If you’ve worked hard on your podcast, it can be disheartening not to see audience growth. You may have recorded hours of high-quality and entertaining content yet not see engagement, conversation, and increased listeners. Therefore, you might be wondering how to get started with podcast promotion. Actively promoting your podcast is a great idea. You can increase your reach, and over time this can be the growth engine of your entire podcast.
Knowing how to promote a podcast can potentially grow your show and attract new listeners. Plus, there are dozens of ways and examples for podcast promotion. Common methods include social media, creating your own podcast website, and inviting guests to your show or participating in other shows.
In this article, we’ll look at everything you need to consider before you start promoting your podcast. Then, we’ll discuss four ways to promote your podcast. Let’s get right into it!
Where to Begin With Podcast Promotion
Knowing how to promote your podcast can be challenging. If you’re starting from scratch, with no audience, it may take a while until you start getting a steady number of listeners. It’s important to develop a podcast marketing strategy, stick to it, and always put the highest priority on the content itself – it’s much easier to promote a good show rather than a podcast that isn’t well produced.
That said, podcast promotion can get you from no audience and no listeners to grow and succeed with your show. If you already have some interest or downloads, these listeners have shown their interest early, and you shouldn’t underestimate their willingness to help you grow by sharing and interacting.
The most important thing at this early stage is knowing who you want to reach and your overall goals. While you may say that you want extra listeners, what does this mean to you? Does it mean more interaction and exposure? Or maybe you’re looking to increase your revenue.
Many marketing-related efforts, such as being a guest on another show, could bring a temporary spike in your listenership. But if you don’t do anything to retain that audience, your numbers will fall again.
Therefore, producing quality content that’s informative and entertaining can engage your listeners more effectively and achieve better long-term growth. You’ll need time and patience since there’s no magic overnight path to success. However, there are a few ways to ensure you’re on the right track.
4 Best Ways to Promote Your Podcast
There are several ways to promote your podcast, with too many to list here. However, some methods are more effective than others, including these four!
1. Create a Website
Creating a podcast website is a huge step and helps establishing a brand name for your show. No matter how good your podcast is, its audience will be limited without a dedicated website. You’ll see that most high-profile shows have their own websites. Here are some of the best podcast website examples we love to get you some inspiration. Based on several researches, about 30% of new podcast listeners search the internet to find new podcasts. Success isn’t as simple as just creating content and thinking that listeners will come.
Having a website gives you a space to add content and create a hub for your podcast. Then you can attract new listeners with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques that increase your rankings in the search results:
These are some things you may wish to include on your podcast website:
- An About Us page where you can sell your brand.
- A Contact page with an email form.
- A Subscribe page with your podcast links.
- An embedded episode player.
- Social sharing buttons.
Fortunately, a podcast site is super easy to put together using Podcastpage:
Our website builder helps you create a complete website for your podcast quickly and easily. It is fully customizable, includes a bunch of pre-designed templates, automations, and tons of built-in podcasting features. All that without needing any coding or need for a technical experience.
Creating your own website is an important step in your podcast promotion journey. It gives you an online home for your show that you actually fully own and manage.
2. Collaborate With Other Podcasters
You don’t have to see podcasters in your niche as competition. Instead, other podcasts can be sources of mutually beneficial relationships. Both of your shows will have unique listeners who, given your shared interests, will likely be receptive to your content. Additionally, people who already listen to similar podcasts are the easiest audience members to attract.
You can potentially explore several avenues when reaching out to other podcasters. For example, you may wish to begin with a promo swap for podcast promotion.
However, perhaps the most effective form of collaboration is being a guest on other shows. Selling yourself to another audience acts as a teaser where you can leave the listeners wanting to hear more:
In turn, you can have guests on your show. You might encourage these speakers to share the episode with their audiences and provide them with materials such as quotes and images. Potentially, you could also record a tagline with your guest.
3. Promote on Social Media
17% of listeners use social media to find podcasts. While this figure may not seem high, social platforms can help you attract new listeners and interact with your existing audience. By doing so, you can build strong relationships and a sense of community around your show.
It’s essential to add value to your social media posts. You might share rich media, including soundbites, videos, images, and teasers. Social platforms present opportunities to be creative.
Additionally, you can use your channels to tease the next episode and share your latest podcast multiple times. However, we recommend posting just 2-3 times a week so as not to annoy your audience:
You can also add some personality to your feeds. You could include behind-the-scenes photos, information, and outtakes, for example.
Equally, remember to interact with your audience. Consider seeking their feedback and ideas through polls and surveys, asking them about topics they’d like to hear about, or even running competitions.
4. Use Paid Advertising
Finally, despite the prevalence of social media promotion, traditional advertising is still essential when planning how to promote your podcast. You can even customize your ads specifically for your target audience.
For example, Facebook advertising can detect the user’s device and send them to iOS podcasts on iPhones or Google podcasts on Android devices.
However, targeting doesn’t end there. You can directly target advertisements at people using segmentation. This means you could promote a podcast episode dealing with a specific theme.
For example, suppose you host a sports podcast featuring an episode on the New York Yankees. You might advertise this episode to fans of the team’s official Facebook page or people living in the New York area.
Another option is Google Ads. While the platform once only offered text-based advertisements, it now includes reviews, contact information, a shopping function, and mobile optimization. Since Google is the most popular search engine, you stand a better chance of reaching a wider audience with its ads.
Conclusion – Podcast Promotion
Promoting your podcast starts by leveraging your existing listeners. Then you can gain a wider natural fanbase by encouraging listeners to share and follow your content. However, there are additional ways to market your podcast.
To recap, here are four ways to promote your podcast:
- Create a website: Consider using Podcastpage to build an attractive site quickly.
- Collaborate with other podcasters: Feature guests and appear on other shows within your niche.
- Promote on social media: Develop a social media strategy across multiple platforms.
- Paid advertising: Utilize Facebook and Google ads to target a new audience.
Remember – podcast promotion is always a long term game, and so is the overall success of your podcast. You can’t expect for an overwhelming success after releasing just a couple of episodes, and so you also can’t expect your show to explode after a short promotional effort. Choose sustainable ways to keep releasing episodes on a constant basis, and tailor a long-term marketing plan around it.
