Promoting Your Podcast: Complete Guide to Allure New Listeners
Podcasts have become increasingly popular in recent times. In 2019 there were around 88 million podcast listeners in the United States and is expected to be worth $94.88 billion by 2028.
With all of this market growth predicted, more and more podcasts are expected to hit the market. In this sea of content, finding ways to market your podcast and stand out from the crowd becomes important.
The first thing you may be asking is “How do I get more listeners for my podcast?“ To help answer this question, we will share a few podcast promotion ideas.
How to Market your Podcast
Before we dive into the world of strategies, let's discuss how you can promote your podcast. We get it, you're asking yourself "How do I promote my podcast in 2022?” and we’re here to help. The first thing you may be asking is, can you pay to promote your podcast, and the answer is yes. The execution, however, will depend on the platform.
When it comes to looking at how to promote your podcast on Instagram, the answer is simple: attention-grabbing Instagram ads. Instagram is an incredibly visual profile, so try to find ways of designing graphics that force users to stop scrolling. Look for imagery related to your topic and consider using bold colors. Link it to your podcast and you’ve got a winner on your hands.
If we look at how to promote the podcast on Spotify, it becomes slightly more complex. To start with, you can create a run-of-the-mill popup ad. Or you could create an ad on your social media platforms linking back to your podcast episodes.
On the other hand, you may be wondering how to promote your podcast on iTunes. For this, you need to build an audience beforehand, and then produce eye-catching cover art for when you share it. This is all simply put but should give you an idea of what you’ll need to do.
10 Podcast Promotion Strategies
When it comes to promoting your podcast, here are a few easy ways to reach a wider audience.
- Use your guest’s audience to your advantage – tag them, share content, and generate hype around the episode. This way their followers will see it too – and hopefully engage with it.
- Promote the episode on social media using different social media platforms and content types. This gives you room to be creative and see what your audience responds to.
- Release more than one episode in the day, people want to follow the story and know more. Don’t leave them waiting.
- Convert your podcast to video format and share it on video-sharing sites such as YouTube, including your guest's name in the title for SEO purposes.
- Reach out to apps that share podcasts, known as podcatchers, to share your podcasts with an even wider audience that shares your interests.
- Transcribe the show and share it as a blog post to enhance your SEO efforts. You can also use snippets for social media marketing.
- Host a party to launch the podcast and generate interest – and more importantly – ratings. The first two weeks are the best time to do so.
- Run a competition that generates engagement. Something along the lines of “review and stand a chance to win” works well.
- Get your partners and guests to mention you on their social media platforms and in their podcasts to generate more interest. It also helps you build a more trusting relationship with your followers and theirs.
- Accept invitations to be on other podcasts and grow your network.
5 Benefits of Promoting your Podcast
When it comes to marketing, it always needs to answer the question “why?”. Why are you doing the podcast, why should people listen and why should you be committing to a marketing strategy? To better illustrate the why let's take a look at the benefits that come with marketing your podcast.
- You can reach a wider audience and increase your following.
- Your brand becomes more than just a business, it becomes a voice for the people.
- Audio is a lot easier to do than video but can be equally engaging with the right content and guests. It is also more forgiving, whereas a poorly shot video can do a lot of damage to your reputation.
- It is less taxing on data charges, which makes it more appealing when it comes to on-the-go content.
- It leaves a lot to the imagination; people can listen to what is being said and picture themselves in the same setting. This of course means that your content needs to be emotive and facilitate this.
A Consistent Level of Effort is Needed
Promoting a podcast must be done with the same effort as making it to reap the complete benefits. All of the time and effort put into your episodes will be wasted if no one knows they exist.
So, our final word of advice is to consider how you will market your podcast while you come up with the initial episode idea. This will help you make the most of the experience.