How to advertise a podcast

Before we look at how you can advertise your newly minted podcast, we’ll start by having a look at the two main pillars of podcasting. These are quality content and time. We need to ensure that what we’re currently producing is worth promoting and that we have reasonable expectations around the time frames of success.

Quality content

Marketing a sub-par product is a waste of time. No amount of money, creative digital marketing angles, or Hail Mary approaches will grow a stale podcast. So before you begin attempting to crack the code on marketing a show, first make sure it’s up to scratch.

So, what makes a good product? It has to hit these three traits:

1. Valuable: Your listeners have to get something from the episode. They either learned new information or a skill, were amused, or fulfilled a curiosity.
2. Unique: Your podcast’s position adds something fresh to the conversation, although slight. Individuality varies for every topic so begin by creating Venn Diagrams against the others in your niche. If there are too many data points land in the centre, focus on improving your differentiating factors first.
3. Sticky: You podcast needs to capture and maintain an audience’s attention. If your existing listeners aren’t always consuming your episodes in full, concentrate your efforts on the content better. Listen to podcasts which are similar to yours, study their formats, content, as well as structure. Think about how you can integrate those features into your show and enhance what they’ve created.

The best long-term strategy in order to promote a podcast is by delivering value. Gimmicks and shortcuts might work in the short-term, but they won’t support you. Rather than of leaping on the newest marketing trend, concentrate on creating value through solid relationships and quality content.

Time

With quality content in your pocket, next turn to the second-most important pillar: time. We know that Rome wasn’t built in a day and exactly the same thing can be said for podcast audiences.

Remember that many hosts produce a podcast for between five and six months before seeing major increases in their listenership. That means constantly promoting 10 top-notch episodes that eventually see negligible engagement. Don’t be discouraged. Trust that promoting a podcast takes time. Growth of your listenership depends on regularly producing engaging content.

Define your target audience

The most important is knowing exactly who you want to reach. This is all part of the podcast-planning process.  You also need to understand what you want, beyond the simple download and traffic spikes as you could waste a massive amount of time or money promoting your show in the wrong spot, or wrong way, and end up with a big (but temporary) rise in listens.

Podcasters need their target audience to hit subscribe and remain with the show beyond one episode. If you do not know your audience though, how will you get your content in front of the correct people?

Don’t mistake once-off clicks for growth. You’ll only be unhappy when your stats get back to normal the following week. So ask yourself, “Where are my target listeners?” For instance, if very few of them are on Instagram, why spend time attempting to promote your show on this channel? Maybe they tend to hang out in places like Twitter and Facebook? Or perhaps your potential audience doesn’t use social media at all.

With podcast-promotion methods, you need to think about which ones are likely to get you in front of your intended audience as well as which ones could be a waste of time.

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