You’ve put your blood and sweat into creating just the perfect podcast for your audience. You are all ready to launch your podcast and you can’t wait for your audience to listen to it.
But what if your podcast gets lost in the oblivious space that is the Internet? There is a very high probability that this will happen.
How would you feel?
After a few episodes, you are going to call it quits because there’s no reward or recognition, or motivation. Your podcast is not fulfilling the goals you’d set.
So, how do you stir clear to save your Podcast from this doom?
Podcast Promotion
We understand that you are a creator and might not have much experience with marketing and promotion activities. That’s why, in this blog post, we are going to help you create a successful podcast promotion strategy that’ll get you noticed.
First of all, before you start creating promotion plans, here’s a quick Podcast Launch Checklist to check if everything is in place for your launch.
8 Ways to Promote Your Podcast
Marketing or promotion plans are worthless if they are not directed towards an objective or a goal. For any podcast, it’s either getting a prominent place in iTunes’ New and Noteworthy section if you are just launching or making it to the Top Charts. So, before going about promoting your podcast, make sure to list down your goals.
Pro Tip: Use the SMART framework to define better goals.
1. Build an Audience before the Launch
The best way to promote any content is to have an audience beforehand. If we were living in the ’90s then it would have been a tough job to create a following/audience/community before the launch. Since marketing has been digitalized almost entirely, we have the platforms and tools required to build an audience.
It’s easier said than done. But this can help you get the initial traction required. You can leverage social media [select the right channel based on your target audience] by actively sharing insights into the topic your podcast is based on and engaging with your audience. This will create trust as well as the right rapport among your target audience.
2. Leverage Podcatchers and Aggregators
Note: This point has already been covered in the Product launch checklist blog, but it’s one of the crucial parts of podcast promotion.
These are the apps that enable people to listen to/play and download your podcasts. One of the most renowned podcatchers is Apple’s Podcasts app.
When launching, make sure you are submitting your podcast to these podcatcher apps.
To help you get started, here are the top 5 podcatcher apps where you can submit your podcast.
- Apple’s Podcasts/iTunes and Spotify [obviously]
- Overcast
- Stitcher
- Podcast Subreddit
- PlayerFM
Here’s an exhaustive list of podcatchers and aggregators.
3. Leverage the 24 Hours Before Launch Window
Tomorrow’s your launch day. You have the podcast episodes edited and you are ready to hit the publish button.
So, with just 24 hours remaining, start tweeting, Facebooking, and Instagramming about the launch. Don’t spam but make sure you are reminding your audience that tomorrow is the launch day.
- Pin the tweet and Facebook post to your profile and timelines.
- Ask your team members and company execs as well as friends to do the same; tweet and pin it to the top.
Some underrated ways to promote your podcast:
- Add your podcast to your Google Profile
- Use Pinterest [add images with excerpts from your podcast]
- Invite a celebrity or a micro-influencer in your niche [this will help you leverage their audience]
- Trade promotion favors from other podcasters
4. Decide on the Promotion Channels
This is marketing 101. Define who your target audience is, where they spend most of their time on the internet, and then create a perfect social media mix to promote your podcast.
While promoting your podcast or any content in general, keep these points in mind:
- Quality over quantity
- Deliver value
- Be creative
- Be original
5. Utilize Different Types of Content
Podcast promotion is quite similar to content promotion. So, you’ll have to get creative while sharing your podcast. Try different content formats like graphical images, text-only images, soundbites, stories, polls, etc. There’s a lot of formats to explore — but make sure you are tracking which formats are working for your niche so you can devise better promotional strategies in the later stage.
Other content types you can experiment with:
- Talking about behind the scenes
- Create quotes using Canva or similar designing tools
- Do teaser clips or soundbites
6. Repurpose your Content
To keep getting traction on your podcast even after the launch, creatively repurpose the content of your podcast. This can be done by creating a YouTube video, SlideShare, some insightful LinkedIn post, or a Twitter thread [we all know how well Twitter threads work].
Pro Tip: Use platforms like Pexels to get loop videos to convert your podcast into a YouTube video.
A blog post of podcast transcript or show notes can help you garner SEO benefits as well. To get more creative with your blog post, you can edit the transcript and create multiple blog posts on the different topics you talked about in your podcast. Barevalue offers podcast editing and show notes writing services.
7. Giveaways/Contests
To get to the New and Noteworthy section, the best way is to get more downloads and reviews. By keeping this as your end goal, launch a contest or a giveaway on social media to get more reviews and downloads. For giveaways, you can giveaway t-shirts, stickers, product discounts, coupons, etc. — decide the giveaway based on your target audience and what things they put an aspirational value on.
Other ways to promote your giveaway/contest and to get more reviews and downloads:
- Send podcast to your friends and acquaintances – Email, iMessage, WhatsApp, Twitter DM them
- Add the link to your podcast in your signature and ask your team members to do the same
8. Appear on Someone’s Podcast
Your general target audience is someone who listens to podcasts and is curious. So, the best way to get to them is by appearing on someone else’s podcast. You can choose a podcast in your niche or broaden your horizon as well. This is among the best ways to promote your podcast and leverage a completely new set of audience.
Following the above-mentioned ways can help you achieve your marketing goals and make your podcast a hit. But above all, what matters is the quality of the content of your podcast. If your content is unique, insightful, and engaging, then your promotional efforts can be reduced to half since your listeners will be doing the promotion.
Happy Podcasting!
