Effective Podcast Promotion: Tips and Strategies to Increase Your Audience

Short-term and long-term strategies

When it comes to promoting your podcast, there are two areas you should focus on: the launch week when your podcast launches and the long-term strategies for promoting future episodes. While the first week is crucial for building initial momentum and awareness, it's equally important to develop long-term promotion strategies to continually attract new listeners and grow your audience.

Effektive Podcast-Promotion: Tipps und Strategien zur Steigerung deiner Zuhörerschaft
neue Abonnentinnen und Abonnenten für deinen Podcast zu finden.

As soon as you focus on these two elements of promotion, you’ll be able to find new subscribers for your podcast.

You may ask yourself now: “Does it really have to be so complicated? Why can’t I just launch the podcast?” The answer is: Adapt your podcast launch to your resources. If you have time for both launch and promotion, use that time. If not, you can always do it later. 

It’s a myth that if you want it to be successful, you need to bet everything on one card when you launch a podcast. You can still make a blockbuster from an existing podcast that’s just limping along.

 

Franca Cerutti proved that point impressively with her podcast “Psychology to go.” 

She got by for years with a small but loyal fan base and even paused the podcast from time to time. At some point the show was over, and now she’s taking it on tour, so to speak. 

Even if others claim the opposite, you have more than one chance to make a successful podcast. 

 

Now let’s turn our attention to the different elements of the launch.

The Podcast Launch Week

Why a week? Because a week is a manageable stretch of time to launch your podcast. In this first week, you can find potential listeners with a few tricks. To make sure you succeed in this, we’ll now look at some of the elements that can play a role in ensuring the success of your endeavor.

Grundlage: Landingpage 

Foundation: Landing Page 

To make people aware of your podcast, you can give them links to the different platforms, of course. That would be useful primarily for those people who already know you and are waiting for your podcast. 

But what about the people who don’t know you so well yet?

And what can you give people who’d like to share your podcast at a specific place? 

They’d also have to share all the relevant links. Not so clever. 

 

The solution is having ONE link to share: the landing page.

Inhalte einer Landing-Page

Content of a Landing Page  

The landing page is a page listing all the important content about a product, a topic, or a podcast. This page is dedicated to one topic. You can set up a landing page on your Web site or use the Podigee blog, which we make available to our customers.

Links zu den wichtigsten Plattformen

Links to the most important Platforms

When potential listeners come to your page, they should be given the opportunity to subscribe to your podcast. I’d offer as many opportunities as possible. It’s often enough to place buttons for Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. 

pillar-page_10_3(500 × 500 px)

The target group for your Podcast

When people are new and don’t yet know anything about you, they should first get the message that they’ve come to the right place for their interests. A statement like “This podcast is for ...” can give them a reason to stay on the page. That’s why the podcast’s positioning is so important: You’ll score points by speaking clearly to the people who visit your page.

Der Nutzen Deines Podcasts

The benefits of your podcast

Now you need to whet the interest of people visiting your page by talking to them about the content and benefits of your podcast. An introductory “You’re interested in …” followed by a list of content that truly interests people will bring in many more subscriptions to your podcast.

pillar-page_10_5(500 × 500 px)

Advantages of a podcast format

As podcasters, we know very well why we’re fascinated by this medium and the advantages it offers. But not every visitor to the blog or landing page is familiar with the cool features and all the reasons why they should subscribe to a podcast. Some of these advantages are listed below.

  • A podcast is the only medium you don’t need to watch on a screen: Just try watching a blog post or video when you have to pass a truck at a construction site. It doesn’t work. Unlike other content formats that you have to watch on a screen, you can listen to podcasts while exercising, taking a walk, or driving a car. 
  • Always up to date: Besides the information and entertainment listeners derive from podcast content, podcast apps can automatically download new episodes so that subscribers never miss anything.
Feedback Der Community

Feedback from your community

The reviews by your listeners on the podcast’s landing page are like stars on Amazon. When you’ve just begun, of course, you won’t have any reviews to screenshot and place on your landing page. On the other hand, you can certainly find a few beta listeners who’ll listen to your podcast and write honest reviews.

Links, Links, Links

Links, Links, Links

You should also place the most important buttons linking to the podcast platforms at the bottom of the page so that people won’t have to scroll up to subscribe to your podcast.

Getting help launching your podcast

Unless you’ve laid the groundwork, possess a large email distribution list, and have many followers on social networks, you’ll need all the help you can get to publicize your podcast. 

You should therefore think about identifying the people in your network who could serve as multipliers by sharing your landing page or blog in their own networks to help you get started.

Hilfe beim Podcast-Launch

The following people can act as multipliers:

  • Customers with whom you have good relationships
  • Network partners with access to the same target group (excluding competitors)
  • Associations, clubs, and interest groups
  • If your podcast is of interest to the general public, you can include municipal authorities (administration, marketing officials), local governments, and state governments (for topics related to local tourism and the like)
  • People who’ve already agreed to be interviewed on your podcast 
  • Employees of your company to serve as brand ambassadors 
  • Friends and family

Established marketing channels 

Naturally, you should also use any marketing channels you’ve already established, including:

  • Your newsletter
  • Your social media channels 
  • Informational materials for established customers
  • PR campaigns
  • Mailings to your press distribution list
  • A mention in the menu, side bar, or at least the footer menu of your Web site (yes, that’s often completely overlooked).
  • In the case of companies: intranet or corporate wiki
  • Flyers at events with a QR code linking to the podcast
Wie viele Episoden sollten bis zum Start fertig sein?

How many Episodes should be ready  when you launch?

Some sources and “experts” recommend that you have anywhere from a few to 20 episodes ready when you launch your podcast. In our experience, the truth is somewhere in the middle or perhaps somewhat higher than that, if that’s what you want. 

You should release three to four episodes, including trailers, in the first week. That way you’ll have enough material to promote in the first week.

Sequence of steps you should take in the podcast Launchwoche

  1. You should already have published all the planned podcast episodes at the beginning of launch week. Remember what we said before about submitting your podcast, because Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts each have their own peculiarities.

  2. Send pre-formulated texts and the most important links to your multipliers so they can share them with less effort.  

  3. Set a time for promoting individual podcast episodes. The time from Tuesday to Friday has proven effective for this purpose. Promote ONE episode per day in your channels and to the multipliers you have available to you. The goal is to send people to your landing page and place direct links to the relevant platforms in your social media posts. As soon as people have been made aware of the podcast, they should find the first three to four episodes there so they have something to listen to.

  4. Another option is to plan a public Webinar at the launch. The Webinar topic doesn’t necessarily have to relate directly to a topic discussed in one of your episodes. The important thing right now is to get your target group’s attention. A QR code linking to the podcast can be placed on a slide in the Webinar, or a link can be placed on the thank-you page after registration.

If you take these four steps in the first week of your podcast, you’ll have made much more progress than many other beginning podcasters. But remember, you don’t want to promote just the podcast launch. 

Instead, you want to promote each episode. That’s something that many podcasters overlook, unfortunately.

Even if you only act on some of these points, you’ll have done a lot right!

8 Strategies for increasing reach and visibility after the launch  

In addition to launching your podcast, you’ll also need to think about producing new episodes and winning new subscribers.

 

This is especially important if you intend to market the podcast itself and make it interesting to advertising partners. We’re about to discuss a few of the elements you can use to promote your podcast. But let’s start with something to take some of the pressure off.

8 Strategien für mehr Reichweite und Sichtbarkeit nach dem Launch 

One finished podcast episode is all you need

Many podcasters feel stressed when they think about promoting their episodes. After all, it seems like it might involve a lot of work. But all you really need is a finished podcast episode to promote. 

You can make a standalone piece of content out of the elements, passages, or side notes from your finished podcast episode and share it in your community or on social media, for example. 

 

“But will people still want to hear my episode if I do that?” you might ask yourself. 

The simple answer is: YES!

0. Eine fertige Podcast-Episode ist alles, was du brauchst

Why is that? 

First of all, your followers and fans won’t usually see all your posts due to the algorithms used by social media. Therefore, they’ll be grateful if they can consume the entire piece. 

Second, you’ll share much more knowledge in the podcast episode than you could share in any other content format. Ultimately, you want to connect people with people, and that works especially well in the podcast. 

 

That’s why you’ll only need to come up with entirely new content in the rarest of cases (launches, for example). Therefore, you can pick out small morsels of content from a finished long-form podcast and play them on your channels (as Katrin Gildner likes to do, for example). Once it’s produced, it can be used in many ways. 

This makes it much, much easier to promote your podcast episodes.

1. Social media

As already mentioned, social media can be a wonderful way to promote your podcast episode. But you should always remember that the people you want to reach on Facebook and other channels are there because they want to be there. 

A simple link labelled “New episode online” won’t typically inspire people to drop everything and listen to your episode. You should make sure that every post is useful in itself. That makes it more likely to be shared and opened and interacted with. You can then place a link to your podcast at the bottom of the post.

2. Multiplikatoren und Netzwerk

2. Multipliers and network

Are there people in your network whose target group might find your episode helpful? Are there perhaps interest groups you could tag in a post? Informing these people about your episodes could bring in many new subscribers to your podcast. 

That said, networking is always a matter of give and take. Strategic networking isn’t a one-way street, and those who are only “takers” will soon feel very lonely. 

So you should make sure to build a network of contacts whose content you’d also like to share; and you should do that proactively in order to make a good first impression.

3. Cross-promotion between your channels and content recycling (Level 1)

A frequently asked question is: “Should I also publish my podcast episodes in my blog?” The clear answer to this question is likewise YES. 

  • First of all, because the Podigee plug-in for WordPress makes it really easy to make a post out of a podcast episode by easily uploading the text, player, and links. And second, it’s always helpful to make podcast listeners out of blog readers. 
  • You can also check to see if emails referring to your podcast can be automated when added to an email distribution list. Cooperating with other podcasters is also a great idea. 

Imagine, for example, that you have a podcast episode dealing with a software program that does a better job of mapping sales processes. In this episode, you can team up with a sales coach so that you can promote each other. Although the products and services are different, the target group is similar.

4. Podcast Community

4. Podcast Community

It can also make sense to establish your own community. However, this idea is somewhat different from the others in that it requires some work.

  • Establishing your own community (Facebook group, LinkedIn group, membership, etc.) is challenging, because you need a certain critical mass of people before you can actively interact with them. NONETHELESS, it’s worth the effort because your own community will be highly likely to consume and recommend all your content, and you can show them what you have to offer. In addition, having your own community can help you come up with many new ideas for content.

5. Mailing list 

Podcasters often make a mistake when they seek to inform the people on their mailing list about a new podcast episode: They provide a written summary of the content and place a link to the podcast. 

That’s a waste of time, because most of your email subscribers have probably already subscribed to your podcast – meaning that they’ve have already downloaded the episode you’re trying to promote. That makes them doubt whether it makes sense to stay on your list. 

 

It’s relatively easy to promote an episode in your email distribution list. For example, if your episode consists of three core elements or messages, you can surely come up with a fourth message on the same topic, which would then become the core message of your newsletter.

 

This makes the newsletter useful in itself, regardless of whether or not the people on your list have already listened to the episode.

6. Content recycling (Level 2) - Audio in print and Video 

We spoke about content recycling earlier. We’ll now discuss the next step to take in this direction.

Once the structure of the podcast episode has been completed and recorded, it can also be used to create a blog title that can go far beyond the content of the descriptive text. 

If you notice that a given episode is being listened to more often than others, that can be a sign that you should make something more out of this episode, such as an SEO-optimized blog post or YouTube video.

If you feel more confident in front of the microphone, you can also film yourself using appropriate equipment and produce a video podcast. That lets you kill two birds with one stone.

7. Podcast-Interviews für Networking und mehr Reichweite

7. Podcast Interviews for Networking and a wider reach

Podcast interviews are not just perfectly suited for delivering entertainment, variety, and knowledge to your listeners. What’s more, your guests can help broaden your reach.

  • If you give your guests some text, a podcast link, or other information after the episode is published, they’ll likely be glad to share the episode with their own network of contacts.
  • Using an interview as a networking opportunity is also a good strategy for reaching people you don’t know personally. There’s a difference between communicating with someone on social media and spending time with that person in an interview.
  • And if you can think up some good questions that your guest hasn’t answered yet, you can offer them the chance to use the interview audio in their own podcast.

8. Points of contact between Podcast and Website

It’s true that your podcast can usually be found somewhere in the menu or sidebar (although there are some exceptions). Sometimes, however, the podcast appears as a link in the footer menu or doesn’t appear at all on the Web site.

 

That means wasted traffic, which is a shame. You should make sure that your podcast can be found at all points of contact with your target group. 

 

Here are the points of contact you should focus on:

Das Menü deiner Website oder als Banner auf der Startseite

The Menu on your website or banner on the home page

If the podcast is relevant to the concept of your Web site, a link to the podcast’s landing page should be placed in the Web site's menu. This is where the most traffic is generated, and it should be used to publicize the podcast.

Links in sozialen Netzwerken

Links in social media networks

There are many places on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels where you can provide a description of yourself. You should also place a link to the podcast (or landing page) in these places.

Automatisierung deines E-Mail-Verteilers

Automating your E-Mail distribution list

Do you collect emails and leads for your company? Do new subscribers receive a welcome email with relevant information about your company and/or your products and services? One of these emails can be used to inform all your subscribers about the podcast, ensuring that they’ll come into contact with it.

Deine E-Mail Signatur

Your email signature

You can set up your own email signature in most email tools like Outlook, Gmail, and others. You can place a link to the podcast in the email signature of all your employees (and yours as well, of course). Given the sheer quantity of emails sent and answered on a given day, you’re bound to attract some attention this way. It can be especially effective in conversations with prospective customers.

Danke-Seiten

Thank you pages

Do you offer Webinars, live training courses, and/or workshops that people can register for online? The thank-you emails you send to these people can be a wonderful place to inform them about your podcast. You might also include a selection of episodes to help them prepare for the workshop: “Listen to Episode 14 and Episode 34 of the podcast to get more out of the workshop.”

404-Seite deiner Website

Your Webssites 404 page

It happens frequently that people look for something on your Web site but can’t find it. That’s when the classic 404 page appears. How about setting yourself apart from the crowd by saying a few nice words about your podcast? “We’re sorry, the page you’re looking for isn’t here – but have you heard about our podcast?”

QR-Codes als Slide in deinen Folien

Inserting a slide with a QR codes in your presentation

There’s always the possibility of holding a public Webinar or live training course. When you introduce yourself, you can also refer participants to your podcast by inserting a slide with a QR code. You can generate QR codes for your pages for free here.

Als QR-Code auf der Rückseite deiner Visitenkarten

Printing a QR code on the reverse of your business cards 

Besides using digital locations, you can also print a QR code on the back of your business cards to bring people’s attention to your podcast. QR codes are thought to be somewhat outdated in marketing circles, but they can be truly effective when used here.

Als Player in passenden Blogbeiträgen

As a player in appropriate blog posts

If you turn a blog post into a podcast episode, the player will naturally appear in the post. But if you want to highlight other content, you can integrate audio clips or even an entire episode into your blog posts as a player, which could turn your blog readers into podcast listeners.

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