Part 10: Effective Podcast Promotion: Tips and Strategies to Increase Your Audience

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.

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.

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.

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

Sequence of steps you should take in the podcast Launchwoche

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

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!

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. 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

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 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.