Welcome to the last article in our series on podcasting in 2021! This article is about how to market your podcast to be the best it can be, but don’t forget to read the other five articles in the series, you’ll find them here, here, here, here and here. Like we’ve said before, it might be a good idea to read those first (if you haven’t yet, of course). If you have, let’s shake, rattle, an’ roll!
Cutting through the clutter
Admittedly, today’s online environment is a very busy place.
Saturated, you wonder? Maybe. But maybe not.
E-commerce platforms and services let people take business into their own hands. Think Patreon, Uber, Amazon, YouTube, Twitch — the list goes on and on. There are some real heavy-hitters out there.
People are encouraged to start their creative venture, and that’s great! But that also means that entering these fields professionally means facing a lot of competition.
Sorry, that includes your new favorite activity, podcasting. There are over 700,000 active podcasts and 29 million podcast episodes available! It’s going to take some effort to break through the noise and stand out.
As with most professional projects, success always comes back to successful marketing. You could have the most successful product with the worst marketing, and unfortunately the success is only going to be as good as the marketing. After all, people can’t buy into what they don’t know about.
So we’re going back to fundamentals and basics — here’s what you should draw into the equation to market your podcast successfully.
Promotable podcasting
Podcasting promotion, podcasting advertisement, podcasting marketing, these are all just names for the main purpose: showing your podcast’s value to as many people as possible.
The idea is simple. If people listen to a podcast and find that it adds to their lives, they’ll be inclined to listen to more of it, and maybe even promote it if you’re lucky.
So the first step in promoting your podcast is to make a podcast that’s worth sharing! That may seem obvious, but we’ve all seen rush-job products that focus on the marketing before the quality. It’s a shame when you look through the promising exterior of a product, only to realize it was a shiny shell with no substance on the inside.
After mastering the quality of your podcast, you’re ready to take a look at podcasting directories.
Podcasting directories
The biggest players in podcasting directories seem to be Apple Podcasts and Spotify, in that order. It’s a good idea to aim to get listed on Apple Podcasts, because getting listed there means you’ll show up other directories like Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castbox, Castro, and Podchaser.
So getting listed on Apple Podcasts is sort of when you can dramatically say to your co-host, “We made it!”… Although you never really “make it” in life, it’s always a process — a topic for another blog at another time.
But joking aside, Apple Podcasts and Spotify aren’t necessarily the all-encompassing answers. Here’s the best strategy: get on all of the platforms. There’s no harm in doing it! There may be listeners who prefer smaller podcasting directories like Overcast, and you’d miss them if you only tried for the big two.
So feel free to explore all of your options! You could even post your podcasts on YouTube and SoundCloud. Here’s a small, curated list for your use.
Launch day
It’s launch day, and it’s exciting. It could be extra exciting if you’ve prepared well for launch day.
That could mean putting up ads for your podcast, showing early reviews, and just making a lot of noise around your launch. Social media is a great tool here, especially if you have supportive friends. Word-of-mouth marketing is regarded as a goldmine.
Just like hitting all the directories, it doesn’t hurt to spread as far as you can on launch day. Email marketing, Search Engine Optimization, paid ads, a charitable event during opening, press releases, all of these are fair game!
The maintenance
Ever been to Disney World? It’s hard to find a speck of dirt, or the outlying piece of litter. It’s honestly remarkable how well it maintains its cleanliness, and therefore, its visage of a fantastical place.
You can’t exactly go Disney on your podcast in the same way, but continually keeping up the quality of your podcast is crucial for marketing. Be on the lookout for ways to upgrade your podcast, like including a professional voice over for your intros and outros.
The same idea of maintenance and upgrading applies actively to how you market your podcast. After a great launch day, keeping the momentum going means continuing to advertise on social media, continuing to host events and promote them, continuing to network, using hashtags, keeping on top of research trends, and so forth.
Like any great project, you get as much out of it as you put in. The great thing about podcasting is that you can directly see and feel the value of hard work. Imagine providing valuable information and affecting lives for the better — for more and more people. How cool is that? It’s something to be proud of.
So are you ready to go out there and market your podcast?
We wish you the greatest success!