A study done by Listen Notes shows that there are over 3.1 million podcasts and 176 million podcast episodes online today.
Your podcast is just one of them. The only way to stand out from the crowd and stay ahead of your competitors is to promote your podcast. In fact, you’ll need a robust podcast promotion strategy before you launch to have the best chances of ramping up your audience.
In this article, you’ll learn 14 marketing strategies to help you grow your podcast’s audience and be successful.
14 Podcast Marketing Strategies You Should Try
Skip ahead:
- Have a good podcast
- Know your target audience
- Tell human stories
- Launch with at least three episodes
- Make your podcast available on all major platforms
- Host guests with a large following
- Repurpose your podcast content for social media
- Promote on forums and online groups
- Create a website or blog for the podcast
- Use SEO to boost your podcast’s organic rankings
- Appear on other podcasts as a guest
- Try email marketing
- Promote older posts
- Leverage influencer marketing
- Promote your podcast today
The trick to getting more listeners to your podcast is to have a podcast that is actually worth listening to. That’s why you should prioritize having in-depth conversations with interesting guests — preferably subject matter experts — about topics that people are interested in.
Alex Birkett, the co-founder of Omniscient Digital and one of the hosts of The Long Game podcast, knows this all too well. “I know this will sound trite, but the only way to grow a podcast is to have a good podcast in the first place,” Birkett says. “You can convince some big-name guests to jump on with you, but if the premise sucks and your interview is awkward, that’s going to be a little spike of listeners at best.
Almost all podcasts that have grown from scratch (excluding The Daily by the NYT or anything by NPR) have done so primarily via word-of-mouth and from repeated exposure. So if you’ve got a unique premise and the podcast is genuinely good, you have to find where your target audience is.”
But what makes a podcast good?
Here are three things that determine a great podcast:
- Valuable. Your listeners benefit from your podcast. At the end of an episode, they’ve either learned some new tips and information, or they’re entertained. Or, why not both?
- Attention-grabbing. Ideally, you want your audience to listen to your episodes from start to finish. To achieve that, your content has to draw them in and keep their attention. Boring content makes for bored listeners.
- Unique. Your podcast shouldn’t be a rundown of the gazillion other podcasts in your niche. You can get inspiration from other podcasts, but you should add your own spin or twist to it. Like a secret ingredient that makes your podcast stand out.
This may be a little hard to hear, but your podcast cannot (and should not) appeal to everyone. If you attempt to create content for everyone, it’s likely your podcast won’t be specific enough to appeal to anyone.
To build a following and a brand around your podcast, you have to identify your ideal listener or “tribe”. These are people who are actively looking for content to consume in your niche.
When you know exactly who your ideal listener is, you can promote your podcast effectively by targeting the specific pain points, interests, and experiences of your tribe.
But finding your target audience isn’t magic. You’d have to do a ton of research into things like:
- Their age range
- Geographic location
- Education level
- Interests (of both your listeners and your competitors’ listeners), etc.
The more you learn about your audience, the better your content and copy will be.
Christine Brownstein, Chief Marketing Officer at Palaleather UK recommends creating a personal document for this purpose. “It would be ideal if your podcast resonated with everybody, but it is unlikely,” says Brownstein. “So create an industry persona document with all you understand about your audience so you may refer to it while writing marketing content. Take measures to acquire as much as you can about a particular audience so that you can build campaigns that reach them with the appropriate content.”
Read more: How to Start a Podcast with No Audience
People love stories. When they listen to a podcast, they want to take advice from people with similar lived experiences who have found a way to solve their problems. This means telling human stories is one of the best podcast promotion tips around.
I’ve just started listening to podcasts, and one of my absolute favorite podcasts is The Diary of a CEO, hosted by Steven Bartlett. The reason is simple: Bartlett tells stories from his personal and work life and encourages his guests to do the same.
The guests of The Diary of a CEO and I might not have the same experiences, but I relate to some of the stories they share. That makes me stick around until the end to find out how they discovered the silver lining in their respective situations and how I can do the same.
“Using stories to promote a podcast is a great way to get the attention and interest of the audience you wish to attract,” says Christiaan Huynen, founder and CEO at DesignBro.
“PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO LISTEN TO YOU WHEN YOU TELL THEM A STORY. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE BIG OR COMPLICATED; IT JUST NEEDS TO BE AN INTERESTING STORY THAT SHOWS WHY YOU ARE THE RIGHT PERSON TO TALK TO ABOUT THE TOPIC YOU ARE PROMOTING. YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO GET EVERYONE’S ATTENTION, BUT THE PEOPLE WHOSE INTERESTS ARE PIQUED BY THE STORY ARE MOST LIKELY TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST.”
Perhaps the best way to promote a podcast is to make sure people have something to promote in the first place.
As you develop an audience, you’ll grow and deepen relationships with a core set of listeners. This set of highly invested, engaged, and passionate listeners will actively promote your podcast. They’ll do this by sharing it with their friends, telling their coworkers about your latest episode, and resharing your social posts.
But in order for listeners to promote your content, they need episodes to share, forward, and post. That’s why you should launch your podcast with no less than three episodes.
Not only will this give new listeners episodes to binge and more opportunities to connect with you and the podcast, but it will also give them more content to share in the earliest days of your show.
Read more: How to Start a Podcast (Step-by-Step Guide)
The host of Product Marketing Insider, Lawrence Chapman, agrees with this.
“WHEN LAUNCHING PODCASTS HERE AT PRODUCT MARKETING ALLIANCE, WE HAVE A LAUNCH CADENCE IN PLACE WHEREBY WE LAUNCH WITH A MINIMUM OF THREE EPISODES, PUBLISHING ACROSS SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, AND GOOGLE PODCASTS.”
If you want people to listen to your podcast, you have to make said podcast easily accessible. This means listing your podcast on every major platform should be a key point in your podcast promotion strategy.
As Chapman said, the team at Product Marketing Alliance publishes their podcast episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. While these are the three major podcast platforms, you’ll also want to submit your podcast to lesser-known platforms like:
- Stitcher
- Audible
- TuneIn
- Deezer
- Pandora
- Podchaser
- Castbox
- SoundCloud
- Pocket Casts
- Overcast
- iHeartRadio
- Podbay, etc.
Colin Jeffries, the host of the Rethink Marketing Podcast, believes that the more places your podcast is available, the more people you’ll be able to reach.
“WE HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL AT GROWING OUR AUDIENCE TO THE TOP 5% OF PODCASTS WORLDWIDE,” JEFFRIES ESPOUSES. “FOR THE RETHINK MARKETING PODCAST SPECIFICALLY, WE FOCUS ON ACCESSIBILITY: THE PODCAST IS AVAILABLE ON JUST ABOUT EVERY PODCAST PLATFORM WE CAN FIND (APPLE, SPOTIFY, GOOGLE, PODCHASER, STITCHER, POCKET CASTS, CASTBOX, ETC., ETC.). THIS ALLOWS US TO CAST A WIDER NET AND BUILD OUR OVERALL AUDIENCE.”
Recording, producing, and publishing a podcast is already hard work. Tack on promoting podcasts on social media, and it can quickly become overwhelming, especially with a small or non-existent following. This is where hosting guests can become a game changer.
Hosting guests is beneficial for both you and your guests. You’ll be able to share more human stories, valuable insights, and tap into your guest’s following. In return, your guest receives a new backlink for their site, builds their own brand awareness, and fortifies their authority in their niche.
But in order for your guests to see the full benefit of making a guest appearance, they’ll need to mobilize their own following, encouraging them to tune in to the show. To do this, many guests share their featured episode on social media, giving your show a valuable boost on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
“AS SOMEONE WHO HAS STARTED AND GROWN TWO PODCASTS, MY NUMBER ONE TIP IS TO HOST GUESTS WHO HAVE A STRONG SOCIAL PRESENCE WITH YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.”
says Alisa Meredith, Senior Product Marketing Manager at SemRush.
Will Whitman, the host of the podcast, CMO Convo, echoes this: “With a few high-profile names in the bag, who will then leverage their own large social media followings to promote their episode, you can organically grow your listeners pretty effectively. You’ll also attract other big-name guests through word of mouth, creating a nice self-sustaining loop.”
When an episode with a big-name guest goes live, you can send them a personalized email asking them to share it across their social media channels. But you have to make it easy for them to share. Do this by sending them:
- The link to the episode
- Short video snippets
- Pre-selected tweets
- Link to your own tweet so they can retweet
Giving your guest easy-to-share info will make it that much easier for them to encourage their audience to join yours.
Social media is a great place to promote a podcast and connect with listeners. But there’s more to promoting podcasts on social media than just sharing links to each episode. Here are some podcast marketing ideas you can use on social media to increase your podcast listenership:
- Use one of your episodes to spark a conversation on your Facebook page (or group) or Twitter
- Take salient points from an episode and turn them into tweets and LinkedIn posts
- Convert your recorded MP3 file into a MOV file for a YouTube video
- Post teasers of your latest podcast episodes using audiograms
- Take an interesting 30 – 60 seconds excerpt from an episode and add it to a graphic video (with captions, of course)
Alex Birkett explains how the team at Omniscient Digital repurposes The Long Game podcast. “We invested heavily in content repurposing since we have a decent presence on social media (as do our guests). We make videograms, audiograms, tweets, LinkedIn posts, and blog posts from every podcast episode.
No single thing has been a silver bullet, but cumulatively, we’ve grown quite steadily doing all of this.”
Note: Ensure that your target audience uses the social media platforms you promote your podcast on. You want your posts to reach people who are interested in them.
Promoting podcasts on social media also encompasses leveraging forums and online groups. While these are a subset of social media, they deserve their own section because they’re wildly underrated.
Platforms like Quora and Reddit have forums and groups made up of people who are avid podcast listeners. You only have to find the ones in your industry.
Ilija Sekulov, Marketing and SEO at MailButler.io says,
“IF YOU HAVE A PODCAST WHERE YOU TALK ABOUT TECHNOLOGY, FOR EXAMPLE, ONE WAY TO ATTRACT MORE LISTENERS IS TO MENTION IT IN NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FORUMS WHERE THERE ARE ALREADY INTERESTED AUDIENCES ABOUT THE TOPIC, SO THEY WILL PROBABLY WANT TO LISTEN TO WHAT YOU SAY IN YOUR PODCAST.
SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT SINCE THE ARRIVAL OF SOCIAL NETWORKS, FORUMS ARE NOT WORTH IT, BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE, THERE IS STILL A VERY ACTIVE COMMUNITY IN SPECIALIZED FORUMS.”
Learning how to promote your podcast through a dedicated website or landing page is critical.
You can list all of your episodes on your website, in addition to complimentary information like transcripts, about pages, contact information, and more. This will help your listeners learn more about you, your show, and your business or brand.
If you choose to repurpose your episodes into blog posts, you can publish them on your site. In doing so, you’ll be able to implement on-page SEO and boost your rankings in organic search.
Jordan Figueredo, the Senior Content Strategist and podcast producer for Online Optimism, notes,
“IF YOU ARE TRYING TO PROMOTE YOUR PODCAST, CREATE A WEBSITE OR A LANDING PAGE WITH YOUR WEBSITE DOMAIN DEDICATED TO YOUR PODCAST. THIS IS CRUCIAL BECAUSE YOU CAN CREATE BLOG POSTS THAT PERTAIN TO YOUR PODCAST IN GENERAL AND SPECIFIC EPISODES, INCREASING THE CONTENT’S SHAREABILITY AND ADDING SEO VALUE.
BLOG POSTS REIGN SUPREME ON GOOGLE, SO RANKING FOR A KEYWORD THAT PERTAINS TO YOUR PODCAST AND LINKS TO THE WEBSITE THAT HOUSES THE EPISODES IS A GREAT WAY TO PROMOTE THE PODCAST AND GROW YOUR NUMBER OF LISTENERS.”
To rank your podcast website on search engine results pages (SERPs), optimize it around the keywords that people search for to find your podcast. Include that keyword in the:
- Title tag
- H1 title
- Subheadings (H2, H3, H4, etc.)
- Meta description
- Body of the content (naturally)
Speaking of websites and SEO, here are some podcast promotion tips focused solely on using SEO to boost your podcast’s organic rankings.
First, it’s important to look at your podcast and your podcast’s website as two different but related entities. As one performs better on search engines, it will help the other to perform better as well.
This means building a website or landing page and implementing SEO will help your podcast naturally rank higher in searches too. However, optimizing your website for search isn’t where SEO should stop—don’t forget to optimize the podcast itself.
Just as with a website, optimizing a podcast for SERPs has a lot to do with keyword placement.
“Approaching your podcast with classic SEO techniques, like vital keyword placement, will help your podcast perform well in search and reach new audiences,” Fernando Lopez, Marketing Director at Circuit says.
Place keywords strategically throughout your script, show notes, and show descriptions. You can also consider adding keywords to the episode title, however, proceed with caution.
“WHILE YOU MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO ADD KEYWORDS TO YOUR PODCAST TITLE – DON’T! YOUR TITLE SHOULD BE SHORT, SWEET, AND CREATIVE RATHER THAN A KEYWORD-STUFFED, AWKWARD OR GENERIC PHRASE. FOCUS YOUR KEYWORD EFFORTS ON YOUR EPISODE TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS INSTEAD. YOU’LL FIND IT EASIER TO INCORPORATE KEYWORDS NATURALLY TO GIVE YOUR PODCAST SOME MUCH-NEEDED SEARCH ENGINE ‘JUICE’”.
In strategy six, I suggested hosting guests on your podcast. This would allow you to leverage their network and social following, putting your show in front of more people. Now, let’s talk about getting you on someone else’s show!
Even if you don’t have a significant social following, you may be able to leverage your own expertise, experience, or other qualities to earn a spot as a guest on another podcast. This is a great way to expand your audience and promote your podcast effectively.
All you have to do is find relevant podcasts to work with and pitch yourself to them. For example, say you’re a registered nutritionist starting a show about family nutrition. Guests appearing on mommy blogger, family life, and related shows could help make your target audience aware of your show.
“One of the most efficient methods that hosts can use to attract more listeners is to appear on other relevant podcasts in your niche as a guest,” says Jakub Zajicek, co-founder and CMO at Speak On Podcasts.
“THIS STRATEGY ACCOMPLISHES WAY MORE THAN JUST GROWING THE PODCAST AUDIENCE. PODCAST HOSTS ACROSS THE WORLD APPEAR ON OTHER COOL SHOWS TO BUILD THEIR PERSONAL BRANDS, NETWORK WITH OTHER HOSTS, AND MAKE A BIGGER IMPACT IN GENERAL.”
You can find other relevant podcasts on:
- Facebook groups, like Podcasters’ Support Group and Podcast Movement
- Subreddits, like r/PodcastGuestExchange
- Radio Guest List newsletter
- Listen Notes
- Podchaser
When you find someone whose podcast you’d like to be a guest on, send them a personalized pitch explaining why you’ll make a great guest and what topics you can talk about.
In your pitch, focus on what you have to offer—not on what the opportunity can do for you. At the end of the day, other podcast hosts are also interested in creating valuable and engaging content for their listeners. So painting a clear picture of how you can deliver value will improve your chances of getting a guest spot on the show.
After you’ve secured the gig, then you can begin to work out the details like, can you mention your podcast during the discussion?
Email marketing is arguably the best way to promote a podcast as it keeps your audience engaged between shows and seasons. Once an individual subscribes to your email list, you can get to know what their interests are based on their email engagement. Recognizing patterns in their engagement will help you to create podcast content that resonates with them, leading to more listens and subscriptions to your podcast.
Once you’ve grown your email list and understand what your audience loves, reacts to, engages with, and wants to see more of, you can monetize your email newsletter too. Like with podcasts, sponsors will pay for access to your audience, and that can supplement any income you’ve earned from monetizing your podcast.
Lisa Richards, creator and CEO of Candida Diet, extols the benefits of email marketing:
“RESEARCH SHOWS THAT EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR PODCAST CAN GENERATE UP TO 40 TIMES THE ROI YOU’D RECEIVE TRYING TO MARKET YOUR PODCAST ON FACEBOOK OR TWITTER.
WITH EMAIL MARKETING, YOU’RE ABLE TO KEEP YOUR LISTENERS ENGAGED IN BETWEEN EPISODES. YOU’LL ALSO BE ABLE TO ADD MORE DEPTH TO EACH EPISODE AND TO THE BRAND AS A WHOLE BY ELABORATING ON THE TOPIC COVERED IN THE EPISODE, PROVIDING MORE BACKGROUND, OR EVEN OFFERING UPDATES ON THE SUBJECT SINCE THE PODCAST EPISODE AIRED.”
Promoting podcasts on social media includes giving those older evergreen episodes a gentle boost every once in a while. It’s all too easy to only post about your latest episodes, but if you’ve been podcasting for a while, bringing older relevant episodes to your audience’s attention can encourage new listeners to check out previous episodes.
Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing and Outreach Manager at PhotoAiD, understands this.
“ONE IMPORTANT THING ABOUT PODCASTS IS THAT THEY ARE USUALLY EVERGREEN CONTENT. SO, WHILE PROMOTING THEM, YOU SHOULD NOT ONLY FOCUS ON THE RECENT EPISODES BUT ALSO ON THE ONES PUBLISHED A WHILE AGO. I’M WILLING TO BET THAT MANY PEOPLE FROM YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE HAVE NOT LISTENED TO YOUR OLDER EPISODES OR EVEN KNOW THEY EXIST!”
Leveraging influence marketing is one of the podcast marketing ideas that’s shown a substantial return on investment. In fact, data collected by Influencer Marketing Hub showed that influencer marketing campaigns generate $5.78 in revenue for every $1 spent. With stats like this, partnering with an influencer to promote your podcast is worth it.
“Focus on building relationships with influencers in your niche who would be willing to recommend or review your podcast,” says Gauri Manglik, founder and CEO at Instrumentl. “If they like what they hear, they may share it with their followers — and if those followers then check out your show, they could become long-term subscribers.”
To do influencer marketing, you’ll need to find someone with a large following that aligns with your target audience—the process is similar to finding a great guest, only now the stakes are a bit higher. Once you’ve found the right influencer for your show, reach out to them and forge a mutually beneficial partnership to promote your podcast.
When you find someone willing to promote your podcast, you’ll have to pay them in some way: monetary compensation, free product, or a shout-out on your podcast. Every influencer has their own rules, so it’s up to you to find deals that fit both you and the influencer’s budget and long-term goals.
Promote your podcast today
Promoting a podcast is hard work. And oftentimes, it’s a time-consuming, trial-and-error process. Don’t be afraid to experiment with various podcast marketing ideas as you work toward growing your podcast audience. As you experiment, you’ll fine-tune your podcast promotion strategy.
And remember: No amount of money will help you grow a subpar podcast. So if you’re just starting your podcast, prioritize creating high-quality content with interesting guests. Then, you can start experimenting with other forms of promotions.
This blog was originally published in November 2022, it has since been updated in October 2023 to include newer information.
