It’s pretty clear right now that podcasts aren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
With Spotify willing to spend a rumored $100 million to secure the infamous Joe Rogan Experience, they’re betting BIG (seriously… huge) on podcasts sticking around. 💰
The good news is you don’t need millions of downloads like Rogan to create a successful podcast. You can have tens, hundreds, or thousands of listeners and be able to create sustainable lead generation for your business or partner with the right sponsors who you know you can land conversions for.
But, where do you start?
If you have a podcast already and you’re wondering how you can get more subscribers, or your brand new and you need to start from zero—we’ll show you how to market your podcast so you can reach more listeners.
Here are 5 ways to market your podcast and get more subscribers.
#1: Interview people with engaged audiences
This is a strategy you’re probably familiar with. There’s a reason so many podcasts are built on the interview-style model. Interviewing somebody with an audience puts your content in front of new faces. It’s one of the most popular ways to grow your subscribers.
The key to collaborating with influencers in your industry is to make sure they have an engaged audience. If someone has 10,000 Instagram followers that they can share their interview with, and you see that their posts are averaging 500-1,000 like each—this is a really good person to collaborate with.
They have a super-engaged audience (5–10%) which shows the potential for a high conversion rate too. When they tell their followers about their interview with you, they’re going to be interested in listening… which means they’ll pop over to your podcast.
Let’s make something clear though—you’re not just interviewing people because of their audience. You want to bring people on your show who make sense based on the topics you talk about.
If someone has a tiny following (or no following) but they’re going to give your audience golden nugget after golden nugget of awesome information… bring them on!
But just be aware that you’ll have to do the promotions for that episode, but we’ll talk about how to do that below.
#2: Create timely episodes
Did Elon Musk just tweet something crazy (again)? Let’s say your podcast is based on interviewing entrepreneurs, this is a great time to record an episode talking about what Elon tweeted and what your thoughts and your guest’s thoughts are on it.
Creating timely podcast episodes makes people want to listen to that content now. You won’t get saved in their “Listen to Later” folder, which we all know can become a black hole. People will want to listen to that content right away so they can stay up to speed on what’s going on.
There’s a lot of potential for creating podcast episodes that are timely, here are some marketing examples that you can steal:
- Algorithm changes
- Facebook news
- Amazon news
- New Facebook tools
- New industry trends
- Strategies working right now
To stay on top of what’s happening in your industry, go to the top player’s Twitter profiles and opt-in to get notifications when they tweet something new. When somebody tweets something that you know is going to be big news, get a podcast scheduled so you can talk about it.
#3: Make video snippets to share on social media
Think of these video snippets like the appetizer before your podcast dinner. You want people to get a taste of how good the food is going to be—and start to get super excited for dinner to be served. In this case, dinner is your podcast episode and the appetizers are the video snippets you’ll tease it with.
Using video snippets to market your podcast doesn’t require an awesome podcast hosting set up. You just need a decent amount of light and a camera (you can even use your iPhone) to record the video. If you’re having Zoom interviews, you can record your screen.
Then take snippets from that episode and post them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…wherever you are growing your audience. Here’s what each snippet should have:
- Title above video
- Captions on the video
- A 1–2-minute conversation that ends in a complete thought
A quick explanation on that last part “the complete thought”: Don’t end this video with a cliffhanger that makes people feel like they watched your content and didn’t get what was promised. Make sure to deliver on the promise made in the headline.
Here’s an example from Gary Vee on what this video snippet could look like:
#4: Make sharable content based off of your episodes
Marketing your podcast doesn’t have to only be your job—you can get your subscribers to help. Whether that’s making memes that they think are funny and want to share, inspiration quotes, educational video snippets, etc. You can post these to your Instagram stories, feed, Twitter feed, or LinkedIn to create FOMO around the content of your episode.
You can make memes on Imgflip or just write content above an image or video.
Here’s an example of how Morning Brew created a meme based off of the content in their business newsletter (this got 1 million impressions…plus, check out the view count):
#5: Promote episodes regularly on social media
Just because an episode is a few months old doesn’t mean you can’t keep talking about it. Using social media, you can continue the conversation you had on your podcast episode for the indefinite future.
For example, you can pop on to Instagram stories and talk about something that was mentioned in the podcast. Then you can say,
“I went way more in-depth on why Mars really isn’t Elon’s souldog and how to figure out what yours is on Episode 8 of my podcast. I’ll put a link to that episode in my bio if you want to listen to the episode and find out what YOUR souldog is.”
And of course, you’ll be promoting your new episodes each time they come out.
Here are a few ways to get people excited to listen:
- Tease content before the episode comes out (you can use your video snippet)
- Show behind the scenes of you recording the podcast
- Talk about upcoming guests instead of just announcing you interviewed them (similar to BTS)
- Ask listeners to give you fun facts or ask for shout outs
Marketing your podcast is just like marketing a service or product—you need to put it in front of the right audience.
We know your podcast is awesome and people want to listen to it. Now it’s time to execute on the strategies that will get you more subscribers.
