When business leaders evaluate the benefits of podcasting, they want to ensure they can capture the attention of their ideal listeners.
Podcasting provides a great platform for businesses to reach prospects, and if your goal is increased listenership, you will need more than luck to get there. Unfortunately, the internet is full of disappointing podcast promotion tips.
After a quick Google search, I found that most of the results sound good in theory but don’t have much evidence to back them up. To remedy this, I’ve compiled evidence from our 8+ years of experience producing podcasts, combined with real numbers and research.
We’ll approach answering the question about audience growth from a few different angles:
- Paid, earned, and owned promotion.
- How to promote to existing podcast listeners vs. non-listeners.
- And five tactics you can start using now to see positive results.
Why now is the best time to have a podcast.
The barrier to entry in podcasting is much lower than that of other popular mediums today. In fact, podcasting has an unfair advantage over other marketing assets. And, as a whole, the industry has seen continued positive trends, evidenced by Edison Research’s 2024 Podcast Consumer Report:
- 67% of Americans (12 or older) have listened to a podcast.
- 47% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly (up from 42% last year).
- 34% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly (up from 31% percent last year).
- People spend more time listening to podcasts, with 33% of weekly podcast listeners spending 10+ hours per week listening to this medium.
- 56% of monthly podcast listeners have an annual household income of over $75K.
- 46% of weekly podcast listeners have purchased a product or service as a result of hearing an ad on a podcast.
Ever since we switched the direction of our company to focus solely on podcast strategy and production in 2016, we have seen firsthand the value that podcasts hold for companies and brands. Podcasting is on the rise, and the best time to jump in is now.
Great podcast promotion begins in the planning phase.
Anytime a business leader approaches me wanting to produce a podcast, I ask a few questions, including:
- What is the goal of your podcast/what are you hoping to accomplish with it?
- Who is your target market?
When you have clarity around these two questions, all the following steps, including production and promotion, are much easier.
Defining your podcast goal.
Most people think total downloads or listens are the main factor for success. However, that’s not always the case.
Getting lots of impressions and reaching tons of people aren’t always the top concern for our clients. As Seth Godin writes, it often makes more sense to reach the right people than all the people.
For example, when we produced The Sharpest Tool for Scorpion, one of the main goals was to create content to educate the home service professionals they worked with. In this case, engagement was a more relevant success metric rather than the number of downloads.
The data we gathered for this podcast showed that episodes had a 78% or better consumption rate, and several episodes surpassed 110% consumption, which means those episodes were being listened to more than once. This information helped guide our decisions so we could continue to create a podcast that achieved one of its main goals: engagement.
Like other marketing assets, most business leaders, whether CEOs or CMOs, look for a positive ROI from their shows. There are many ways to achieve a successful return on investment from podcasting. Determining what success looks like upfront and making it your goal is step one.
Defining your podcast’s target market.
The second factor you need to know is who your target market is. It’s tempting to come up with an idea, record it, and publish it on the web. However, your chances of success will be much higher if you research your ideal audience in advance.
This is a tried and true principle followed by many of the best marketers I know. Scorpion’s former Chief Marketing Officer, Corey Quinn, discussed it in terms of knowing your customer and perfecting your list on my old podcast. Neil Patel cites another study where 34% of 2,000 U.S. adults “broke up” with a brand because they received poor marketing messages. Kai Davis talks about it in terms of focusing on a specific audience as a consultant on the WP-Tonic podcast. I was also able to discuss it some years ago, in terms of conversion copywriting, with Joanna Wiebe from Copy Hackers.
Knowing who you are talking to, where they are, and what they care about are critical factors for your podcast’s success.
What these principles look like in real life.
Some years ago, our team worked on a podcast for marketers and digital professionals. The show was a 90-second daily podcast designed to quickly inform the listener of actionable or inspirational tips on becoming a better marketer.
As outlined above, I put a lot of research into answering those two questions in the context of this project before I ever recorded an episode:
- I surveyed digital marketers on their pain points and learned they needed a quick and easy way to curate information and stay informed.
- I analyzed my personal podcast to see which topics and guests drew the most interest.
- My team and I researched places like Quora, blog comments, and Reddit to see what the target audience was talking about.
- My team and I reviewed marketing books on Amazon to see what was rated well and what people said in the comments.
It was only after all this research that I started creating episodes. As a result, our 90-second show saw over 500 downloads within the first three weeks of launch, and it had a weekly growth in listenership of over 30% without much additional promotion.
Good podcast promotion doesn’t matter if you have a bad show.
Whether you are preparing for launch or already have a running podcast, make sure it’s the best it can be. Today’s audience is used to listening to high-quality content that sounds good and is interesting. Anything less than that won’t cut it.
Now that you understand how planning impacts your show’s potential growth, let’s dive into the strategies behind successful podcast promotion.
Podcast promotion strategies: paid, earned, and owned.
There are many frameworks you can use to structure the way you promote and market a podcast. The one I find most helpful is understanding the nuances between paid, earned, and owned promotion.
Paid promotion.
This is what people consider classic advertisement—paying a fee to reach your audience with ads. Using paid ads for podcasting can be tricky, but it’s a great way to get in front of new people. Paid promotion includes everything from researching your target audience to understand where you can find them online to media buys on other podcasts and targeted host-read ads.
A note of caution on paid promotion: It’s worth noting that, in recent years, some podcasters have found ways to game the system by purchasing mobile ads to boost their number of downloads, similar to buying social media followers. However, podcast success is not about total downloads, it’s about the total addressable market or listenership. You can boost the number of downloads by targeting anyone who will listen, but your podcast will only help your business grow if you can reach and attract your target audience.
Earned promotion.
Earned promotion requires a PR approach to your efforts. This includes providing media kits for media outlets and journalists, providing guest support, and building strategic relationships in relevant industries to amplify your podcast’s brand awareness. Take my show Outdoor Sounds as an example. To increase its reach, I’m developing strategic relationships with travel and outdoor equipment companies. I don’t expect these efforts to pay off in the short term, but they will help me strengthen the podcast’s visibility with the right audience further down the line.
Owned promotion.
This is everything you can do to amplify your podcast in your own channels. It includes having a dedicated website or landing page for your show, publishing transcripts and show notes, and repurposing your content for other platforms. Owned promotion is key to spreading the voice about your podcast. In fact, we provide all our clients with a number of owned assets they can use for every project. However, owned promotion is just a baseline and not enough to really grow a show on its own.
Finding balance between paid, earned, and owned promotion.
Every show you produce will need a different mix of these three types of promotion. A great example is the show At The Brink, where we used all three types based on our goals and situation. Season one had its fair share of big names, including the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Because of this, we didn’t need to spend as many resources on paid promotion, and we focused on earned and owned media. On the other hand, when we launched season two, the show didn’t have as many famous people participating in the episodes, and it had been a while since season one. So, we decided to focus more on paid ads.
At the end of the day, you need to understand how all types of promotion work to leverage the ones that make the most sense for your podcast.
How to promote to existing podcast listeners vs. non-podcast listeners.
Another important distinction we should make regarding podcast promotion is the difference between marketing or promoting podcasts to people who already listen to podcasts and people who don’t.
Who you market to will depend on your goals and the style of your podcast. Some tactics are more appropriate for existing podcast listeners, but I want us to spend some time understanding how to approach non-listeners, an often overlooked segment.
Non-listeners don’t know what you know.
Like any specialized field, there is a barrier to entry. As podcasters or podcast listeners, we use acronyms and jargon that not everyone understands.
If you watch this Edison Research interview about podcasting with people who have never listened to a podcast before, you might be surprised at how little people know about podcasts.
It’s eye-opening. People who own iPhones don’t even realize they have a podcasting app already installed! Promoting podcasts has to be different for people who have never listened to a podcast.
Talk about podcasting differently.
Tom Webster gave an excellent session at Podcast Movement 2018. He argued that we need to do a better job explaining podcasting to the general public and emphasized that the language we use matters.
“Show” is easier to understand than “podcast.” The word “listen” is much simpler than “subscribe.” Non-listeners don’t always understand how to subscribe and can think it requires a payment. In fact, many podcast platforms have already shifted their language from “subscribe” to an easier-to-understand “follow.” Pretend you’re talking to a grandparent—would it be easier for them to “listen to your show” or “subscribe to your podcast?”
Meet people where they are.
Dan Misener from Bumper calls this concept “growing the pie” and covers many great examples in his How to Grow a Podcast Audience CreativeLive course. Think about where people who don’t know about podcasts are and how you can reach them. Examples include:
- Billboards
- Tutorials
- Postcards
- Event flyers
- Merchandise
- Trailers
Misener highlights that it’s also important to consider how you promote the podcast as a series and each individual episode. For example, consider how HBO promotes Game of Thrones as a series compared to how they tease an episode.
5 Tactics to improve your podcast promotion.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of planning an excellent show and understanding who you’re talking to, let’s look at five tactics we have used to fuel podcast growth.
Remember, there is no one way to do this, and this list has no particular order. Factors like your goal(s), audience, and skill set will all affect what you do and how you do it.
1. Consistency is key.
This is one of the most tried and true tips for podcast promotion we’ve discovered, and it has become a baseline for podcast success. When I talk about consistency in podcasting, I am talking about three aspects:
- Publishing frequency: Whether you’re posting daily, weekly, or bi-weekly, find your rhythm and stick with it.
- Episode duration: While the “best length” for your podcast varies, making it consistent from episode to episode helps the listener know what to expect.
- Episode format: If your podcast has an interview format in one episode, a monologue in the next episode, or a constantly changing host, listeners will never know what to expect.
For example, one of our prior clients posted new episodes weekly, and over the course of 10 weeks, we increased their listenership by 16%. However, some issues came up on the client’s side, and he couldn’t publish new episodes for three weeks in a row. As a result, we saw listenership drop by 30%. Consistency is that powerful.
Another example, we’ve been producing Leading Voices in Real Estate for six years. Each episode averages 60 to 70 minutes in length (which some would consider too long), and it breaks most of the “normal” rules by only posting a new episode twice a month.
After six years of consistency in publishing frequency and episode duration, it’s grown from a few hundred downloads per episode to several thousand. To top it off, it has a 90% completion rate and over 1.7 million total downloads.
It goes to show that establishing a cadence you can follow for a long time pays off.
2. Be a guest on other people’s podcasts.
Many positive results can come from guesting on other people’s podcasts. For example, MeetEdgar was able to accomplish several major milestones through guest podcasting:
- 1.25 million site visitors
- 100,000 email subscribers
- $329,000+ in monthly recurring revenue
The funniest part? They did it all without a podcast. They simply guested on 100 podcasts.
I’ve experienced some of this success as well. I was featured on an episode of the Matt Report back in 2019, and during the episode, both Matt and I encouraged the listeners to check out my personal podcast. My monthly listenership doubled the month after the interview. I also had a prospect reach out to me specifically because he heard me on that podcast. We closed a deal with his company within a few weeks.
I’ve also been featured on the Podcast Hackers podcast, where I promoted my personal podcast and the Creative Marketing Brief podcast. After this appearance, my podcast saw a 22.4% increase in downloads, and Creative Marketing Brief increased by 31.1%.
I don’t contribute all the growth to podcast guest appearances, but they do play a strong factor.
3. Cross-promote on other podcasts.
Podcast “cross-pollination” can be incredibly effective for podcast promotion. This means trading segments or entire episodes with other similar casts; you feature them, and they feature you. In one case, a podcaster saw an increase of 100,000 overall downloads within a month of doing a podcast swap.
In another case involving Shannon Cason’s Homemade Stories podcast, he went from a few thousand downloads per month to 100,000 after being featured on Snap Judgement.
Find similar shows and see if it makes sense to arrange some cross-promotion.
4. Focus on discoverability.
Podcasts aren’t just audio. They’re usually seen before they are heard. You have the cover art, titles, excerpts, show notes, and transcriptions. These aspects should help your podcast promotion be more visually appealing, discoverable, and accessible for your audience. Additionally, you need to make sure you submit your podcast’s RSS feed to all the major distribution networks so it can be found easily, anywhere.
The list of podcast-listening and hosting apps is constantly changing. Podnews keeps an updated directory you can check out to make sure you cover as much as possible.
Second, when it comes to the visual aspect of your show, you should focus on these four factors:
- Does it represent your show accurately?
- Does it stand out in your category?
- Is it scalable?
- Is it creative?
We focus on these factors at Come Alive when designing show covers for our clients.
Third, along with the audio, every podcast episode has a written component, which means elements like titles and search engine optimization (SEO) matter. Copywriting is far too big of a topic for me to cover in depth in this article, but it holds serious weight.
You should consider covering the basic elements of each episode:
- Having a clear and engaging title.
- Your excerpt or summary should give the listener a reason to listen to your show.
- You should treat your show notes like a short blog post, emphasizing specific keywords and search terms.
- Transcriptions should be included for accessibility reasons.
5. Repurpose your content.
If you aren’t recycling or reusing your content in at least three different ways, you’re doing your audience and yourself a disservice. Producing high-quality podcasts takes a lot of time and effort, anywhere from 5 to 50+ hours per episode. If you only publish each episode and do nothing more with the content, you’re limiting its impact.
For example, when we worked on the Coach Factory podcast, we conducted 24 original interviews and turned them into 12 dynamic episodes. Each interviewee was featured in multiple episodes. Instead of just doing 12 great podcast episodes, our client published each individual interview in the membership-only section of their website. But we didn’t stop there. As is customary with the work we do, we created a series of assets for social media, newsletters, and the blog, these included but weren’t limited to: video clips, social media graphics, articles, show notes, and transcriptions.
In short, we turned 24 interviews into more than just 12 episodes. Together with the client, we created a comprehensive content campaign to promote the podcast in multiple platforms, maximizing the content’s reach.
That said, there are two principles we use in social media campaigns that you should keep in mind when repurposing content:
- Sell the story, not the medium: People don’t typically care that you released a new episode. We’re dealing with the attention economy, and time is our most scarce resource. If you want someone to click play on your link, you need to communicate what’s in it for the listener clearly.
- Understand the platform: Each social media network requires its own touch. For example, audiograms and short informative posts work well on X, whereas medium-length, personal reflections on episodes work well on LinkedIn. While some universal truths exist for social media, you don’t need a presence on all of them. Pick the platforms that work for your target audience and use them well.
If you’re interested in learning how to stretch your content further, I recommend reading my article on how to create content repurposing workflows.
Taking your podcast promotion from theory to practice.
There are no “silver bullets” for podcast promotion, and every show and audience is different. For now, I want to encourage you on your journey.
The best time to start a podcast is now. Tomorrow will be harder. I was just having this conversation with a marketing friend—imagine if we started three years sooner than we did. Five years? Ten years?
If you’ve already started one, kudos to you! Now, take some of the things you’ve learned and make it even better.
And if you’re looking for a turnkey solution for your business’ or organization’s podcast, contact our team and see if we’re the right solution for you.
All the best, and happy podcasting!
