Starting and running a podcast can be considered the easy part for many, whereas marketing and promoting a podcast is where the real challenge lies. After all, if you can’t get listeners and retain them, your podcast will not be sustainable in the long run. Ideally, I recommend that you have a marketing strategy in place before launching your podcast, as it can take time to have an effect. In this article, I am outlining how to promote a podcast with several different strategies.
Delve Into Traditional Marketing Methods
Just because the world has gone digital, it doesn’t mean that traditional marketing is ineffective. Think about it, where do people listen to podcasts? On their commute while driving, on the train, on flights, in cafes, and so on. A unique way of reaching these audiences is through traditional marketing.
This could be through billboards to catch those driving to work, it could be on posters in cafes, free newspapers they hand on out trains, or in other creative ways. The key is to capture the audience when they are listening to, or looking for a podcast to listen to, as they are more likely to act upon seeing the advertisement. Whereas other forms of advertising might elude those audiences. For example, over 75% of consumers prefer to see ads that are relevant to them instead of generic ads.
Promote It On Social Media
Any form of marketing promotion should include social media in this day and age, especially when worldwide social media users increased by 320 million people from January 2023 to January 2024. Podcasts are no exception and should be promoted on social channels. This doesn’t mean posting a link to your podcast saying ‘Hey look, I have a podcast’. It means creating social media-optimized content that grabs the attention of the audience and tells them why they should check your podcast out.
This can be done through audio snippets, video clips, images highlighting featured guests, and even text snippets from the podcast transcript that build up anticipation for the audience. You can use tools like Canva to create the assets and Notion to plan the content, even going as far as using a social media scheduling tool to plan the content. Each episode you release should have several assets that are created for social media to accompany them.
You must also target different social platforms (where your target audience is) and optimize the posts with hashtags and language to suit that platform. Consider joining Facebook groups and pages where people might discuss podcasts, casually dropping yours in along the way.
Transcribe The Audio & Repurpose
Transcribing your podcast is a must. Not only does it make the podcast more accessible to the audience, but it also supports SEO and provides content that can be repurposed. You don’t need to sit down and manually type the podcast out, you can either use a paid service like Otter to do it for you or just use AI – but you should probably read over and check it afterward.
Once the podcast episode has been transcribed, you can repurpose the content in many different ways. It can help you create blog posts for a website, social media copy for promotion, episode information, advertising copy, scripts for videos, and email marketing. Of course, it will need to be edited and refined for repurposing – but most of the heavy lifting will have been taken care of already.
Consider Doing A Video Podcast
Video is still number 1 when it comes to content, in fact, 33.33% of all online activity is video consumption, that’s why creating a video podcast is a great way to promote it. There are 3 different ways this can be done:
- Set up camera equipment and record the podcast as its own video to post later.
- Do a live recording of your podcast episode.
- Convert the podcast audio, create a stock video or background, and play the audio over the top.
Option number 3 technically isn’t a video, but it allows you to upload the episode to YouTube, which is a great way to promote your podcast. The most feasible option is likely number 1, as you can edit afterward and create snippets for repurposed content.
Once you have the video content, you can share it on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, and even add it to blogs you have created from your transcripts. However, if you are already strapped for time, I recommend skipping this option as it will require more investment in editing/publishing content.
Collaborate With Other Podcasts
A great way to reach new audiences and promote your podcast is to collaborate with other shows in the same niche. This could be teaming up to run join giveaways, working together on a series, appearing as a speaker on their podcast, or having them as speakers on your podcast. Although technically, they might be your competition, podcasts are unique to the presenters and appeal differently depending on the audience, so this shouldn’t be a factor that deters you.
You can’t collaborate with just anyone either, the podcast needs to have a similar audience demographic to yours to be effective. The goal is to get in front of new audiences, appeal to them indirectly, and encourage them to follow/listen/download your podcast. Therefore, the podcast you collaborate with needs to be in your niche or similar, have the same target audience, and also have a large enough audience; there’s no point in collaborating with podcasts that don’t get any listeners if you are looking to grow.
Purchase Ad Spaces
If you have money to spend and want to promote your podcast, purchasing ad spaces is another great option. According to Edison Research, 51% of people who listen to 5 or more hours of podcasts per week say they pay more attention to ads on podcasts than ads on other media. Primarily, you should focus on ad spaces with other podcasts, as this will be the most direct to your desired audience.
Then there are also ad spaces within email newsletters and website banners, depending on your audience and the brand/individual you want to partner with. I only recommend this option if you have extra money to invest or as a last resort, there are plenty of organic ways to grow a podcast that work effectively.
Invite Guest Speakers With Large Audiences
This is slightly different from having other podcast hosts on your show/appearing on theirs. Instead, you can invite popular figures in your industry, celebrities, influencers, or anyone with a large audience related to your podcast niche. It’s not a simple task, but even if you can get 1 or 2 people to appear on your podcast, it can have a huge impact on growth. The key is to get the person who comes on your podcast to share the episode with their audience and also promote the episode before it goes live, driving them to your podcast.
To pull this off, you have to research people in your industry, pre-qualify them, set up a call and discuss the opportunity, then convince them to appear on the podcast. It does require time and effort to manage this, but it’s worth it if you want to grow your podcast.
Create & Manage A Website
Creating a website is a no-brainer in 2024. If you want to drive organic traffic, having a website with supporting content – focused on SEO best practice, is a great way to do this. After all, 93% of global traffic comes from Google. Of course, this requires time, money, and effort, but the rewards are endless if done correctly. You can also utilize the repurposed content from your podcast episodes to inform some of the design and content of the website.
To be clear, the website is one part of it. A place where users can visit, listen to episodes, find out more about your podcast, buy merchandise, and even join a mailing list. This will require initial setup, design, and ongoing management.
However, the real power comes with having a blog following the latest SEO practices. This can help you to rank on search engine pages, driving organic traffic to your podcast. It will require research, planning, strategy, implementation, and management, but for free ongoing traffic, it’s worth every second. The posts that rank the highest can include video clips, podcast recordings, links to the podcast, email capture forms, and focus on building your audience too.
Start Email Marketing
According to the latest email marketing statistics, by the end of 2026, the number of active email users is projected to go over 4.7 billion, making email marketing an effective promotion channel. There’s a caveat with this one, as to effectively run email marketing campaigns, you need to be collecting emails or have a list already. Generally, that comes from website visitors or lead capture forms (which can be created with certain email providers). So you will need to have a small audience somewhere or be driving traffic to a website/social media for this to be effective.
However, once you have email subscribers, you pretty much have a constant bucket of people who will listen to your podcast. But that’s not all, these subscribers are likely to spread the word about your podcast to others, driving WOM advertising. Additionally, you can engage them in competitions to get even more referrals to your podcast. This leads to the next point…
Run Giveaway Contests
One of the best ways to grow your audience is to run contests, and according to one study, roughly 55 million Americans participate in online contests each year. It could be a ‘like and share this post for a chance to win’ or a ‘comment and tag 3 friends to win’ and so on. The competition criteria are up to you, but it must follow rules and regulations. The only problem with this method is that not everyone who is ‘tagged’ or sees the ‘shared post’ will be your target audience. So it’s kind of like casting a net in the ocean and hoping to catch a certain type of fish.
Ask For Shares, Likes, Ratings, Reviews, And More
If you don’t ask – you don’t get, right? There’s a reason why in YouTube videos, everyone says directly to the camera ‘like and subscribe’ – because it encourages that action to be taken by the audience. The same applies to podcasts, you need to ask listeners directly to share the podcast, leave a review on certain platforms, or comment on the content. By doing so you are inspiring action to be taken.
If you manage to encourage any of the listeners to take action – this can bring in a new audience and new subscribers to your podcast. It can be very difficult to track the results of something like this, but simply saying a few words at the beginning or end of your podcast, it’s worth doing.
Invest In Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has quickly become a popular strategy for brands and individuals to promote products, where according to the latest influencer marketing stats, global influencer marketing spending reached over 34 billion dollars in 2023. This can also be done with podcasts. Firstly, I recommend having the influencer on your podcast or you join theirs – this will bring maximum value to promoting your podcast. However, if that’s not possible, you can pay the influencer to promote your podcast however you agree.
The benefit here is that the audience of an influencer is already highly engaged with high levels of trust, which you can tap into by getting the influencer to recommend your podcast. Depending on the number of followers, this will cost money and you will need to provide a CTA with one of the best podcast episodes you have to try and capture some of that audience. But if you have the money to invest, it’s worth it.
Share Your Podcast On Online Forums
Online forums, such as Reddit, provide great platforms to promote a podcast. However, it must be done in the right way. You can’t go online to social groups and forums, spamming links to your podcast. You will be swiftly removed and banned from posting again, particularly on Reddit. Instead, you have to be a valued member of the community, engaging in conversation, interacting with others, and then, when the time is right, subtly suggest your podcast.
If you target groups and threads specifically on ‘new podcasts to listen to’ and anything within your niche, there is a chance that you can gain a substantial number of listeners from this promotion method!
Submit Your Podcast To Aggregators or Blogs
Have you ever come across a site or article that lists ‘X best podcasts to listen to’? There are many out there, and you have the chance to be mentioned. Some of these lists require a payment to be mentioned, but some are free – if you go about it the right way. Contacting the editor and asking to be featured will not work. Instead, you need to craft a unique email explaining your podcast, why it’s beneficial to people, and why it deserves to be on that list.
If you manage to get listed on one of these sites, you can gain new traffic to your podcast which can be converted into regular listeners!
