As a new or pre-existing business in the industry, chances are, you’re looking for a solid way to cross promote a podcast to help you reach your fans and provide solutions that make them turn to you to solve their problems. Such a digital marketing tactic can increase your audience and help you achieve your marketing goals.
As you look for a way to promote your podcast, how can you elevate its effectiveness and ensure you’re getting to a larger audience?
Today, we’ll be exploring the ins and outs of strategies to cross-promote your podcast to reach more people. We’ll also share with you the secrets behind successful podcast marketing.
Let’s begin by taking a quick look at what a podcast is.
What is a podcast?
A podcast is a series of content marketing in audio form that focuses on specific topics or themes. Therefore, as a business, you can look at podcast marketing as a series of audio files that can help you connect to your audience.
Podcasts are uniquely effective and can give you a bigger chance to grow your business. This facilitates a more substantial podcast audience connection through the use of voice.
It’s a personal way to get to new listeners, podcast guests and share your information accurately. Therefore, podcast ads can be a game-changer when used effectively and efficiently.
How to make your podcast marketing effective
Every business’s main target is creating a results-generating marketing strategy to ensure your business’s success. With an effective way to promote a podcast as a part of your campaign, you’ll successfully reach your audience and obtain desirable outcomes.
But realize that you’ll have to put in the efforts to ensure your podcast campaigns have the right audio content to initiate a connection with your audience. Even then, having an effective podcast campaign strategy isn’t difficult.
Next, let’s look at podcast marketing best practices for improved business performance and results-oriented ways to promote your podcast.
#1. Podcast SEO
Podcast marketing is a powerful technique to include in your marketing mix with word of mouth since it offers a quick and efficient way to reach out to new subscribers.
But the question here is, can your podcast audience find your marketing podcasts while browsing the internet or on different social media like Facebook groups? And if they can’t, what can you do to ensure they find your shows for a significant marketing impact?
Well, let’s embark on an in-depth analysis and find out how search engine optimization applies in your marketing efforts to ensure that people find your podcast episodes quickly and easily.
Quality content for your show
Rest assured, the quality of your show greatly influences search engine optimization. Keep in mind that top-quality audio content is highly ranked on google search. So, how does quality content ensure that your show gets a good ranking on search engines? Let’s find out.
For SEO-focused content, you must make sure that you have a clear theme and a good content flow. This way, the search engines are much more likely to quickly index your marketing podcasts and reward you with a higher ranking on the Google search result pages.
Also, you should tailor your podcast to be audience-oriented in the sense that the prospects can listen and comprehend your content. Doing so will grant you a higher ranking on different search engine result pages and incredibly boost your podcasts’ visibility.
Use keywords in your show
As you create your marketing podcast show, the keywords you choose for your titles should describe the content in general. Also, they must offer the terms that your audience uses when searching the internet for solutions for an effective result. The revelation leads us to the question, how do you go about it?
Well, begin by checking your central theme and the episode structure to make sure you only select the best terms that align with your content. Once you’ve done that, it’s time you check in their search volumes to establish the keywords that are frequently used when prospects search for content like yours on the web.
What to look out for when choosing keywords
But as you do so, avoid opting for keywords that have stiff competition. That is because it makes it more difficult for your content to get top ranks on search engines. Instead, go for terms with less competition which provides a greater chance of success in optimization.
Similarly, you can use long-tail keywords, which usually are more specific plus they have a higher conversion value. What’s more, make sure that the keywords you use for each episode are entirely distinct. Why?
Search engines heavily penalize duplicate content by either failing to index them or awarding lower ranks on the result pages. Therefore, your titles must be unique for each podcast episode to avoid such encounters.
Note that keywords are the basis of SEO. Hence, for you to attain the top position on search results pages, make sure that you use effective keywords in your titles.
Add transcriptions to your episodes
Many businesses may consider the addition of transcription as unnecessary. But that’s far from the truth. Rather, it’s the best way to make the show notes more discoverable by search engine bots in various social media channels like Facebook.
As such, Transcriptions enable the search engines to easily find and comprehend your content before presenting it to prospects. And this helps boost your podcasts’ online visibility and mirrors an improvement in the exposure rate.
Link your podcast on social media
With the ever-increasing users, Social media like Facebook groups are flooded with traffic day in, day out. Consequently, posting your show on various social media channels and your blog post will get you positive comments from friends and followers and increase further sharing.
Share links for your podcasts on social media like Facebook
This in turn results in more people choosing to listen to podcasts you put out. And as you might have noted, a viral podcast improves your ranking, which then provides you with an opportunity to gain new listeners and recruit them as a part of your blog post and podcast followers.
That said, it’s clear that optimizing your podcasts for social media marketing is critical in discovering new fans. This also helps boost your show reach. Therefore, remember to include social media accounts links to your podcast on blog posts. This will help bring you great success as you promote your podcast campaign.
#2. Engage Your Prospects
In podcast marketing, the content you present to any person must be engaging for ultimate success, and that’s why you need to come up with fresh and unique ideas for a podcast. And for a podcast to be engaging, it takes an exciting and compelling episode to ensure those people listening to you remain hooked on your shows.
The content should grab the attention of your fans to ensure that they’re active and attentive throughout the show.
It’s worth noting that an engaging podcast is crucial to gaining a more loyal fan base that never fails to leave positive reviews and even encourages word of mouth to spread your content with friends. This way, your show will go viral faster, resulting in an opportunity to find more new listeners and guests.
Having mentioned that, the following question pops up, how do you ensure your podcast episode is engaging? Well, check out the following tips to help you fine-tune your marketing podcasts to maintain an engaged audience;
Focus on Your audience
To create amazing content that keeps your audience and guests curious and engaged, you should consider customizing your podcast content for guests to make sure that you provide people with what they need to learn about and keep them engaged in your content.
But for you to achieve this, you must know your prospects’ needs. The following are some ways to establish the pain points of any person or guests listening to your show:
You can start by researching topics from different sources where your audience is likely to be found – like online Facebook groups or forums. This way, you’ll know how to approach them easily and grab their attention.
Consider using audience feedback for insights
Alternatively, you can scan through the comments in your podcast’s social posts and find out what the prospects have to say. Their reviews help improve the reach of your show and come up with shows that fit the audience’s needs.
As a result, you’ll keep them engaged and loyal to your podcasts – this ensures that you have successful and result-oriented podcast app campaigns. Generally, when it comes to focusing on your audience, provide solutions to their problems, that are simple. But as you do so, keep your marketing goals in mind.
Add Call to Action (CTAs) in your marketing podcasts
Call to action is super effective in keeping your audience engaged and helping you achieve your end goal in marketing. As you’ve already guessed, the call to action directs the listeners and guests on what’s next after listening to podcasts you share. It shows them the next steps to take.
Since CTA focuses on maintaining an engaged audience, it also aims to persuade new listeners to take action in favor of your business. Nevertheless, the episode CTA has to be very effective to convince them to get your products or services.
As such, be sure to use a solid sentence that’s powerful enough to get them to act. Also, your CTA should be straightforward and on point without distractions.
Why use a CTA
it’s worth noting that not only should a CTA tell the audience what to do next, but it should also mention the benefits they’ll reap by doing so. For instance, if you ask them to subscribe to your podcasts or other social media accounts, tell them what’s in for them – that is what they’ll get by subscribing to your podcast.
Plus the right CTA on a podcast app enables you to engage your listeners and reach your marketing goal simultaneously. This also portrays the great importance of CTA in your marketing. Therefore, you should be keen when dealing with it.
Ensure the audio is Perfect
Are you looking to engage your listeners using your marketing podcasts? If so, you must make sure you use good quality sound or audio. Typically, you should focus on having high-quality audio, as sound is the core element of conveying information in podcasts.
Note that poor audio sound can negatively impact your success level in podcast promotions. That’s because they are highly distracting and will instantly repel your audience. Also, that means that your listeners won’t get the information you’ve created for them. Fortunately, this situation can be avoided,
Therefore, come up with audible and eloquent podcasts for perfect clarity for the audience to easily grasp the information. Doing so doesn’t have to be hard either. You can quickly achieve this by employing top-performing recording tools capable of capturing clear sounds. This way, you’ll get a greater chance to attract listeners.
Show Notes and Why you need them
Most podcasters don’t believe show notes to be a vital step when publishing a new episode. As such show notes offer you more opportunities for sharing your audio content. What’s more, show notes make an amazing reference for people listening to your shows.
Also, links to your podcasting show notes page are great because they’ll direct people to your website and not third-party iTunes or podcast App.
Show notes are a comprehensive written account of everything happening during an episode. It also includes additional resources which help take the audio contents to a whole new level.
Even then we recommend that you create show notes for each episode. And if you’re launching a podcast, you should consider including show notes in your workflow. Besides, the benefits they offer far outweigh the effort therefore don’t skip this important step.
remember to have additional resources like links to any articles you mention during an episode, guests’ bios as well as social media channels, iTunes, videos, and any relevant calls-to-action.
Launch several episodes when beginning
Whether you are a new or pre-existing business in your industry, when releasing your podcast show, experts recommend that you come up with more than one episode.
Why? Imagine releasing new episodes, and then it happens that the listeners love it. If you don’t have extra episodes as a backup, what will happen is that you’ll disengage your listener since they’ll not hear from you as fast as they want or expect. But it doesn’t have to get to that.
Create several episodes before you launch your show
When producing your podcast episodes, come up with a few and not just one – which helps ensure that your audience has more content to listen to.
Also, you’ll get ample time to work on a future episode. This way, you’ll keep them engaged, and they’ll eventually end up subscribing to your show and becoming active listeners.
Release New Podcast episodes at the right time
Similar to other marketing tactics where timing the publishing is crucial, podcast promotion is effective when released at the right time. If you are a pre-existing user of this marketing approach, you must know the ideal moment to reach your audience.
On the other end, if you are a new business that has already released a few episodes, you may find it appropriate to check out similar shows to find the right time to create a new episode. Once you have a better understanding of your prospects, then you’ll be able to identify the perfect time to post a new episode.
It’s noteworthy that releasing your episode at the right time is critical in ensuring you reach your listeners at the most appropriate time. You wouldn’t want to release an episode when entirely aware you don’t have your listeners’ attention.
#3. Promote Your Marketing Podcasts links
As a business, note that your podcast is more than a show. It’s a technique you are using to expand your fan base and achieve your company’s marketing goals. Hence, it requires intense promotion to facilitate greater effectiveness and efficiency.
Your end goal should be to reach out to a larger audience, easily delivering the important message, and eventually, making your prospects take the action necessary in helping you achieve your marketing goals.
But to do so, you must make efforts to put your show out there on social media channels like Facebook and gain access to a huge audience. As such promoting your new episode is very helpful in helping you achieve your marketing goals. But the big question is, how can you promote links to your new show effectively? Let’s find out.
Publish the new podcast on all major social networks platforms
To have a successful way to market your podcast, your content should have a lot of traffic. And one way to achieve that is to publish it on all giant media platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes App, Google search, and Stitcher. Also, you can include your podcast on business cards.
But why use major platforms? Your audience is more likely to be using these big podcast platforms, and hence, you can easily reach out to them. Therefore, making sure your content is available on the leading platforms is critical to your success.
Leverage your website
Promoting your podcast may mean using different channels to help make it go viral – including availing it on your website. As you focus on publishing your content in different podcast channels, you can also consider adding it to your website.
Besides, your website’s traffic and even business cards can help fuel the exposure rate of your show. Sounds good, right? Additionally, visitors on your site may already be familiar with your business. As a result, the chances are high they’ll check out each of your episodes, which leads to expanding your audience’s size.
Even better, you can merge the related posts and podcasts in your website for a mightier audience approach. This way, as your site’s visitors read the posts, they have the option to listen to the show. This tactic of promoting your show is very effective and can generate incredible results than you can imagine.
Be a guest in highly-reputable podcasts
Appearing on reputable podcasts is an open chance to explore a new audience – this is because the podcasters have an existing audience that you can leverage to drive more listeners to yours.
Here’s the thing, when you appear on reputable podcasts creates an impression that you have flourishing relationships in the industry. And therefore, you’ll arouse curiosity in your host’s audience, making them check out your website and episodes to find out more about you.
Alternatively, if you can’t secure a spot in the famous show, you can invite an influencer with a larger audience than yours. Due to this, you get the opportunity to explore a new territory of prospects. As a result, you’ll get the chance to improve your podcasts’ visibility.
Collaborate with other podcasters
Moreover, you can opt for collaboration with other businesses where you’ll be co-hosting episodes – this can be your new and powerful way to reach out to new listeners. Consequently, you’ll increase your audience and improve your podcasts’ visibility.
Your marketing campaigns will gain more success thus helping your business remain competitive and operate efficiently.
Use Ad services
Ad services can yield incredible results in promoting your show. They are exceptionally effective in extending your audience reach, which opens the door to spreading your podcasts to a larger audience.
The speed at which ad services boost the visibility of your marketing campaigns is noteworthy. Realize that it can take less time for your content to go viral when using Ad services. And that’s an important aspect of podcasting.
Try in-podcast ad networks
One of the best ways to advertise your podcasts is using in-podcast advertising networks. It is where you target listeners using the podcast channels rather than using external ones like Facebook.
Again, when using external channels to advertise your new episodes, you’ll primarily be targeting non-podcast listeners. Therefore, we recommend that you majorly focus on in-podcast channels. This way, you’ll be sure to reach your target podcast listeners and give you the results you desire.
Look for ways to grow your fan-base
What’s more, you can widen your fan base by advertising on other famous and well-performing podcasts in your industry. It can be the most excellent way to grow your podcast and achieve your marketing goals.
Using this tactic to advertise your show provides access to podcast listeners you can easily persuade to check out and subscribe to your shows.
Advertise in other shows
In light of this, one thing comes to perspective, advertising on other popular shows grants you the power to use their influence to reach people listening to them and promote your show. It can be the quickest way to obtain new subscribers to your shows and increase your audience.
Key tip: Ad services can be a game-changer for your podcast campaigns despite their expensive nature. On top of that, in-podcast channel advertising is more effective than advertising in external channels when considering podcast listeners.
Ask for feedback (reviews) from your audience
In marketing, nothing can be as powerful as feedback from people listening to you. Do you know why? It can assist in identifying whether you are dropping the right stuff to your prospects. And if you aren’t, it allows you to re-engineer your content and once more approach your followers with top-quality content.
On the other hand, if feedback from your audience indicates that your content is of world-class quality and serves their need, then you should continue doing so. The exciting part of it all is that you can use the feedback to grow your reach. You can achieve this by showcasing positive reviews to a new audience.
Generally, keep in mind that positive reviews from existing prospects are vital when you’re looking to grow your podcast.
Initiate the use of email newsletter
Promoting your show using an email list can generate incredible results. You can update your followers on the latest news, like the release of new podcast episodes, through email marketing newsletters.
This way, they’ll stay informed, which leads to a good relationship and increased loyalty. With a loyal audience, the rate of sharing the new episodes will increase therefore, your content will reach more prospects. Hence your podcast campaigns will be successful.
#4. Work with a Podcast Marketing Agency
A podcast marketing agency offers professional assistance in ensuring that your business’s podcast campaigns are effective and a complete success. If you’re looking for guidance on how to handle the whole podcasting process for your business, an agency may be your best option.
With a podcast press kit from a marketing agency, people can obtain all the essential podcast marketing services for a fully functional strategy. Agencies can help you go through the whole process with ease.
Align your strategy to your marketing goals
Most agencies start by helping the business understand and structure the podcast program to satisfy your marketing goals. Then, they help you identify the right target group and an execution plan that’s with the right timelines and financial status.
Next, they offer services like content creation, production, and promotion through advertisements in different channels. Additionally, this is a great way to get more guest podcast opportunities to ensure that your podcast campaign is as effective as possible.
Why you need a podcast agency
Also, they assist in coming up with quality content and the most appropriate channels and hosts to publish the podcasts. This way, you’re guaranteed that you will reach the appropriate people.
Better yet, they’ll help you identify the publishing frequency and give suggestions on promotional plans perfect for your business.
Guaranteed success
Most agencies are professionals, and therefore, they can guarantee successful podcast campaigns from all perspectives – optimum business performance and growing your reach.
What’s more, you’ll be able to focus on other business activities without worrying about your podcast campaigns processing.
Be sure to work with the best agency to promote your podcast
What’s more, when working with an agency, be sure to select the best agency that guarantees top-quality results without having to break the bank.
What you need to know before hiring a podcast agency
So, how do you identify a perfect agency for your business? Well, it’s easier than you think. You can begin by checking what other businesses are using to promote their podcast. That way, you’ll establish the probability of succeeding if you opt to work with them.
Also, you can find out how long the agency has been operating to determine whether it fits your business. The longer the time of service in the industry points more to their experience in delivering quality services. Therefore, consider opting for an agency that has been operational for a long period.
#5. Additional ways to promote a podcast
Hold Giveaways and Contests
Consider hosting contests and a giveaways where listeners can win prizes whenever they leave reviews of your podcasts on iTunes. Also, you could offer additional entries for people who share your podcasts with friends or other people in social media posts.
Remember to promote show links to those blog posts you’re running for the giveaway. Note that even if it’s a contest, realize that it doesn’t limit you from running a Facebook Ad campaign.
What is important is that you make sure you have fun when getting started. Also, make sure that you keep anyone listening to a podcast engaged to help promote your show links.
#6. Get A Good Podcast Hosting
When it comes to publishing your shows, you need to have a good podcast platform. In addition, you’ll need delivery and media hosting tools, an RSS feed for iTunes and Apple Podcasts, a podcast website, and stats. Make sure that you have a platform that supports you as a producer.
Also, as your show grows ensure that your podcast hosting provider can provide a reliable and fast network. It should also provide flexible storage and bandwidth that supports your podcast as it grows.
If you want to leverage the most out of your podcasts, you’ll need to know about the many different platforms that you can use to get started. Take a look at this guide to podcasts software and see how you can use these to your advantage.
Have enough bandwidth
There are many podcast hosting companies that you can use for free to share your podcast. But, if you want to grow your podcasting guests, you should have a working plan. Also, make sure that you have enough bandwidth to make it easy for when an episode goes viral.
This helps support downloads, win more people listening to your show, and support your podcast growth.
#7. Combine different Ad options
Be sure to include a visual landing page that’s carefully crafted and an ad that specifically outlines the listener’s benefits and value offering from your overall podcast. You can also consider mixing different ad options for instance Facebook ads and “Share Gates” for an improved conversion rate.
When you’re starting, setting up Facebook ads properly can be intimidating. Therefore, you could decide to hire an experienced person or opt to take a Facebook ads program to help you get started.
Facebook ads are among the most affordable paid Ads choices you can use to make it easy to promote a podcast. When starting, you can simply use an episode to “boost” a post on a podcast site or Facebook.
However, to grow your podcast, we suggest that you get a dedicated landing page for your podcast. The podcast landing page should include an incentive for when people sign up. While boosting Facebook posts can be a fast solution, however, it rarely converts.
Measuring your Results
While there are many ways you can use to promote your podcasts, it’s crucial that you measure the results. In doing so, you’ll know what tactic works and what isn’t.
If you’re creating promotions and noticing that your numbers are growing, it may be time that you get started on measuring and optimizing.
Sources of Analytics
Using tools like Spotify and Apple Podcasts Connect, you’ll get all the information regarding audience engagement as well as their consumption of episodes.
Such data is very useful as it’ll inform you of those episodes that resonate most, those segments of your shows are getting skipped, and those areas you may be losing followers.
Presently, Spotify’s analytics are better compared to iTunes, or Apple podcasts App and include basic demographic information. Platform-specific data is a great way for you to get part of the whole story. However, it’s a good starting point.
Use a combo of these analytics
A combination of this data and the information from your podcast hosting platform will inform you on how you can structure your episode, the type of episodes you can double down on, or even what to cut.
Your podcast hosting platform will offer you information that will help you identify where your audiences are based, the time of week and day they typically listen to your shows, and the device they’ve listened on.
Such information provides you with a good feel of how people are listening to your podcast. This also can influence the type of content you create and how or when to market it to them.
8 Mistakes to Avoid in Podcasting
Each podcaster might make mistakes at some point during their podcasting journey. So the best way you can avoid such mistakes is to know about them. That way you can make sure that you do everything possible to avoid these mistakes.
To help you steer clear of these mistakes we outline nine common mistakes to avoid during your podcasting journey and what you can do to overcome them easily.
1. Not following a plan
Lack of consistency is one huge mistake that you should avoid when it comes to your podcast. Therefore, having a detailed plan as you launch your podcast will ensure that you always have consistent uploads with enough content.
Plus you’ll have a targeted niche around which you can tailor your topics around. However, many podcasters don’t take time to prepare before they begin recording
2. Too Many Ads
Another mistake that you should avoid is when podcasters use too many ads in their podcasts. That means they end up selling their listeners’ attention to advertisers. However, when done right, paid ads can be beneficial for listeners, the host as well as the advertisers.
But when you use many ad reads or when the ads aren’t relevant to your target audience, you’ll risk frustrating your fans. In turn, this might lead to them stopping to listen to your show forever.
3. Failing to include a call to action
It’s important that you include a call to action in all your episodes. This can either direct listeners to your social media platforms or website. It should encourage your listeners to check out your past episodes or subscribe to your show.
Sometimes listeners need that little push and a new point of view. Again, it’ll take you under 30 seconds to ask them to join your show as you end each episode.
4. Not knowing your listeners
One huge mistake that podcasters make is failing to know their audience. You should segment the people listening to your show into a niche to make sure the content, upload frequency, and guest features can be tailored accordingly.
After identifying the target audience, podcasters can now concentrate on niche topics that fit audience needs. And this is better rather than covering a wide variety of topics that interest some listeners. As such make sure that you can share the episode.
5. Failing to Collect Subscriber Emails
As a podcaster, collecting subscriber emails can prove to be a huge asset. Emails are a crucial point of contact you have with listeners. Through this tool, you can get feedback, give them updates, and so forth. As you launch your podcast website, remember to collect emails so you can start building your email list.
Also, failing to collect people’s (listeners) emails means that you’re not getting the most of this business and marketing resource. Note that collecting emails comes with many benefits. So remember to start an email collection to help change and increase your opportunities in the future.
6. Using poor sound quality
Many people will stop listening to a show if the sound quality is not quite right. It could be slightly unclear, too loud, or background noise overpowers the episode. Therefore, it is important that you invest in a top-quality microphone and you won’t have to spend much.
You must get a microphone that works well that listeners won’t want to switch off your podcast before 5 minutes are over.
Note: If you can record good-sounding audio, you could help your guests and podcasters who just launched their shows by sharing such knowledge via email or calling them before the show starts. You can even discuss it.
7. Not teaming up with guests
Even though people like listening to you, the content can get rather repetitive if you don’t switch up things every so often. To help keep the engagement levels high, you should consider teaming up with other podcasters or even having featured guests on your show.
For example, you could have a finance expert on your show during the week you’ll be recording an episode on saving money.
Also, you could choose to do a joint show with another podcaster who has similar interests as you. In doing so, your podcast name will be shared on the podcasters’ social platforms. In turn, this will lead to increased downloads.
8.Not making your podcast easy to find
At times, the issue isn’t that the podcast isn’t good, rather that people can’t find it. To avoid this make sure that your podcast is easy to find on directories like Google play music, iTunes, and Stitcher.
Also, your podcast should have a catchy description, design, and even reviews. Remember to encourage your audience to leave feedback about how they’ve loved your episodes. This is important since listeners often use them when searching for something new.
Fortunately, there are numerous resources out there that can help you avoid any initial issues. Note that most of these mistakes can be valuable learning opportunities for new podcasters. And they can help your first episode sound good.
Which Podcast Promotion Strategies should you use in 2021
Coming up with an effective podcast promotion strategy doesn’t have to be difficult. You can ensure that your techniques are effective by optimizing your podcasts for search engines, engaging your listeners throughout the episodes, or even working with an agency when necessary to manage your podcast marketing activities.
Note that your podcasts episode can be an important resource for your target audiences, but that only happens when they can easily find you.
With focused marketing approaches like SEO, planned social media strategies, and a few relevant communities, it’ll be easy for you to grow your podcast show and episode.
Remember that podcast promotion is more of a test-tweak-analyze process. Therefore, consider using more than one of the marketing strategies listed above and measure their effectiveness before taking on additional strategies.
