Breaking through and grabbing your target viewer’s attention is crucial for your podcast.

Over 80% of the podcasters I’ve surveyed said growth is their biggest problem, and not going as fast as they want.

Growth means engaged viewers bringing revenue to your business. It means you’re making progress and  touching more people’s lives.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing the inside workings of many podcasts. And I’ve noticed 3 critical traps that could be hampering your growth! 

At the end of this article, I’ll also list 10 rare and hidden ways to market your podcast. Marketing strategies that are untouched by most podcasts, and potentially very valuable. So stay tuned for that!

1. You’re Spending too Little Time Marketing Your Podcast

There’s too little time being spent on marketing their Podcast. It’s counterintuitive, because many people think of Podcasts as marketing material. 

But a 1 hour long podcast episode is a tough sell to a viewer who’s unfamiliar with you. Podcasters need to build a  pipeline to reach new viewers and ‘sell’ them on the long form episodes. Then finally, build a deeper relationship with them through the long form episodes.

Most podcasters know they have to spend time deliberately growing their audience. But still spend very little time on it per week! 

A good rule of thumb is to spend about 30-50% of your time exploring and trying out various growth strategies. Unfortunately most podcasters have very little time left after producing their weekly episodes.

That’s why I created Podmate, a tool that can help save a huge amount of time editing video Podcasts.

With the rise of AI tools like Podmate, you can massively speed up your video production. Giving you the crucial time you need to market and grow your podcast.

Suppose you’ve now adopted some AI tools, leaving you with more time to market your Podcast.

Most podcasters would jump straight to making short form videos and clips. That’s how you grow your podcast, right?

Maybe not.

The problem is that short form videos/clips are the obvious move. So they’re already quite saturated with podcasts.

In general, a marketing channel that’s already saturated can be a recipe for mediocre results. So how can you differentiate?

2. The Best Growth Strategies Are Underused Ones

To succeed in marketing a Podcast, you have to make sure your approach stands out from what others are doing. The two major ways to differentiate are:

1. Create unique/outstanding short form content or
2. Use a completely different marketing approach, which is not as saturated

Creating Outstanding Short Form Content

Short form content works best when it triggers a strong emotion from the audience.

Make your audience laugh, cry, or blow their minds in some other way. Don’t be afraid to lean into edgy or controversial opinions. 

Apathy is your enemy!

A polarizing idea/message will perform much better than a tepid one at growing a podcast.

How to stand out from competition:

• Use advanced editing or animations to blow minds
• Choose segments that naturally have a storyline.
  • That means there’s a:
    • Question/hook
    • Discussion/explanation
    • Joke or surprise as a payoff. 

• Audiences will naturally want to replay a video if there’s a twist at the end.
  • Viewers replaying the video tells the algorithm that your video is worth spreading. 

• Add music to heighten the emotion in your video
• Add segments/games to your Podcast that lend themselves to short form content

Stand out by using a Different Marketing Approach

There’s a host of other ways to spread the word about your podcast. Different approaches will work depending on your podcast topic and channel size.

You’ll want to run fast and cheap tests on different marketing approaches. 

Then lean into the ones that seem most likely to hit your growth targets. As your podcast grows, new marketing approaches will open up, and old ones will stop moving the needle.

List of possible marketing approaches:

1. Virality – Get existing viewers to refer people to your podcast.
   • You can do this organically or give your audience an incentive
     • Organic virality: Create memes and inside jokes that your audiences can spread to other segments of the internet. People who search those memes and inside jokes will find your Podcast.
       • This is hard to do on purpose. But often your audience will latch onto certain things you’ve said or done. And leaning into those jokes can help create a meme organically.
     • Incentivized virality: Offer incentives like merch/giftcards to whoever can make the best performing clip of your Podcast.
       • If your podcast gets big enough, your users may create clip channels themselves. Consider letting these channels stay up as they can bring considerably more attention to your podcast.

2. Unconventional PR – Using stunts/contests to draw press/attention to your podcast
   • You can draw blog, press or media attention by doing remarkable or ridiculous things
   • From renaming a town after your podcast to naming your first born child ‘Podcast’. There’s a variety of unique and interesting things to generate media attentions
   • Leaning into controversy is another route. Often controversy/beef draws alot of attention from blogs and other youtube channels. 

3. Paid Ads –  Buying Ads on social platforms
   • This can become very costly, so it may not scale as a way to generate traffic to your podcast. 
   • But paid Ads can be a great way to test out ideas. You can use Ads to
     • Test how well your website does at capturing and engaging new viewers
     • Find which thumbnail and title idea is better
     • Figure out which of your ‘lead magnet’ ideas are better
       • (Stay tuned for below if you don’t know what a lead magnet is)
4. Offline Ads/Editorials –  Getting your Podcast on Newspapers, Bulletin Boards, Billboards
   • Newspapers and bulletin boards can work well if you’re building a location based podcast
   • Newspapers Ads and billboards are expensive, but could work as part of a stunt to generate media coverage. (Unconventional PR)

5. SEO – Getting your Podcast to show up in search engine results
   • This is an especially great approach if your podcast’s topic is something alot of people search for.
   • SEO takes some effort to get highly ranked, but then you get traffic to your content for essentially free!
   • The underlying basis of SEO is to:
     • Satisfy searchers. Your content must be able to answer the question that prompted the search.
     • Give the search engine signals that your content should rank high.
   • To rank on Youtube Search:
     • Create podcast episodes around a keyword that is easy to rank for, and has enough people searching for it.
       • You can use ‘Google Keyword Planner’ to research this.
     • Make sure the keyword is present in your title and description. But do so in a natural way, since Google penalizes ‘keyword stuffing’.
     • Add timestamps to the topics you cover, so searchers can find the information they’re looking for.
     • If your podcast is one of the most popular videos for that keyword, it can rank high on Youtube’s Search Results.
   • To rank on Google Search:
     • Create a text version of your podcast, and optimize it for SEO using a tool like Yoast
       • Optimizing it for SEO means doing things like:
         • Mentioning the keyword in the title 
         • Making sure your article is readable.
         • Making sure your article is ‘indexed’ (seen) by Google
         • Etc.
     • Email other website owners, bloggers, podcasters and ask them to link to your post/site
       • This builds your website’s authority and chances to rank for that article/content
     • Consider using a paid SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find good keywords, and track your SEO progress

6. Short form/Clips content – Creating clips of your Podcast to spread on social media
   • Clip portions of your podcast and spread them on other social platforms
   • Give viewers a reason to checkout the full podcast
     • Choose clips that hint at a larger storyline/joke that they’ll have to checkout the full podcast to see
     • Add a ‘call to action’ at the end of the short form video that includes the Podcast and episode name it came from
     • Don’t forget to link back to your main podcast and include the episode number/name 
   • The main goal should always be to bring them back to the full episode.
     • Short form viewers are not yet ‘hooked’ as fans. 
     • To ‘hook’ them as fans, they’ll need more contact with you, and that’s best done with your full podcast.
7. Medium length Videos – Creating standalone videos meant to promote your podcast
   • Create well edited topical videos in the 3-10 minute length. These have a higher chance of going viral than a 1 hour long podcast.
   • A large chunk of Youtube viewers are looking for medium length well-edited videos. .
   • If a viewer likes the video and goes away, there’s now a higher chance your Podcast gets recommended to them. (Add link)

8. Email Marketing – Capture your audience’s emails and send them regular content
   • Keep your current audience engaged and re-engaged constantly with weekly/biweekly emails
   • You can gain the power to notify your audience of what you’re doing, outside of Youtube’s sphere of influence

9. Guest posting on blogs/appearing on other Podcasts
   • Be a guest on another person’s blog or podcast. Give them some good content and in exchange get exposure to their audience.
   • You can search for blogs and podcasts in your niche. Then send them a proposal.
     • You can usually find their emails in the ‘about’ section on their Youtube channel. Or on their website.
   • The proposal should be a short email. cover things like:
     • A personalized messaging showing you’ve researched their show/blog
     • The content you would help them make/ topics you could cover
     • Why you think the content might do well. 
     • A link back to your channel. So they can familiarize yourself with who you are.
   • Other channels want engaging content and audience growth. So frame your proposal around how you can help them achieve this. 
   • Even if they say ‘no’ or that they’re not available now. Connect with them on social media and keep in touch. Networking is about investing in and building long term relationships.
10. Cold Messages and DMs
    • Reach out to people who might be interested in your topic, using cold messages.
    • Find people interested in your Podcast’s topic through Reddit and Facebook groups.
    • Be careful to not spam messages out. Make sure your messages are unique and personalized to each person. Or you may get banned from the facebook group or subreddit.

11. Forums/Q&A Sites
    • Engage with people on forums and question/answer sites 
    • Participate and be helpful. Then occasionally refer people to your Podcast/Channel when the opportunity arises.
    • Posting useful content on forums and q&a sites will often make people click on your profile.
      • Make sure that a link to your channel/podcast is on your channel. That way they can click through and possibly become a fan. 
12. Community Building
    • Create a community around your topic of interest on Reddit, Discord or a related site. 
    • Post content in your community. And make the community a hub of discussion and value. 
    • You can refer community members to your Podcast/channel, or use email marketing to engage with them more deeply.
13. In person events
    • Go to events around your Podcast subject, meet new people, and form a relationship.
    • Collect their contact details. So that you can use email marketing to maintain and strengthen the relationship you’ve built. 
14. Speaking engagements
    • Speak to a crowd of people interested in your topic. Deliver them value and/or entertainment. 
    • Again, collect their contact details! So that you can use email marketing to maintain and strengthen the relationship you’ve built. 

The vast majority of marketing approaches either won’t work, or won’t be at a price point that’s sustainable. That’s why fast and cheap tests are important.

Different approaches also work at different scales. In-person events or speaking engagements are a great way to get your audience building started.. But they likely won’t move the needly once your podcast has thousands of weekly viewers.

With enough testing, tweaking and iterating, you’ll find a way to bring in alot of new viewers every month. But you might find that your audience size is still not growing. 

What gives?

3. Your Podcast is a Leaky Bucket

Even with a great marketing plan, your podcast still might not grow.

Consider a bucket with many holes in the bottom. You can pour alot of water into it, and the water level still may not rise.

That leaky bucket is a podcast which isn’t retaining viewers week to week. It’ll be impossible for your growth efforts to compound if your podcast isn’t somewhat ‘sticky’ to new viewers.

A podcast which is able to ‘hook’ viewers into coming back week after week is a tight bucket. Most of the largest podcasts are ones that have people coming back to them week after week.

Your growth depends strongly on ‘retention’ or how well you’re able to hold onto viewers week after week.

Plug the Holes – Hold onto Viewers For the Long Term

You have alot of levers to control how many viewers come back to your videos every week.

Engage their emotions 

Your biggest competition isn’t competitors, or the platform you’re on. 

Your biggest competition is apathy.

The foundation of catching a viewer’s attention is…well…catching their attention. People browsing Youtube are looking to be entertained at the end of the day. So even if you plan to teach your audience, maintain a high level of entertainment even as you educate them.

Every strong emotion you make your audience feel is another coin in their memory jar. 

Your viewers won’t remember your podcast, they’ll remember how it made them feel. 

Give them Repeated Exposure

Many of our closest friends are also our oldest friends. 

Why? 

Because we have layers on layers of positive experience with them, across many years. 

The result is that your friend would do anything you asked of them.

Your new viewer needs to see you more than once before they’re ‘hooked’ into your brand. But how can you guarantee this repeated contact even before they’re a committed fan?

I’ve written a bit about that in the past, so you can check them out here

• Make the Youtube algorithm more likely to show them your next video
• Get their contact details and contact them through an email list
  • Offer a ‘lead magnet’ aka a free piece of content, in exchange for their contact information

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In short, growing your podcast is a ginormous undertaking. And is much bigger challenge than simply producing your Podcast. 

That’s why at Podmate, we’re creating tools to help you save time on editing. So you can use that time to grow your audience, and get your podcast to be self-sustaining ($$) and beyond!

You can learn more about Podmate here, if that sounds intriguing.

Make sure to subscribe below to make sure you don’t miss the next issue on growing your Podcast!

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