In order to successfully market your podcast, sometimes you have to think outside the box.
So you want to successfully market your podcast, what should you do? A large part of the answer depends on what your goal for the podcast is, and what sort of budget you have available to you for marketing.
There are two types of podcasts – those that are supported by advertisers, and those that are meant to help you market your product, service, or brand.
While the end game for each type of podcast is the same – more listens, more shares, more downloads and more active listeners, the means to achieving the end are going to vary based on your circumstances.
How Are Successful Podcasts Ranked?
If you’re familiar with Podtrac, you already know that they publish a list of Top 20 podcasts each month, as well as a list of the Top 10 publishers. What’s the difference here? Some of the publishers, such as NPR, have multiple shows that are listed, and some publishers only produce a single series.
The overall king of podcast listens is NPR, especially if you factor in This American Life being an NPR radio show at its roots, even though a different company handles the production. TAL also hosts Serial, which is arguably the most successful podcast of all time, and in large part responsible for the resurgence of podcasting as a viable medium over the past three years.
Do you need an advertising budget to successfully market your podcast?
That depends on how quickly you’re looking for chart results, and what kind of numbers you want to see for weekly downloads, listens, shares and listeners.
There are a growing number of podcast producers and hosts who are using social media marketing – paid Facebook ads, Twitter blasts, Instagram, Pinterest, etc to generate user interest in their podcast episodes; as a matter of fact we do that with our own podcast. It takes time (and money) to develop a cost-effective strategy, and if you’ve done any social ads, you know that costs can quickly rise if you don’t stay on top of the ads 24/7.
Successfully marketing your podcast isn’t really rocket science, but it’s not an overnight process, either – at least not without a big budget and a large social following to lean on for listens and reviews while your podcast series is still feeling the glow of being New & Notable at iTunes, Stitcher, Spreaker, etc.
Hazel & Kim walk you through some simple strategies in this episode of Mobile Wallet Marketing Made Easy, and offer suggestions to help you budget for creative marketing, especially if you’re relying on mobile wallet advertising to help increase your numbers with each new episode.