Picture this: you’re 8 episodes into your Video Podcasting journey. You’re having an absolute blast learning from your guests, inspiring your listeners and watching your view counts slowly but surely weave their way up the scoreboard. At this point, you’re fully confident that you’ve found your voice as a podcast host. You’ve come to enjoy podcasting so much that you’re now considering devoting even more time to your craft. You start having unshakeable dreams of becoming the next Tim Ferriss. Your head starts to spin with all of the possibilities, but you’re lacking a clear plan to swiftly and effectively take things to the next level. Remedying this issue requires two things: 1. An affirmation with yourself that you’re in it for the long haul and 2. A multi-pronged approach that covers all possible bases. Lucky for you, you’ve just stumbled into the SPS lecture hall! Grab your notebook…and no texting. Class is now in session!
Engagement marketing, from a traditional business perspective, encompasses direct communication with consumers in order to foster a personal connection that translates to increased brand loyalty. This concept applies to the marketing of your podcast, in that you must interact with both current and potential listeners on a regular basis to draw tangible support for your show. Though the importance of follower and subscriber counts should not be understated, you should also have the goal of acquiring truly passionate fans. To this end, the grassroots appeal of engagement marketing can help to build a community around your show that will lead to a healthy career in podcasting. This ties directly with the phenomenon of Evangelism Marketing, in which your fans do much of your marketing for you simply by believing in your brand as much as you do.
Though the idea of Evangelism Marketing has its roots in the 1980s with Guy Kawasaki’s role as “Chief Evangelist” of Apple, it has taken on an entirely new role in the current age. Coupled with the unprecedented level of influence that the modern consumer has on the broader market, Evangelism has nicely converged with Word-of-Mouth marketing to create a constant marketing machine driven by ecstatic consumers. This is the perfect time to get into podcasting because you have a serious chance to hook some fans and have them essentially do the promotion for you. Yet these fans won’t just magically come to you–you’ll have to venture out into the wilderness yourself and scavenge for them.
First, you must scout out the groups of people who would be most interested in the topic that you are exploring in your podcast. Join a few subreddits, Facebook Groups, or use Instagram hashtags to engage with like-minded individuals who just might be converted to daily listeners! Just make sure to respect the rules of whatever community you’re engaged in, in terms of self-promotion. This can include following accounts who follow a certain hashtag on Instagram and liking their posts, or even commenting on their posts if they post about something you are passionate about. This will organically drive traffic to your show, and you will develop a fan-base full of friends who want to follow your every move. This can even lead to you becoming a guest on other shows, which is also fantastic promotion! By the time you start “repurposing” your content into Instagram and TikTok clips (more on that later!) you’ll hopefully have a solid base of relevant hashtag followers that the videos will be fed to.
When uploading your show to a podcast hosting platform such as Buzzsprout, you need to make sure that it is being uploaded to as many directories as possible. This will immensely increase visibility for your podcast in Google search results, as well as making your podcast available in different regions throughout the world. Even if the bulk of your audience comes from Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, the increased distribution of your podcast will lead to substantially higher reach in the algorithm. However, with this increased visibility comes an important responsibility: to title your episodes so that they have a higher likelihood of latching on to current trends or topics in your space. With this practice, you are also tackling elements of SEO marketing.
Search Engine Optimization for Podcasts takes place largely within the landscape of the myriad podcast directories that house one’s show. One must take care to properly title their podcast in a way that stands out amongst the truly endless sea of shows. In addition, Podcast Episode Titles should be formatted in a way that fosters both discoverability and familiarity to the audience. For example, the phenomenal podcast Wikihole, hosted by actress D’arcy Carden, features a fairly consistent title system: the topic (or starting point for the “hole”) and the guests joining her on each episode. Another popular system is to title the episode with an iconic quote from the episode, followed by a “with…” if there are guests included. Your episode description also holds a key weight in whether your podcast will be properly indexed when potential listeners are searching for topics in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any of the other podcast directories.
As discussed in our recent article on Branded Podcasts, research has shown that podcast advertising has one of the highest levels of consumer trust and action compared to any other advertising medium. Take advantage of this perk and use podcast advertisements to promote your own podcast! Your listeners will already be on their podcast platform of choice, so they will have easy access to search and subscribe to your show (and ditch the one they’re currently listening to, for that matter!) I have certainly done this many times before. The True Crime and Horror ones always get me, often when I’m listening to one of my daily ‘routine’ shows. I’ll hear a compelling ad and get sucked in, often subscribing and listening to multiple episodes. Your ad should essentially be an abbreviated version of the trailer for your show, along with some extra clear info in relation to your podcast’s title and objective. There should also be a call to action, encouraging listeners to subscribe. There are numerous great platforms for this, but here are a few key players to get you started: AudioGo, Overcast, and Podcast Addict.
In this tell-all video Steven Bartlett, host of the Diary of a CEO Podcast, reveals key insights into the initial growth and explosive progression of his show. His first point of “consistency” highlights the importance of regularly publishing episodes on a consistent schedule. He explains that when he first started his show, he was sporadically publishing episodes. At a certain point, he began to publish episodes regularly, which sparked massive growth in his listener base. He shows a graph that clearly illustrates a flat line during his initial run, with a consistent, three-steps-forward-one-step-back, mostly linear progression once he started posting with regular frequency. In Steven’s case, the key to this was posting at 7AM every Monday, catching those just heading off for their morning commute. Definitely give the entire video a watch, as it is a fantastic example of much of the points I’ve outlined here being utilized in practice.
The first thing to consider when thinking of potential sponsors is: “What products have I organically talked about or recommended on my show?” You may be surprised how many random products from different areas of life that you have talked about extensively on your show, deliberately or not. Sponsorships don’t have to be limited to physical products, either. For example, I have recently been hearing a TON of podcast ads for Broadway shows and Theater Productions, sometimes read by the host. In addition, I have also been frequently hearing ads for subscription services such as Babbel and Skillshare.
Some shows comically explore this idea of modern shameless product placement, as evidenced in Poog’s Intro when co-host Kate Berlant remarks “This is our naked desire for free products.” It has been an incredibly educational experience in podcast marketing to hear the hags (this is what hosts Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak have termed themselves as well as their listeners) talk about a product one day, and then tune in to the next episode to see that they have received free samples. This often progresses to a full-blown sponsorship, with the hags recording a hilarious, sometimes brilliant host-read ad (the Hulu and Babbel ads in particular stick out for me).
It’s often recommended to consider sponsorships once you’ve reached 1,000 downloads per episode. At this point, you can start reaching out to brands that you think your listeners would connect to, in addition to creating a press kit that explains the M.O. and general reach statistics of your show. Another option is to apply to have your podcast represented by an agency, such as True Native Media, that lists podcasts in a database that advertisers can choose from to work with.
The swift, meteoric rise of TikTok in 2018 introduced a novel type of scroll in the form of an endless stream of short videos that are constantly served to the viewer and based on a heavily individualized feed. At this point, video podcasts were already a well established fixture in the media landscape. Yet when TikTok was introduced, creators started chopping up their full length shows into bite-sized clips with captions and quick cuts and feeding them into the algorithm. This highly effective promotional tool is explored in the famed GaryVee Content Strategy, with its eponymous creator highlighting the importance of having one piece of “pillar content” (in this case, your podcast episode) that is then contextually repurposed for other forms of social media. We at Skyllamas Podcast Studio have seen our clients’ reach grow immensely after incorporating shorts into their posting plan. A well-timed, captioned and hash-tagged short has a higher chance of going viral and picking up new viewers than practically any other medium on the planet right now, and the podcast form perfectly lends itself to this idea of repurposed content.