The podcast landscape is more crowded than ever. As a podcaster, you’re asked to wear a lot of hats—podcast host, editor, and promoter. To build a podcast audience effectively, you need to be savvy about leveraging digital marketing strategies. We’re here to help you do that by giving you the resources you need to market your new podcast and connect with your audience so that you can build a successful, revenue-generating podcast.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” While SEO is most commonly used in conversations about Google, Bing, and other search engines, it can apply to any platform with a search function, including a podcast directory like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or a social media platform like Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest.
Podcast SEO can help you reach a wider audience for your podcast by ensuring that your podcast shows up when a potential listener makes a search relevant to your podcast. Here are some of the top tips for how podcasters can use SEO to reach new listeners:
As a podcaster, you have a secret weapon for website SEO: transcripts. A finished podcast episode is typically between 10-60 minutes. Based on the average words per minute, that means each podcast episode transcript is between 1,000-7,200 words. (In the world of SEO, this is referred to as long-form content, and it can help you rank for relevant searches.)
After you record, make a transcript of your podcast (services like otter.ai make it so easy), turn that into a blog post, and publish it to your podcast website. This will help you reach a new audience with minimal extra legwork. Plus, it’s a more accessible medium for hearing-impaired people who might be into your podcast.
If you don’t have a website for your podcast, you should. Your website and email marketing are the two channels you own, so you want to prioritize them and leverage them. If you have no idea how to build a website, worry not. Platforms like Squarespace and Wix make it easy. In addition to SEO, you can use your website to link to social media, announce tour dates, sell merch, and more.
It’s also worth taking the time to optimize your podcast description for search, so that podcast listeners can find you in various directories (Spotify, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, etc). When your podcast listing is optimized for relevant keywords (“true crime,” “Real Housewives recap podcast,” “Dungeons and Dragons gameplay,” etc), you open yourself up to reaching a wider audience.
Forty-one percent of consumers have used TikTok as a search engine, and that number is even higher for Gen Z (64%). Pinterest has long been a tool that marketers have used to boost SEO and connect with a wider audience. There are murmurs that Instagram, too, may begin to put more emphasis on search. At this point, optimizing social media captions to be information-rich and include relevant keywords is something that every podcaster should be doing.
Email marketing should be a core part of your podcast marketing strategy. This marketing channel can boost listener engagement, convert listeners to paid subscribers, promote live events, sell merch, and more. What makes email marketing different from a lot of other podcast promotion channels is that you own your email list, which gives you a greater deal of control and autonomy.
Here’s everything you need to know to get started with email marketing as a podcaster:
Build your email list: Encourage listeners to subscribe to email. Offer a monthly newsletter, early access for live event tickets, contests/raffles, or other exclusive offers to encourage sign-ups.
Segment your list:Segment your list by activity level, subscription level, or demographics/locations to send targeted emails only to the most relevant subscribers.
Use templates: Use email software that gives you templates and makes it easy to design emails. Spend some time adding your podcast colors/styles to the templates and choosing a few different designs to be your core templates. This will make it easier to plug and play as you send various emails.
Find the best time to send emails: Test different email send times to see what days and times your audience is most active and engaged.
You might not have a ton of budget to invest in advertising (on other podcasts), but you know what you do have? A podcast, and you can use that to trade. Partner with other podcasts for ad swaps, and you’ll both enjoy the benefits of an ad without the price tag.
You can also cross-promote podcasts within the episode itself. One of the most tried and tested ways to do this is to invite another host to your show as a podcast guest. Then, they can repeat the favor and invite you to their podcast.
When determining whether to partner with another podcaster for a guest spot, you want to make sure that it makes sense you have sufficient overlap in your target audiences and that your shows have something in common. You also want to ask yourself, “Will my audience care what this person has to say?” and “Would their audience be interested in my podcast?” If the answer is yes, partner away.
Social media can help you stay connected to your existing audience and help new listeners find you. Because you’re already in the business of making content, you have a head start. Make clips from the highlights of each podcast episode and post them on Instagram and TikTok. You might want to add video when you’re recording your podcast episodes, so that you have already have the visual element ready to post on social.
An engaged listener base will drive word of mouth, your cheapest and most effective form of advertising. Foster an engaged listener base by creating a community space where listeners can gather and share opinions and geek out over their shared love of your podcast/podcast topic. Facebook still tends to be a favorite for podcast listener groups. The setup is pretty easy, and the mechanics of Facebook groups function pretty well.
Before you rush off to make your new podcast group, there’s one thing you’ll want to consider. Podcast groups can invite lively debate, so you need to ensure you have the resources to moderate the group. You’ll also want to make the rules of your group really clear, so it’s easy to enforce if and when issues arise.
The benefit of paid ads? They work more quickly than many other podcast marketing channels. The drawback is that it’s also often the most expensive listener acquisition strategy. The trick to getting the most out of your paid ads is to create custom ads designed specifically for each platform.
As a podcast host, you know how to entertain. Invite your listeners to a live event or live recording. You can promote the live events within the podcast, as well as on your website, via email, and on social media. In addition to the revenue from ticket sales, live events give you the opportunity to spread your reach through word of mouth—often podcast listeners may invite a friend to the event who then becomes a new listener—and exposes your podcast to the venue’s existing audience (as most venues will promote your show in their email marketing).
There are two types of merch that you should consider selling: branded merch and meme merch. Branded merch is printed with the name of your show. When listeners wear branded merch, they’re effectively walking billboards for your podcast.
Meme merch refers to clothing and accessories that feature an inside joke. Meme merch has become enough of “a thing” that New York magazine recently devoted an article to the trend. Meme merch will be less directly promotional, but theirs still the chance that someone will discover your podcast if they see someone else wearing meme merch (and either Google it or talk to the person about it).
Twilio SendGrid might not be able to edit that podcast episode for you, but we can make email marketing a breeze. With drag-and-drop tools, customizable templates, segmentation tools, and an industry-leading deliverability rate, we can help you take your podcast to the next level.
