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One of the things that surfaces from the audits that I carry out for clients
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is Neal, how do I grow my podcast's
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audience?
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Usually these people are a little bit disappointed with the numbers that they see in
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their feed, in their stats. Usually sub 100 per
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episode after 30 days. Putting aside for a moment the fact
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that actually if you've got 100 people. Listening to your episode
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within 30 days, that's pretty excellent.
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Think about it from this point of view. If you hired out a
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village hall for the day to do a talk on something you're passionate
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about, and you saw 100 people turn up
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to listen to you give this talk, wouldn't you feel quite proud of that?
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Yet, weirdly, when our podcast is
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published. Globally for a worldwide audience,
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somehow we see that as slightly less than
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putting. That thought to the side for a moment. Because it doesn't matter what I
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say. About that, you are still going to. Be wanting those dopamine hits
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of oh, I really would love to see my episode listens
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grow. Fair enough. So what we're going to talk about
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now is the challenges of growing an. Audience when it comes
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to publishing a podcast and
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some ideas that you might. Want to be looking at in order to grow that
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organic audience. If you've got a bit of budget. For marketing, we
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can cover that too. But this is predominantly going to be for those people
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that want to get the biggest bang for their lack of buck.
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So first of all, before we even. Think about growing an audience, we need to
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understand who our audience is. There's no point trying to get more.
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People listening to this thing if we don't know
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who it's for in the first place. To that end, we need to think.
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About defining our target listener. Who
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are they? What challenges do they face? How do you
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help them? What will they get from listening to your podcast?
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Are you offering transformation? Are you offering a course?
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Is your podcast something that they're going to get something from
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episode to episode? Or is it simply a guide? Is
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it a refresher of something they already know but just need you for the
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mentoring and accountability? All of these questions are very
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important. For you to ask of yourself before. You
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start thinking about growing your audience. You also want to get some
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listener. Feedback from those that you already have listening. Now, I can
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recommend surveys for this. You could offer a voucher, maybe
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for Amazon 50 pound gift voucher. Ask for feedback directly
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within the episodes themselves. If your
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podcast is hosted via its own website, which I highly recommend,
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you could stick some sort of voice note tool on there
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podcast page and podpage offer these built into their own
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systems. So if you don't have a podcast. Website, I highly
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recommend you use one of those two platforms.
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So before we go into some of the actual specific ways that you can grow
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your podcast on the cheap or for free,
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let's talk about the psychology of growth when
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it comes to anything product related. Take for
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example, a new restaurant has opened in a town.
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Nobody knows about it yet. Most companies, when they're doing
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something like this, they want to bring new footfall into their place of
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work, into their business. They will advertise to let
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those customers know they exist. They'll buy their first
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customers. And that's largely what you have to do with the podcast. You
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have to buy your first listeners. If you've got
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to a point where you've plateaued with your organic audience and maybe you're reaching,
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I don't know, between. 70 and 120 listeners per episode,
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maybe. You need to think about how you. Can strategically
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buy a new base level of listeners. You've already got
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those 70 to 120 listeners turning up every single
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episode. That's fine, that's great, you've got those. But how are you going to
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get new listeners coming in? There are a number of ways you can do
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this. You can do the content marketing approach where
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essentially you're setting up your social. Media channels for your show and
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you're promoting. So we're talking lots of posts, different
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kinds of content, audiograms, video
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clips, quote cards, transcript
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segments, threads, you name it. There's lots of
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ways that you can use social media to promote your podcast
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episodes. Blogs are obviously a great idea as well. And
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certainly if you can get a. Blog post published on a high domain.
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Authority website, that's great traffic for your podcast
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website. You can organize to go on other podcasts and promote what
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you do on those shows. You could do a feed drop. That's
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where another podcast allows you to.
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Publish an episode in their feed. This can sometimes be a
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financial arrangement. Or it can just be a swap. One week you
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promote their podcast in. Your feed, the next week they promote. Your podcast
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in their feed. I think we need to manage your. Expectations on how
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effective this can be. You might generate a 2%
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conversion or below. In terms of that, it's probably gonna. Be a handful of
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listeners, but if. It'S something that you feel like trying,
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by all means give that a go.
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But the truth is, in order to grow your podcast, you're probably
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going to need to invest at least a little bit of money into it. One
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of my favorite methods of growing a small podcast and getting
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a slightly bigger audience each time is Facebook ads. They can be extremely
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effective to get you some extra traffic to podcast apps. Specific landing
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pages in which people listen, maybe follow your show,
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in which case. I would be thinking about a follow. Campaign where you can get
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people signed. Up to your newsletter using again, Facebook lead
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generation forms. This can be a really, really good. Method honestly for
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growing more followers more. Quickly, which can definitely help
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with the. Search ranking of your podcast within Apple Podcasts and
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Spotify LinkedIn ads. The same
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LinkedIn I find to be a little bit less effective unless you are
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literally doing a b two B. Podcast, however, great
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targeting similar strategy you. Could use in app
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podcast ads. So we're talking the likes of Acast
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or Spotify. Pocketcasts take ads as well.
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These are great because rather than having to cross a hurdle of someone scrolling
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a social media feed, then they got to take the decision to click on the
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button that will take them to your podcast within an app. Theyre already in the
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app, theyre already. In the modality of listening to
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podcasts. So the conversion rates are going to. Be much higher because youre
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asking them not to go to another app, youre. Just asking them
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to go to another podcast. That can be extremely effective
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for growing your listener traffic. Another thing you can
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try is PR. This is where you create a story
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around a specific episode and then get. That distributed
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to various different publications with the promise of
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either a link to your podcast episode or if you're really lucky,
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they might even embed a player for you. There are lots of different services
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that offer this. PR fire is one. I'm also a big fan of a
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company called Whitepress. Whitepress allows you to get targeted
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publications. That will embed your stories
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within various highly specific blogs and
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websites around the world. This could be a great way of. You getting
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slightly more affordable campaigns published for your
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podcast. If you've got a bit more budget, well, there is
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something a little bit more effective that you can try. You
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can work with podnost podcasting. We have agreements with third
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party providers where we can actually embed your podcast
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in highly relevant blogs and websites around. The world, similar to
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whitepress, but even more targeted to the point
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of actually picking the genders, the age
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and the. Earning brackets of the people visiting these
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websites. If that's something that will be of. Interest to you, then
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please do reach out to me and we could talk. About how we can help
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you to. Grow your podcast audience in a highly
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targeted and relevant way. Absolutely
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no wasted traffic. We don't use bots, you can guarantee
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where people are listening, how old they are, what gender they
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are, if you have a very gender specific product and what their earning
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bracket is. If you're offering courses, this could be a great solution for
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you. I hope that helps. And if you need any more information, you know where
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I am. Do reach out to me. The podmaster is a Podnos
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podcasting production. Find out more about us at Podnos
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Co. Uk. That's podknows
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dot co dot uk.
