Want to grow your podcast audience?
If you’re wrenching your hair out over your stagnating podcast audience, parked stubbornly south of the 100-listeners per episode mark....
Give me your ears!
Not literally, keep those; you’ll need them for what you're about to hear.
The pain of the plateau
I get it; the deflation hits hard when your buffer audience wouldn’t fill a dinghy, let alone that elusive cruise liner you dream of sipping Negronis on after a good hour in the hot tub.
But I'm going to share two key bits of insight with you.
1: How you need to reframe your current audience stats.
2: What you can do to increase them if you're still seeking dopamine.
By the time we’re done, you’ll have a noggin brimming with tactics tailored to your individual podcast challenges.
Because, let’s face it, moulding a prosperous podcast it’s not about rolling dice, it’s about strategy.
Want to get more of a handle on your podcast strategy so you can enjoy more new ideal listeners who are actually going to enjoy what you're putting out?
Contact me!
https://www.podmastery.co/contact/
Timestamped summary:
00:00 Recommend using one of two website platforms.
05:23 Grow podcast with targeted ad investment.
08:25 Targeted, precise traffic without any wasted efforts.
Mentioned in this episode:
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policy
Transcript
If you're getting stressed because your podcast isn't delivering the results that you know it deserves, sign yourself up for my free seven day podcast makeover course every single day.
Speaker A:During the seven day course, I'll email you with a pro tip that will help enhance your podcast and bring you better results.
Speaker A:Sign up now at Podmastery Co seven days.
Speaker A:That's Podmastery Co seven days.
Speaker B:Seven Days.
Speaker B:One of the things that surfaces from the audits that I carry out for clients is Neil.
Speaker B:How do I grow my podcast's audience?
Speaker B:Usually these people are a little bit disappointed with the numbers that they see in their feed, in their stats usually sub 100 per episode after 30 days.
Speaker B:Putting aside for a moment the fact that actually, if you've got a hundred people listening to your episode within 30 days, that's pretty excellent.
Speaker B:Think about it from this point of view.
Speaker B:If you hired out a village hall for the day to do a talk on something you're passionate about, and you saw 100 people turn up to listen to you give this talk, wouldn't you feel quite proud of that?
Speaker B:Yet, weirdly, when our podcast is published globally for a worldwide audience, somehow we see that as slightly less than putting that thought to the side for a moment.
Speaker B:Because it doesn't matter what I say about that, you are still going to be wanting those dopamine hits of, oh, I really would love to see my episode listens grow.
Speaker B:Fair enough.
Speaker B:So what we're going to talk about now is the challenges of growing an audience when it comes to publishing a podcast and some ideas that you might want to be looking at in order to grow that organic audience.
Speaker B:If you've got a bit of budget for marketing, we can cover that too.
Speaker B:But this is predominantly going to be for those people that want to get the biggest bang for their lack of buck.
Speaker B:So first of all, before we even think about growing an audience, we need to understand who our audience is.
Speaker B:There's no point trying to get more people listening to this thing if we don't know who it's for in the first place.
Speaker B:To that end, we need to think about defining our target listener.
Speaker B:Who are they?
Speaker B:What challenges do they face?
Speaker B:How do you help them?
Speaker B:What will they get from listening to your podcast?
Speaker B:Are you offering transformation?
Speaker B:Are you offering a course?
Speaker B:Is your podcast something they're going to get something from episode to episode?
Speaker B:Or is it simply a guide?
Speaker B:Is it a refresher of something they already know but just need you for the mentoring and accountability?
Speaker B:All of these questions are very important for you to Ask of yourself.
Speaker B:Before you start thinking about growing your audience, you also want to get some listener feedback from those that you already have listening now.
Speaker B:I can recommend surveys for this.
Speaker B:You could offer a voucher, maybe for Amazon, 50 pound gift voucher.
Speaker B:Ask for feedback directly within the episodes themselves.
Speaker B:If your podcast is hosted via its own website, which I highly recommend, you could stick some sort of voice note tool on there.
Speaker B:Podcast Page and podpage offer these built into their own systems.
Speaker B:So if you don't have a podcast website, I highly recommend you use one of those two platforms.
Speaker B:So before we go into some of the actual specific ways that you can grow your podcast on the cheap or for free, let's talk about the psychology of growth when it comes to anything product related.
Speaker B:Take for example, a new restaurant has opened in a town, nobody knows about it yet.
Speaker B:Most companies, when they're doing something like this, they want to bring new footfall into their place of work, into their business.
Speaker B:They will advertise to let those customers know they exist.
Speaker B:They'll buy their first customers.
Speaker B:And that's largely what you have to do with a podcast.
Speaker B:You have to buy your first listeners.
Speaker B:If you've got to a point where you've plateaued with your organic audience and.
Speaker A:Maybe you're reaching, I don't know, between.
Speaker B:70 and 120 listeners per episode, maybe you need to think about how you can strategically buy a new base level of listeners.
Speaker B:You've already got those 70 to 120 listeners turning up every single episode.
Speaker B:That's fine, that's great, you've got those.
Speaker B:But how are you going to get new listeners coming in?
Speaker B:There are a number of ways you can do this.
Speaker B:You can do the content marketing approach, where essentially you're setting up your social media channels for your show and you're promoting.
Speaker B:So we're talking lots of posts, different kinds of content, audio grams, video clips, quote cards, transcript segments, threads, you name it.
Speaker B:There's lots of ways that you can use social media to promote your podcast episodes.
Speaker B:Blogs are obviously a great idea as well.
Speaker B:And certainly if you can get a blog post published on a high domain authority website, that's great traffic for your podcast website.
Speaker B:You can organize to go on other podcasts and promote what you do on those shows.
Speaker B:You could do a feed drop.
Speaker B:That's where another podcast allows you to publish an episode in their feed.
Speaker B:This can sometimes be a financial arrangement or it can just be a swap.
Speaker B:One week you promote their podcast in your feed, the next week they promote your podcast in their feed.
Speaker B:I think we need to manage your expectations on how effective this can be.
Speaker B:You might generate a 2% conversion or below.
Speaker B:In terms of that, it's probably going to be a handful of listeners, but if it's something that you feel like trying to, by all means give that a go.
Speaker A:Are you still wondering why your podcast isn't pulling in those results you know it deserves?
Speaker A:Maybe it's your clunky intro or those show notes that nobody's reading.
Speaker B:Perhaps your artwork is more meh than meow.
Speaker A:Don't stress, because I'm going to help you get yourself involved with my seven day podcast makeover.
Speaker A:It's a free email course that will whip your podcast into shape faster than you can say, hey, welcome to my podcast.
Speaker A:Over the course of seven days, I'm going to show you how to do everything from nailing that intro so listeners actually stick around through to editing like a pro, learning what to cut and what to leave in so that you can enhance the listening experience.
Speaker A:And if you're using guests, I'll even show you how to book and interview the right ones.
Speaker B:Sound good?
Speaker B:Thought.
Speaker A:So sign up now and give your podcast the glow up it deserves.
Speaker A:Your listeners and your download stats will thank you.
Speaker A:Go to podmastery co seven days.
Speaker A:That's podmastery co seven days.
Speaker B:But the truth is, in order to grow your podcast, you're probably going to need to invest at least a little bit of money into it.
Speaker B:One of my favorite methods of growing a small podcast and getting a slightly bigger audience each time is Facebook ads.
Speaker B:They can be extremely effective to get you some extra traffic to podcast apps, specific landing pages in which people listen, maybe follow your show, in which case I would be thinking about a follow campaign.
Speaker B:Or you can get people signed up to your newsletter using again Facebook lead generation forms.
Speaker B:This can be a really, really good method, honestly, for growing more followers more quickly, which can definitely help with the search ranking of your podcast within Apple podcasts and Spotify LinkedIn ads.
Speaker B:The same LinkedIn I find to be a little bit less effective unless you are literally doing a B2B podcast.
Speaker B:However, great targeting.
Speaker B:Similar strategy you could use in app podcast ads.
Speaker B:So we're talking the likes of Acast or Spotify Pocket Casts take ads as well.
Speaker B:These are great because rather than having to cross a hurdle of someone scrolling a social media feed, then they got to take the decision to click on the button that will take them to your podcast within an app.
Speaker B:They're already in the app.
Speaker B:They're already in the modality of listening to podcasts so the conversion rates are going to be much higher because you're asking them not to go to another app.
Speaker B:You're just asking them to go to another podcast.
Speaker B:That can be extremely effective for growing your listener traffic.
Speaker B:Another thing you can try is pr.
Speaker B:This is where you create a story around a specific episode and then get that distributed to various different publications with the promise of either a link to your podcast episode or if you're really lucky, they might even embed a player for you.
Speaker B:There are lots of different services that offer this.
Speaker B:PR Fire is one.
Speaker B:I'm also a big fan of a company called whitepress.
Speaker B:Why Press allows you to get targeted publications that will embed your stories within various highly specific blogs and websites around the world.
Speaker B:This could be a great way of you getting slightly more affordable campaigns published for your podcast if you've got a bit more budget.
Speaker B:Well, there is something a little bit more effective that you can try.
Speaker B:You can work with Podnos Podcasting.
Speaker B:We have agreements with third party providers where we can actually embed your podcast in highly relevant blogs and websites around the world.
Speaker B:Similar to whitepress, but even more targeted to the point of actually picking the genders, the age and the earning brackets of the people visiting these websites.
Speaker B:If that's something that will be of interest to you, then please do reach out to me and we could talk about how we can help you to grow your podcast audience in a highly targeted and relevant way.
Speaker B:Absolutely no wasted traffic.
Speaker B:We don't use bots.
Speaker B:You can guarantee where people are listening, how old they are, what gender they are, if you have a very gender specific product and what their earning bracket is.
Speaker B:If you're offering courses, this could be a great solution for you.
Speaker B:I hope that helps.
Speaker B:And if you need any more information, you know where I am.
Speaker B:Do reach out to me.
Speaker B:The Podmaster is a Podnos podcasting production.
Speaker B:Find out more about us@podnos.co.uk that's p.
Speaker A:O d k n o w s.co.uk.
