How to Kickstart Your Podcast Marketing Journey

In the modern, oversaturated online world, simply having a great podcast isn’t enough to ensure long-term success and growth. Unfortunately, you can forget about going viral or enjoying a steady stream of new and returning listeners without a concrete marketing strategy.

Why? Because no matter how good your episodes are, you need to put time, money, and effort into getting that content in front of your audience regularly.

Now, operating in a multi-billion-dollar industry such as this one does mean that there’s enough of the proverbial pie to go around, but it also means that the competition is stiff.

Today, we are not talking about starting a podcast—today, we are talking about getting your podcast off the ground and hopefully into the stratosphere. To help you do that, we’ll be taking a look at the essential marketing and brand-building tactics you need to use to stand out in a competitive podcast industry.

Here’s what you need to do.

Personal Brands Take Center Stage

Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, Jay Shetty—the list goes on and on, but the one thing that always stands out about a podcast is the name. The name of the host(s) whose personal brands speak louder than the noise in the industry is what truly separates their podcasts from the competition.

There’s a lot to be said about personal branding in general, about its influence on marketing and business growth as a whole. But when it comes to successful podcasts, there’s no better marketing than having a powerful personal brand—a name everyone knows even if they don’t listen to your podcast.

With that in mind, your first order of business is to start working on your personal brand. This means your image, your presentation, your tone of voice, your network, and of course, your reach.

Here’s a checklist:

• Define your online persona.
• Define your tone of voice.
• Create an image—podcasts are also visual, so make sure you present a memorable image.
• Start connecting with other podcasters and notable names in the industry.
• Join podcasting groups and relevant online communities in your niche.
• Start posting and commenting in those groups and communities regularly. 

You can expand your reach further by contributing to important websites in your niche and by hosting guest posts on your own site. This leads us to the next important point. 

Build a Beautiful and Intuitive Podcast Website

Most of your listeners will use dedicated podcast platforms or video platforms like YouTube to watch your episodes. While we will talk about those in a moment, remember that effective podcast marketing and brand-building start with a beautiful website.

Having a website for your podcast is the best way for people to find all of your episodes quickly, learn about the brand, engage with you, and disseminate your content across the web. In today’s saturated market, having a website for your podcast is non-negotiable.

One of the best and easiest ways to build your podcast website is with a podcast starter template that sets everything up for you so that you only need to upload your episodes. It’s customizable and easy to use, and most importantly—it’s fast.

The podcast starter template is optimized for speed and seamless viewing on all device formats. No matter if they’re listening on their mobile or desktop PC, your audience will get a seamless and enjoyable experience.

There are numerous built-in features for marketing and shareability, so be sure to check it out.

Complement Your Site with Podcast Aggregators

One of your top priorities should be to make your episodes, and your podcast brand as a whole, as discoverable as possible. 

To do this, you need to have a notable presence on all the relevant podcast platforms and aggregators. Any platform capable of hosting your podcast should be in your marketing strategy, and that includes visual platforms like YouTube if you’re also filming your episodes.

If you’re not filming your episodes and you’re just making audio recordings, start filming immediately. This will give you more exposure, and it will do wonders for your podcast marketing strategy as a whole, as more and more people watch podcasts instead of just listening in. Filming your show will also allow you to create social media content and viral videos.

The most popular podcast aggregators include:

• Google Play
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube and YouTube Music
• Deezer
• Podchaser
• TuneIn
• Pandora
• Overcast
• Downcast

You can automatically upload episodes to all of these podcast directories and any other by submitting your RSS feed to these platforms, which will automatically submit every new episode you put out. This is a great way to stay consistent and never miss uploading an episode.

Understanding the Most Relevant Marketing Platforms

When it comes to marketing outside the podcast directories and your own website, you need to think of ways you can make your episodes easily accessible to new audiences.

The best and most effective ways to do that are marketing and promotion via email, social media, influencers, and paid ads.

Putting resources into all of these is about effective content distribution, gaining visibility, and enough traffic so that the aggregators start promoting your episodes on their own. By getting people to click on your links and play your episodes, you can train the algorithms to promote you more over time. 

With that in mind:

• Send out emails about new episodes, with excerpts and CTAs.
• Post on your social profiles every day and share interesting details from your episodes.
• Engage with influencers and get them to talk about your podcast on their channels.
• Be more aggressive with sponsored ads, and get people to click on the links to boost your CTR and visibility.
• Consider advertising on podcast apps as well, to gain exposure and direct traffic to your episodes.

With social media, email, and advertising on your side, you will gain viewership over time.

Snippets Attract Audiences on Different Platforms

Always remember that effective marketing relies on your ability to create content that teases your audience, delivers value, and inspires shares and clicks.

When it comes to effective podcast marketing, you have a unique opportunity here to create highly engaging and shareable content in the form of snippets and reel-type videos. Taking short snippets from every episode where you present a problem or an interesting topic and then tease a solution is a great way to get people to engage with your posts and check out the entire episode.

The great part is that all the relevant social networks nowadays have a short video format, so you can post your snippets on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, even LinkedIn and beyond. 

Complemented by a good call to action and compelling descriptions and copy, you can make these short-form videos stand out and give your audiences something to think about. Most importantly, you can get people to share those videos with their own networks to give you more exposure. 

Learn from the Best Marketing Podcasters

Without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to grow your own podcast is to learn from the best marketing podcasts and to stay on top of the latest marketing trends in the industry. 

Some of the top marketing podcasts you can tune into include:

• This Old Marketing
• Everyone Hates Marketers
• Marketing School with Neil Patel & Eric Siu
• Marketing Growth Podcast
• Online Marketing Made Easy

There are many more you can check out, of course, and we would be remiss not to talk about our own Kadence Beat podcast that covers everything WordPress, strategy, and innovations in this space.

Building this podcast was one of the best ways for us to keep our audience in the loop about industry news, our products, and the evolving community as a whole. Most importantly, our podcast gives you real-time information you can use for your website, brand, and podcasting strategy. 

Leverage Your Guests’ Clout

Lastly, never underestimate the power and potential of your guests’ names and the audience that follows them across the online world. 

Your goal should be to host as many impactful guests on your podcast as possible, as early on as possible to gain exposure and potentially go viral. Guests can make or break your podcast, so you not only need to sign with big names—you have to make sure they’re reputable names.

What’s more, the people you host need to be truly relevant to your niche, so that you can meet audience expectations. Don’t hesitate to bring in controversial figures, but make sure to do your research beforehand.

Highly controversial guests can harm your brand, so you have to control what is being said and discussed on your podcast to maintain your reputation properly.

Over to You

Building a successful podcast takes time and persistence, but it also demands that you employ good marketing techniques that have helped others thrive in this space over the years. Keep in mind that the better the marketing, the higher the chances you’ll go viral at some point, after which you’ll be able to take your podcast to new heights of success very quickly.

Make sure to start implementing what you have learned here today, and always remember that consistency is the key to long-term success. Be consistent in delivering value-driven content, be consistent in bringing quality guests, and always be consistent in all your marketing channels.

Kadence’s user-friendly tools will help your podcast shine on your website. Get started today, and embark on an exciting podcasting adventure.