With over 120 million listeners, truth be told we can no longer ignore the power of podcasts.
But as a beginner, how do you cut through the clutter, compete with the big players, and drive leads to your business?
That’s what you’ll learn in our podcast marketing guide today.
Rules to follow before creating a podcast
1. Use your podcast as a lead generator
Unless you’re running a podcast full time, you shouldn’t determine success by the number of sponsors or downloads you attract.
Podcasts are only one part of the business for consultants, freelancers, and service providers.
If your obsessed over the number of sponsors and downloads, and you’ll lose interest and feel burned out in the long run.
Here’s a better alternative: Treat your podcast as a lead generation machine.
There’s no better example than Ramli John, the host of Growth Marketing Today. Only three months after launching and at 100 downloads per episode, he won a consulting contract worth $23,000.
2. Applaud complementary brands
Self-promotional businesses that only talk about themselves and fail to give credit when it’s due appear untrustworthy to customers.
A better way is to do permissionless co-marketing, a strategy where you make the first move to promote the brands you admire and want to collaborate with in the future.
For permissionless co-marketing to work, focus on relevant brands indirectly related to your own.
For example, if you’ve built a team communication tool and host a team-building podcast, talk about your favorite collaboration tool, Trello. Share with listeners how you use it and ping Trello on social media when the episode is up.
Who knows, Trello might retweet your podcast to their 190,000+ followers, sponsor your next episode, or invite you for a new co-marketing campaign.
Here’s Brendan Cahill, coach consultant and host of The Coach Cahill Show, tweeting about how he uses Trello to create digital recruiting boards.
It easily scores—pun intended—a retweet from Trello as it portrays the product in a favorable light.
3. Automate repetitive processes
As a podcast host, you’ll want to focus on growing your podcast and building relationships.
You don’t want to get bogged down with repetitive tasks, such as creating pages for every episode.
Consider automating your manual processes to gain back time.
For example, submit your podcast RSS feed to OnPodium and let it build a dedicated page for each episode automatically.
5 ways to repurpose and promote a podcast episode
1. Upload audiograms
You’ve probably spotted audiograms out in the wild on Twitter and Instagram.
Usually under a minute, these podcast clips spotlight the biggest golden nugget from an episode to attract new listeners.
Here’s an example featuring The Copywriter Club (TCC).
In episode 273, three copywriters share their experiences inside the TCC’s signature program, The Copywriter Accelerator.
Notice how the audio graph and captions play on screen?
It’s easy to create audiograms with tools like Audiogram.
All you have to do is pick a clip that shows a key takeaway (pro tip: choose something inspirational or feature a high-level strategy), select a template, and download and share it on social media.
Best part? Captions are automatically transcribed and editable.
2. Write an accessible blog post
Blog posts are one of the effective ways to repurpose your podcast episodes.
Transcripts especially are a no-brainer. They’re easy to create (tip: use tools like Rev or Otter.ai), and they appeal to folks who prefer reading over listening.
There’s also a bonus: SEO.
Since keywords are naturally baked into the post, search engines can index the episodes, eventually boosting your podcast’s search visibility and rank on the SERPs.
Plus, blog posts allow you to cross-promote relevant content.
Got an ebook or an evergreen webinar that discusses the topic in detail? Drop them in the resources section. These internal links help Google understand your website and further boost rankings.
Of course, these transcripts are far from perfect. You probably realized how overwhelming it is to navigate these large blocks of text! Even if you use Chrome’s Find in Page tool, it can still take a long time to locate the information you want.
A better approach is to list the episode’s key takeaways (with timestamps) above the transcript. That way, readers or listeners can navigate to their favorite parts without weeding through the endless streams of text.
Here’s a neat example featuring Animalz’s podcast episode 59. When users click the timestamp on the key takeaways, the site automatically directs them to the desired section in the transcript.
It’s simple, effective, and frankly, under-used.
3. Create a tweetstorm
Tweetstorms are a fan favorite. Just look at the number of your favorite Twitter users who pin them right at the top.
These rapid-fire tweets are perfect for summing up episodes packed with loads of valuable information.
Here’s Peep Laja summarizing the 15 patterns he spotted in successful B2B companies for his podcast, How to Win.
To repurpose an episode into a tweetstorm, use Typefully. Once you finish writing a key point, click Enter three times to start a new tweet.
Out of the podcast repurposing strategies in this list, quotes are the easiest to create. Select a template, input the quote, choose your preferred fonts and colors, and you’re good to go.
Shareable quotes are best for highlighting one-liners, such as critical insights, inspirational quotes, and contrarian opinions.
Use a design tool like Canva to create and publish these graphics directly to social media.
5. Plug your show on other podcasts
Guesting on other podcasts to promote your podcast (how meta!) involves an enormous amount of effort.
Besides pitching a unique angle, you also need to prepare talking points and determine the interview time with the host.
Fortunately, the benefits are often worth it. Sumo-lings, this is a powerful way to expose your podcast to new listeners.
Ideally, focus on podcasts that:
- Complement your business or topic,
- Invite guests frequently and are of
- Similar caliber in terms of listenership or social presence
Here’s Hillary Weiss, founder of Statement Piece Studio, chatting about how to become a fearless marketer and how her show, #HAMYAW, came about on Everyone Hates Marketers.
Note: #HAMYAW was a YouTube channel at the time of recording. It has since moved to InstaLive.
YouTube, Instagram, or podcast, it doesn’t matter! This guesting strategy works.
Conclusion:
It’s challenging to attract listeners and leads without an effective repurposing and distribution strategy in place.
Even though the podcasters and creators on the list have recorded tons of fantastic episodes, they remain active in promoting their episodes out in the wild.
These strategies are nothing new, and they are easy to replicate, so consider giving them a shot and let us know how they work for you.