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Growing Your Podcast Audience

Growing Your Podcast Audience

There are various strategies you can employ to drive traffic to your show and grow your podcast audience. Download our guide for advice on how to increase your podcast's audience.
August 1, 2022
Contents

Someone once said, “A podcast without an audience is just a roundabout means of talking to yourself.”

It can be incredibly disheartening to spend hours and hours creating podcast episodes, only to find they go mostly unheard or receive little engagement. The bottom line is that you need to have an audience to make your podcast worth the time, effort, and money you’ve invested into it. While many podcasters can successfully launch a show without too much difficulty, the same can’t be said for growing a podcast audience. Since podcast discovery is still largely dependent on word of mouth, attracting new listeners can feel like a difficult, if not an unachievable goal. While it's undoubtedly true that the best way to grow an audience is to create great content, it's rarely as simple as that. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of various options and strategies you can implement to drive listenership for your podcast:

1. Create Your Ideal Listener Profile.

It’s almost impossible to know how to target your listeners online if you have little clue who they are, what they want, and which sites they spend most of their time online. Information like this can help you understand where to advertise most effectively, and how to tailor your content to be most impactful.

2. Maximize Distribution.

It’s very possible that potential listeners simply don’t have access to it or your podcast isn’t sufficiently discoverable. Most podcast listeners are very loyal to one specific podcasting platform. You can maximise your reach with tools like Linktree , cross-promotional PR efforts with other podcast hosts, and by ensuring your podcast is available in as many as podcast directories as possible.

3. Increase Engagement.

There are various strategies you can utilize to encourage listener engagement, whether via live streaming, designing audiograms for your social media posts, repurposing content or creating trailers.

4. Track Your Podcast Marketing

It’s no use implementing a wide variety of marketing channels if you have no idea how successful they are. Tools like SmartLinks from Chartable are able to collect data not just on the number of clicks on a particular link, but also actual downloads , regardless of which podcast player the listener uses. This will allow you to figure out which marketing channels are driving the most downloads, and where you should prioritize your efforts.

5. Rent RSS Feeds From Other Podcasters.

This strategy allows your podcast episodes to be featured in the RSS feeds of other, more popular podcasts in the same genre or category. Although this can be expensive, it allows access to a dedicated listener base similar to your own and can be very cost-effective over the long term.

Growing an audience takes time, effort and, above all, perseverance. For more in-depth strategies, we’ve pulled together a 12 tactic guide that you can follow to continue growing your audience and increase the discoverability of your show. You can pick a few strategies, try them over time and see what works for you and what doesn’t.

Download our guide to growing a podcast:

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Podcast Marketing

Growing Your Podcast Audience

Last updated on: 
August 1, 2022

There are various strategies you can employ to drive traffic to your show and grow your podcast audience. Download our guide for advice on how to increase your podcast's audience.

Someone once said, “A podcast without an audience is just a roundabout means of talking to yourself.”

It can be incredibly disheartening to spend hours and hours creating podcast episodes, only to find they go mostly unheard or receive little engagement. The bottom line is that you need to have an audience to make your podcast worth the time, effort, and money you’ve invested into it. While many podcasters can successfully launch a show without too much difficulty, the same can’t be said for growing a podcast audience. Since podcast discovery is still largely dependent on word of mouth, attracting new listeners can feel like a difficult, if not an unachievable goal. While it's undoubtedly true that the best way to grow an audience is to create great content, it's rarely as simple as that. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of various options and strategies you can implement to drive listenership for your podcast:

1. Create Your Ideal Listener Profile.

It’s almost impossible to know how to target your listeners online if you have little clue who they are, what they want, and which sites they spend most of their time online. Information like this can help you understand where to advertise most effectively, and how to tailor your content to be most impactful.

2. Maximize Distribution.

It’s very possible that potential listeners simply don’t have access to it or your podcast isn’t sufficiently discoverable. Most podcast listeners are very loyal to one specific podcasting platform. You can maximise your reach with tools like Linktree , cross-promotional PR efforts with other podcast hosts, and by ensuring your podcast is available in as many as podcast directories as possible.

3. Increase Engagement.

There are various strategies you can utilize to encourage listener engagement, whether via live streaming, designing audiograms for your social media posts, repurposing content or creating trailers.

4. Track Your Podcast Marketing

It’s no use implementing a wide variety of marketing channels if you have no idea how successful they are. Tools like SmartLinks from Chartable are able to collect data not just on the number of clicks on a particular link, but also actual downloads , regardless of which podcast player the listener uses. This will allow you to figure out which marketing channels are driving the most downloads, and where you should prioritize your efforts.

5. Rent RSS Feeds From Other Podcasters.

This strategy allows your podcast episodes to be featured in the RSS feeds of other, more popular podcasts in the same genre or category. Although this can be expensive, it allows access to a dedicated listener base similar to your own and can be very cost-effective over the long term.

Growing an audience takes time, effort and, above all, perseverance. For more in-depth strategies, we’ve pulled together a 12 tactic guide that you can follow to continue growing your audience and increase the discoverability of your show. You can pick a few strategies, try them over time and see what works for you and what doesn’t.

Download our guide to growing a podcast:

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The Quill Team

Platform
Price
Pro’s
Con's
Anchor

Free

  • Easy to use
  • Automatically distributes your podcast to major platforms.
  • Embed media player.
  • Great if podcasting is a
    side hobby
  • Very basic editing
  • Since it’s a free tool, you don’t have full control over the monetization of your podcast.
  • Not the right platform for people taking podcasting seriously
Buzzsprout

Free for 2 hours of content per month

$12 for 3 hours per month

$18+ for 6 hours and up

  • Very user-friendly
  • Caters to both long term and beginner podcasters
  • Advanced analytics
  • Easy distribution of your episodes
  • They measure their size requirements to hours not megabytes
  • Bonus: get a free $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up for any paid hosting plan!
  • Advanced features like dynamic ad insertion need some work
Libsyn

$5/month for Monthly Storage 50mb

  • Oldest podcast hosting site.
  • Easy distribution to major platforms and great for scaling once your podcast gets bigger.
  • Hosted over 35,000 podcasts.
  • An iTunes Podcast partner.
  • Allows you to publish your podcast to specific directories.
  • Embed media player.
  • Price is based on storage
  • 50mb storage for $5 won’t be enough if you are publishing weekly so you’ll end up with a higher price point
Podbean

Unlimited audio package: $9/month

Storage space:

Unlimited

  • Great support & customer service features
  • Unlimited audio.
  • Pages are easy to customize
  • Can schedule podcast release dates.
  • Easy to use.
  • Uploads and changes to podcast titles and/or descriptions are automatic to Spotify.
  • Embed media player.
  • Simple Analytics
  • Analytics aren’t as advanced as other platforms
  • Upload and changes to podcast titles and/or descriptions take a day to change on iTunes.
  • Not an iTunes podcast partner.
  • The process to send a podcast to iTunes is more tedious. But, you will still be able to get on the platform.
Blubrry

Classic

$5/month

Monthly Storage

50mb

  • Podcast Wordpress plugin and management.
  • If you want to record a new introduction or conclusion, add in a sponsored ad or upload a new version of a podcast, it doesn't count towards your storage usage per month.
  • Blubrry allows a 25% storage overage each month
  • Prices are based on storage.
  • Usability is okay.
SimpleCast

Starting: $15/month

Recommendation: $35/month

Monthly Storage: Unlimited

  • Hosts your audio files no matter what the size!
  • Dynamic insertion for podcast ads or edits.
  • Incredibly detailed analytics including number of episodes completed and listener location tracking.
  • Embed media player.
  • Easy to use.
  • Great distribution! Easy access to all major podcast platforms.
  • Customizable podcast
    website.
  • Prices are slightly higher than other platforms, but well worth it especially if you have a branded company podcast!

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