How to Create a Successful Podcast Marketing Strategy

Without a well-thought-out podcast marketing strategy, it will be a challenge to watch your show rise through the ranks (unless you’re a celebrity but sadly, that’s not the case for many of us). 

Throwing tactics at the wall and seeing what sticks without a clear strategy or measurement plan in place can be a waste of time at the end of the day. Especially for brands, creating a podcast marketing strategy for your team can help to mitigate a lot of questions they may have about the podcast’s audience growth tactics.

Below, we’re outlining a six-step process to creating a podcast marketing strategy you and your team will love. 

1. Identify the goal of your podcast

First and foremost, you need to identify the goal of your podcast series. 

This should only be one to two sentences long. If you go over two sentences, you’re probably trying to achieve an unrealistic amount with your podcast and your messaging may become muddled within all the different goals you’re trying to hit. 

There are endless goals that your podcast might be trying to achieve, but some that might suit your show could include: 

• Awareness
• Credibility/thought leadership
• Relationship building 
• Partnerships
• Lead generation 

When you write out your goal, it might look something like: 

“To generate awareness and establish credibility within the fitness and wellness industry.” 

Or maybe: 

“To build industry relationships with different fitness influencers that have over 10K followers across all social media platforms.” 

This is an example of a broader and slightly more specific goal. The route you choose will ultimately depend on your show and what you’re trying to achieve through it.

2. Establish the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your podcast 

How will you measure the success of your podcast? This is where KPIs (key performance indicators) come into play. 

If you don’t set any KPIs for yourself, then you’ll lack the ability to effectively measure your podcast’s performance overtime and observe whether or not it’s achieving the goal(s) that you set out to achieve initially. 

We’ll be the first to admit that sometimes setting a goal for your podcast series isn’t the easiest endeavor in the world. Compared to video, blogs, and other marketing mediums, podcasts still have a long way to go when it comes to metrics. This has been a large focus for Quill, and something that we’re currently working on solving for brands and podcasters. 

But as of today, the main metrics you can use in your podcast marketing strategy are: 

• Downloads
• Unique listeners 
• Average consumption rate 
• Demographic data (i.e., location, age, gender, musical interests) 
• Social media engagement 
• Website engagement 
• Any sort of sign ups such as webinars, events, newsletters
• Any sort of downloads such as whitepapers or reports
• Leads

Most of these metrics (1-4) can be found in either your hosting platform or through the listening app where your podcast lives (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, etc.). The remaining KPIs can be found through other tools such as Google Analytics and social media analytics.  

When setting your KPIs, try to be as realistic as possible but also set a healthy challenge for yourself. For example, hitting an average consumption rate of 60% is a great KPI to start with. 

3. Create a list of all of your marketing tactics

What tactics will you be using to achieve your goal(s) and KPIs? 

Create a list of all the tactics and channels you’ll be using to grow your podcast. These can be both paid and organic. 

Some paid platforms include: 

• Castbox 
• Podcast Addict 
• PlayerFM 
• Spotify Advertising 

Some organic platforms include: 

• Social media 
• Newsletters
• Podcast guests 
• Podcast directories 

4. Break down each marketing tactic within your list 

With each marketing tactic that you choose to use in your podcast marketing strategy, break it down so you as well as your team have something to refer back to. 

Include aspects such as: 

• A description of the platform 
• How you plan on using the tactic with your podcast 
• Your KPIs for the tactic 

This will help to keep you and your team organized and also shed light on your strategy in case you select too many tactics and you don’t have capacity to not only execute on all of them, but to do it well. 

Try picking just two or three tactics out of both your paid and organic options and start with those for the first few months of your podcast to see how they perform. As you build a routine around them and become more knowledgeable, you can slowly add more or swap out the ones that aren’t working. 

5. Create an execution plan for each of your marketing tactics 

Create individual execution plans for each tactic. These execution plans should include the steps that you or your team need to take in order to bring the tactic to life. 

Make notes of anything like budget, approvals, access to certain accounts, payment information, or really anything that could potentially create a barrier in your podcast marketing strategy. Once you’ve done this, work on jumping through any hoops before you start executing so it can all run as smoothly as possible. 

A sample execution plan could look like: 

1. Receive approval for $250 USD Spotify Ad budget;
2. Obtain payment information;
3. Create a Spotify Advertising account;
4. Set targeting for Spotify Ad; 
5. Add all audio and visual creative to Spotify Advertising; 
6. Review and receive final approvals;
7. Launch Spotify Advertising campaign. 

We can already see that there are some potential areas of friction in steps 1, 2 and 6, so it’s a good idea to think through these challenges in advance. 

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6. Analyze the results of your podcast marketing strategy and adjust accordingly 

And finally, it’s time to analyze your podcast marketing strategy results. 

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Some questions to ask yourself: 

• Did you hit your KPIs? 
• Were you under or over the KPIs you set? 
• Did you identify any other KPIs that you should add to your strategy? 
• Which tactics performed well? 
• Which tactics did not perform well? 
• Which tactics would you like to add into your strategy and why? 

Create a report to answer all of these questions and provide an argument about what should and shouldn’t change in your podcast marketing strategy. 

Depending on the cadence of your podcast, reviewing your strategy every 3-6 months will ensure that it’s up to date and that you’ve given each tactic enough time to be able to tell whether or not it’s a good fit for your podcast. 

If you’ve decided to change your strategy, create a copy of your current strategy and start a new one in a separate document. This will ensure that you always have documentation and the history of your podcast marketing strategies to reflect on and learn from.