Are you thinking about starting a podcast for your business in 2023? With the ever-growing popularity of podcasts, there is no better time to take the plunge and launch one for your business. This guide will provide a comprehensive overview of the essential elements you must consider to succeed when launching a podcast. From choosing the right format to developing a promotional plan, this guide will walk you through the complete process of launching a successful podcast. With this comprehensive guide, you will be well-equipped to launch a successful podcast that will benefit your business.

The UK Podcasting landscape

Over the past decade, podcasts have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the UK. (REF) Just like Netflix disrupted the streaming industry, podcasting is making its own big moves. The demand is clear, with over 800,000 active podcasts and over 54 million episodes currently available worldwide.

But despite the increase in listeners and the increase in podcasts, the medium is still in its early days - you’re before the curve, and whilst it might seem like everyone is releasing a podcast, the space is surprisingly unsaturated.

There are an estimated 2 million podcasts. Compare that to YouTube’s 50+ million channels, and it starts to put things into perspective. (REF)

Podcasting is a powerful marketing tool that can help build a passionate audience around your brand. In fact, a recent OFCOM survey suggests that 25% of UK adults listened to podcasts regularly in 2022 with 41% of the population listening to podcasts at least one a month, consuming approximately 70 million hours of content each week. Not only that, but podcast listenership has been growing consistently year after year, and this is expected to continue. As such, podcasts provide a fantastic opportunity for you to target your audience with a podcast.

The average weekly listener will consume five podcast episodes during the week, while the most prolific listeners will consume 11+ shows weekly.

Now, you may already have other plans in place for your target audience outreach. However, they’re unlikely to be as engaged with as podcasts. On average, 68% of listeners listen to the entire episode. The level of engagement is significantly higher than liking a LinkedIn post or sharing a tweet. When listeners hit play on a branded podcast, they get a lot of one-on-one time with that company. Releasing a podcast for your company or brand is a great way to develop loyalty in your customers and clients while showing yourself to be experts within your industry.

When it comes to why people listen to podcasts, the two most popular reasons are entertainment and learning something new, with 48% of people saying they listen to podcasts to learn something new. This provides excellent grounds for businesses to create information-based podcasts to educate prospects, clients, and their peers.

Of those who do not listen regularly to podcasts in the UK, 34% stated this was because they could not find any podcasts that interested them, suggesting that not only is the podcast market growing, but there is a large proportion of the UK population that remains untapped.

With the podcast industry growing so quickly, now is the time to develop your own and get your voice and values broadcast to your audience. However, with so much to consider when starting a podcast, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

This guide will take you through our 8-step process for planning and starting a business podcast that brings value to your audience and your business.

Step 1: Evaluate the commitment of starting a podcast

Podcasting is a hot topic, with many businesses wanting to get involved. But starting a podcast is a significant commitment that will take considerable time.

We recommend our clients commit to at least six months of podcasting, with a minimum of 12 episodes, to get a sense of the trends, see what's working, and build momentum. Like most marketing strategies, generating momentum and producing a return on investment takes time.

In addition to the time commitment, you must assess your team's commitment to the project. If you partner with a podcast production company like us, we can take on a lot of the work, particularly during production and post-production, aiding with recording, editing, scheduling and more. But if you decide to produce the podcast in-house, you need to make sure that your team has the capacity to take on the workload that comes with producing a podcast.

Does your marketing team have the time and energy to commit to releasing a weekly podcast episode for the next six months? If the answer is no, you must reconsider whether a podcast is for you or consider bringing a podcast production company on board.

Secondly, do you have the budget required to run this podcast? Producing the podcast in-house can save a lot on production costs but will require a heavy investment of time. Can someone on your team edit the audio? Do you have access to quality recording equipment and software? By contrast, hiring a podcast production company removes a lot of the work, leaving you to book your guests and plan your content to facilitate interesting conversations while the podcast production company makes you sound as good as possible and gets your podcast out to listeners, although this can be expensive. It’s beneficial to allocate a yearly budget for the podcast so that you can control its cost and also ensure that you can commit financially.

This might sound like a dreary start to this resource, but we’re starting here because if you don’t have the resources and budget to allocate to podcasting, you may as well save yourself the time and stop reading. We’re all busy people, after all!

Want to keep reading? Awesome, next up is goals!

Step 2: Identify your goals

Now that you know the commitment needed to start a podcast, it's time to set goals. Ask yourself: why am I starting a podcast? What do I hope to achieve? Your goals will help determine the format, topics, and guests. Make sure they are reasonable, achievable, and measurable. For example, aiming for a certain number of listens is a vanity metric, whereas aiming for a certain number of leads to your website is a more accurate measure of success and audience engagement. Here are a couple of examples of common podcasting goals.

I want to help customers through the buying process. You may want to cover the benefits of your product or service and common objections.
I want to share your unique point of view and raise awareness of our brand. You may want to cover industry news and interview other leaders in your industry.
I want to streamline the onboarding process of new employees. You may way to cover the mission and values of your company and interview department heads.
I want to establish myself as an industry expert. Perhaps interview other leading experts in the field to confront pressing matters within the industry.

By identifying the goal of your podcast, you’ll have a clear point of focus and a vision that you can use to guide each episode and ensure that all content is in line with the vision. Having a goal also allows you to set quantifiable targets that you can use to measure your progress, helping you to stay on track and stay motivated.

Step 3: Identify your Audience

You’ve identified your goals; now it’s time to start thinking about your audience. Who do you want to listen to your podcast? Who is your target market?

One of the biggest mistakes podcasters make is targeting too broad an audience. Suppose you’re in real estate investment; it may seem sensible to target landlords. But there is a lot of variety between landlords, the needs of a landlord with ten properties will be different to the needs of a landlord with one. What about landlords for students? Their needs will be different too. Or landlords in London? They’ll probably have different needs than a landlord in the Cotswolds.

Start with a niche topic that you can be the best at. It’s better to be the big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. For example, expanding on the previous example, if you’re a real estate agent in London, you may want to focus on real estate investing in London for landlords with multiple properties. It might seem daunting to niche down so specifically, but it enables you to make sure that your content is hyper-focused and of high value to your audience.

Another benefit of targeting a specific audience is the wealth of topics you can cover. It may sound counter-intuitive, but the smaller your audience, the more you can talk about because you are able to deep dive into the topics that other, broader podcasts can’t.

Here are several ways you can niche down your audience:

Industry
Specialism
Competency
Seniority
Values
Demographics
Location

Industry

The industry is the first and most obvious way to niche down. For example, is your target audience in SaaS, retail, manufacturing, or education? You can take this further by looking at the type of business. What is the size of the company? Are they a micro-business, a small business, or an enterprise? Are they B2B or B2C?

Specialism

What do they specifically do within their industry? For example, if you are going to target marketing agencies, are they full-service agencies or specialists? Are they experts in organic search and SEO or paid media and social? Do they have a specific industry that they work in?

This is usually as far as most podcasters go, but there are still many ways to niche your audience further.

Competency

Are they experts on a particular subject, or are they just starting? Let’s say you sell online courses for designers; you might want to target beginners instead of industry experts working in the industry for the past 30 years.

Another way to think about competency is to ask yourself the questions, “what do they know?”, “what do they not know?” and “what do they know they don’t know?”. There is no point in teaching SEO experts about the basics of SEO, so what do they not know? Perhaps recent updates in the industry or highly detailed experiments which require a lot of knowledge and understanding about search.

Seniority

Are they a senior in their field, at management level, or junior? A business owner faces different challenges from an entry-level employee at a company. Suppose you want to target managers within the logistics industry; you’ll want to include topics that are relevant to management, such as improving the efficiency of staff and hiring talent in logistics. Looking at the other end of the spectrum, someone new to the industry would perhaps be more interested in topics relevant to everyday tasks, how they can continue to develop within the industry and how to strive for more senior roles.

Values

Do they have a particular set of values? For example, are they a sustainable company? Are they vegan? Do they sacrifice profit for a social cause? Do they believe in minimalism? Companies and individuals with different values will have different challenges and needs, you’ll want to cater your content to help the challenges they face.

Demographic

How does your ideal audience identify? Are they Gen Zers, Millenials, or older? Do they have a large disposable income, or are they from lower economic backgrounds? Do they have any hobbies or specific character traits? Your target demographic will play a big role in identifying the topics you cover in your podcast, the tone, and how you deliver the content.

Location

Are they in a particular country, a particular state, a particular region, or even a particular city? For some niches, the location of your audience might not be relevant. But for others, it could be vital. For example, legal systems can drastically vary between countries. If you are a law firm, you’ll want to make sure your podcast content is specific for the country you operate in.

Your target audience will also help you determine where to promote your podcast. If your target market is small business owners, you may want to submit your podcast to directories that focus on business podcasts. We’ll cover promotion and marketing strategy in Step 8.

By identifying your target audience, you can ensure that the content you create provides real value to them and addresses their challenges.

Step 4: Competitive Research

You can learn a lot from your competition. What are they doing that works? What are they doing that doesn’t work? What topics are they covering or not covering? Doing your competitive research will give you an overview of what other podcasts in the niche are doing and give you some guidance on what to do and what not to do.

To find competitors in your niche, take to the major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify and begin searching by keywords relevant to your niche. This could be “accounting” or “finance” if you're an accountant. Try various keywords and start making a list of podcasts that frequently appear.

Once you have found a couple of podcasts using this technique, you can use the “People also listened to” feature on Apple Podcasts - called “more like this” on Spotify - to find similar podcasts that your target audience listens to.

One thing to note during this stage, make sure that the podcasts you are adding to your list are still active and releasing episodes. To check this, look at the date the most recent episode was published. If it is within the last 30 days, it’s probably still active. If it’s beyond 30 days, but they structure their podcast in seasons, they may be on a break between seasons. In this case, you can still add them to your list.

Apple Podcasts and Spotify are the two most popular podcast apps. However, it’s still worthwhile to research competitors on smaller apps such as Google Podcasts and Pocketcasts, as you may find different results.

You can also head over to Google to see if anyone else has compiled a list of top podcasts in your niche. Alternatively, if you know anyone in your target audience, ask them what podcasts they listen to.

Once you get a list of 10 to 20 podcasts, you’ll want to rate them on a matrix with relevancy on the x-axis and audience size on the y-axis.

As we discussed in Step 3, you want to target a specific audience, so you may find a large number of the podcasts you list targeting a larger, more general audience. Place podcasts that generally talk about your industry lower down on the list, and put the podcasts that are closer to targeting your specific audience higher up on the list.

Next is to estimate the size of the podcast’s reach. Unlike social media and YouTube, you can’t see how many people subscribe or follow a podcast, so you need to use some indicators to gauge the potential size.

The first way is to head over to Apple Podcasts again and see how many reviews a podcast has. If it has over 100 reviews, they likely have a large audience of over 1,000 listeners. If they have less than 10, their audience is likely smaller. You cannot leave reviews on Spotify, but you can leave ratings. The number of ratings a podcast has on Spotify can also indicate size.

Next, dive into the show notes of the podcasts and see if they link to any social media accounts, either for the podcast or the company. How big is their following? Do their posts get much engagement from listeners? Are people talking about how great the podcast is? Individually, these indicators don’t mean too much, but as you start to compile them together, you can get an idea of the size of their audience.

If you want to go more in-depth in your research, you can use tools such as Rephonic. Rephonic allows you to search a database of over 2 million podcasts to find information such as listenership, audience location, chart rank, and reviews.

Once you have completed your matrix, the podcasts in the top-right quadrant with high relevance and a large audience will be your competition. Do further research into those podcasts, and spend time listening to their episodes to identify how their podcast is structured, what topics are covered, how the content is delivered, how they are hosted, what is done well, what could be done better, how often they post, and the average length of the episodes.

Once you’ve completed your competitor research, you should know the podcast landscape for your niche and industry. The next step is audience research.

Step 5: Audience Research

Audience research is a step that many podcasts overlook. Through Step 3, you will have already identified your target audience and you may even think that you know what they are interested in, but do you really know? You want to produce a podcast your target audience loves and looks forward to listening to weekly. The best way to be able to do this consistently is by conducting audience research and talking to your target audience to find out what they want to listen to.

You could use surveys, social media polls, and emails to do this research, which are all effective methods of research, but nothing is better than speaking with your target audience directly. Ask them about their pain points, what they are struggling with, what they want to learn more about, and how they want to consume the content. The more people you speak to in your target audience, the more trends and similarities will become apparent.

You can also ask your target audience who they want to hear from and what stories they want to listen to. They may provide you with specific names or describe the type of person they want to hear from. For example, suppose you are in the digital marketing industry. In that case, your target audience may say they want to hear from the SEO lead at a digital marketing agency that helped their clients rank number 1 on Google or from the MD talking about how niching down into PPC resulted in exponential growth in their business.

Once you’ve gathered this information, you can use it as inspiration and a guide to help structure your episodes around key themes, topics, and guests. Feedback from your audience is the most valuable asset we have as podcasters.

Ideally, you’ll want to speak to at least ten people within your target audience, but the more, the better. Here are five questions to get you started:

What challenges are you facing in your business?
What topics do you want to learn more about?
What is something no-one else is talking about online or on podcasts?
Who do you want to hear from?
What are you NOT interested in hearing about?

You want to ensure that your podcast is the podcast in your niche that listeners love listening to. The podcast that they share with their friends and colleagues. The podcast that gets people talking and excited for the next episode. Through appropriate audience research and exploration of your target market, you vastly improve your chances of appropriately catering to listeners, ensuring that they consistently come to you and your podcast for insight.

Step 6: Show Outline

By now, you should have the goal of your podcast, identified your audience, an overview of your competitors, and a list of key themes and topics provided to you by your target audience. The next step is to start outlining your show.

Your show outline is the concept of your show and your hook - why people should listen. This includes the topics and themes you’ll discuss, how you’ll deliver the content, and your unique angle and voice.

You’ll likely have a long list of topics you want to cover across your niche, but go on the assumption that you won’t be able to cover everything. So what’s the most important content your audience wants to hear, and how can you hook them in?

This is where your competitive research will be useful, as you know what everyone else is doing. Your hook could be to do with the way the content is delivered. Suppose you operate in a traditionally serious industry; perhaps you could bring some comedy into your podcast? Or maybe your competitor’s episodes are really long, so you’ll make yours less than 10 minutes so they can be listened to during work breaks?

The hook of your show is what’s going to differentiate it from other podcasts in your niche.

Next, you want to start thinking about your format. Your format will determine the flow and structure of your podcast episodes. There are a few key elements you need to consider when finding your format:

Is the podcast interview-based or solo?
Will you have one host or multiple?
Will you focus on one topic per episode or several?
Will you have any re-occurring segments?
How long will your episodes be?
How frequently will you publish?
Will you release episodes consistently or in seasons?

Hosting

The decision of having a solo host or multiple co-hosts can come down to your own preference as there are advantages to both styles of hosting. For solo hosts, it can be easier to plan recordings as you are not restricted by the schedule of your co-hosts, meaning you can more easily work around your own schedule. Moreover a solo host can make the show revolve around them and their voice, meaning they can be the main attraction. That also means that being a solo host may be more nerve-wracking to first-time hosts as they are solely responsible for instigating the conversation and maintaining the audience’s attention.

On the other hand, while co-hosting can be more difficult to schedule, having multiple hosts can be a great way to keep the conversation flowing, add different perspectives and knowledge, and provide a more dynamic conversation for listeners. Furthermore, while a solo host certainly shouldn’t feel that they have to interview guests and can certainly talk through a topic (similar to a TED talk), with a co-hosted podcast, that reliance on other guests further diminishes as it is possible to hold a conversation between the hosts, exploring their own opinions, knowledge and experiences.

Regardless of whether you are a solo host or have co-hosts, you want to ensure that you come across as a credible source. If you decide to go solo or with a partner, make sure the host(s) are well-prepared for each episode so that their passion and expertise can shine through.

Structure

Discussion

A discussion-style structure for your podcast is ideal for anyone looking to explore a particular topic with their own expert opinion or experience. With this structure, the host or co-hosts are able to explore their own experience and knowledge, rather than relying solely on that of the guest as is typical for interviews. Discussion-based podcasts are also less structured and more conversational.

Interview

An interview podcast is typically highly structured, in which the host acts as the guide for the listener, presenting a question-and-answer format, typically with guests such as industry professionals, those who are knowledgeable on the topic and those whose story best demonstrates the topic. This structure can be very beneficial as you can ensure that you and your co-host/guest are able to cover everything that you wanted. You can also send the questions to the guests ahead of time so that they are able to prepare. However, when using an interview structure, the conversation can be constrained as the host may be limited to the questions they have prepared in advance, meaning that any areas of discussion that come up over the course of the conversation may get missed.

Moreover, this can affect the flow of the conversation, although this can be mitigated to an extent by being willing and able to change the order in which the questions are asked, however that can take practice to do well.

Round Table

With a round table podcast, you will typically have several guests discussing a single topic. The host may present an occasional prompt of an area of discussion, but the direction that the podcast goes in is dictated by the conversation had between the guests. This can provide fascinating insight for your listeners as a round table discussion allows the possibility of new areas of conversation to arise that you had perhaps not thought of or planned for.

Narrative

A narrative structure may sound confined to fiction, but that couldn’t be further from the truth! With a narrative podcast, it is typically the host or hosts that present different threads of information, backed by case studies, statistics and further research, to build a picture of a wider point or narrative. This structure can be incredibly engaging, however arguably takes the most work to prepare and assemble.

At the end of the day, the structure of your podcast will heavily depend on the topic, the information you wish to present, and what you believe your audience would most engage with. Consider whether interviews, discussions, round table or narrative structures would best serve the content you are looking to deliver.

Segments

You could break up your podcast into smaller segments. The advantage of this is it adds can add structure and variety to the episode. That being said, it is important not to fall into the trap of being too rigid with your segments, it is better to deviate from the formula as and when required, rather than restricting your discussions to fit into a particular kind of segment.

Duration

When looking at the duration you want for your podcast it is important to consider your audience, the topic and your competition. The optimal length can vary from podcast to podcast. You want to be able to cover content in sufficient detail without it feeling rushed, but similarly, if you try to make your podcast episodes too long, you run the risk of losing your audience’s interest.

A shorter podcast can facilitate very specific and tightly packed discussions. A shorter episode may also suit your audience’s schedules better, so a podcast aimed at business owners may be more successful having episodes that run for 10-15 minutes on average to allow the listener to get caught up on your content during lunch breaks.

In contrast, longer episodes can allow you to cover everything you wanted to in a single episode, whether that is through multiple segments or through interviews with one or more guests. However, with longer run times, it can be easy to try to attempt to do too much to fill out the time, which can be counterproductive. It is better to cover less breadth but more deeply, rather than casting a wider net and only being able to scratch the surface.

Frequency

Within podcasting, most successful podcasts opt for a weekly or bi-weekly release schedule. While a monthly release schedule is appropriate in some circumstances, in our experience that can make it difficult to build momentum and gain an audience. As such it is advisable to aim for a weekly/bi-weekly release schedule as consistency and frequency are vital when building your audience.

To ensure that you can meet and maintain your desired frequency, make sure you are prepared before recording. This could include topics, questions, guest research and content that you want to cover. Once you have decided the frequency you want to maintain, do your best to stick to it and be consistent with when you release content. It can be helpful to work at least two episodes ahead of the release schedule to allow some leeway encase there are any issues or delays when it comes to scheduling the next recording.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to how you should structure your podcast and how frequently you should post, as production time will vary depending on the topic and format of the podcast, as well as the availability of the hosts and guests. However, a good rule of thumb is to release new episodes regularly, preferably once a week or every other week. This will help keep listeners engaged and allow you to gain momentum.

Now, show outlines aren’t set in stone. One problem we see with podcasts is that they stick too rigidly to their show outline, which can result in stale content. So don’t be afraid to explore and experiment with your show!

Step 7: Finding your host

You’ve defined your show, now you need to find a host. The host is the face of your podcast and one of the most important elements to consider when producing a podcast. Hosts provide structure to the conversation and can act as the gatekeeper to the listener, helping them to learn more and most importantly, work to keep the listener engaged.

Your host could be the business owner, an employee or an expert on the topic. Try to find a host with great energy and presence, who knows their subject matter and can provide their own opinion on the topics. Having someone who is confident and personable will allow them to hold their own in the conversation and be better equipped to guide that discussion along each episode. Moreover, confidence can help the host to ask difficult questions that could reveal unique and fresh perspectives or insight for the listeners. When starting out your podcast is that it’s important to remember that hosting is a skill that can be learned. As such no previous hosting experience is necessary, as long as your host is a confident and knowledgable speaker, after some practice, they can become one of your greatest assets in developing your podcast and cultivating a loyal audience.

Following on from this, when choosing a host, you want someone who has the time to commit to the podcast for at least a year. This will allow them to grow within the hosting role and more importantly begin to build a relationship with the listeners. Moreover, constantly searching for a new host could be costly, both in money and time and can make the podcast feel less cohesive for your audience. You want to find someone who can be consistent and reliable, as this will reflect positively on your podcast.

Step 8: Marketing Strategy

Finally, once you’ve created your podcast you need a comprehensive marketing strategy to ensure that your show reaches its intended audience. Creating a podcast is a great way to build your brand and reach a larger audience, with the potential for great returns. Creating a podcast requires patience, determination and creativity but with a good idea and a solid marketing strategy, you can get your podcast in front of your target audience.

Social Media

As part of your marketing strategy, you need to consider the platforms you’ll be using to promote your podcast. Social media is an obvious choice and allows for organic marketing efforts for free, as well as collaborations and sponsorships for additional exposure and reach. Social media platforms are also a fantastic way of interacting with your audience. You can utilise these platforms to post a variety of multi-media content, like videos, behind the scenes photos, audiograms and quotes from the episodes. This gives your followers an opportunity to participate in the conversation and connect with the content.

Ultimately, a podcast is only as good as its marketing strategy. To reap the full benefits and create an engaged audience for your podcast, you need to make sure you have a clear and concise marketing plan in place before hitting record. Take the time to consider all angles of your strategy and use all the resources available to you to ensure that your podcast can reach its full potential.

Audiograms

As previously mentioned, audiograms are a great asset when advertising your podcast online. They allow you to repurpose clips from each podcast episode, approximately 30-90 seconds, turning them into videos that you can use to advertise your podcast. Audiograms are effective as they provide an eye-catching and low-level commitment for potential listeners that work to entice the listener.

You can make these yourself through the use of video editing software. Alternatively you could use a service like Reels or Headliner that streamlines the process for ease of use and will typically have a free option for those making only a few audiograms each month which can be perfect for trialling the service.

Once you've created your audiograms, you can share them on your social media pages as well as other podcasting websites and platforms. This can be an effective way of reaching more potential listeners and encouraging them to subscribe to your podcast. Encouraging the sharing of these audio snippets can also help to spread the word about your podcast and build its online presence.

Podcast Website

Having a website for your podcast can help in a number of ways. Firstly, a website can increase your chances of being found by search engines such as Google. Secondly a podcast website provides a hub for you to keep your audience up-to-date and can provide a variety of additional complimentary resources such as a bio on the hosts, links to episodes on a related topic and blog posts based off of the discussions you have on the podcast.

Blog posts in particular are not only another great way to optimise your podcast for search engines, but also allows you to get the most value from your content, being able to repurpose it for a standalone written resource. These blog posts could also be posted to your LinkedIn, Instagram or other social media accounts to further your discoverability, as well as spark a conversation between you and your listeners and advertise the latest episode.

Setting up a bespoke podcast website can be time-consuming, benefits of having a website over solely posting to social media is that you’ll have greater control over the layout, design and user experience. Furthermore, podcast websites can be a great asset when it comes to marketing. It provides a single place that can cover a plethora of related topics and mixed media resources for your audience to consume. Through embedding your podcast episodes into your website, you are able to directly link articles and blog posts to the relavent episodes, as well as showcase recommended and related episodes on the homepage to increase your listener’s engagement and provide a completely cohesive experience that allows your audience to flow from one episode to another with ease.

Ad Campaign

You could also launch a targeted advertising campaign to promote your podcast. This could be done on social media platforms or even on a podcasting platform. Advertising directly to podcast listeners is arguably the most effective form of ad campaign to promote your podcast as the only people who will see your ad are those that are already listening to podcasts. There are a couple of ways of doing this:

Advertising on homepages

Through podcast platforms like Apple podcasts and Spotify, you can get your podcast advertised on the front page of the website. This means that for an agreed period of time, anyone who visits the podcast platform will see a link to your podcast, meaning you can gain large numbers of listeners quickly. However, this can be very expensive, with some podcast platforms having a minimum investment of around £2500. Moreover, while a large number of podcast listeners will see the ad, they are not necessarily your target audience and while they may check out your podcast, they may not stick around.

Advertising through Acast

Another option is to use a podcast advertising platform like Acast which allows you to dynamically play your ad campaign during the ad breaks of other podcasts. The advantage of this service is that the initial investment is much more approachable, with a minimum spend of £250. Moreover, whereas advertising on podcast platform homepages casts a wide net, potentially getting you many listens over a short period of time, ads through Acast can be targeted to your desired audience. You are able to set numerous parameters such as age range and genre of podcast which will help to place your ad on podcasts with a similar audience, increasing the chances of developing your listenership with people who already listen to similar content.

Lastly, whereas advertising on the homepages of podcast platforms limits you to that platform, this is not an issue when advertising through Acast, you are not restricted to a particular platform as the advert is dynamically added to the podcast, rather than just the podcast player.

Paid Sponsorships

Lastly, you could consider sponsorship. Sponsoring a podcast can be a great way to increase your reach, particularly if you sponsor a podcast with a similar target audience. This will get your content in front of potential new listeners and also build credibility for your brand through association. Moreover, if you have your ad read by the host of the sponsored podcast, you are leveraging the trust their audience has in their host, enhancing your chances of successfully attracting new listeners.

While there are many other ways to promote a podcast, the tips above should give you an idea of how to get started. Make sure to define your goals and develop a strategy that works best for you. Through a mix of organic and paid promotion, a comprehensive marketing strategy will ensure that your podcast reaches its intended audience.

Conclusion

Now you are ready to get your podcast out in the world! By following the last eight steps, you are now so much closer to engaging with your audience and begin showing yourself off as an expert in your field. You now have a better understanding of the work that goes into developing a podcast, you have identified your audience, the content that you can provide for them and you have a better understanding of the marketing options you have for getting your podcast seen.

Ultimately, starting a podcast can be a time-consuming process and there are many details to consider, but with the right plan and a lot of hard work, you can reach your goals and get the most out of your podcast. The key is to plan ahead to ensure that you are able to produce targeted content that you know your intended audience will love. By following the above steps, you will have the skills and know-how to complete the necessary pre-production, ensuring that when you get to recording you can focus completely on creating compelling and entertaining content that, with a bit of patience and determination, will attract an engaged audience, build your brand and grow your business. Moreover, by following this document, you will be able to ensure that you can get your podcast in front of the right people and help your intended audience to find your content with ease. Your podcast is an expression and extension of your business and values, so use it to your advantage. Good luck, and happy podcasting!