A podcast is never going to be successful unless you have the audience to listen to it and then take action. As with all marketing and sales, podcasting is a numbers game. The greater your audience, the more reward you will receive back. So you should aim to grow your audience on a consistent basis.

So how do you grow your podcast’s audience? Here are several tricks to help you.

1. Be Consistent

The first priority of your podcast marketing is to look at the internal working of your show. Audiences like consistency whether that is for a blog or a podcast. If you say you are going to publish an episode every Thursday at a set time, ensure you keep to that schedule.

This is not only polite, but it also allows you to build trust between you and your main listeners; they won’t disappear because you haven’t published a show one week believing you’ve stopped and instead they may actively promote your show through word of mouth. It is also far easier to retain an existing audience than to seek new listeners, so if you want to grow, you’ll want a solid audience foundation to start with.

2. Podcasting Directories

An easy way to promote your podcast audience is to ensure that you are listed on numerous podcast directories. These used to be more effective than they are now, but there are SEO benefits from them and they will still generate you some traffic.

Podcast directories are also a ‘do once, last forever’ marketing tip. This makes them very time efficient, but they shouldn’t be relied upon as the only audience growth strategy. However, there is one directory that you should ensure you get on and that is the iTunes New and Noteworthy list. If you can gain access to that, you will see a significant boost in your audience.

3. Invite Others To Speak On Your Podcast

Another great way to grow your audience is to attract experts to talk to you on your podcast. This has a couple of benefits for your podcast. It allows you to grow your audience by tapping into their contacts and network when they mention they’ve featured on your show. It will also grow the audience when you mention that you’ve got an expert speaking on your show because it will give you more market credence.

To have experts join your podcast you will need to offer them something of value. You’ll also need to carefully balance your shows, so guests aren’t just talking about themselves but are offering something highly valuable to your audience.

4. Social Media

If you want to get to the masses then you’ll need to advertise your podcast on social media. Social media has great potential because you can literally reach the entire world with just a few pieces of content.

The major issue with social media is that it will take a significant amount of your time and there is no guarantee that the audience sent to your podcast will be high value customers.

5. Search Engines

Nearly half of those who want a question answered will head to a search engine to ask it. Therefore, demonstrating to search engines that you have the answer in your podcast could generate you a significant audience. To do this you will need to optimise your podcast for search engines. This does not mean changing the content of your podcast, but rather its description and the page it is hosted on.

By improving the SEO of these, your podcast should feature prominently on Google and other search engines.

Conclusion

Growing your podcast’s audience is not as simple as just publishing your podcast. It takes time and effort to attract listeners on a regular basis. Yet, many of the tactics you should be using are simple and effective and would not take up too much of your time.

How do you attract audiences to your podcast? What tips do you recommend?

Let us know in the comments below.

Take Action:

• Invite an expert to appear on your podcast.
• Optimise your podcast’s description for search engines.
• Use social media to draw attention to your podcast.