The 4 Pillars of Podcast Marketing

Building a great podcast is hard. It requires not just quality content but some basics of quality marketing as well. It can be difficult to market a podcast and we know that it can be frustrating if you don’t see your audience grow over time. Well, worry no more.

The basics of podcast marketing and a successful podcast rest upon 4 pillars. So read it carefully and gear up to level your game.

4 Pillars of Podcast Marketing:

The Podcast and the Creator

The first pillar is, not surprisingly, the podcast and its creator. This is the first challenge in making your podcast attract any audience. To make your podcast a sensation and have killer marketing, it first needs to pass the quality checks. This is made up of 3 factors.

First, your podcast must have a clear premise and a USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Don’t just pick out any generic topic every week and start throwing it around. There are hundreds who might be doing it. And they’ll all fail. Simply because there is no originality and no clear premise. Is this a cartoon podcast, a bitcoin podcast or what? No one can say!

Once you have selected your podcast niche, say technology or science or business, your next challenge is to give it our own voice. This means adding your personal views, opinions and style to the podcast. Unless you discuss your original ideas, perspective and style, it's just not going to work. You can get inspiration from others. But don’t be a puppet.

And finally, learn from your audience, especially the early audience. Listen to their feedback and try to incorporate them to improve. You know as they say “If your audience isn’t growing, maybe you are not”.

The Production Quality

The production quality of a podcast is vital. It is, hence, the second pillar. The reason why it is separate from the first is that you may have amazing content and topics that you discuss, but if your production is of poor quality, it may drive your audience away.

Production here refers to sound editing. NO, you don’t need studio quality set up to do it. Don’t let that perfectionism make you lazy. It simply means having decent quality headphones and mic, making sure voice doesn’t echo, and that the volume is adjusted nicely (not too low, not too loud). It’s not that difficult.

All you need to do is simply sit in a quiet room, make a simple set up, have a sound check before you begin, and after you have recorded your podcast, just review it before posting. If there is any editing required, hire a freelancer to clean the sound and uplift the quality. Simple.

Strategic Marketing

This is one of the most important pillars, but yet one which is least known. After you have a quality podcast recorded and published, now you need to be strategic in your marketing. For most podcasters the cycle ends once they publish their podcast. It is perhaps the biggest mistake for you to make.

Strategic marketing is more than publishing your podcast and sharing its link on whatsapp groups and other platforms. It refers to the repurposing of your podcast content and then spreading it across various social media platforms to garner higher audience growth.

Repurposing podcast content is simply converting your 30 or 60 minute podcast into different forms of content pieces simply by changing its format and utility. Like converting it into blogs for your website, or summarizing it for your newsletters.

Similarly, you can convert it into smaller audio clips by snipping out the main punchlines or important parts, even add animation to it and make a reel or youtube shorts, make a Twitter thread and so much more. There is no limit to it. And you’re not actually creating any additional content for it. Just recycle what you have already made.

The biggest benefit of repurposing your podcast is that you can strategically market it now by having a presence on and distributing on other social media platforms. You can gain a massive audience by doing this simple thing.

And the best part is you don’t need to do it all by yourself. Our recommendation is that you focus on creating quality podcasts only. Then hire a content repurposing agency (yes they already exist) who specialize in it, like Madfire. In fact, it will cost you much less than setting up your own team to do it. This will reduce your workload but will help you reap benefits.

Patience

The final golden nugget is having patience. Patience is the fourth pillar of a successful podcast. We know, it sounds so simple and easy but it really isn’t. You see a podcast, just like any new thing takes time to grow. Your part as a creator is to create quality content, keep your audience engaged and repurpose your content.

If you do this consistently, you will see exponential growth. Let’s say your target  is to reach a Million subscribers or listeners. And you start with one subscriber or lister in the first month. If you double your subscribers every month, do you know how soon you can get to a million subscribers? In 30 months. It may sound too long but hey, we started with one subscriber in the beginning.

The idea of exponential growth is similar to that of the compounding effect. Growth is not just about marketing. But the more you give it time to grow (or compound), the bigger and bigger it gets. Imagine if you stop one month before, say on the 29th month. DO you know where you will be then? At half a million subscribers.

Again it may sound bizarre but you can go look at the charts of most successful podcasts or youtube channels. You will see this on their graph too. NOt exactly doubling every month but steadily increasing and then suddenly exploding growth. That’s what you want, right? So have a little patience (and a cold beer) my friend.

So there it is. The 4 main pillars of podcast marketing and a successful podcast. Although you need to note that you may start with one or two of these only. But you need to build your foundation on all 4 pillars, or else your structure may be too weak. And it may all fall down to the ground. Hope that doesn’t happen.

Graphic Instructions: Put generic graphics related to subheadings - the 4 points mentioned above. Place Madfire smartly in the 3rd point somewhere if you can.