Starting a new podcast is an exciting time. When considering how to grow your podcast, you must produce a high-quality show, as this is one of the most essential aspects of building a podcast audience. Anyone can start a podcast show, but you need expertise, skills, or experience in your chosen topic. You might have worked in a particular niche for many years and now want to share your skills with others and build brand awareness for your company.
You might be starting your podcast from scratch. Perhaps you have experience in a particular industry, maybe worked in business or marketing for many years, and want to start a new career in podcasting.
Building A Podcast Audience
Here, we look at ten great ways to support you in building a podcast audience.
1. Who is Your Target Audience?
You will need to focus on your target listeners from the beginning, and a great way to start building a podcast audience is to create an audience profile. To do this, describe the character you want to reach, which is simple to do if you already have an established business, as you can use your current consumer research. Consider who they are. What are they interested in? What would they like to hear you talk about?
Doing plenty of market research at the early stages of your podcast creation is essential, and this is an aspect you’ll be supported in when you work with a podcast production agency. When you work with Produce Your Podcast, your podcast discovery sessions will help you bring your podcast show to life.
See what’s on trend for podcasts in your niche and what attracts the audiences you want to reach. Then create a podcast that you know they will like. You need to ensure your podcast series is original and that you love it, as your enthusiasm and originality will help to attract and retain listeners.
2. Have a Consistent Format
A great tip for building a podcast audience is to create a consistent format for your show. This way your regular listeners will know what to expect when they tune into each episode. Try to be consistent and use a variety of topics while not deviating too much from your USP (unique selling point) or your niche.
Keep a spreadsheet with a list of your content topics and titles, as this will help you keep note of what you’ve covered. You can also see if there are any correlations between your content and engagement statistics. Monitor the statistics, as this can help with attracting sponsorship.
Ensure your format is fun and keeps your listeners engaged. Provide a comfortable balance of helpful information (including facts and data) that your audience can implement within their business. However, your listeners will also appreciate hearing your personal experiences.
If you have a co-host, your audience will enjoy hearing you discuss your opinions and experiences. If you’re the sole host, you can have conversations by chatting with guests. Try not to make it sound like too formal an interview! You can use humor to help lighten up more complicated business topics!
3. Use Attractive Cover Art
Your cover art is essential to your success when building a podcast audience. You will need to select an image that best represents your show. This might be you and your co-host if you have one. Or you might decide to have some graphic artwork for your cover.
Ensure your choice reflects the tone and style of your show. Research other podcast shows in your niche and other popular shows to identify current trends for podcast art.
If you don’t have any graphics experience, you have a few options if you aren’t confident to have a go yourself. You can hire a graphic designer, or most Podcast Production Agencies will have an experienced graphic designer you can work with to produce a modern, attractive, stylish cover art to suit your brand.
4. Tell Your Audience a Story
When planning the content of each episode, consider how you can make your episode more relatable to your audience. One way to do this when you’re building a podcast audience is to tell a personal story of how you have experienced a problem and how you overcame it. This will not only help you share your experience with your listeners, but it will also demonstrate you are trustworthy and relatable.
This is especially helpful if you are planning to promote a service or product within the episode. People love hearing stories and real-life ones are ideal. Remember if your story includes someone else you should ensure they’re not identifiable, don’t use their name without permission for example.
If you have a negative story you want to share so your listeners can learn from it then that’s fine. Just remember to highlight what you learned from the experience, what you were able to implement into your one work, and the change it inspired you to make. As you help your listeners make valuable changes to the way they operate their businesses you will establish yourself as a leading industry expert and become a trusted resource.
5. Invite Exciting Guests for Your Show
When building a podcast audience, having guests on your show can be great for promoting your show, retaining your audience, and attracting new listeners. If you and your guest promote each other’s brands, you can make the most of the segment by tapping into each other’s audiences. This helps to grow an enthusiastic community of supporters for your show and your business.
Having guests on your show can provide an exciting variation to each episode. If you select guests who can offer insight that you’re interested in learning about then you can be sure that your listeners will be excited to hear from your guest as well.
Like many of the other aspects we’ve mentioned above, you need to ensure your guest segments are managed professionally. Ensure they have the questions you want to ask in advance so they can prepare. Provide your guests with an opportunity to share either their show or their business and provide opportunities for your guests to connect with your guests.
6. Produce a Professional Show
It’s essential when building a podcast show that your show has a professional sound from the beginning, and this is a key advantage to working with a Podcast Production Agency from the start. It means you can avoid all the common pitfalls, hiccups, and setbacks that inexperienced hosts can experience without the right support.
You can record your podcast at home easily, and it will still sound professional. We’ve mentioned having the right equipment above, but you also need a quiet room that you can use where you won’t be disturbed. If you plan to record videos, you will need to ensure good lighting and consider the decor and placement of furniture.
7. Choose the Right Equipment
Building a podcast audience successfully relies on you producing a high-quality sounding show. Not only will it help you sound professional, but it’ll also provide your audience with an enjoyable listening experience.
You can record your podcast at home, but you need a quiet room without any noise or distractions to record in. If you decide to record a video too, make sure the room decor suits your show and that the lighting is correct for recording.
When you work with Produce Your Podcast as a full service, we provide you with the equipment you need to produce a great-sounding show. We’ll also have our sound engineers check your equipment and sound so you don’t waste any time in your recording.
8. Produce Enticing Call-to-Actions
You must retain current listeners when building a podcast audience. It can be easy to think just of attracting new listeners, but it’s important to produce high-quality episodes that listeners can enjoy and relate to.
At Produce Your Podcast, we advise the hosts we work with to always provide an actionable point at the end of the show. This needs to be something tangible your audience can take away, implement in their business, and benefit from.
If you provide your audience with a clear call to action, they’ll know what they need to do. This might be signing up to your mailing list to download a free planner for their marketing activities or a free ebook. You should also include these details in the show notes to accompany your podcast when you publish it. You could invite new shares to your social media page to receive a free PDF of actionable content.
9. Post on Plenty of Podcast Streaming Platforms
Building a podcast audience requires you to make your shows available to as much of your potential audience as possible. Posting episodes on lots of podcast streaming platforms is one way to increase your reach. Ensure that you have an exciting description that lets potential listeners know what they can get from listening to your show and why they should listen!
Ensure you have a polished episode every time by using the right software to edit your show. Having thumbnails and placeholders is essential, and your transcript should be SEO-friendly (search engine optimization). This is so your podcast can be picked up by search engines. At Produce Your Podcast, we can advise on this, or you can arrange for our team to provide this for you as a full podcast package.
10. Monitor Trends & Competitors
Keep track of your competitors, as this will help you keep your show moving in the right direction, building a podcast audience. You also want to ensure you’re attracting the right audience. By seeing what your competitors are doing, you can get insight into current trends and new ideas that you might want to incorporate into your show. You can also use this research as a way to see what you don’t like for your show. You can also get ideas for blog content and show topics from your competitors.
FAQs:10 Tips for Building a Podcast Audience
What Is Most Important for Building a Podcast Audience?
A professional, great-sounding show is essential for building a podcast audience.
Where Can I find good podcast ideas?
Listen to shows in your niche and others to get ideas. Discover what you do and don’t like and then consider how you can blend these ideas with your own.
What Marketing Strategies do I need to build a Podcast Audience?
Try to produce high-quality marketing materials that you can use to promote your podcast in a variety of ways. This includes your website, social media newsletters, etc.
Final Word: 10 Tips for Building a Podcast Audience
When building a podcast audience you need to get your show right from the very beginning so you can hit the ground running and propel your brand forward. You have to get all aspects right from your equipment, your sales strategy, your content, etc. This is where working with a Podcast Production Agency, like Produce Your Podcast is ideal because you can tap into their wealth of knowledge and experience to build a podcast audience from the start.
Produce Your Podcast is a full-service podcast production, editing, and marketing agency specializing in helping brands launch, grow, and monetize successful podcasts that impact their bottom line. With 30+ years of experience in both broadcasting and business development brought to every project we work on, our team of experts is a reliable partner to help you achieve your goals with your show.
Click here to schedule a conversation with our team today and let’s bring your show to life!
