🥜 Simple & Proven Strategies to Skyrocket Your Podcast Audience

You’re a podcaster, you know podcast growth is hard. BUT it becomes a lot easier when you invest in things that actually work. Today, we give you some of the most powerful and slept-on methods to grow your podcast in under a 5-minute read. Let’s get after it.

In Today’s Email

• Proven Growth Strategies

• HIT & MISS of the Week

• How to be featured in future Newsletters

How To Grow Your Podcast

To grow your podcast you need to maximize your efforts by taking a sniper approach and invest into proven methods of growth. These are some of the most effective strategies podcasters consistently use to get results, ranging from free to paid.

Be a Guest on Podcasts

The easiest way to grow your podcast is by speaking to people who already enjoy listening to podcasts. This way, you only need to sell them on you and your show, not an entirely new habit. Existing podcast consumers are low-hanging fruit to grow your show, and you can get a lot done with a little budget or none at all. To find shows to get on you can use Facebook groups, cold email outreach/DMs or even leverage services that help pair you with shows like matchmaker.fm.

Leverage makes getting on shows much easier. Continue to focus on building your brand through social content and also nail your unique value offering, to the show host and their audience. What can you uniquely provide to bring them value and how can you communicate this effectively? Lock this down and refine it with every outreach to improve your success rate.

Advertise on Podcasts

It has never been easier to advertise on podcasts through platforms like Spotify, Buzzsprout, other media buying tools or even directly through podcasters themselves. Just like being a guest on shows, every impression that comes from this kind of ad is more valuable (especially when done in a targeted way) because you know whoever hears it already has the habit of consuming podcasts. Find shows that already have your desired audience or a complimentary one and find the most cost-effective way to advertise on their content.

An important tip here is to experiment with different ad content. Write and record multiple variations of ads so you can swap them to see which one drives the most listeners.

Run Ads for High Pain Problems

If there are recurring high pain point problems for your listeners that your show helps to solve, you can buy ad placements targeting people with that exact problem, sending them to an episode where you solve it. When done correctly you can quickly turn a random person into a loyal fan through enacting the law of reciprocity. People feel indebted to those who help them out or solve their problems. The higher the pain the more effective this can be. Think about what these pain points are for your audience and buy ads on YouTube, Google or anywhere else your audience hangs out online.

These are some of the most effective strategies for growing your pod but we have plenty more we will save for future newsletters. Pick one of the three mentioned above to focus on and implement a routine ASAP to track and improve. It will take time and effort to find out the best approach to any strategy and learning can only take place through action. Get after it!

HIT & MISS of the Week

HIT

Why it HIT

• Perfect mix of authoritative positioning and understanding his audience’s desires. The guest is a men’s development expert and Chris (the host) knows his audience’s deepest desires from studying previous content, which he leveraged here

• Great use of imagery combining personal desires while still feeding off of the title

• Title speaks the target audience’s language - the use of the word “Beast” is powerful because it’s a word the target viewer would use to describe their goals. This makes it far more likely to capture their attention when they come across it

This video performed extremely well and attracts the exact desired demographic of the Modern Wisdom podcast (men 25-40). This is why it’s so important to obsess over your audience and what’s going on in their head.

MISS

Why it MISSED

• No open loop / itch was created. The title teases some hidden knowledge that can lead to a desired transformation but the thumbnail removes the need to click the video

• Only the first 50 characters of titles are guaranteed to show up everywhere on Youtube which cuts the title off at “Navy Seal Jocko Willink: The Weird Trick for Overc” meaning the most important element for getting the click will be cut off for a ton of people, dropping CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and hurting the performance of the episode

• The copy on the thumbnail only appeals to existing Jocko fans. There are clips all over the internet where he stresses the importance of getting up early. Unless you are a Jocko superfan, there is no need to watch this in the mind of a casual viewer. I can hear them saying, “Yeah, we get it. Wake up early,” as they scroll past this video

233k views in 4 days is a lot, but not relative to their other episodes. Compare your performance to your other content, to figure out what a HIT or MISS looks like for you.

P.S If you would like us to keep an eye on your content and potentially give you feedback in the HIT & MISS of the week, reply with the name of your show and the link to it on YouTube!

Happy Podcasting.

See you next week.

-Ben