Now you have to get your podcast out into the world to be heard. Many broadcasters to simply podcast for personal interest or to get their opinions out into the world, don’t bother to market their podcast. And perhaps, if you have a small and faithful following that might be all you’re interested in.
For example, maybe you are pastor at a church and it doesn’t matter to you other people outside of your congregation hear your podcasts, as long as they are available for your parishioners. That’s fine.
But there are many people, especially business podcasters, who need to be heard. Perhaps you need to be heard because of the importance of your sell your product and put food on the table, whatever the reason is, you need to do your podcast out there.
The first in you want to do is submit your podcast to the podcast hosting sites mentioned in a previous chapter. If you haven’t done that already, take time to be that right away. Don’t just submit to one, submit to all of them.
The next thing you need to do is to make sure that your marketing material (if you are a business) contains the web site on which your podcast is hosted. For example, if your company has a web site, make sure it’s on your marketing material.
Then go on to your company’s web site and make sure that the podcast is easy to see. Lots of companies have very busy web sites which makes it difficult to notice if there are new items on the page. You might also want to put on your marketing material something along the lines that of “subscribe to our podcast.”
Just plunking down your podcast on your web site and a web address on your marketing material will not get you very many subscribers. It could get some calm and that’s great, but just like any other product that you sell you need to give people a reason to subscribe to your podcast.
If you haven’t noticed, this article talks about content and niche marketing but the underlying secret of both of those is value. When you offer a value, people will come to you. If your product solves a problem, they will buy it from you.
If your service benefits someone, they will buy it from you. If your podcast helps them in some way, they will subscribe to it or even buy it from you.
So how do you make your podcast provide value? This article, and previous article, give lots of ideas to help provide value: people are looking for interesting and engaging entertainment, information, and instruction to listen to at their convenience. That’s what podcasting is all about. Those three things:
1. Interest and engagement. (Is the format varied and easy to listen to?)
2. Entertainment, information, instruction. (Is the content of high quality?)
3. Convenience. (Is it an appropriate length and updated with appropriate frequency?)
That is the best test to ensure that your podcast provides value. If it does not to fulfill all three things than you’ll find your subscribership will diminish over time.
Here is another exercise that will help you determine your value to your subscribers. If you have spent any time in sales or as an entrepreneur you’ll probably already familiar with this, but it is a good exercise to do nonetheless, since it is often overlooked in the podcasting industry.
Features and Benefits of your podcast
1. One one side of a piece of paper, list the features of your podcast. Leave plenty of lines under each feature. What are features? The topic is a feature, the length is a feature, the frequency you update it is a feature, it’s a feature if two people host the show, the format can be a feature, and your variety and quality of content is a feature.
2. On the other side of the paper, list the benefits: what it is about those features that subscribers will find helpful. For example, CNN provides very short podcasts of excellence depth. Those are features. The benefits are that the listener will save time and become well informed.
3. Determine if there is one or two of those benefits that set you apart from other podcasts in a similar category. For example, perhaps you can provide the same depth of coverage on a sports team as another podcast, but you can do it with greater frequency or with more expert analysis. (Of course those of the features, but the benefits are that your subscriber can save time and increased knowledge by become better informed more frequently).
4. Now promote those benefits!
This is a classic feature/benefits exercise from sales training 101. It is often overlooked in podcasting because podcasting is such a personal medium and its brand-new so people are pushing the boundaries in spite of the lack of benefits to their listeners.
Pushing the boundaries is okay if that’s what you want to do, but if your interest is in gaining subscribers or in making money from podcasting, then you’ll want to discover the benefits of your podcast and promote them.
If you can drive people to your web site, you might be able to you post a couple benefits beside your podcast link. Or, if your marketing material has enough room, you can put those benefits right under your heading “subscribe to our podcast”.
You might also find that, although they may appreciate the benefits and value that you provide, they may be scared off by how “technologically advanced” it seems to them.
Rather than calling it a podcast, you may want to call it an online audio program or an Internet radio show. It may not be exactly accurate, but it’s a lot easier then telling people that it’s a podcast and spending half an hour explaining it to them and telling them why they don’t need an iPod to hear you.
You may also want to you pay other people to host affiliate advertising to send an end to your site if you are creating a podcast for people to pay to listen to.
These concepts are covered in a little greater detail in another article, but it is appropriate to mention them here at something else to think about in marketing your podcast.
The best form of advertising for any kind of business is word of mouth advertising. It he can get your search drivers to be your biggest supporters and talk about you all the time to their friends, you won’t have any problem getting subscribers. How do you do that? (You should be able to answer this in your sleep by now: content, niche markets, benefits).
It is still very early in the industry, but it won’t be long before you see referral marketing programs that give subscribers some kind of discount or freebie for getting other people to subscribe to a podcast. With a little creativity, you may be able to start doing this right now.
Getting subscribers is all about providing value. If people see the value, they will subscribe. Tell them about your program, tell them what the value is to them, and tell them how to subscribe, and tell them to get their friends to subscribe, and you should not have any problem building up a big list of subscribers.
And with this audience, you’ll be able to get your views heard and maybe even make some money!
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