With over 2 million active podcasts and more than 48 million episodes in 2021, the podcast market has already been agglomerated. To stand a chance in this jam-packed space, you need to increase your subscribers. And the best way to increase subscribers is to reach out to them through different means of promotion and association. In this article, we’ll discover 9 strategies that you can try to increase your podcast subscribers.
- Create a Podcast Trailer
Trailers are meant to entice your audience and increase participants. An effective trailer of a podcast that may provide value to the listeners can increase your number of subscribers in a matter of weeks. But podcast trailers are fundamentally quite different from movies and shows. Where the trailers of movies depend upon the visuals and storytelling more than the story itself, podcast trailers need to hint to the audience about what to expect.
To create an effective podcast trailer, you can make use of the below-mentioned strategies:
Introduce Your Podcast
If you are starting with a new channel or are trying to gather more subscribers, try to introduce your podcast to your audience and let them know who they’re listening to. Keep it simple and concise, but don’t fail to mention the important details.
You may also subscribe to platforms like Supercast to increase engagement and revenue. Supercast offers an advantage to the creators by introducing your podcasts to a huge range of audience and interested individuals. With Supercast, you can introduce your podcasts to the users along with empowering them to subscribe within 2-tap simple interface, analytics tracking, alerts notification, managing multiple podcast in a single dashboard, and of course, revenue making with every transaction, you own the financial details and get paid directly.
Share Highlights
Mention the highlights of your podcast briefly in your trailer. If your podcast is about tech, consider telling your audience about the gadgets that you’ll discuss in the next podcast. If your podcast is about nature conservation, highlight the creatures that you may address.
Create Questions Around the Topic
Keep your listeners asking for more with the trailer. Leave open-ended questions. Build a curiosity at the end of the trailer. Leave sudden twisty questions to make your subscribers think about your podcast the whole day.
Don’t Forget to Use Sounds
Sounds make a lot of difference in podcasts. So it does for the trailer. If you have a consistent background score or theme that works for you, consider letting your listeners know that it’s from the same source. As they can’t see you, the sounds are their cues to understand who they are listening to.
- Implement Call-to-Action
Call-to-action or CTA are effective strategies to guide your audience to become subscribers. In every audience-focused channel like blogs, videos, and podcasts, CTA is employed in the forms of text, voice, and video. In the case of podcasts, you can tell your audience to subscribe to your channels by strategically mentioning them in the initial, middle, or final stages. A few examples of effective call-to-action may include:
- “Subscribe to our podcast”
- “Click on the link in the description”
- “Comment below to let us know what you think”
- “Subscribe to get more content like this”
Although you may rely on these CTAs, the options are only limited by your creativity.
Keep the CTA placements simple and clear. Don’t make it too promotional if your podcast includes sponsorship or affiliate links.
A more effective but challenging way to implement call-to-action is to mention your viewers or commenters through the podcast. People love to hear their names. And by relying on that strategy, many successful podcasters read the few best comments that their audience has left; encouraging others to subscribe and leave comments.
- Promote on Social Media
Social media is a great resource for podcasters to promote their latest content. You can find groups, interested individuals, and other podcasters to collaborate with through social media platforms. Not promoting your podcasts through Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and other mainstream social media platforms is a destructive decision in this competitive market.
However, to start promoting your content through social media demands some basic skills. Which include:
Generating Visuals
Most social media platforms are heavily reliant on visuals. As visuals aren’t limited to images, consider trying videos, animations, gifs, and other forms of graphics with your podcast link to stand out from the crowd. Consider using your voice and the music that we mentioned earlier if you are using videos as your promotional material.
Finding the Right Social Media
Not every social media is appropriate for promoting podcasts. Choose a social media that allows you to include links with the visuals. Instagram may not work for you if you are just starting out, but Pinterest, Facebook, and Discord are amazing alternatives.
Running a Giveaway
A giveaway is a sure-shot way to increase your subscribers. If you can manage sponsors for the giveaway, that’s fine. But if you can’t, consider starting with products that you may have affiliation with. That way, you can promote the products and earn profits in addition to increasing subscribers.
Creating Blog Posts
Blog posts can help you with being discovered on the search pages on Google. Even if you don’t have a blog, consider promoting your podcast links with a small blog post on social media to ensure that the search engines can index it. Give your audience a sneak peek of the upcoming content and a detailed transcript of the previous podcasts.
Using Hashtags
Hashtags are powerful tools for social media promotions. With appropriate hashtags, your podcast can reach millions of individuals on different platforms. The key to utilizing hashtags effectively is to use hashtags that are relevant to your content and don’t have much competition. Using hashtags that are being used by market leaders may increase the impression, but may also be responsible for low CTR.
- Invite Podcast Guests
Invite industry giants to your podcast. They may not be celebrities, but, if they’re an expert on the topic that you are intending to talk about, they’ll bring significant engagement. Arrange interviews with them and make sure to use their name in your next promotion cycle.
Your guests may also promote the collaboration through their social media handles and other promotional channels. If they are prominent voices in the podcasting industry, you may also be benefitted from their promotional strategy.
- Consider Guest Hosting
As with guest posting for blogs, consider guest hosting for your podcast. Reach out to established podcasters and arrange sessions with them. Since they have a huge audience base, you’ll be able to ride their fame by collaborating with them and using their name on your promotional material.
- Maintain a Publishing Routine
Podcasts need to have a fixed publishing routine. If you can’t upload daily content, consider sticking to a weekly or bi-weekly routine to give your audience a reason to subscribe. As podcasts are intended to engage your audience without involving their hands or eyes, they won’t know when you’ve uploaded a new podcast if you don’t have a stable schedule. A fixed schedule will help them get back to you easier.
The Bottom Line
To survive in the podcast market, you need to market yourself. For that, create trailers, promote podcast sneak peeks through social media, and try to implement a call-to-action. Apart from that, you also need to invite guests, collaborate with industry leaders, and maintain a publishing routine.
