Want to earn more from your podcast? No matter your niche or your monetization tactics, the key to maxing out your podcast earnings is creating a solid marketing plan. You can be creating the most engrossing podcast content on the market, but if listeners don’t know it exists, it’ll be falling on deaf ears.
A great marketing plan helps you promote your podcast effectively, so you can boost your reach and, ultimately, your income. In this article, we’re walking you through creating your very own podcast marketing plan, so you can start earning the most from your podcast.
We’re also providing you with a handy Podcast Marketing Plan Template, which features everything you need to plan, launch, and manage your podcast marketing plan. This easy-to-use template is chock-full of helpful writing prompts and fillable tables that make the process easier and faster than ever. Get it for free here!
Why create a podcast marketing plan?
So, why create a podcast marketing plan? As mentioned, marketing is absolutely crucial when it comes to making the most money from your podcast.
Why? Well, because podcasts are a unique beast within the digital media market. Rather than living on popular social media platforms (like Instagram or TikTok), most podcast content (we’re talking about audio-only podcasts) is accessible mainly through podcast directories. And while podcast directories are great marketing tools themselves, this means that your podcast is going to need a little extra promotional support via tactics like social media and email marketing.
A stellar podcast marketing plan typically includes a combination of different tactics, which does require some time and effort on your part. The benefits of building a great podcast marketing plan, however, are huge. They include:
- Building a strong brand identity: Creating goals, identifying your target audience, and strategically planning your content (you know, all of those big business moves), help you build a strong brand identity, which lends you credibility in your audience’s eyes and name recognition within the larger podcasting ecosystem.
- Reaching your target audience: Developing a comprehensive marketing strategy helps you better target and reach the listeners who will love your podcast — and want to pay for your content.
- Expanding your reach: Planning and implementing effective marketing tactics helps you reach new audiences, which grows your pool of potential paid subscribers.
- Setting yourself apart from the competition: Bolstering your podcast’s brand and creating content based on your goals will set you apart from the competition within the crowded podcast market.
- Achieve your goals faster: Getting clear on your goals and setting objectives helps you plot out your map to podcasting success, so you stay on track and reach your milestones in record time.
All of these benefits are totally great on their own, right? When you mix them all together, however, they’re the recipe for an incredibly lucrative podcast.
How to write a podcast marketing plan
Now that you’re aware of all the great, income-boosting benefits of creating your own podcast marketing plan, it’s time to put them to practice. That means it’s time to start creating your podcast’s very own marketing plan.
Lucky for you, we’ve broken the process down into eight easy-to-follow steps:
- Define your goals and target audience
- Conduct a competitor analysis
- Submit to podcast directories
- Create a podcast website
- Build your email list
- Create a social media marketing plan
- Develop a paid advertising strategy
- Plot out your timeline
Step 1: Define your goals and target audience
The best laid plans always start with a goal in mind. And this principle totally applies to your podcast marketing plan as well!
Get clear on your goals
The first step to creating your podcast’s marketing plan is figuring out what you want to achieve with your podcast. Getting clear on your goals will help you align your marketing efforts with your desired outcomes.
Whether big or small, your goals should always be realistic, measurable, and in-line with your values as a creator. Need some examples? A few goals for your podcast could include increasing your subscriber count, generating new leads, and boosting brand awareness.
When writing up your podcasting objectives, you’ll want to ensure that they’re SMART (that’s specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely.) For example, if one of your goals is to generate more leads, then the corresponding SMART objective might be something like “Generate 50 new leads per month through podcast marketing efforts.” Adding quantitative details provides you with a specific target to reach for and a tangible marker for your success.
Define your unique value proposition
Creating your podcast’s goals goes hand-in-hand with defining your unique value proposition.
So, what’s that? To get technical, your podcast’s unique value proposition is a statement that expresses why your podcast is better than your competitors’. Your UVP statement should convey your podcast’s unique benefits and how it solves your audience’s pain points.
In other words, your UVP describes the “secret sauce” that sets your podcast apart from the rest.
Identify your target audience
And speaking of your audience’s pain points: you’re going to need to identify your target audience in order to define your podcast’s value and set your goals.
Who’s your target audience? This is the specific group of people who will most benefit from your podcast (and any products or services you might launch in the future).
Your target audience is a segment of your podcasting niche’s larger target market. This means that you’ll need to get pinpoint precise when defining this group.
Example: Let’s say you’re a personal finance podcaster. Rather than targeting everyone between the ages of 25 and 35, you might want to hone in on single women within this age range who live in mid-sized cities. This level of granularity will help you better uncover and understand your audience’s pain points, so you can create the content and marketing campaigns that will resonate with them.
Getting a clear picture of your target audience (from their demographics to their pain points) is crucial to creating your podcast marketing plan, because these are the people you’ll be tailoring your promotional content towards.
Want to identify your target audience today? Our Target Audience Templates Bundle helps you understand your target audience’s needs in no time, so you can start creating effective marketing campaigns right now.
Step 2: Conduct a competitor analysis
Creating a stellar marketing plan requires a little bit of every creator’s favorite task: market research. In this case, we’re talking competitor research. This means conducting a competitive analysis of other podcasts within your niche or content category.
For this step, you’ll create a list of competing podcasts, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and detail how your podcast is different — or better! To do this, you’ll want to check out your competitors’ podcasts, along with their social media channels to get a handle on their content and marketing strategies. Pay attention to their podcast episode format, guest strategy, as well as their social media presence, and notice any strengths or weaknesses within these categories. With all this data, you can piece together their unique value proposition and target audience.
Conducting a competitor analysis helps you determine which audiences your competitors are targeting and just how they’re going about it. This information is useful for a number of reasons. For one, it helps you identify gaps in the market that you can fill with your own podcasting content. Secondly, it might help you identify (and target) new audiences that you hadn’t even considered.
Step 3: Submit to podcast directories
Now that you’ve done all that research, it’s time to start developing your marketing strategy. The first step? Applying to podcast directories.
A podcast directory is an app or website that collects podcasts and sorts them by category. Most directories also double as podcast players and podcast search engines. Some of the most popular podcast directories include Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Podcast directories are the most common way for listeners to find new podcasts. Getting your podcast listed on the top podcast directories can help you attract new listeners and subscribers, get more ratings and reviews, and alert subscribers to new episodes.
Typically, you’ll need to go through an application process to get your podcast added to a directory. So, you’ll want to start researching and applying to them early on in your marketing journey.
Step 4: Create a podcast website
Submitting your podcast to podcast directories is a great way to grow your following. However, as a podcaster, you’ll also need a “home base” for your podcast content.
Why? Having a dedicated podcast website allows you to own and control your brand on your own terms. While directories like Spotify or Apple Podcasts could remove your podcast at any time for any number of reasons, no one can remove your podcast from your own website.
On top of that, there are a number of other benefits to creating a website for your podcast. First and foremost, your website acts as a hub for your business. It’s where potential listeners can learn all about you, your expertise, and your journey (via your “About” page), browse your product and services offering (via your integrated online storefront), and view your written content (via your “Blog” section).
And if that’s not already enough, a traditional website also provides you with better SEO opportunities than having only an Instagram (or TikTok or YouTube) account. That’s to say that having a website lends your podcast business a stronger foothold on popular search engines like Google, which can drive tons of new listeners to your content.
Step 5: Build your email list
Want to hear a fun fact? While we may be living through the golden age of social media marketing, the humble email newsletter still remains one of the most effective digital marketing strategies out there. The numbers don’t lie: on average, email marketing generates a ROI of $36 for every dollar spent.
As a podcaster, e-newsletters are a powerful way to convert casual listeners into paying subscribers. In addition to its income-generating power, email marketing provides you with more ownership and control over your brand. That’s because your email list is a marketing tool that you actually own, rather than your social following, which is at the mercy of third-party social apps and their fickle algorithms.
So, about that “email list” — what is it, exactly? Your email list is the list of subscribers who will receive your marketing newsletters. It almost goes without saying that, before you can start writing and sending out email campaigns, you’ll need to start building up your email list.
Today, there are a number of ways for podcasters to capture their listeners’ email addresses. These include adding opt-in forms to your link-in-bio page and podcast website, as well as offering your audience lead magnets.
Supercharge your email list
Want to build your own email list? The Leap can help you with that.
The Leap is an all-in-one creator platform with features like an AI-powered digital product builder, a link-in-bio storefront, and an email marketing suite. On top of helping you run your email marketing campaign, The Leap’s easy-to-use authoring tool empowers you to turn your digital products into lead magnets, which you can give away in exchange for your followers’ contact info. In other words, it’s a powerful tool that allows you to start building your email list quickly, today.
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Click here to start building your email list with The Leap today, for free.Step 6: Create a social media marketing plan
While email marketing remains a profitable promotional tool, it’s still true that we’re currently living through the golden era of social media marketing. This means that, in addition to your other marketing tactics, you’ll want to harness the power of social media to promote your podcast.
The first step in creating a solid social marketing strategy is to choose the platform (or platforms!) you’d like to use. This decision hinges entirely on your target audience’s preferences and habits, which means you’ll want to choose the platform(s) where they hang out. Here’s a pro tip: great podcast marketing strategies typically harness a combination of social platforms in order to reach a larger slice of your target audience.
And here’s another tip: If you want to supercharge your social marketing strategy, consider making the leap to video content. Capturing your podcast on camera allows you to capitalize on the short (and long) form video formats of popular platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Having video footage handy means you can transform your podcast’s most meme-worthy moments into Reels and YouTube Shorts, which boost your chances of going viral — and cashing in on new subscribers.
Step 7: Develop a paid advertising strategy
If you want to invest a bit of money into your podcast business, try advertising it. As a podcaster, there are a few ways to approach your paid advertising strategy:
Advertise on social media
From YouTube to Instagram, every social platform has some way for you to advertise your podcast. And a single sponsored post can go a long way!
You don’t need to spend a ton of money to try out paid advertising as a marketing tactic. Rather, we suggest you approach it as an experiment with a smaller budget.
Whether your platform of choice is TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or something else, look into commissioning an ad or two for your podcast and see where it takes you.
Try out Google Ads
If you’ve ever Googled something (or just surfed the net), then you’re probably (at least subliminally) aware of Google Ads as a marketing venue.
Google Ads get displayed in Google search results, on websites and blogs, and in a ton of other places throughout the world wide web. This means that Google Ads have the potential to give your podcast a ton of visibility.
Google Ads also deploys some of the best targeted advertising and pixel tracking technology on the net, which means that your ads have a better chance of reaching the people who will want to listen — and pay — for your podcast.
Develop a guest strategy
Who doesn’t love a good collab? Partnering with other podcasters is a great way to expand your reach and visibility within your particular niche.
Reach out to other podcasters within your category and try securing guest spots on their podcasts. Rather than going the paid sponsorship route, you might be able to work out an exchange where you promote each other’s products or they guest on your podcast.
Treating your fellow podcasters as collaborators rather than competitors can open the doors to brand new audiences — and brand new subscribers.
Step 8: Plot out your timeline
Finally, it’s time to put your marketing plan into action! To start implementing your marketing strategy, you’ll need to plot out a timeline that will keep you organized and on track during your rollout.
Your timeline should include an overall schedule for achieving your marketing objectives, along with start and end dates for each of your marketing tactics.
Want to create a comprehensive marketing timeline in no time? Our Podcast Marketing Plan Template provides you with a list of every beat you need to hit on your marketing timeline, along with a fillable table that helps you manage your marketing strategy at every step.
Earn more from your podcast today
And there you have it! Your step-by-step guide to creating and deploying a marketing plan that will max out your podcast earnings.
Now, the proverbial mic is in your hands. It’s up to you to put this article (and our helpful podcast marketing plan template) to great use and begin planning out your route to the top of the podcast charts.
Follow The Leap on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for more monetization tips for creators. We also make a newsletter.
Further reading
- How To Create a Podcast Business Plan (+ Free Templates)
- YouTube Monetization Requirements: How to Monetize Your Videos
- How To Find Your Target Audience (+ Free Template)
- How To Build an Email List in 6 Easy Steps (+Free Mini-Course)
- 20 Ways To Grow Your Email List
- 12 of the Best Ways To Make Money Online as a Creator
