Give me a $1,000,000 marketing budget, and I’ll give you $999,950 in change. I just don’t understand what you’d do with all that money.
But as an indie podcaster, you don’t need a marketing budget. You don’t have to run ads to millions of people. You need to market like a door-to-door salesman.
- Knock on the door of a potential listener
- Explain your podcast and ask them to listen
- Move on to the next door and repeat.
That is the only way us indie podcasters can grow. It’s the approach my wife and I have used to grow Generally Spooky History to over 16,000 monthly downloads, and it’s the approach I want you to believe in.
I don’t suggest actually going door to door (although kudos if you do). I suggest finding the exact individuals your podcast is for and talking to them
Here’s how I do it.
Email people who’ve written about your topic
If you only think of bloggers as people who might want to share your work, you’re missing out. Because if you can find someone who’s written a blog post on the same topic you’ve made a podcast about. That’s a potential listener.
It doesn’t matter how big their audience is. It doesn’t matter if they might share it. All that matters is that’s an individual who might love what you do.
I did this for a folklore series we made on Generally Spooky History. We had five episodes, and I hunted through the first 15 pages of Google to find every blogger who mentioned it.
I’d read the article, and if I liked it, I’d hit up the contact page or an email address to say, “I saw you wrote an article about X. We just released a podcast about X and thought you might like it :)”
And I got a ton of positive responses:
If you’re too busy thinking about how to get 1 million downloads, you miss these opportunities to connect with individual people. These are your perfect listeners, and they’re waiting for you to get in touch. No, it doesn’t scale. That’s fine. Grow your podcast one person at a time.
Telling everyone you meet – but don’t force it
I went to a book launch event at my favorite cafe a few weeks ago. I was flying solo, so I sat next to someone who looked friendly and struck up a conversation. We back and forthed on the usual “So what do you do?” And I said I work on a podcast.
It didn’t go much further than that, but we swapped numbers, and she later messaged asking for the name of my podcast. I told her, and a couple days later this message came through:
Not only did she enjoy it, but she’s going to show it to someone else. That’s huge! It’s word-of-mouth marketing happening in action.
Of course, this doesn’t scale because you can only talk to one person at a time. But it grounds your progress correctly. Becoming known locally as a podcaster is much less daunting than trying to go global.
Swapping trailers with other podcasts
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot and see other podcasters as competition. According to Buzzsprout, listeners tune in to 8 different podcasts every week on average. This means the more you can work with other podcasters, the better.
Enter, trailer swaps.
I’m always going on about them because they’re so effective. You agree to play someone else’s trailer at the start of your episode, and they play your trailer.
It doesn’t scale because you can only do one trailer per episode, and you’re only making a set number of episodes. But it becomes a tide that lifts all boats, bringing more people into your niche and growing everyone’s audiences together.
To find shows related to yours, start with a Google search.
Put in the genre of your podcast, and a list will come up of the most related podcasts. Not everyone will be a good fit, but you’ll find similar-sized podcasts to yours and be able to make a start.
You can either go straight in for the ask, or start connecting on social media and building a rapport. If you build up a rapport and become friends, you’ll have much more success compared to going straight for the ask. But having done both, they do both work.
Grow your podcast, grow your niche, and make some new friends while you do.
Final thoughts
Forget marketing to everybody. Forget trying to go viral. Forget scaling up your efforts. Find one person who might love it and ask them to listen. Leave marketing at scale to the big companies who feel proud to spend tons of money.
We’re indie podcasters. We do things differently. Our superpower is being able to connect with individuals who turn in to listeners and turn into fans.
It’s not just the most authentic and satisfying way to grow a podcast.
It’s the only way you can grow your podcast.
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How I Can Help You
1) Free 5-day Podcast Marketing Fundamentals Course – Learn the basics of what it takes to grow a popular show, get more listeners, and earn more money from your podcast. The five day email course is totally free
2) The Template Vault – Learn how to grow your podcast on autopilot. Get fill-in-the-blank templates to set up your podcast’s foundation for growth, success, and making money.
3) Podcast Marketing Coaching– I am an experienced podcast coach, and I want to help you master your podcast marketing. Check out my full list of services and discover how we can work together.
4) Recommended Tools– These are the tools I use to grow my podcast. I focus on tools that improve quality and save time.
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