14 Ways to Grow Your Podcast Audience in 2023

Learn: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience

Do you want to grow your podcast audience? Then I’m here for you guys to share some worthy tips and strategies to increase the number of listeners or audience for your podcast. And those secret tips will guide you to reach and grow your audience faster.

1. Research Your Podcast Audience and Target Them

Research Your Podcast Audience and Target Them

Researching your podcast audience and targeting them to listen to your podcast is a vital thing to do in order to grow your podcast audience.

Who your audience is, which ones have the most or least views on them, which ones people listen to longer, and so on, are all factors that will help you determine your target audience.

One way to increase audiences is to find out the correct niche. Everyone has different tastes and preferences. So, if you target the whole audience, then it’ll be quite difficult to reach them.

Let’s say, ”Macklin’s Take – Boxing Podcast“ is a podcast that will be related to boxing. So, their targeted audience will be those people who are interested in this game. But the podcast is for everyone. Anyone can be their audience.

That’s another fact. So, you have to make your podcast creative, unique, inclusive, and accessible to a wide range of people. But, you just need to have a particular niche.

Another way to research podcast audiences is to analyze data. You can check the demographics of listeners and the number of downloads.

Also, you can create an option for the review so you can be aware of their taste. Thereafter, you can create content that is tailored to their interests which will help you to hold audiences with your podcast for a long time.

2. Optimize Your Podcast

Optimize Your Podcast

Podcast optimization is the easiest way to reach larger audiences. Optimizing your episode titles, descriptions, audio quality, and other things varies a lot to increase visibility in search engines.

When your title, your description is clear or followed SEO rules, then it will help your audience to find your podcast very easily. And this is how you can gain your targeted audiences.

After a depth research I’ve come to know about one of the most effective and easiest ways to optimize your podcast is to use “Anchor”.

Anchor is a podcast hosting and management platform that will help you to optimize your podcast to be the best for the listener and distribute them on all platforms (Like Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, etc).

It’ll also help you to look at your performance with detailed analytics and statistics on a regular basis. Basically, Anchor FM makes it easy for users to create, distribute, and promote their podcasts.

3. Consistency

Consistency

Having a publishing schedule is an essential factor to grow an audience. When you release your podcast episodes on a consistent schedule, it will help you to build trust, and predictability with the audience and help to build regular listeners.

Consistency also works for promotion by those regular listeners after sharing with their friends or family about your upcoming episode that will come out on the following schedule.

You can also upload those on your channel and can cast them on TV as well for the traditional audience.

4. Using SEO

Using SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process to optimize your podcast or help you to increase the visibility of its related content on search engine results.

SEO always makes it easy to reach potential audiences. When your potential audience will search for a podcast with your related topic, they will find out your podcast easily on the search engine.

And this is how you can increase your podcast audience. Here are a few ways you can use SEO to grow your podcast audience:

• Optimizing Your Podcast’s Title, Description, and Tags

Using relevant keywords and phrases in your podcast title, description and tags makes it easy to understand and search engines what your podcast is actually about or based on.

It will increase the likelihood to show up your podcast on search engine results when people will search for those keywords.

Use a Transcript

Using the Transcript of your podcast episodes can help with SEO to rank on search engine results because search engines always index the text and make it easy to discover for the people.

• Use Structured Data

This is by far the most important SEO thing you can do on your website. Structured data helps to communicate with search engines in a better way as it carries some specific attributes about your podcast.

It helps web crawlers to understand better and may help you to unlock the SERP Features. Eventually, assist you to increase more visibility among your targeted audience.

You may check out the official page of Schema for a better understanding of how you can implement it on your web pages.

Create Backlinks

Backlinks are known as inbound links that come from other websites that point to your website.

Backlinks are very important for SEO because Search engines use them as a way to determine the quality and authority of a website. The more backlinks a website has, the more likely to rank well in search engine results.

Although it is not always true you know. It depends :))

By implementing these SEO strategies, you can get a long-term effective result. But it will take time to work. You have to wait for the right time growing up your audiences and keep working for that.

5. Using Overcast Ads

Using Overcast Ads

Overcast is a popular podcast app for iOS and it offers a feature called” Overcast Ads”. Basically, overcast ads can help you to promote and increase your podcast audience.

It also allows you to create a short pre-roll ad before playing the selected podcast episode.

Here are a few ways to use “ Overcast Ads “ to grow your podcast audience:

• Promote the New Episode

Overcast Ads can be a powerful tool to promote the new episode of your podcast. This feature allows you to create a short pre-roll ad that plays before a selected episode of your podcast.

In this ad, you can highlight the main topic or massage that your audience wanna listen to within a short time with a brief summary.

This can help to create excitement for the listeners most likely to tune in with the episode. So, Overcast Ads can be used to increase visibility and reach a larger audience.

• Boost Visibility for Older Episodes

Boost the old episode of your podcast with Overcast Ads. It will increase the visibility that may have been overlooked by audiences.

• Target Audiences Based on Specific Demographics

Demographics will help you to target specific audiences. Such as from where you are getting more traffic or the specific content that is most likely required by the listener.

Use the Overcast Ads on this specific place. It will help you to gain audiences.

• Measurable Results

Overcast Ads provides detailed analytics so you can track the performance of your ads is it really impacting your audience growth or not.

• High Conversion Rate

When the ads will have been shown on the screen before starting the specific video, the listener expresses interest in the topic and want to get more content related to that. Then they are most likely to subscribe after the ads.

But to use this feature, you need to be an Overcast partner which is a paid subscription service. Though it is an expensive method, it helps you to gain new audiences on your podcast.

6. Using the Anchor’s Q&A and Polls

Using the Anchor's Q&A and Polls

Anchor is a popular podcast-hosting platform that offers many features to help podcast creators increase their audience. One such feature is the “Q & A” and “Polls” tools.

Using Anchor’s Q&A and Polls always helps to Interact with listeners and gather feedback. When you respond to their questions and comments, it makes it easy to increase engagement with your podcast.

It will also assist you in collecting data and understanding your listeners. You can get an idea about the topic which they are enjoying more which will give you a direction in making content. It generates new listeners to tune into future episodes.

7. Ask for Reviews and Build a Rating for Your Podcast

Ask for Reviews and Build a Rating for Your Podcast

Asking for reviews and building a positive rating is an effective way to generate buzz.
and increase listeners.

The most interesting fact about getting positive reviews and a high number of positive ratings are to rank your podcast and increase its visibility.

Positive reviews and ratings can easily attract new listeners and also can gain the trust of the audience. You can also shear those positive reviews on social media to contribute to a growing audience.

And, If you are missing something wrong or need to do much better than that, you can identify the areas very easily from the reviews for improvement and make changes in your content.

8. Be Authentic

Be Authentic

Being authentic is the most important thing in podcasting to build trust with your audience cause when your audience sees that you are genuine and honest, they are more likely to listen to your podcast and become loyal fans.

Authenticity can also help you to stand out and differentiate from other podcasts. So, it will be your big benefit to grab a huge number of loyal listeners.

Because people always look for something unique and authentic. So, always be authentic.

9. Create Engaging Content

Create Engaging Content

To keep your listeners interested, and entertained and to come back for more interesting content, creating engaging content is a must.

Engaging content always assists a creator to hold listeners’ attention and encourages interaction.

So, when you create compelling content, it makes people want to listen to it. It also prevents them from losing attention or tuning out.

10. Create a Trailer

Create a Trailer

A podcast trailer is a brief introduction to your show or an overview of a podcast and what listeners can expect from the show.

It’s a great way to promote a podcast. Even you also notice that all movies, dramas, and shows have their own trailer. It basically generates interest and attracts new listeners.

A well-crafted trailer allows your potential listeners to understand the whole episode of your podcast within 30 seconds and also helps to entice them to listen to more.

And the most interesting fact is to create a trailer, it can be shared on social media or used for promotional purposes. Even, It assists to grab the audience’s attention and establishes brand identity.

So, for creating a buzz in your show, you must create a trailer.

11. Networking With Other Podcasters

Networking With Other Podcasters

For increasing audiences, you have to network with other podcasters. You can be a guest on their podcast or you can invite them to your podcast.

Networking with other podcasters allows you to tap into their audiences. You can expand your podcast in front of its audiences and reach new listeners.

Also, you can establish your reputation and build your brand by networking with other successful podcasters.

So, network with other podcasters and enhance your credibility.

You may also read: Top 10 Characteristics of Potential Customers

12. Promote Your Podcast Through Social Media and Other Channels

Promote Your Podcast Through Social Media and Other Channels

Promoting your podcast through social media and other channels can help to build an online community, grow your email list, drive traffic to your website, and increase visibility, it also can be used as promotional material.

So, we can say that social media and other channels always provide opportunities to reach a wider audience and get new listeners.

13. Email Marketing

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that allows promoting your services, products, or content to targeted audiences by sending an email.

So, you have to send emails to your audiences to promote your podcast. And, It also can be an effective way to reach a large audience, build brand awareness, and generate leads and seals.

14. Call to Action

Call to Action

A call to action (CTA) is an instruction, button, or prompt that encourages an audience to do something at the end of an episode such as asking to subscribe, leaving a review or rating, sharing the content with others, etc.

So, In your podcast, you can follow this prompt that will help you to grow your audience.

Conclusion

From this write-up, I hope you understand that making engaging content is a crucial fact to gain a larger audience. Because that content will be promoted through various channels.

You have to do networking with other podcasters and must use CTA at the end of the show, send emails, create backlinks, etc.

So, create engaging content and focus on the value of your audience’s interests or needs, and deliver it in a relatable and entertaining way.

Now it’s time to get off, until we meet again, my dear reader, I won’t be happy. Even I can’t wait to share the next article. I’ll see you soon.

Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with us. Have a good one…