Episode 15: 5 Things to Include in Your Podcast Growth Strategy
If you don't already have a podcast growth strategy, this episode is for you. I'll share 5 things to include in your podcast growth strategy that will actually move the needle on your downloads and start to create more conversions in your business.
You'll learn:
How to plan your content
How to convert your audience to clients
Strategic promotion
Creating habits with your audience
Upping your listener engagement
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Good Chat Media acknowledges the traditional owners of the land where we work, live and record the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and we pay our respects to elder's past and present always was always will be Aboriginal land Hey, I'm Cass, the founder podcast production agency, Good Chat Media and welcome to Good chats. Good chat is a podcast with a holistic approach to business and marketing. And with the help of some super special people, I'll be spilling all the secrets about boosting your brand building credibility and connecting with community through podcasting. Let's get into the episode.
Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of the Good Chats podcast. It is your girl Cass and I want to chat to you today about something that's really important. If you've got a podcast or you're about to start a podcast and you don't have a growth strategy in place, unfortunately, I don't think the podcast is going to be as successful as it will be if you do.
Now, when I say growth strategy, it sounds intimidating, but it's not at all. It's really just a plan and a podcast growth strategy is a plan to achieve your goals for your podcast. Now, a podcast growth strategy might refer to a set of tactics that are aimed at increasing your audience or increasing their engagement and more downloads or the overall success of the podcast.
But for a lot of you who are listening, I know most of you are business owners and in my books and what I teach is the importance of the growth strategy being the center of where we go from to have more money coming into your business from your podcast and using your podcast as one a master form of content but then two Part of your sales funnel to then convert your listeners into paying customers.
So what does it actually mean? So realistically, when people come to me for a growth strategy session, I want to know a few things. One of them being, what are your goals? What do you want to achieve out of this podcast? The next being, what do you like about your podcast? And what do you enjoy doing? What lights you up?
And the third is, what do you not like about your podcast? What do you want to change? What do you want to improve? And we go from there. Because there's no point in me whipping up some, you know, elaborate strategy that you're not even going to do because it doesn't align to what you want to do. Who you want to target and it doesn't align with the goals that you actually have set for yourself Now you might not have thought about exactly the goal of what your podcast Is for me as I always talk about it's about conversions and when I Meet people and they say, Oh, you know, like I want to work with you because I listened to your podcast.
I know that you know what you're talking about and that's why I want to work with you. I'm like, perfect. That is my job done. That is my goal hit. There are some metrics around these goals that of course are really important. But there's a balance of quantitative and qualitative metrics to track. So when we go through the growth strategy sessions, another thing that I ask is where they're currently marketing their podcast.
Because if they're saying that they're currently marketing it on Instagram, and they want to start TikTok, but they don't really know what kind of content to put onto TikTok. That's where we really go in and we're like, okay, who are your audience? Where do they hang out? What do they want to know? Because if we know...
Who you're targeting and we know what content you like creating. That's where we find that balance of what marketing is, what comes naturally to you, what is a little bit more challenging, what can we work on and how can we connect with more people and make it a space where more people want to join and tell their friends and let them know that you're the one that they should be listening to.
So I want to talk to you about five of the elements that we consider when developing a podcast growth strategy. Now, I'm not saying that this is everything and I'm obviously not going to give away all my secrets, but these are the five things that you can do at home today or in the next week that you can create your growth strategy with.
Okay, so let's go. Okay. So the first one that we want to go through is the actual content. I like to go through what content people are creating because We want to actually uncover why it's relatable to their audience. So right now for me, I'm creating this episode because I know that people want to grow their podcast.
That's why they come to me and having this free content out there, letting them know what they can get. from me and grow my personal brand at the same time is perfect. So, creating high quality, engaging and valuable content is crucial for your podcast growth. You want to make sure that your audio sounds really good so that people continue to listen.
You want to have good hooks. You want to be able to be clear and concise. And if you can't do that, get someone to edit the podcast so that you don't sound silly. I'm not the best speaker. I'm not saying I'm bad, but I also know how to edit the podcast so that I sound really great when I'm speaking on the podcast and I don't have to worry about, oh gosh, I said um, oh gosh, I, you know, I stumbled my words.
See, like I just did there. Normally I would cut that out, but I'm keeping it in there so you understand what I'm speaking about. So I think going through and actually mapping out what the content is that you're going to be creating so that you can actually make sense of why you're doing it. The why is always important.
You don't want to be putting out podcast episodes just to be putting out podcast episodes because people know when it's not authentic. You don't want anyone to go, oh, that was boring. And not every subject is going to be for every person, but if you can kind of gather the information of what your audience wants and being able to provide really either entertaining or informative or inspiring content that's going to keep the listeners coming back, that's where you want to focus.
So, have a think about what's coming up in your next 10 weeks and what episodes you can do to make sure you're matching that with your episodes that you're creating. Make it purposeful. The second one is to get a really clear understanding of your target audience. Now, I understand that this is something that we talk about all the time and it's honestly not the sexiest topic.
But it's the one that makes a hell of a lot of sense. And the way I like to look at it is not just asking who they are, where they live, how old they are. It's more like understanding their interests and preferences. Whether it's like they like to be on Instagram over TikTok. Okay, cool. Let's ramp up the Instagram marketing then.
Let's add more story posts. Let's remind them to go and listen to the episode. Let's go live with our guests that week. Let's like find ways to build up the hype in the areas where your audience is already engaged so you're not doubling down on creating content that's not going to work. Really focus your efforts on where things are already working and then ramp it up.
When it comes to your audience. I also really want you to think about what are the pain points that they're having and how can you fix them? Because realistically, that's what a business is there for. They're here to say, Hey, I know you're feeling this way about this problem, and I've actually got the solution for you.
When people know how you can help them, of course they're going to come to you for help. You've been able to make them build trust with you, and you're going to be able to convert them from that. So have a think about how you can create the content that matches that. Okay, number three. I know we just talked about marketing to your audience, but this one is more about...
being strategic in the promotion of the podcast. So starting where your current audience is already engaged and then doubling down on that content. But then also how can you do it a little differently? How can you repurpose that content? When you plan your episodes, if you write maybe like five or six dot points of what you want to talk about, there you go.
That's six different posts for you. podcast episode as a whole. Plus, you can do one as an umbrella topic. Plus, you can do one with your guest. Like, so many options. I just told you eight things that you could do there, but you could do 20, if you wanted to. It depends on what works for you. Don't ever do anything because you quote unquote should, because I'd really don't believe in that.
Do what lights you up. What makes you feel good. If going live with other people is what is going to work for you and get traction on the episode with that person, then do that consistently share episode highlights and engaging snippets, and even shares teasers before the episode goes live, because you want to generate that curiosity.
To then be able to attract new listeners. Someone who does it really well, and I love talking about this podcast because it's my favorite one probably of all time, and don't hold this to me, but Call Her Daddy does a really good job of generating curiosity because their team will post teasers. of Guess Who The Guest Is, and that is a really powerful thing because it's starting the conversation early and then also it's then able to be teased out completely and it'll make people want to listen when the episode goes live.
So I really think stick to maybe one or two, two to three. Platforms where your audience is currently hanging out and engaged and then really go in on how you can make content that will work for that space. So if you're on Instagram already and you're like, well, we want to break into TikTok as much as people think, Oh, we can just post the same thing.
Unfortunately you can't, it's the same thing as like, Oh, you can't really post the same thing on Instagram as you can on LinkedIn. You can, but it might not do as well with the audience that are on there. Because LinkedIn is more of a professional platform. Whereas Instagram is more of a lifestyle and aesthetically driven platform.
So if you're wanting to go on to TikTok, it's not really about aesthetics on TikTok. Sure, there are some aesthetic videos that people use CapCut to put them all together. But realistically, TikTok's made for the real. And I don't mean real as in an Instagram reel, I mean R E A L. It is more of a unfiltered, raw, real platform.
So if you're going to go on there and talk about what your episodes are about, you need to do it in a different way. So look at what other people are doing and take inspiration and make it your own from there. The next thing that I would say is basing your podcast on a consistent release schedule. It doesn't actually matter what schedule you go off.
If you don't want to do a weekly schedule, you can do fortnightly. That is no problem, but you need to make sure that your audience knows when their episodes are coming out, because that's where you're going to be able to maintain your audience engagement and loyalty. And it really does help build that anticipation and creating the habit for your listeners to be able to say, Okay, every second Wednesday, you'll hear me in your ears.
That is the way that you're going to attract new audience members as well, because they're going to be able to tell their friends about it on the day that it happens, and they say, Okay, it comes out every other Wednesday. And that's going to make it really easy for them to remember, Okay, cool. Every other Wednesday.
See you then. Just make it easy. And then the last one is to really care about your community. And fostering a sense of community and connection with your audience is actually really easy. If someone messages you saying that they loved the podcast, encourage that listener feedback. Encourage people leaving reviews.
Encourage the questions. Because those questions can help shape your next episode. Respond to your comments, respond to your messages, respond to your emails. Build a relationship with your audience members, because once you build that personal connection with your listeners, they can become clients and.
It encourages loyalty when you're actually responding back to them because they're going to feel special. Who doesn't want to be made to feel special? And when someone feels special, of course they're going to tell their friends about an episode because it's not just about the content, it's the way you make people feel.
And when you make people feel special, that's when they're going to tell the world about you. You get it? That's all I've got for you today. That's my cheat sheet on your podcast growth strategy. Now, I've said it once, I'll say it again, we do growth strategy sessions for you that will be specialized to your goals, your metrics, your audience, your podcast.
So if you would like to do that, there is a link in the show notes to book that session in because each strategy is going to be different depending on those qualities of your podcast. I would also encourage you to monitor your analytics. your growth metrics and just continue iterating your strategy based on your audience feedback and the data analysis so that it can contribute to long term success and not just a quick, Oh my gosh, I got number one on the Spotify charts.
Cause a lot of the time people get that from really good growth strategies or from being an influencer with a huge audience already that is ready to hear what they're doing. So they've already built that trust. I've said this before. If you are a business owner, you don't want to be an influencer and that is okay.
I don't want to be an influencer. I want to be able to help people make more money in their business and make awesome podcast content that all of their following wants to hear. That's it. All right. I will chat with you next week. We have a beautiful guest episode and I can't wait for you to see who it is.
Bye
We want to say thanks so much for joining us for another good chat. We would love if you would help us with our 2023 goals to get to 100 ratings and reviews and then send this podcast on to someone who you think will love it just as much. Connect with us on LinkedIn Instagram, my good chap media. I will chat with you next week. Bye. This podcast was produced by good chat media.
