We talk to thousands of podcasters every month. And, lots of those podcasters ask us, “How can I get more listeners?” or, in other words, “How can I grow my audience?”

Today, we are outlining just that: how to grow a podcast’s audience using Headliner. In this blog post, we are showcasing our products to show you how Headliner promotes podcasts from beginning to end.

An Omnichannel Approach

An omnichannel approach is more than a fancy marketing term. It involves creating multiple, unified touchpoints for your audience. This includes things like messaging and imagery. 

Omni-channel marketing is a method where businesses promote their products and services across all channels, devices, and platforms using unified messaging, cohesive visuals, and consistent collateral. Omni-channel marketing ensures you reach customers where they are with a relevant and on-brand offer.

Hubspot

Marketers everywhere are using an omnichannel approach to grow their businesses and gain brand recognition. Podcasters should match that energy. Using multiple channels for your podcast is a smart investment for long-term success. It allows you to connect with your audience effectively. 

Why omnichannel?

There are TONS of reasons why omnichannel approaches work. Hear is a short list of some of our favorite reasons why podcasts should use an omnichannel approach:

  1. Reaches Diverse Audiences: Different people prefer different platforms and formats. By promoting your podcast across various channels, you increase the chances of reaching a wider and more diverse audience.
  2. Boosts Visibility: Each channel you’re on offers a unique opportunity to showcase your podcast. An omnichannel approach helps keep your podcast visible to your current audience and reach new listeners. This approach utilizes various mediums, such as social posts, emails, and audiograms. 
  3. Engages Your Audience: Being on multiple channels engages your audience and allows for deeper connections. It encourages feedback, discussions, and fosters a deeper sense of community around your podcast.
  4. Adapts to Changing Trends: The digital landscape is ever-changing (he-em, X formerly known as Twitter). An omnichannel strategy allows you to adapt quickly to emerging macro trends (…not TikTok dances) and technologies. Ensuring your podcast remains relevant and competitive despite living in a dynamic environment. Being on multiple channels allows your podcast to remain agile and increases the likelihood of long-term visibility and success. 

Now that we understand what an omnichannel approach is, let’s explore how you can start using it for your podcast.

How to omnichannel

The most complicated thing about an omnichannel approach, aside from the name, is just getting started. Understanding how to create an actionable plan is the most challenging part of the whole process. The first step in going omnichannel is making that decision.

Once you make that decision, you’re honestly ready to go. Hear are some things you can do to leverage an omnichannel marketing plan for your podcast:

  1. Use Social Media: Chunk up your full episodes and repurpose those bad boys! Share teaser clips or highlights on multiple channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. You can even use captions and comments to foster audience engagement while using hashtags to boost traffic across platforms. 
  2. Podcast Directories and Platforms (emphasis on the plural): Publish your podcast to more than one platform.  Improve your podcast profiles with interesting descriptions, keywords, and cover art to strengthen your marketing foundation. 
  3. Email Marketing:  Collect emails to send regular newsletters to your email subscribers. “Hear” you can offer up exclusive content featuring podcast updates, episode releases, or even behind-the-scenes content. To start your email list, just ask! You can ask your listeners to subscribe to an email list wherever you promote your podcast. 
  4. Collaborate with Other Podcasters: Podcasting is a community! Ask other podcasters to be on your show or guest on other podcasts. Doing this taps into a larger audience within your niche. You can even collaborate through a one-for-one program which allows for easy cross-promotion without doing any extra work! 
  5. Create a website or blog: Make a website or blog for your podcast. It helps people find your content, builds trust, and makes your podcast more legitimate. If you’re looking for an easy way to get started, just post your show notes and transcript. Voila – you have a blog post! 
  6. Press Releases and Media Coverage: Something big or cool happen? Share it! Write to podcasting forums, community managers, or even podcasting media outlets, like Podnews, to share your message while gaining more visibility. 
  7. Paid Advertising and Podcast Promotion: You can advertise your podcast on paid platforms too! Choose a budget, make a few clips or assets, and quickly attract new listeners. You can listen to more about that hear too.

Just like anything else, with podcast promotion, consistency is key. And remember, there is no “one plan fits all approach.” When using an omnichannel approach, choose platforms that are suitable for you, your podcast, and your audience – both new and existing!

Introducing the PodPod

Headliner has a podcast, but we also like to try new things and mix it up. So, what did we do this time? We made a PodPod!

The Headliner PodPod is a podcast about podcasts by people who help podcasts. The PodPod is set up like a mini book club. Every other week, we listen to a Headliner’s podcast and then we get together and discuss. You can check out the latest episode, hear, hear, and hear if you’re curious (check out our social hear too for more PodPod content)! (As you can see, we talk the talk and walk the walk by promoting our podcast across multiple channels.)

This next section will walk you through EXACTLY how the Headliner podcast used our entire product suite to market ourselves, leveraging an omnichannel approach. 

The pod-motional plan

We created this simple, 4-step approach to podcast promotion. Steps:

  1. Make podcast 
  2. Deciding where to promote 
  3. Make platform-appropriate assets
  4. Tell people!

Step 1. Make podcast 

Our team is 100% remote! We have a few pockets of people in NYC, New Jersey, Nashville, and even one Florida Man. So, we had to record this episode remotely. We chose to record and edit our podcast using Zoom + Eddy. 

Headliner has an API integration with Zoom. The integration allows for easy access to our new transcription and editing software, Eddy. This allowed us to record and edit our podcast super quickly and easily. Using Headliner’s AI, Eddy even helped us create some of the components assets for our promotional plan. 

Step 2. Pod-motion time! 

As a company, we exist on multiple channels already, so we didn’t really have too much work on that side. We just decided it made sense, given our audience and goals, to leverage ALL our existing platforms (thank goodness for the resizing feature!). 

So, once we had the full episode cleaned up, finalized, and transcribed, we took to posting! Our marketing person uploaded the video to our host platforms, YouTube, social media, and sent out a heads-up to our +100k email audience in our weekly newsletter. 

Since the PodPod functions like a book club, we also sent over the episode to the podcasts we talked about. This opened the door for free and easy cross-promotion within the podcasting community!  

3. Make assets

Since we are posted on multiple channels, we needed to create a lot of different assets. But that didn’t necessarily add a ton of extra work. We created ready-made content using Make + Eddy by Headliner.

The two are integrated so we could bounce between platforms to create the following assets:

  • Polished podcast
  • Full-Episode YouTube video
  • Transcript
  • Video clips 
  • SEO-optimized asset copy

4. Tell the people!

The final step for us was to let our audience know about the new episode. 

Leading up to the actual release, we used Headliner’s AI to make some fun teaser clips and content nuggets for our social media.

Next, we got to work scheduling out the full-episode release. We decided to release the episode to our Headliners first in our weekly newsletter. We like to give our loyal audience early access and exclusive news, so we thought doing it in a podcast format this week would be a fun shake-up!

After the newsletter was prepped and ready. We uploaded the finalized episode to our host platforms and YouTube. As an added bonus, the podcast episode was uploaded to some of our blog posts too, using our Disco Free widget.

What’s next?

In today’s world, podcasting has evolved from a niche hobby into a mainstream form of entertainment, education, and communication. But with millions of podcasts vying for attention, how can you ensure that your podcast reaches the widest possible audience? The secret lies in adopting an omnichannel approach for your podcast promotion. One of the easiest, most effective ways to get the omni-ball rolling is to use Headliner.

Headliner is paving the way for podcast promotion. We have designed a user-friendly product suite specifically designed to help podcasters effectively and easily grow their podcast while reaching new ears – all with an omnichannel approach in mind. If you are interested in more, check us out hear!