Podcast Thoughts

Marketing a Podcast: Grassroots Style

March 2, 2018 8:22 am

Sarah Werner, host of Write Now and Girl in Space, is an experimentalist.

In 2014, she decided podcasting was the next form of digital media that she wanted to experiment with. She decided to start a podcast for writers called Write Now.

“That ended up doing pretty well,” she said.

Write Now has a steady stream of listeners. It was initially getting around 200 downloads per episode but now averages somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 and the show has had nearly 500,000 downloads since its start.

She described Write Now’s beginnings as “very grassroots”.

It all began with an email she sent out to family and friends.

“I said ‘Hey friends, I’m starting a podcast,’” she said. “I gave specific instructions. I said on this date, go to this link, and download the first three episodes. I gave very detailed instructions because a lot of people in my circle are not very tech-savvy.”

She went through her entire list of email contacts as well as Facebook and Twitter and reached out to people she thought would be supportive of her latest endeavor. As a result, her very first episode had 75 downloads.

She also started a Twitter account for her new podcast and created a WordPress site as well. With the support of her peers, her show ended up in the New & Noteworthy category on iTunes that year. From that point forward, she said that marketing was very experimental.

“You have to be experimental and intentional when you start out marketing your show,” she said.

The key to growing a large audience, Werner believes, is marketing. “It’s something that I think is a mystery to a lot of podcasters [audience growth] and the answer is marketing,” said Werner. “It’s something that I know a lot of writers and podcasters are scared of.”

Knowing where to jump into marketing and how to do that can be tough. Werner began by building an online community. She started a Facebook group.

“I started a writers’ group because it [Write Now] was a podcast for writers, so I had discussion topics that went along with it [each episode],” she said.

The biggest thing, that helped as she built her Write Now community was making herself approachable and keeping herself that way. She made a call to action at the end of every episode to tell listeners to reach out if they wanted to talk to her individually about writing.

“I would always answer emails, I said here’s my personal email address and Twitter,” she said. “And people started spending stuff. I was marketing through personal connection and that was coming from a place of wanting to help people and build a community.”

Werner said that the process won’t be the same in marketing a podcast for everyone. It depends on the content and on the purpose the podcast holds for the creator.

Financially, Werner didn’t spend much marketing her podcast. However, she did say it took up a ton of her time. “For some people their time might be more valuable for them, so they could try Facebook ads or Google Adwords ads, for me it was social media,” said Werner.

She has only ever done one Facebook paid ad for $60 when she first started out.

“I haven’t felt the need to do something like that since, but it’s an option,” said Werner. She also said Google Adwords are very easy to set up and can be somewhat effective.

It’s important, she said, that podcasters are making sure to not measure their success by a “vanity metric,” such as Facebook page likes or Twitter followers — just because someone likes a page doesn’t mean they are listening to the content that that podcaster is publishing.

The best way to market a podcast, she said, depends on what the podcaster is hoping to achieve. But one factor remains constant in all podcast marketing practices: knowing what the desired outcome is.

“Whatever your end goal is, whether it is getting listeners to your podcast or getting listeners to become a customer, just be very intentional with how you guide them [the audience],” she said.

Her ability to grow the audience for Write Now helped her as she kicked off Girl in Space.

“I have a very steady listener base with Write Now,” said Werner.

She had built up her email list as she continued with Write Now and when she was ready to launch Girl in Space, she reached out again via email, similarly to how she began with Write Now.

And her listeners crossed over.

“Podcasting is a cult of personality,” said Werner. “If they [the audience] like you, they’ll probably like the next thing you’re doing.”