PWH 19: Q&A: How to Market Your Podcast and Attract the Right Audience

This episode was recorded & edited using Riverside. I wanted to test out this platform that many podcasters are using, especially for interviews and to export for video. HOWEVER. My review of Riverside is that I had a lot less control over the editing experience and the audio (recorded using the same microphone) was less clear. I'll be testing more podcasting softwares for you guys to give you honest reviews! For now, back to recording with GarageBand :) Back to this episode...

 If you’re pouring your heart into your podcast but still wondering why it’s not growing like you hoped—it’s probably not your content, it’s your marketing. 

What You'll Get in Today's Episode:

• Why podcast clips might not be your best bet on social media
• Tips for promoting your show without sounding repetitive
• Smart strategies for repurposing podcast content into blogs, emails, and social media
• How to set podcast growth goals and measure ROI
• Evergreen marketing channels to invest in now
• What kind of content drives podcast growth (solo vs. interviews vs. series)
• Why your cover art and copywriting might be turning listeners away—and how to fix it

Resources Mentioned:

Gillian Perkins Podcast Marketing Episode

CONTACT & MORE RESOURCES

Project Start Your Podcast Workbook

Let’s Connect!
Tag me on your latest podcast episode on Instagram or LinkedIn – I’d love to cheer you on!

Podcast Inspo:

Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap

All In with Allie

Always Supporting:

Planned Parenthood

© 2025 Whistler Media LLC. All rights reserved. No content may be reused without written consent.

Transcript

Alexandra Susann: 0:00

If you're pouring your heart into your podcast, but wondering why it's not growing like you'd hoped. It's probably not your voice. It's your marketing. In this episode, we're breaking down the real, doable strategies to get your show in front of other people who need to hear it, and how to do it without burning out or selling out. Welcome to podcast with her, where we publish value driven podcast episodes every week together, and we have fun and learn so much while we do it. Hi, I'm Lexi, and my mission is to teach women how to create an impactful podcast and establish authority in their professional fields. That is what podcast with her is here to help you do, speak confidently, publish consistently, and create value with your voice. So consider this your accountability. Check. Where are you on this podcast journey? If you're right in the beginning. That's great. The first three episodes are here to help you get started already making episodes perfect. The rest is to keep you motivated to keep going. Welcome back. This is part two of the marketing series, and I'm so looking forward to answering some questions for you from the last episode. So let's jump right in, starting with question number one, how do I attract the right listeners to my podcast? This is a question that's so often asked on social media and with podcasting, and my answer to this, and especially what they've been teaching us in school, as far as strategic communication goes, the clearer you are about who you serve and who you're actually speaking with being specific, the clearer your message will connect to the that right audience, quote, unquote, right audience. More that you can tailor your marketing message to who you're planning on serving, the more you can speak to what they're going through and what the transformation is that they want, the better that you're going to attract the right listeners, but the right listeners might not be exactly where you expect, because I have always been on Instagram and recently Tiktok for marketing, and I thought that those would be the big platforms that I would be able to connect with people, and, you know, talk to my quote, unquote, right people. But I recently challenged myself to get to 100 downloads, and I'm so close, but I did double the downloads that I had already. And that night, I went on everything I did, everything that I could. In the morning, I had an email that said that someone had signed up for a podcast audit, and I was so excited to speak to this person, and when she told me where she found me, it surprised me, because it was from Reddit that She discovered me, and I'm not a Reddit user, but one night, that night, I spent 30 minutes and I searched up podcasting questions, and I just spent time replying to those podcast questions the best that I could, and then I signed off like, best of luck and like, hope that the show goes well, hope this helps, and I just put Lexi podcast with her.com and through that, the right listener to my podcast. You know, the person who wanted a podcast of her own found me signed up and is now one of my clients. So you never know where the right listener is. You might not expect where they come from, but as long as you're putting your message out there, you're sharing your expertise very authentically. The better you can do that, the more you can show and almost signal to that person that you are, who they're looking for. So get your messaging right and not right, but clear. The clearer, the more you can tailor your message to who you are, the more it's being tailored to who needs you. Question number two, what's the best way to promote my episodes on social media without sounding repetitive, I actually just listened to a podcast episode. I will share it in the show notes, and it was all about marketing podcasts. And he said that, obviously social media is a great way to organically promote your episodes. I. But that the clips from podcast episodes don't necessarily get the biggest turnover rate from people on social media seeing the clips and then wanting to listen to the rest of the episode. He said, what actually does the best to entice people to go find the episode and listen in is if you give like, your four steps to blankety blankety blank and you share a snippet like it's not a snippet of the podcast episode, it's actually just a snippet of the information that you shared, and you're sharing it on social media. You're recording a video specifically for social media. It's not a clip from your episode or audio from your episode, it's just the information that is educational that you're sharing. And then you say, if you want more, I did a deep dive on this in this podcast episode. Here is where you can find it. So this gets you out of that repetitive sharing a clip from social media or sharing the cover art of your podcast episode and saying, tune in. It's better if you can take a little bit of the information that's in your podcast episode out of it and repurpose it. Just film yourself giving those tips, and then say, Hey, I have a podcast. It's deep diving on this topic in this episode. Here's where you find it that specific information that you're giving makes it not sound repetitive, but I want to be very clear, it's okay to be repetitive, because our world is so busy that people aren't hearing your message over and over and over because you are saying it over and over, you might feel like it's repetitive, but because there's so many people on social media following hundreds of other people of other creators, that they see your message being repeated just means that you are solid In your beliefs. You are solid by what you stand by, and that's okay. And we need reminders like Mel Robbins and her book right now the let them theory, she's speaking about one principle over and over and over. And it's repetitive, for sure, but it's the reminder that I need every time I tune into her content, that this is something that I need to practice, because we all need to practice these things. And if you're giving a principle on whatever is in your industry that would be very beneficial to them, it can be repetitive, like think about nutrition or working out. Like you don't learn about it one time and then keep on going. And you learned it one time, and then it was everything you needed, and more you know that you need to work out. You learned that in Fayette and elementary No, you need reminders. You need motivation. So keep it coming. Be repetitive. Change up your messaging a little bit. Don't use the same video over and over and over and over, but be repetitive in what you believe for, in what you stand for, what your values are, what your mission is, so that people can speak to your message, and when people ask who is best in that industry, they know you because you're so solid in your stance on things. I hope that helps next question, how do I repurpose my podcast content into other forms of marketing, like emails, blogs or reels? I went over this a little bit, but I would definitely take the notes from your episode, what you looked at in order to record that episode, and then refilm some things for reels or Tiktok. And then I had no idea how good it would be to be on Reddit, but just taking what you learned from that episode that you just spoke on and somehow putting that into messaging on Reddit or replying to comments or something to do with your industry. Get into a Reddit channel for that and go HAM like that's a great way to just repurpose the knowledge that you have into another marketing place that I was not expecting. And then for emails, we are going to have the next two episodes be all about email marketing. It's something that I'm learning right now. For the last few weeks, I've been studying up. So that I can give you more of a deep dive. And the plan is to walk through creating an email, a landing page, a sequence, and take you along for that journey. So we're gonna go deep into email marketing and how to repurpose your content from the podcast to emails and actually get people to listen to your episodes from emails, so that is coming up in the next two weeks. And then blogs. We talked about this. If your show notes get too long, repurpose it into a blog. You can always repurpose your content to a blog. I love using chat, GPT or something that helps save you time by taking your episode transcript and then just asking it to beef it up, asking it what other questions your audience might have from this episode, and then answering those. But you can totally ask chatgpt to reformat your episode to a blog or a few blogs, and then post those on your website or on sites like medium.com I was not expecting I was really surprised by how, when I challenged myself to get a certain number of downloads, the fear of who saw my episode went away because I had a goal now, and it didn't matter who, who thought I was. Cringy, you know, I got on Facebook, and I've posted a few times about the episode. I got on snapcha, and I posted it Instagram. I published, I mean, it's places where people have known me from childhood, and I'm just sharing what I'm up to, and having that number that I wanted to hit, took the focus off of the external people and put it back on this podcast that I want to show up for, and have other people show up and share it. So that was really a learning curve. So I highly recommend having a milestone and going after it, because it can change how your attitude is about marketing. Next question, Should I run ads for my podcast? And if so, where do I start? This is something that I have not done, and I personally, if something looks like an ad on Instagram, I and a lot of other people I know, scroll away immediately. So if I learn more about ads, I will absolutely share that with you, but for right now, don't worry about it. Do organic marketing. Next question, how do I measure if my marketing efforts are actually working? This is such a great question. When you are measuring something, you need to have the initial numbers, and then you have the number that you want, the number that you are looking to see. The next goal, the next milestone. So for me, that next milestone is hitting 100 downloads, and the next one would be 200 and then 300 you know, we're going up in increments like that, so that it's not all or nothing, but that I can actually start climbing towards it. So don't make it huge, but maybe the number that you want to see is sales. That might be a better place to determine if your ROI of podcasting is really worth it. And for me, being that, I just signed two clients into podcast design and management, I'm really excited about the ROI now we're just about to 20 episodes, and I have enough proof that this is just getting started, and I already have people who really want this service. So if you're not getting a response from people who want more from you, more of your offers, your services, whatever you can teach them, then the ROI might not be as great. So check out your leads, your sales, or how it's growing your brand. And I would give it a long term view of measuring in quarters. You can start quarterly and see how the podcast is benefiting your quarterly sales, but really take some time. Don't give up on this after a few months. Take a year, two years, three years, and keep on going. Make it a long term commitment. So short answer, determine what you are measuring. Is it leads? Is it sales? Is it your brand growth? Is it. How people are reacting to you. Is it the downloads? What are you measuring? And then take it month by month or quarter by quarter and see how things are improving. Next question, how can I grow my podcast without spending hours every day on marketing. This is a great question. It's something that you should always have top of mind. And people like Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher have talked about this for ever. It is getting the Evergreen pieces of marketing out there on sites like Pinterest. Pinterest is part social media, part search engine. So if you're repurposing your content into blogs that you can share a link, or you can create pins on Pinterest that have related topics to your episodes. That's a really great way to create evergreen content, meaning that it doesn't die. And same with YouTube. The videos on YouTube don't go away. They're there for ages. I know those YouTube videos that we watched when we were kids, and we can still pull them up and crack a laugh, and it is so great to do that with a simple search. So make sure that your episodes are searchable, or your pins or your blog posts are searchable based on the topic, and the more searchable we've talked about SEO, but making sure those keywords and those key questions are within your content, so that when people search them, your answers to those are coming up. I hope that helps next question, what kind of content actually drives growth? Solo episodes, interviews, a series or something else? This is a great question that takes some experimentation. So for me, I was really surprised when I started to look at the analytics. And I don't think that 20 episodes is necessarily a large enough chunk to really see what's resonating with people, yet I would challenge you to create consistently and test out these different content strategies and see what's working. So for me, all of my episodes have been solo so far. That's very intentional. I don't know when I will add in guest interviews, but it'll happen sometime, and they might end up being bonus content or or not. I don't know. I haven't decided yet, but guest interviews are really great for cross pollinating your audiences. Solo episodes are great for positioning yourself as the expert on the topic, and for me, podcast with her right now is really helping me to learn all of these ins and outs and these questions that people have about podcasting so that I am the expert now, so these solo episodes are not driving growth as much, but for me, it's driving personal growth. It's driving growth in how knowledgeable I am in this industry. So just determine what kind of growth you're talking about. If it's if it's growth that has to do with your audience, for sure, interviews are going to be great because it's pulling in another person who hopefully has an audience. Series are really great because people are expecting to go through more episodes. They're looking forward to coming back and getting the next step so determining what kind of growth you want and when, and go after it with a certain style, see how it goes, and then reiterate. But for me, what I'm noticing in my content right now is that people like episodes that are over 30 minutes my most listened to episode is almost 50 minutes long, and it was a part two, which I was surprised by, because less people listened to the part one than the part two, and this shows me that they were looking at how long the episode actually was and determining the value that they're going to get with the length of the episode, the titles were almost exactly the same. So everything else, except for that, it was a part two. It was really interesting to see. And then some other things that I've learned about my podcast that you can determine. In with your own audience is that episodes that have words like plan or have steps in them, or have a how to in them, are the most clicked episodes. My audience wants a plan. They want help content creating. They want step by step guidance, and that's great because that's what I'm here to help with. So notice what titles your audience is clicking on the most which of those episodes have the most downloads, and add that into your vocabulary. And how can you create more content around that next question, how do I make my podcast stand out in a crowded space when it feels like everyone has a show? Now, great question. A lot of people do have podcasts, but they don't show up consistently. I've seen so many creators start a podcast and then I've gone to their episodes and their last post is like three months ago. Then it's so disappointing, and I get so sad, because consistently is how you stand out in a crowded place. The longevity of it is how you stand out. And make it feel like you are confidently showing up every week, and you're educated and you're an authority on this space, because if you start and stop you, you discount yourself. You lose credit in the podcasting space. It makes it show. It makes it seem like it's just a hobby, when in all reality, you can make this into a business, and I know that there's saturation in the podcast place, but just think about if a musician thought that they shouldn't release their song because The music industry is saturated. That's the same thing, because the more specific that you can make your show about a certain topic, the more that it's going to attract the people who need your show. So my tips are to show up consistently, show up well, with quality. Make sure that your audio sounds good. I'm actually recording with Riverside today, and I'm going to test and see if it's better than when I better or worse than when I just record in garage band. So we will see. We're testing out a different platform today, so quality and making sure that your cover art has something to say, that it's not just the title. Maybe it's the title, if the title has enough to attract, if it says enough based on what your audience is looking for, but maybe it doesn't, and then maybe you have to have some sort of a sub headline or headline or like a three almost bullet point, whatever you can do for your cover art to actually show what you're talking about, or to make it more attractive to those people who are looking for you. That makes it stand out, if it's just a graphic made in Canva that has basically just your show title on it. Please just give it a little bit of a boost. I'm not hating on Canva. Canva has some great elements to design. Now. Just give it more of a picture, a background, something else to make it stand out. Make it say more of what you want it to say visually and with your message. Those things help for sure, and I will keep you posted as I keep going next final, last question, what are the first things someone sees that make them hit play or skip my show entirely such a good question. Let's start with cover art. Make sure that everything looks clear. There's nothing fuzzy. I have seen people design really poor cover art because their picture is fuzzy, or it was just exported weird and it just didn't look good. There's something called widows in when you're typing text and just one word cuts off. So my suggestion is make sure that your podcast title fits in one or two lines and there's not just a hanging word out there. You know, make it I would look up design formats like look at a page layout. Look at other podcasts on Spotify. Look at whatever platform you're on Spotify, Apple. Look at the top charts. See how they're laying out their cover art. Is there a person in it? Is there a face? Is there more on the topic? Is there a subheading? Does it have the host name? What makes the cover art stand out to you? Is it the colors? Is it the lack of colors? What is it? What makes it different? And then next, Episode, titles, hooks and headlines, you guys, copywriting is a huge part of podcasting. If your headlines are not speaking to who you are trying to get to click on that episode, then, is failing. We spent all of April talking about copywriting. So go back to those episodes on hooks and headlines. Make sure that the start of your this is the next point of it. Make sure that the start of your episode, much like social media, has a hook so that it hooks people into the episode. It delivers straight from the headline that you have, aka the title, and the first sentence that they listen to, show them that they clicked on the right episode. Because you are delivering what they're looking for, you're speaking to a problem that they're having. You're delivering the information that they need to get the transformation and to get on the other side. Yes, and then descriptions. Make your show notes clear. Make that hook top of the show notes, so that if they just click on the episode and read it first, it's similar to what they're looking for and what they will hear in the episode. Don't make it click bait. Make it all speak to the same topic. The first impressions are everywhere. The first impressions are not only when they hear your voice, which I hope the audio quality and what you're speaking about fits the episode title, but it also the first impressions. Are your cover art, are your episode titles. Is the title of your podcast, and is the description that they're going to look at, if it's all together around the same topic. That means you're aligned. That means that you know something about this topic. That means that it's not amateur hour, that you're showing up professionally and with quality, putting this podcast together, and that is how you get consistent community showing up because they know that you're the expert on this topic, and they're gonna come back for more every single time that you promote an episode that they are looking for answers to. So that is my suggestion for first impressions on the show. I'm so glad you tuned into this episode and got some more details about a marketing overview and how to attract your specific audience. And definitely go check out the hooks and headlines shows to have more insight into copywriting. And I'm so glad you were here today, and there are always ways to contact me and more resources in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Until then, go and value your voice. Cheers.