Creating a premium podcast will help you cultivate a loyal following and generate recurring revenue. However, in order to be successful, you’ll need to learn the most effective way to promote it.
Remember: you’ll be asking listeners to pay a subscription fee or register for an account, which involves commitment. This means you need to get creative with your promotional strategies, and convince followers that they will benefit from the membership. For instance, you might offer them a taste of your premium content with a free trial.
In this post, we’ll look at a few things to consider when promoting a premium podcast (as opposed to free one). We’ll then show you three strategic ways to advertise it. Let’s get started!
What to Consider Before Promoting Your Premium Podcast
A premium podcast usually offers extra perks (like bonus content or ad-free listening). Alternatively, it might only be available to a closed community.
Either way, access to premium episodes usually requires some investment from the audience. You might ask listeners to register for an account or pay a subscription fee:
This means you need to be more convincing when promoting it. If you have some content available for free, you’ll also have to show followers why the premium episodes are better.
Essentially, you’ll want to highlight the value and benefits of the paid content.
You might think that promoting your memberships to existing followers will be easy, since they’re already familiar with your content and may therefore be more inclined to make a purchase. However, if they’re happy with the free version, they might not see the point of paying for the content.
Therefore, you’ll need to ensure that your premium subscriptions include features that make your offer irresistible. These may include access to a members forum, live Q&A sessions, and downloadable material like ebooks and checklists.
How to Promote Your Premium Podcast (3 Ways)
Now, here’s how to promote your premium podcast to get more paying members and grow your income.
1. Create a Website
The best way to promote your premium podcast is to create your own membership website. This acts as a central hub for all your content, making it a crucial part of your premium podcast promotion strategy.
With a website, you’ll be able to leverage search engine optimization (SEO) to gain visibility in search results. For instance, you might write keyword-rich blog posts and pages along with publishing your episodes.
This will help drive more traffic to your website, which makes your premium subscriptions more discoverable.
Beamly.com makes it very easy to create premium podcast. It lets you build a podcast website and sell premium subscriptions. Once you set up an account, you’ll be able to automatically import your episodes from different podcast platforms. You’ll also get a customizable audio player and a blog.
Beamly comes with built-in membership functionality, so you won’t have to rely on third-party integrations. You’ll be able to restrict content access for your podcasts, videos, blog posts, and pages.
You can also offer multiple memberships (including a free option) and restrict access to individual content pieces (e.g. bonus episodes or exclusive blog posts) based on different tiers. You also have the option to bulk-restrict playlists, which is ideal if you want to create a fully private website.
2. Post on Social Media
Social media is a powerful platform for reaching a wider audience. It also provides ample opportunities to interact with your followers and build a strong sense of community. For instance, you can create a Facebook group and hold live sessions on Instagram.
First you have to think about where to post. There are different social networks at your disposal, but you must meet your audience where they’re at:
If you’re looking to cultivate a more professional listener base, LinkedIn is a good option. This is also ideal if you discuss industry-specific topics in your episodes, like AI in digital marketing or tech in health care.
Meanwhile, the younger generation tends to gravitate toward TikTok and Instagram. These social networks are perfect for sharing rich media like soundbites, videos, and episode teasers. They’re also powerful platforms for targeting people who are interested in lifestyle and educational topics.
The casual nature of social media also gives you the chance to inject some personality into your feed. For example, you could post behind-the-scenes footage or episode outtakes.
Plus, you can encourage user engagement through polls and surveys. These are great for collecting feedback, asking for podcast topic ideas, or running contests and giveaways.
For instance, you might ask your listeners what they’d like to see or hear on your podcast. You can then include these features or topics in your premium subscriptions.
3. Purchase Paid Ads
As mentioned earlier, implementing SEO practices will help you generate organic search traffic.
However, if you have the budget, you might consider paid ads. The benefit of this strategy is that you’re able to appeal to your exact target market, so the offer is more likely to make an impact.
For example, Facebook ads detect the user’s device and direct them towards Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. Thanks to sophisticated segmentation technology, your ads only get discovered by people who are highly likely to be interested in your podcast niche.
Google ads are a great option if you want to reach a wider audience, as you’ll be advertising on the most popular search engine. You can publish text-based ads, podcast reviews, and more.
Alternatively, you might like to advertise on popular podcast apps like Overcast. This gives you direct access to a community of people who are already listening to podcasts. Plus, your ad will gain maximum exposure if it appears in the “what’s hot” or “most popular” categories.
Conclusion
Podcast promotion is a key part of growing your listener base. If you’re offering premium content, you’ll want to make sure that your followers are aware of the added value and benefits. For instance, you might offer a free trial so they have an idea of what to expect from your memberships.
You can start by creating a podcast website and setting up your premium subscriptions. Beamly enables you to restrict access to episodes for different membership tiers. Then, you can promote your premium podcast by creating engaging videos on social media. You might even consider purchasing paid ads on Google and social platforms.
Are you ready to make money from your premium podcast? Get started with Beamly for free today!
