Ideas For Promoting Your Podcast On A Budget

Brett Johnson: Welcome to the Circle Sessions featuring the circle of experts. The circle of experts are Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs. Tanisha English Amammo of TJE Communications. And Don The Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson from Circle270Media Podcast Consultants. Well, each week, one of the Circle of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We'll focus on marketing, social media monetization, and website design and implementation of all of these. This week, Don is here with the circle of experts. He possesses creative powers beyond those of mere mortals. Don idea, the Idea Guy, rescues those in need of innovative ideas through his brainstorming sessions there at Five Buck Brainstorm. Don, thanks for joining me today.

Don The Idea Guy: Happy to be here, Bright.

Brett Johnson: I see a lot of posts on social media. I'm a part of probably three or four different podcasts Facebook groups, and they're always talking about their needing ideas for promotion. I think a lot of podcasters get into this and they think just because they put a podcast out there, people are just going to go crazy coming to them and listen to podcast because it's brand new and it's the best podcast and the best ideas and the best content. It's like shouting in a forest. Basically, you're amongst 3 million, 4 million other podcasts. So I wanted to go over this episode of at least looking at some promotional ideas for your podcast, but knowing that everyone has a budget and most times the budget is zero, you need to try to do as much free as possible. You came up with some really good ideas and I want to go over those with you and listener too. We may not get through this whole list, but if we do, great. But if not, Don's got tons of other ideas and we'll give you an idea where to get those as well after the episode is done. But you came up with a really interesting, right off the bat as a free podcast website. Talk more about that.

Don The Idea Guy: Right, so working with the assumption that every new podcast startup is working on a shoestring budget, I always look for low dough or no dough ways to promote, well, frankly, projects of my own as well. But for podcasts specifically, the place to start is you're going to have to have a page for your podcast anyway. The best way to promote is to have a place on the internet that talks about all the great reasons they should be listening to your podcast. Well, you can absolutely pay for hosting, pay for a domain name and host all that stuff yourself or with another vendor that's taking money out of your pocket. And especially at the beginning of a project, it's a lot of money coming out anyway because, you know, you bought the fancy microphone, right? So I said, start with a free podcast website. There are plenty of sites out there, card co that's Carrd co that's a great place to build a simple landing page for free to promote your podcast. But the one I'm most excited about is the newest one. Brett, I know you heard about these guys as well. There's a website host called Transistor FM. They do a good job of hosting podcasts and they have a lot of tools and utilities built into their hosting platform, which costs money to promote a podcast. But they rolled out a website with the great name Freepodcastwebsites.com. You can't get much more straightforward than that. They built out this platform simply for users to come in, create their own homepage for their podcast. You can include your RSS feed.

Don The Idea Guy: It's got built in subscription buttons for all the major platforms. It lists your episodes, it could serve as your primary podcast website. It's a great place to build your first one. But even if you decide that it doesn't have enough customization for your own site, it can still be out there as a free doorway to your podcast. Google judges websites by the quality of links coming out of a website and the quality of links coming into a website. So having this free website out there is going to actually give your podcast more Google Juice, more Findability on Google, just by virtue of having that page out there. So there's no secret upcharges. Certainly it's owned by a podcast hosting company, so you're probably going to get some promotional mentions, messages from that company inviting you to their paid service. But this is just a free podcast website. I really encourage everybody just to go out and take advantage of it while it's still out there.

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I think that's a really good idea because I think a lot of podcasters look at having a website, but it can be daunting, because if it's more than just their podcast episodes, they need artwork. You could maybe blog, you hear all the other items that can be put on a website. Don't let that stop you. Start somewhere and then build on it. That when you start to build content. Then, you know, you can go to another platform, a bigger and better website, that's great. Maybe start shopping around and looking at other podcasters on what they do and go, I could do that, I could do that. My contents that way. And it's been, you know, that upgrade to a bigger and better podcast website. If you ever want to go there, add some monetization opportunities too, which, again, we'll touch on in future episodes, but start somewhere. I totally agree. I think that's look at the free ones and see what you can do with it. At least just get out there for that free promotion with a free website.

Don The Idea Guy: And I'll be the first one to tell you to own the land that you're building your platform on. So definitely own your own domain. Absolutely. Host your own website. But when you're getting started and you're pinching those pennies this is a good thing to build up that will continue to return on the investment as you build out your custom website because that's always going to cost twice as much and take twice as long as you think it will. And having this thing out there that you never really have to take down is just upside. It's all frosting.

Brett Johnson: I agree. You mentioned also as a second idea, be a guest or host a guest. I think there's a great idea to do that. There are some caveats to that, but it's certainly an easy, inexpensive way to promote your podcast on a budget is to do those two things right.

Don The Idea Guy: And this is certainly an idea that I'm sure your listeners have thought of, they're probably actively pursuing. The thing I want to stress on it is to do it intelligently. You're probably thinking from your point of view, I need to get out there and promote my podcast. Well, the person you're trying to get on your podcast wants to promote their podcast or their project. The person whose podcast you're trying to get on as a guest wants to create great content for their audience. So too many people are kind of thinking about what's in it for them versus what's in it for the other guy. And certainly you have stars in your eyes and you'll be thinking about getting on the top rated podcast in your genre because of course, why not shoot for the highest level? But it's more likely that they're getting a lot more demand from guests who want to be on their show and from shows that want to host them as a guest than some of the upandcomers would be. So my advice is to look for people that are at your level or maybe even a little bit low. So I think when you're going to the top podcasters who they don't owe you anything and you want them to give you something, you're asking for a handout. But if you're looking at people who are at your level, trying to grow like you are, and if you're helping people at a lower level or maybe they're looking at you as somebody who's a rung or two above them on that ladder, it's a hand up rather than asking for a hand out. And they'll remember that. I still recall getting together with a guy who is just starting blogging like a decade ago. I'd been blogging for years. It really appealed to me.

Don The Idea Guy: A long time blogger, a modicum of success. You could find me if you Googled me, but I was by no means a superstar blogger, but this guy was just getting started. So he had nothing when you Googled for him. But we got together for several coffees, just bounced around some ideas, gave him my best advice for blogs and places to promote the blogs. You fast forward a few decades, he's way more successful than I am now. He's got three or four best selling books. He's got a platform that everybody goes to him when they're searching for a sales expert. He's got an annual event that he brings hundreds, if not thousands of people to every year. He's kicking my butt now, but because I helped him out when he was at a level below me, he returns my emails and my phone calls when I need to reach out to him. So remember that you can reap what you sow, but you got to spend some time. Sowing don't forget to plant some seeds that you can harvest in the future. The best way to do that with your podcast is bring on some guests who have a new project or podcast to promote or look for somebody who's got a new podcast and they may only have half dozen listeners counting their mom and their wife, but you could be a guest in an early episode. And the nice thing about podcasts is those early episodes stick around in the feed. And when somebody latches onto a podcast and they're interested, I know I do, I go back in the archive and I frequently go back and start with episode one. So get into the early episodes, do them a favor, but you're doing yourself a favor at the same time.

Brett Johnson: I think another good way of looking at this, too, is do some homework on the podcast you want to be a guest on, because it's not always true that being a guest on another podcast will lift the water for you. If they do no promotion on, they're just filling a guest slot and do no promotion around their episodes. I had that happen to me once, and I have no problem being a guest on anybody's podcast. Quite frankly. I think it's a great practice. I love having conversations about podcasting. It doesn't matter. It's just something I'll promote that I was a guest on, whether they promote or not. But I was on his schedule. My episode didn't fly for three months because he was just packing in tons and tons of guests and he promoted it pretty weekly. Quite frankly, it was very bad promotion. Again, I didn't care, but I didn't really do any homework. If I was really relying on that interview to do something for me, it wouldn't have done anything for me. So I think the homework is going to be done on you as a host as well as you should do some homework as yourself as a guest, too.

Don The Idea Guy: Absolutely not. Just the homework on the podcast to make sure it's a good match. You're not reaching out to somebody and asking to be a guest on a podcast. And it turns out that podcast never has guests. It's just one guy talking all the time and you're asking to be the next guest. A lot of times they get mad. You never sampled an episode of theirs. Point out one episode where I had a guest and you'll be my next one because they've never done that format. The other is you brought up a great point on don't rely on the podcast that you're on that you're a guest on to promote that episode. You need to take the responsibility, you need to own that to promote the fact that you were on their podcast. Now, if you're tagging them in the social medias, hopefully they're going to see that and they'll like and they'll retweet or share and you'll get some additional mileage out of that. But don't assume that they're going to do it. They may look at it as they've already done you a favor by having you on as a guest. On the flip side, if you bring them on as a guest, make it easy to help them promote the fact that they were on it as well, because they're not always going to promote that they were on your show either. It's your show.

Don The Idea Guy: It's your job to promote it. But if you can create some graphics for them or some text that they can easily tweet out that says that they were a guest, tune into this episode with the link. If you make it very easy for them to click a button and help promote their presence on your show, chances are they'll help you with that promotion, but you can't rely on it.

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I agree. Next, you mentioned a copromotion advertising endorsement exchange idea. Talk a little bit more about that.

Don The Idea Guy: This is kind of a step down from being an official guest on somebody else's podcast or bringing them on a guest for yours. It's possible that your podcast themes and topics don't align very well, but there's some audience crossover. A chance to invite them to participate in a co promotion could be a way to get both of you more listeners. So especially when you're starting out on a website, you may not have established sponsors or advertisers. One way to fill that space and still show people that you're open to those opportunities is to use a spot that you would have dedicated to an ad to some copromotion. So if I'm going to have my website and I'm talking about creativity, well, not every creativity creative idea I come up with is going to have to do with podcasts. But a lot of the people who might be listening to my podcast about ideas might be looking for ideas that they can use in their podcast. It's a great opportunity for me to promote Brett's podcast in my show and vice versa. Brett can promote my podcast in his episodes as more of a line item read or a promotional mention that, hey, if you're enjoying this episode, we're sharing a lot of great ideas. If you really want a bunch of other ideas you should listen to don the Idea Guys podcast. Insert link here and promote it. That way you both get value out of it it's a great way to promote people at, again, your level, maybe a level below. Certainly have those dream podcasts that you'd love to be promoted on. But if you're going to go after one of those folks, I'd look for an opportunity where they are promoting something specific, an annual course enrollment, a new book launch, a new course launch, and invite them to promote it on your show, either as a guest or as one of these co promoted advertising or show endorsement lines.

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I know. I've heard feedback from some podcasters saying, well, I'm going to lose listeners if I do that, and there's really no research to show that that's going to happen. I understand that you think that's the possibility, but you're giving your listener value because you've offered and suggested another podcast they should be listening to. You're not going to lose a listener because of that.

Don The Idea Guy: No. Brett, you probably have a stat off the top of your head. What's the average number of podcasters someone listens to?

Brett Johnson: About five.

Don The Idea Guy: Yes. So the person they're listening to is already one of those. Right. So if you can get a mention in their show, you're going to get added to their listeners. They're not going to remove one. It's not a one for one exchange. Well, if I promote Brett's podcast, they're going to stop listening to my podcast. That's not going to happen if you're generating good content that they find a value. People listen to more than one radio station, they use more than one streaming platform. They certainly listen to more than one podcast. I can't even tell you how many I subscribe to. Do I listen to the podcast every single week? Some of them I do. Sometimes I skip one. That topic or a guest doesn't interest me, and I'll go to something else.

Don The Idea Guy: Wouldn't you want to be one of those other channels that I might flip to if I'm an avid podcast listener and it's the same token, your audience sharing, especially if it's a non competitive piece? I'm selling ideas, you're selling podcast services. There's definitely an intersection of listenership there that we could be taking advantage of, and I'm sure it's the case with your listeners.

Brett Johnson: I agree. Yeah. I love this next idea you came up with promo inserts and library books.

Don The Idea Guy: This is an old school idea.

Brett Johnson: I love it.

Don The Idea Guy: Did you like this one?

Brett Johnson: I love it. I saw them going, that is totally like you said the first line, gorilla marketing. It just hit the streets. Do the right thing. I love it.

Don The Idea Guy: Yeah, this is old school marketing. Geek advice. I can't remember how long ago I originally heard it, but it continues to be an effective means of reaching people. So here's the basic idea, whatever your podcast theme is, so let's say it's a cooking show. You're sharing spicy food recipes or barbecue. You're talking about barbecue? Go to your public library, go to the section on how to Barbecue Barbecue Recipes, barbecue Sauces barbecue Grills and insert a promotional card. Go to a cheap website like a Vistaprint or a Moo and print up some postcards or bookmark size cards that talk about your show, my weekly show on hot sauce reviews, and insert those into the books that are affiliated with that topic. So all the barbecue books you're going to put in your Hot Sauce Review podcast postcard, when people check out that book from the library, they're going to feel something's in the book. They flip to it. They find that people always leave BOOKMARKS inside of book. I found a $5 bill. Somebody uses a bookmark once in a book at the library. So if you want to increase your odds of being found in there, put a $5 bill attached to your promotion card. But if I'm reading a book on barbecue, I've been interested in that kind of theme, I see your postcard on a Hot Sauce podcast review website.

Don The Idea Guy: This might be something that's worth checking out. I'm going to think that the last person who had this book out of the library tucked that in there as a bookmark that they want to refer to that page. So I recommend putting it into a section that might be especially appropriate to your podcast theme. So if there's a section on barbecue sauces, tuck your hot Sauce Review postcard into that section so it looks like somebody bookmarked it. Some people might say it's a little shady. I don't think it's shady at all. I think it's putting it's contextual marketing. You're in a book of somebody who's interested in barbecuing and you're sharing this promotional piece that they can either throw away, ignore, leave in place, or they might just take it out, save it, and check out your podcast. If you want to increase your odds, take a ballpoint pen or a Sharpie and on that postcard, write, oh, Barbecue Hot Sauce is on episode ten and underline it, listen to episode ten for barbecue Hot sauce recipes and put that in there. Well, now it's a tacit endorsement from somebody going, oh, it's not just about this podcast. That might be good, but this specific episode of the podcast should be a great one that I listen to. That'll be. The other thing I'll tell you is if you're going to write down an episode that you're going to recommend, make sure it's a good episode. Don't pick a lame one. Make sure you're recommending a good one.

Don The Idea Guy: So what do you think about that?

Brett Johnson: I like that because you bring that up. I got a book for Christmas as a gift from my sister, and I'm always lacking BOOKMARKS, always. And there was a bookmark from the bookstore that she bought it from. I'm going, oh, that's so nice. It has a bookmark. I don't have to go find anything. I love the idea because it really made me feel good. There was a bookmark in there. And I think to your point, I love the idea of writing down a specific episode and make it look like the previous reader had written down episode ten was great, or that sort of thing. I think it's a great idea. I think the bookmark design is probably even better than a four x six you think are the three by five. You think you want all that landscape. I think the bookmark is perfect. It probably will remain in that book because it's a bookmark.

Don The Idea Guy: Yeah, bookmark is perfect because it looks like a legit bookmark. But think about the things you use as BOOKMARKS. I've gotten brochures, I've gotten junk mail, anything that'll keep a page in there. So a bookmark will certainly be appropriate. But I think sometimes a folded over brochure, a number ten envelope especially, the more random the thing is, the less likely somebody's going to look at it as ad placement. Right? Yeah.

Brett Johnson: Three by five card you could three by five card. Yeah, you could put in there your best episode and you could put in there keep it going. What episode did you like?

Don The Idea Guy: Yeah, and I'll give this out there as well. If you think if you are somebody who feels that that idea is offensive because it seems a little evil mastermind, then be straightforward about it. Create a postcard that says, this is my podcast about hot sauces. If you're reading this book about barbecue sauces, you might love episode ten of my podcast. I invite you to take a listen. Do that. It's still putting your message in context with other information that that reader and somebody who consumes media on any platform. If you read, you're probably going to like a podcast. If you like podcast, you probably enjoy reading. There's definitely crossover audience there. So yeah, just try it. I'm telling you, you're going to get better results from it than you think you are. It's fun if you do the handwriting thing on the episode. See if your average listenership of that episode climbs at all.

Brett Johnson: Exactly. Yeah. Targeted social community sharing. Let's dive into that. Knowing social media is such a pain in the butt, but it's useful and it's free. So it fits all the categories we're talking about here. But it's a tricky piece.

Don The Idea Guy: It's certainly abused and a lot of times it borders on spam. So everybody who has a podcast is certainly already promoting it in their own social feeds. That's kind of the go to default. A lot of those podcasting utilities that you're using may automatically post out to those feeds and that's fantastic. But you're probably a member of a community that has to do with your podcast topic. So if you've got a true crime podcast, you're probably a member of a Facebook page about mystery writers. Those people who are also members of that community would probably be interested in your true crime podcast. They're probably listening to others as well. But if they knew another friend in their community had a podcast of their own, they're probably going to be more likely to listen to it than a new podcast they heard about that they've got no personal connection to. Now, promoting in those groups is tricky because it can be perceived as spam. The advice I would give is, if you've been a long standing member of that group, if you started a true time podcast, you've probably been a fan of this mystery writer for a while or this mystery book website for a while. You will have pretty good results if you reach out to the admin of that page and say, hey, I just started this podcast, or I have this podcast where I talk about how this mystery book that's very popular and the people in the chat are talking about it. I'm covering the true crime that inspired that story. Would it be okay to share a link to the podcast with the group when you reach out in advance? Those Facebook admins are always especially happy that you sought their permission.

Don The Idea Guy: They can be dictators at time and they take special glee, some of them, in deleting and hiding posts that they consider spam they did not get advanced permission for. If you reach out in advance and ask for it, you could end up being given current blotch to go ahead and do that anytime you want. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I see you post here all the time. Oh, I listen to your podcast, it's great. Or, I think that podcast sounds fantastic. Yeah, just go ahead and share anytime you want. And now you can promote that as long as you don't abuse it. Whenever you do have an especially connected episode that that audience would be interested in. Now don't just do that with one of the communities. Go out to the other communities and do the same thing. Now do something custom. Find the episode that matches that community better than another. If it's a Sherlock Holmes group that you're with, then talk about a true crime podcast episode that happened in England so that the folks following the Victorian Detective would be interested in that. Don't pick the Zodiac Killer in California.

Don The Idea Guy: It has nothing to do with the Schlock Holmes folks. So yes, it takes a little extra time to match those things up. Yes, it takes a little extra time and consideration to reach out to those admins, but that's why you won't be considered spam or booted out of a group. So I think it's a good match.

Brett Johnson: If you keep in mind the admin created that Facebook group to add value to the group, then whatever content you want to add, if you consider it and convince them that it's value added, then it probably will be approved. So look at it that way. You want to keep the conversation going versus shutting it down with some spam hit. They don't want that to happen, right?

Don The Idea Guy: And just to jump back to one of the earlier ideas, you may end up finding that the admin could be a great resource to be a guest on your podcast because they're running a Facebook community devoted to the same topic that you're podcasting every week about. And now you know that admin has a platform to promote their guest appearance on your podcast on, right? So there's a lot of crossover between these ideas, right?

Brett Johnson: Yeah. I want to go over one more before we end the episode. Create and promote with the Greatest Pits audio clips. Really good idea. I love this. Look back on what you've done. It's almost a great exercise on what you've done well and put it together. I love this idea.

Don The Idea Guy: Yeah, I mean, we all love the curated playlist, right? We're all consuming audio on different platforms. We listen to our spotify. How many of us shared their Spotify playlist this year? I mean, Spotify does a great job of saying, you listen to all these songs this year. I love the fact they created like this concert festival poster that had all the artists on it. That was really cool. Well, they didn't give you a list of all the songs you played this year, they gave you the ones you played the most. So if you take that idea and spin it towards promoting your podcast, look back at your favorite podcasts and not the entire episode, but the sound bite. What was a podcast? Maybe it didn't get a lot of plays, maybe it was an early podcast and you were rather long winded and it took you a long time to get around to the point. But man, when you got to that point, it was solid. Problem is, a lot of people might not listen through all of that to get to that one. Good point. But if you can take it out and make it a Greatest Hits clip and promote your podcast with that clip, hey, you do it on a regular basis.

Don The Idea Guy: Here's the best clip of the week. And play that clip. That one big takeaway that you had that episode, or the funniest bit, or the weirdest fact, or the biggest blooper, or the place where your guest had a sneezing fit. It's the most consecutive sneezes in a podcast. Take those clips, put them out there on social media, use those to promote yourself in the TikToks and the Insta stories and in YouTube shorts. It's another place to drop breadcrumbs that lead back to your podcast and your website.

Brett Johnson: I have one podcaster who wants me to keep all their outtakes. They want a good laugh themselves internally of all the goofs and all the things that they've done, because they usually are pretty funny. That just the tongue tightness and all that sort of thing. Never hits the air, never goes into a podcast, but they want to hear it themselves. So it's that concept of. Keep the good stuff, but do it soon after you've done every episode because you're going to forget. So just get a good folder of audio clips. They may never see the light of day, but do it because then you have and you don't have to go back and listen to full episodes and you have it in your audio file folder of all the stuff that you do want to cross promote whenever end of the year highlights, lowlights or ongoing.

Don The Idea Guy: And if you're doing an interview podcast, maybe you ask one specific question of your interviewee every episode. If you're asking them what their best business tool is, take that as your clip. Put together a series of clips with just the best business tool responses. And Tim Ferris did that in his podcast. So he's got podcasts that are way too long. I don't listen to them. They're 2 hours long. But in every episode, he was asking people what tools they use, among other questions. And he ended up turning that into its own book. He got a book deal out of it. And it's just a collection of all the tools people used. And that came specifically out of a greatest hits clip of his website. So do that. If you ask everybody what their favorite podcast is, maybe it's a bunch of short clips that'd be kind of meta. You're a podcaster who's promoting their own podcast by asking your guests what other podcasts are their favorites.

Don The Idea Guy: That's kind of funny.

Brett Johnson: It is really? Yeah. Great to offer that to your listeners as well as you finding out some about podcasts you didn't even know about.

Don The Idea Guy: Well, think about the shareability. I mean, if you did that and you shared that as a greatest hits clip, the first person I would notify is the host of that podcast that got named and go, hey, listen, one of my guests named their favorite podcast. I'm promoting it. Here it is. Here's a link to it if you want to give it a like or a share. And now all of a sudden, you're getting other folks to help promote your podcast because it benefits them.

Brett Johnson: This is what Don, the idea guy, does all the time. And we only went through half the list. We're going to do this and finish up the list and probably even more in a future episode. But if you didn't come up with one idea to walk away with, you need to relisten to this episode and think again about your podcast because we covered a lot of different ideas and different ideas that can help with different genres of podcasts as well, too. It's not just about the true crime podcast or the entrepreneur podcast. This stuff works for every type of genre that is out there for podcasts. But we'll have notes on what we talked about. But Don, how can they get a hold of you? What's the best way to engage you in generating some ideas for the listeners podcast for their podcast.

Don The Idea Guy: I appreciate that, Brett. Yeah, I tried to make sure I came up with a bunch of ideas that you could apply to every format. Yeah, I gave examples of some specific ones, some silly ones, but you should be able to apply them to just about any genre. Also pick one. We've rattled through five or six different ideas. Pick one. Pick one. Give that a try, then add another one, then try another one. Don't let the number of ideas overwhelm you. That's what I tell people whenever I do personal brainstorms for people. People hire me out at dontheideaguy.com where they can hire me for doing specific brainstorms on how to promote their own podcast or promote their own business or their book release. And that's a custom one to one private brainstorm session. The other place to get hold of a bunch of ideas that I come up with is based on the episode we had today. I've started a list on the substance platform called Five Buck Brainstorms. So if you go to Fivebuckbrainstorm.com, you can sign up for the free list there where you're going to get access to collections of ideas, typically a dozen ideas in every brainstorm.

Don The Idea Guy: This episode was based on a brainstorm I did called Podcast Promotion on a Budget It. So any listener here go to Fivebuckbrainstorm.com, sign up for the list, I'll make sure that this post is free for them to access, and you can take a look at the entire twelve plus ideas that they can use to promote their podcast.

Brett Johnson: Thanks Don. And thanks for following and subscribing to the Circle sessions from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants.