Good for you – you decided that a podcast was the next thing in your businesses marketing arsenal. That, or you just love a topic so much that you want to talk about it non-stop! Woohoo – go you! It’s going strong, you’re getting downloads, folks are listening and you’re creating an engaged and loyal audience.
But now what? Is it reaching your target market? Great? But is it selling your stuff? Earning you money? Don’t worry if it’s not. Just know that it could. Here’s how…
Use your Podcast as part of your sales funnel
If nothing else, I really hope you’ve got a good ol’ fashioned Call To Action (CTA) where your listeners can find it. If not, make sure that’s your next priority. Always signal the next step for your potential customer; whether it’s to a free thing, a paid thing, a mailing-list thing, a social thing… whatever! Just make sure to include them (clickable links where you can) in your main written blurb, each episodes blurb AND mention it during the recording itself.
At this point you can get all strategic and think about where you ultimately want your customer to go. Getting folks on your mailing list is a great way to capture that audience for your own. To entice them, consider giving away a bonus or exclusive episode to subscribers and create a sales funnel behind it. Ideally, your funnel wants to lead directly to a complimentary product or service that is perfect for your listeners.
Create a Complimentary Product
Add passive income to your business by creating a complimentary digital product that you can make once and then sell time and time again. There are so many ideas for this (check out this post to help), but my key advice is to ensure it is the next step your customers want to take. A digital download, course or content library might be just perfect, but often, memberships and subscription models work beautifully with podcast audience needs; a sense of community around your subject.
Alternatively you could sell aligned products or ‘merch’. Do this the old fashioned way by buying stock in, or the more passive routes of print on demand, drop-shipping or affiliate marketing.
Whatever you choose to sell to your audience, try stick to one product or service consistently across all of your podcast episodes (trust me, it’s less confusing and psychologically gets into the heads of your customers). Make sure to talk about it before, during or after every episode and as your CTA.
Memberships and Subscriptions
You can easily create a community around a podcast and charge for the privilege of being a member. You could share early access and bonus episodes, exclusive alternative versions/mediums of existing episodes, have a curated or exclusive newsletters or other content that only the members get to see. You could consider gating older episodes and charging members to access them, essentially creating a limited listening time on episodes and listeners then pay to access the back-catalogue.
You could consider a content upgrade specific to each episode or just simply build a paid-community where your dedicated listeners can hang out and talk to both you and each other.
Ask for Direct Support from your Listeners or Get a Sponsor
Direct support is asking listeners to pay to support you and your business; it’s that simple. You can do this through a direct PayPal or Stripe button as your CTA or an external platform like KoFi. Alternatively, you can get another company or business to sponsor your show. This can be done directly with the company or through an advertising agency. (here’s a great blog on how to get sponsors that are right for your audience)
Whatever you do, PLEASE Repurpose & Reuse
Your podcast content is just one in many of the marketing cogs you can have turning at any one time. In order to build a bigger audience, it makes sense to repurpose your podcasts into other mediums and onto new platforms that ensure you reach new people. This lets you benefit from additional visibility, multiple options for reaching potential new customers in their preferred format AND opening you up to alternative monetisation options too.
For example:
When recording, use video equipment and upload the video to YouTube.
Break the video down into shorter clips for Meta reels and TikTok.
Transcribe the main points and use this as a blog post (I love that Nick Loper does this for his Side Hustle Nation Podcast and blog!)
Use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog and thus, your website.
Later in the process you can collate blog posts and create an eBook and, if the content is the right fit, create a course.
Your possibilities are endless – so good monetise that fab podcast you’ve got! And join us in the Passive Business Academy to figure out all the other money you might be leaving on the business-table too 🙂
