The Podcast Marketing Strategy Behind Entrepreneurs on Fire

Podcasts offer a unique opportunity for businesses to expand their marketing efforts and reach more customers than ever before. But like any form of marketing, you need a strategy to make the most of the opportunity. 

Podcasts have become increasingly easy to set up and therefore have become an increasingly popular platform for businesses to use. They offer an opportunity to:

• Increase sales
• Increase traffic
• Build trust and connect with customers
• Show off expertise and industry knowledge
• Promote new products and services

The EOFire Podcast is one of the biggest and most successful entrepreneur podcasts out there and one we at Ardor SEO have had the pleasure of helping to grow. 

EOFire is an example of how a business can use a podcast as a critical marketing tool while also having fun and creating long-lasting customer relationships. 

The Podcast marketing playbook

First, let’s look at some of the things we’ve used to execute a successful and profitable podcast marketing strategy and how you can adapt them to your efforts.

Set clear objectives

Every good marketing strategy requires clear objectives for success. Spend some time thinking about what those objectives are for your business. Typical goals of podcast marketing include:

• Attract new customers
• Generate new revenue
• Build a “brand voice.”
• Improve brand credibility
• Increase traffic to website
• Become an authority in your industry

Whatever your objectives, it’s helpful to list them out clearly with your team and put some numerical targets against them. How many new customers do you want to attract? What increase in web traffic would you like to see? Do you have a specific ROI in mind?

Clear and concise targets will help your team make the best decisions for your business throughout your podcast marketing strategy. 

Focus on quality

One of the best podcast marketing methods is to create great content. If you focus on creating excellent podcasts that add real value to your listeners, it’s hard to fail.

Focusing on quality means drawing a line between content and promotion. Find a balance that feels authentic and helpful. Never over-promote.

Use audience segmentation to your advantage

Segmenting your listeners will help you to target specific groups of your customers who have different preferences. Discovering what these segments enjoy can help you design content just for them, creating loyalty. 

It’s essential to listen to your customers and design content with them in mind. 

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Podcast marketing includes a lot of trial and error. But that’s ok. It’s how you learn to create even better content that produces the best results. Make sure you track the ideas that work and the things that don’t.

After a while, you will start to see a pattern for the type of content that yields the most interest and ROI.

Don’t be annoying

Podcasts are successful when the content is of high quality and engaging. If you use your podcast to barrage people with promotions constantly, it will soon lose listeners.

Instead, try to pick the best times to promote. Ask for feedback from your listeners to find out what is acceptable and what is not.

Building authority with podcast marketing

A business podcast is a unique opportunity for building brand authority by showing off your skills, expertise, and knowledge. This builds customer trust and credibility, which drives sales from those who are confident you’re the best in the business. 

Go niche

Your podcast must fall within a niche for your company to build authority. If your show talks about everything and anything, it’s going to be challenging to get noticed. 

Instead, niche down and make sure it’s the right niche for your company. Your podcast must have plenty to discuss too. If you can only get ten shows out of your niche, it’s not worth pursuing.

What makes you unique?

Determine what the unique selling point (USP) of your podcast is. What’s going to attract customers? What makes your podcast better than others? What special expertise is on offer that can’t be found elsewhere?

The most successful business podcasts that have attained authority have a strong USP, which allows them to continue to attract new listeners and build authority.

Keep learning

You may think you’re an expert within your industry, but true masters know they’re never finished learning about their work. Ensure that you always keep learning about your industry, learning from other experts, and keeping up with the latest developments. 

Not only will learning keep your podcasts fresh, but it will also help build your authority and establish you as an industry leader with their finger on the pulse. 

Get some credibility

To get credibility, you need credentials. Just saying you’re an expert isn’t enough. You have to back it up with official proof of said expertise. Credentials will help you to prove your knowledge and will ultimately help you keep learning about your industry. 

Quality content, ALWAYS!

You will hear this over and over, and that’s because it’s true. You must create great content that is authentic and engaging if you want a successful podcast and podcast marketing strategy. 

People want to tune in to great listening. They want to learn new things that they can apply to their lives and develop themselves. If you change people’s lives, you will win their loyalty for life.

Interact with your audience

Don’t be afraid of your listeners! Ask them questions. Ask them to take part in competitions. Ask them for feedback about the show. Audience interaction can help build a strong relationship between you and your audience, which will build respect and authority for your company. 

Bring in other authorities

Experts tend to hang out with each other. Podcasting is no different. You can ask other experts who are well known with established authority to come on your show. It’s a chance for them to promote themselves and their business further, so there is a good chance they will say yes.

Choose your authority guest carefully. Make sure your current listeners and customers also see this person as an authority first.

Be a guest for other podcasts

Do you ever suddenly start to see the same face on every youtube channel or website you go? That’s not a coincidence. It’s just good promotion. You can do the same thing by asking to be part of other podcasts that are relevant to your own or your industry.

Once people start to see you appearing on all their favorite podcasts, it won’t long until they begin to see you and your podcast as something worth listening to. 

Increase revenue and increase traffic through podcasts

Podcasts are engaging and easily shared by people online. Distribution of your podcasts and redistribution allows your podcast to get as much exposure as possible. 

But, how can a podcast increase revenue and boost web traffic?

Listeners become customers

As you gain more listeners and subscribers, you’re also gaining prospective customers. It’s then your job to ensure you keep those new listeners engaged and promote your product/service at the right time. 

Once you establish yourself as an authority in your industry and people are engaged with what you’re saying, it’s not too difficult to convince people they need your product or service.

Each podcast should have some promotion for your product or service, a special offer/sale, or anything else that can boost your revenue. Just don’t overdo it!

Podcast Sponsorship

Once you have gained a healthy number of listeners, you can find companies or brands who will be interested in sponsoring your podcast. What does this mean? 

It means that a brand will pay you to give them or their product a shout out during your podcasts. You may have heard other podcasters introduce the name of their show at the beginning, followed by “sponsored by Hertz Car Rental.” 

Podcast Sponsorship can be a good source of income and add to your revenue. You can negotiate the fees as you gain more subscribers. 

Podcast Advertising

Like podcast sponsorship, podcast advertising provides other brands opportunities to feature on your show, but this time, in the form of an advert. Many podcasts have very short adverts that are paid for and help generate income. 

Podcasting advertising rates are negotiable as you gain more subscribers and can become very lucrative. Don’t be tempted to accept too many advertisements on your podcast shows though as you risk losing listeners. This isn’t radio, respect your listeners!

Listeners want to know more

If you listen to podcasts regularly, you will have already noticed that some presenters plug their website or social media at the beginning and end of each show. If you create engaging content that encourages listeners to learn more about you and your business, you can easily direct them to your site. 

Podcasts are SEO-friendly

Having your podcast on your website helps search engines pick up the information on that page and rank you on their search results.

It’s crucial to optimize your podcast pages so that you get the best chance possible to rank on Google or Bing. 

You can also create single-page optimization (SPOs). These pages are specifically designed to promote your content using the best SEO practices available. SPO’s can generate vast amounts of traffic if executed correctly.

Social media posts bring in visitors

Once your podcast is up on your website and your chosen podcasting websites, it doesn’t stop there. You can then start to share your latest podcast via your social media channels. 

Again, if you create great content that’s worth sharing, your podcast can snowball on social media and even go viral (if you’re lucky!). Each time someone on Facebook or Twitter shares your podcast, it is seen by thousands and even millions of more people. 

According to AdWeek, 96% of the most loyal podcast followers share content with their friends. They also consume twice as much content as the average listener.  

Gain backlinks from authority sites

If your podcast is good enough and the content is valuable, you can be assured other websites will start to link your podcast and website on their website. Each time another website does this, it creates a backlink, which improves your website’s domain rating and increases your chances of new traffic. 

How to grow your business on podcast listings

If you create a great podcast, but it’s just sitting in your business website and nowhere else, it has little chance of success. Your podcast needs to be in all the podcast networks where your potential listeners are looking for great content.

Where are all the potential listeners? Unfortunately, they’re spread out over several different podcasting websites that you need to make sure you feature on. 

Getting listed is not difficult. It’s often a case of opening an account on each one and uploading your podcast. You can also use a podcast hosting platform that will distribute all your podcasts over all the various podcast listings for a fee.

Either way, it’s imperative you get your podcast out there and listed on all the most popular podcast listing sites such as:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• TuneIn Radio
• Blubrry
• PodBean Podcast App
• RadioPublic
• Castbox
• iPodder

The more podcast listing sites your podcast is featured on, the more opportunity for prospective listeners to find your podcast and download it. The more listeners, the more shares, the more exposure, and before you know it, you have a hugely popular podcast like EOFire. 

The ongoing success of EOFire Podcast

John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of the hugely successful EOFire Podcast. His podcast is built to discuss all things entrepreneurial. It includes invaluable advice for budding entrepreneurs and even veterans in the game.

The Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast, launched in 2012, and has since gone from strength to strength and continues to do so today using the podcast marketing strategy set out by Ardor SEO.

Today, EOFire is the most successful entrepreneur podcast on the planet, releasing over 2600 episodes, gaining millions of loyal subscribers, and interviewing some of the best in the business, including Tony Robbins, Barbara Corcoran, Jack Canfieldf, and Gary Vaynerchuk.