Where to Invest in Your Podcast
May 10th
When you have limited resources, planning where to invest in your podcast can prevent you from spending more time and money than you can afford…
In a previous article we told you how you can earn money from your podcast, but one thing we touched on only briefly was how important it is to think about what you are investing in your show. This is especially important if you are an independent podcaster, and even more important is thinking about where you are investing your time and money.
Broadly speaking, there are three main places you can invest in your podcast: producing the actual show; marketing your podcast; and building a community around your podcast. It is likely that you do all of these things already, but you will no doubt focus on some more than others and might not have separated them in your mind.
Here are some suggestions of where you can invest in your podcast – and where you perhaps don’t need to!
Marketing
Investing in the marketing of your show will help you build a large audience, but marketing can be a rabbit hole of costs! Set a budget and stick to it.
£ Low
If your budget for marketing is small, use it to target people in the right place. Find shows that are similar to yours for trailer swaps and shoutouts, make sure your show is searchable with SEO and suggest your show for themed features in podcast apps.
££ Medium
If you have a bit more budget, consider hiring someone familiar with podcasts to do some marketing and approach the press. You want to reach potential listeners in the right places, and hiring someone with podcast knowledge will make it more likely you get featured on podcast apps or in places like podcast review columns.
£££ High
Perhaps you have a massive budget and want to build a big audience – it is worth spending some money on advertising your show to the right people? Many podcast apps offer the chance to buy advertising, and this can be a really good way of building awareness for your podcast. However, to reach big numbers it can take big bucks!
Community
Listener numbers are certainly not the only measure of success for indie podcasts. If your show is more niche, or talks about issues that are relevant to a particular demographic or community, you might not get a big audience but you can get a dedicated audience.
£ Low
Start with your current listeners, and build up conversations with them on different platforms. Make sure you use your podcast to speak to them and thank them, and take the time to reply to comments and questions on social media. You can also include your audience in your show through your call to action, and ask them to respond to questions.
££ Medium
If you want to spend a little more on things for your community, a great investment is merch. Merchandise is often a bit of an upfront investment (although you can find companies that print-to-order) but it can be a really great way of giving your show and community a shared identity. Another thing that takes less cash but some time is doing live streams or a Q&A online for your community.
£££ High
If you have a really strong community feeling around your show, an in-person meet-up can be a fantastic way to meet your listeners, and thank them for supporting you. This could be based around a live show, or it could be a social event that is related to your topic – for example a hike for a podcast about hiking.
Production values
The most obvious part of making a podcast is – making the podcast! Investing in the actual content of your show makes a lot of sense. You can invest a lot of time and money into making a really professional podcast with the best equipment and paid team, but if your show is a side hustle, it’s okay to spend less on production costs.
£ Low
For small budgets, it is really worth spending a bit of time to develop your show into the best version of itself. Check out our free resources to help enhance your own production skills and spend a bit of extra time script and edit your podcast together. The International Women’s Podcast Festival is another great place to learn more about podcasting, with workshops and classes to help you create and grow your show. You’ll find some of the sessions from the last festival on our YouTube festival playlist.
££ Medium
If you are looking to level up your show, it’s worth investing in your sound quality – you can buy good microphones, but podcast studios are a great place to invest some money. They have higher quality equipment than what is generally available, you have access to engineers, editors and producers, and you’re going to get the best audio possible without too much effort on your part.
£££ High
If you want to make your podcast as professional as possible, it is really worth investing in production support to elevate the listening experience. Recording in a studio and hiring an editor is great, and don’t forget to put as much thought into the pre-production. Booking a consultation is a good one-off investment to develop your ideas, as well as help you structure and format your podcast.
Access
Lastly, one thing that everyone needs to invest some time or money in is thinking about the accessibility of your podcast – it helps your show reach a wider audience, it creates extra content and it builds a strong sense of inclusive community.
£ Low
At the lower end of investment, accessibility means thinking about an audience beyond listeners and providing transcripts (and there are several reasons that will help you too!). Auto-transcripts are very quick and can be done for free, or you can put your show on YouTube to use their auto subtitles.
££ Medium
If you want to invest a bit more in access, upgrading your transcripts to human-corrected versions means you can make sure that names are spelled correctly – something that can mean a lot to people whose names often get misspelt.
£££ High
For some shows, accessibility is a core part of their offering, and they will invest a lot into making sure everyone can access their podcast. Equal Too, a podcast about the paralympics and disability, offered a British Sign Language (BSL) version, and posting CD versions for people who aren’t internet users is another way some podcasts include more people in their shows.
If you’d like to invest in a day of podcast-related content, connection and collaboration designed to help you grow your podcast, why not join us on 4 October at the International Women’s Podcast Festival, live in London and online. We hope to see you there!