In this live session, I gathered three(-ish) people who spend their days thinking about podcast growth and audience engagement.
Representing three different corners of the industry: audience development consultant Maggie Taylor, Player FM’s Jonathan Demel from the listening-app world, and (in spirit!) Robert Tuchman of Amaze Media Labs.
We broke down the realities of podcast marketing, spending a good chunk of time on paid opportunities for growth and audience engagement.
When organic efforts such as cross-promos and press hits max out their reach, that’s where paid opportunities come in.
Our session explored what to do after you hit that wall, how to spend money wisely, and why tracking your results is the difference between sustainable growth and burning cash.
Want to learn more about free things you can do to grow your podcast? There’s a live for that! Here’s a chat I had with
Lauren Passell
recapping our keynote presentation at Podcast Movement. We focused on non-monetary podcast audience development tactics.
*We experienced some sort of bug that didn’t allow me to add Robert into the live conversation!
Why Paid Spend Exists in the First Place😲
Podcasters often start with the “free stuff,” such as promo swaps, guest appearances, pitching themselves for potential editorial placement, and every guerrilla tactic imaginable. I advise most of my clients to always have an organic growth strategy — even when they’re also spending money on growth.
That free stuff, especially the borrowing of audience by setting up collaborations, is the best way to slowly but surely expose your show to the right people.
But if you feel you’ve hit a wall when it comes to your audience, or you’re finding that you have some extra cash around and you want to put it towards podcast growth… there are options for you!
Maggie shared that many indie shows she works with eventually hit a ceiling: if you don’t have an established audience (or if your show is brand new), you can’t trade impressions with bigger podcasts, and organic reach on major listening apps doesn’t move shows the way it did even five years ago.
Looking at spending that way, buying allows you to save your trades and non-monetary swaps for down the line, instead of at the start when you don’t have much by way of collateral.
🔐Before You Spend a Dollar: Get These Things Locked In
One of the questions I asked of my panelists was…
What should every podcaster have set in stone before they start spending money to grow their show?
Maggie and Jonathan both emphasized that paid ads only work if your podcast’s foundation is solid. Podcasters who want to spend some money on growth should ideally have:
🎯A Defined Target Listener
“My show is for anyone and everyone…” That’s not a strategy. Your ideal listener should be specific, narrow, and reachable. Your ideal listener persona may change over time, but the ability to be speaking to someone in particularly is crucial at this stage.
🖼️Strong Creative Assets
This means: well-designed, easy-to-understand artwork, episode titles that tell us what we’re going to learn, and a compelling trailer that matches the tone and scope of your show. Jonathan shared that when podcasters buy ads on Player FM, something as simple as a strong episode title can improve performance by 10%.
📊Tracking / Measurement Tactics
Attribution tools like Magellan or Podscribe can tell you who heard your show’s promo or mention, who clicked, and who actually became a listener. This is essential data for knowing whether your money is working.
Maggie also mentioned Swap.fm when an attendee asked if there are any tools emerging for independent creators.
Ok, so where should you actually spend money to grow your podcast?
📲Ads Within Podcast Apps
Podcast listening apps like Player FM, Pocket Casts, Overcast, or Castbox allow podcasters to buy impression-based placements or subscriber uplift campaigns. These can be effective for many reasons, but one reason I want to highlight is that you’ll be reaching listeners when they’re actively looking for something new to listen to.
Jonathan shared some insight into Player FM’s impression-based approach: small budgets get high-value placements, they’ll just appear less frequently. Maggie mentioned that the ads she has bought in Overcast on behalf of clients tend to yield the stickiest subscribers.
🗞️Newsletter Advertising
I’m a huge advocate for buying ads in podcast recommendation newsletters. (Yes, I write a few of them myself: EarBuds Podcast Collective & Podcast Plunge).
Similar to buying ads within podcast apps, potential listeners are primed by the time they open that email to hopefully find a show they’ll check out. So, you’re hitting them when they’re ready to listen.
Bonus: buying ads in niche newsletters
Maggie shared that for some of her clients, business newsletters and women’s interest/wellness newsletters have consistently driven strong conversions because subscribers are already in a content discovery mindset.
👀Web-Based Display Ads
Robert’s tool (though he couldn’t join live!) places visual podcast players on contextually relevant websites. Think: a pop-culture podcast appearing on People.com or Vogue.
This exposes shows to huge audiences, but also highlights the reality that you’re paying for exposure, not guaranteed long-term listeners.
👩⚖️The Hard Truth About Spikes, Downloads, and “Sticky” Listeners
A big theme of our conversation was expectation-setting.
Paid campaigns often lead to spikes in downloads. But spikes naturally drop off. Sustainable growth and success is measured not by how high the spike in your download numbers goes, but how slowly it comes down and how many listeners remain a few weeks or months our from your paid campaign.
Ultimately it’s going to be your content, not the ad, that keeps people around. Buying an ad can and will bring people to your show. But at the end of the day, those people are humans who have preferences and even pet peeves. They may be exposed to your show, love it, and be a subscriber for life. Or, they may be exposed to your show, hate it, and leave you a mean review.
🥡Extra Takeaways
If you want to grow your show — sustainably — not just chase vanity metrics, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Paid marketing is most effective when layered on top of strong organic foundations. AND a solid show.
Spend only where you can measure. In fact, you should also measure your non-monetary marketing efforts.
No single tactic works for every show. You must test, track, and double down on what works.
The goal of marketing or paid spend isn’t a download. It’s a listener who comes back again and again.
Podcast growth requires professionalism, experimentation, and a willingness to treat your show like a business.
Thank you Flo Lumsden, Lauren Passell, Dan Delgado, Stories&Strategies Podcasting, Keelin, and many others for tuning into my live video with Maggie Taylor and Jonathan Demel! Join me for my next live video by hitting the follow/subscribe button.
Thanks!
Arielle Nissenblatt
