The holiday season is coming! And if you have a podcast, soon you’ll probably be wondering how to take advantage of the seasonal marketing opportunities.
There's a wide range of ways you can promote your podcast during this part of the year. You can create holiday-themed episodes, partner with other brands and organize exciting giveaways.
So whether you want to connect with your audience or boost your social media presence, creating a holiday marketing campaign is a great way to fuel your engagement.
In today’s post, we'll share:
- Why holiday marketing for podcasts is worth trying out
- Some must-know holiday digital marketing tips to apply to your podcast
- How to implement them in a holiday marketing strategy
Without further ado, let’s dive in!
The Benefits of Holiday Marketing for Podcasting
The holiday season is a wonderful time to forge deeper connections with listeners and get to potential listeners.
The reason is simple: the festive mood creates an atmosphere of hope and excitement. Holidays bring you the opportunity to speak directly to the hearts of your listeners, capturing their attention and inspiring a sense of belonging. That way, creating a comprehensive holiday marketing strategy for your podcast is crucial. But why?
In short, by creating a holiday marketing campaign you can:
- Increase your podcast’s brand awareness and number of listeners by taking advantage of experiences that your entire audience has in common
- Help your sponsors connect with your audience in a moment when they're the most likely to make a purchase
- Launch limited-time products and promotions
- Surprise your audience with creative initiatives
Now you’ve got a clear idea of why a seasonal marketing strategy can reap amazing results. So let’s get your marketing efforts started with a list of the 6 key digital marketing tips for the holidays.
6 Key Digital Marketing Tips to Promote Your Podcast During the Holiday Season
In this section, we’ll get into some of the most effective digital marketing tips to boost your podcast visibility on holidays.
We recommend:
- Creating holiday-themed episodes
- Setting clear campaign goals
- Boosting your engagement with a special campaign
- Partnering with other brands
- Optimizing your website
- Crafting a promotion strategy
Let’s take a closer look!
Create Holiday-Themed Episodes
For most people, the holiday season is a very meaningful time of the year. So, coming up with an episode that helps your listeners get in the holiday mood is a great idea. Cover interesting holiday-related topics that are relevant to your show's theme.
Depending on your podcast's theme and focus, you should:
- Invite your listeners to tell you about their holiday traditions.
- Share your own funny or touching holiday stories.
- Tell your audience about holidays and traditions from different cultures that are taking place during the season.
- Make stream reruns and extended episodes.
- Compile highlights and unedited clips from the best episodes of the year and react to them.
- Get creative and change the episode’s usual format by adding music or special effects, having unexpected guests, etcetera.
Set Clear Campaign Goals
Before you launch a holiday marketing campaign, figure out what you want to accomplish. Basically, define specific goals. By doing so, you'll be able to evaluate your campaign's performance later on, and get key insights that will help you do better next time.
Make your goals SMART. SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Here’s an example of what your SMART goals could look like:
- Getting 300 subscribers by January 1, 2023.
- Generating 1000 more followers on Instagram and Facebook by December 30, 2022.
- Increasing the number of listeners from 10,000 to 15,000 by December 20, 2022.
- Getting $4,000 in affiliate revenue during the holiday season.
Boost your Engagement with a Special Campaign
Once you've set your goals, it's time to define some initiative that will help you get there.
As much as podcast’s monetization is critical, you can also retain your listeners by offering free rewards, special offers, savings, or promotions.
Besides, the holidays are a time to give, so your audience may value being shown that you're grateful for them. You could do this by:
- Giving away merchandise or offering free shipping.
- Providing free subscriptions.
- Organizing a fundraiser for a good cause.
By creating a specific and well-targeted campaign, you can increase your listeners’ loyalty.
On the other hand, sweepstakes have conditions that encourage participation. For instance, your users could have to share an Instagram post, follow your podcast, and tag their friends in order to participate. This practice is a great way to increase your engagement and get your show in front of new people.
Partner with Other Brands
Another smart way to make your holiday marketing campaign work is to partner with other brands. A co-branding holiday marketing campaign can help you to increase your own brand awareness.
Here are some common examples of co-branding:
- Sponsorships. During the holiday season, you can team up with some sponsors to promote their products. In the same way, they can use special ads connected to your show across their marketing channels.
- Collabs with other Content Creators. Create a mega-episode with other podcasters or content creators to leverage your guests’ audience.
- Suppliers. Partner with your suppliers to create a specially comprehensive and interesting episode in exchange for promoting their products.
Co-branding is an effective way to:
- Pool resources with other brands
- Decrease campaign risk
- Increase credibility for both brands
- Get in front of a wider audience.
If you have solid relationships with people in your podcast's niche, don't be scared to invite them to collaborate.
Optimize Your Website
You've already decided what topics you'll cover on your podcast, what your goals are, and what you'll be offering your audience. Now it's time to give all those initiatives a home. This is where your podcast website comes into play!
To boost podcast traffic in an organic way this season, create a landing page for your holiday campaign. This way, new listeners can find out what you're all about.
Make sure to include:
- A clear headline
- A short and concise description
- Your latest episodes
- A schedule for the next special holiday episodes
- A newsletter subscription form (if you have one)
- Links to your social media profile
- Thematic visual elements
Pro tip: If you want to create a podcast landing page, focus on one goal. Don't overwhelm users with all kinds of information. For instance, if you set the goal to get more email subscribers, craft a design that focuses primarily on encouraging people to subscribe to your newsletter.
Create a Promotion Strategy
Creating a landing page is only the start. Your holiday marketing campaign will either succeed or fail based on your podcast promotion strategy. Getting active in social media is essential. That's where your potential listeners will first discover your content and gain interest.
Here's how to produce relevant, brand-building podcast content on social media during the holiday season:
- Design your holiday content calendar focusing on your seasonal initiatives.
- Plan your content repurposing, to make the most out of every episode and post.
- Create short videos. According to Hubspot, 85% of marketers say short-form videos are the most effective format on social media.
- Create occasions to connect. Ask your followers to share what they're most excited about this holiday and answer all their comments.
- Encourage holiday-themed user-generated content.
Pro tip: If you're interested in creating a more comprehensive content marketing strategy, you can also write blog posts, newsletters, and even launch a holiday PPC advertising campaign. However, carefully consider whether it's worth it and if the effort aligns with your goals.
Boost Your Holiday Marketing Strategy with Audiotease
Holidays are a great time to grow your podcast listenership or strengthen your bond with your existing audience. If you want your podcast to grow this holiday season, leverage the power of short video.
With Audiotease, you can highlight your podcast's best moments through stunning audiograms. No editing skills needed.
This holiday season, don't let your podcast go unnoticed. Try Audiotease today, for free.