Today I want to share with you the POWER of FOCUS.
What does that mean?
Let’s say you want to focus on gardening. Well, that’s a good niche. It is a popular niche. I am just using it as an example. You can choose boxing or auto repair, whatever you’ve identified as your niche (we talked about that earlier, too).
But “Gardening” is really a general category. It may be specific compared to something else, but the “Gardening” category is a general category.
Your podcast could simply be about “Gardening” and then it could cover different aspects of gardening.
Or you can focus on just one aspect and become the expert in that area.
For example, there could be indoor gardening; Outdoor gardening; Rock gardens; Huertas; Flower gardens; Patio Gardens and I could go on and on.
How can you market this to your specific target audience?
Well, many podcasters want to use advertising. Which is fine, if you do it correctly.
What I see with most new business owners, and podcasters too, are ads that look like their competitors’ ads. And they all look almost exactly the same!
They will say things like “The best service” and there will be your photo or your logo. There will be a list of services or products they offer and then a link to their podcast. They will list things, let’s continue with gardening as an example, they will list things like:
Landscape bricks; four different types of mulch; upper floor; pre-fertilized soil; fertilizer; nets for birds; nets for animals; vegetable seeds; vegetable transplants; planters; etc.
Then there will be your podcast website saying something like “We discuss all of these topics and more to help you grow your garden!”
You can place any niche you want and place the products and services that you would normally advertise. You may have even tried ads like that.
The problem, as we covered about the archer shooting arrows in the mist, you’re not actually aiming at anything!
Here is what you need to do. Choose ONE theme and use it in your ad.
An area. ONE, not two. Only one.
For instance:
Patio Gardening. Have multiple podcast episodes that only address that aspect of your niche.
Use that information in your ad.
You can put something like, “We’re the patio gardening experts. If you’re looking to set up a backyard garden, listen to our podcast for great tips on setting up your backyard garden.”
Then in the podcast, you can have a call to action like, “Give us a call and we’ll help you set up for success” or something similar. I’m just doing this on the spur of the moment. You can express it appropriately for your niche.
But that would be it! Nothing more. There are no other products or services.
You can put a picture of a backyard garden in the ad and set it as the photo for your episodes. You can put that photo on your website.
Then split test the ad …
If you don’t get answers with the list on the website; change it to an email address and run it again.
If you get some responses with a way to run the ad, change the description of the product or service JUST A LITTLE, maybe a word or two at the most. Then run it again …
Change the picture. Then run it again.
Change the colors used. Then run it again.
If the answers go down, change it and run it again.
Do this until you have the ad that gives you the best results for “Patio Gardens.”
Then, do the same process again with another area. In Gardening, you can run, Orchards. Choose a type of vegetable and start the process over.
If you ran a week of episodes in each area with a small ad each week, by the end of the year, you will probably have 8-10 well-tested ads that are getting you great responses.
These can be used over and over again.
If you are marketing in the city, patio gardens are probably the way to go. You can have guests on the podcast to give advice on setting up your patio gardens!
Instead of marketing all the different types of gardens available and waiting for someone to listen to you, talk to ONLY ONE PERSON. And don’t confuse them with too many options. Confusion will not equal no action!
Talk to ONE person in ONE niche category and offer ONE product.
Let your competitors run the long list of services. Become known as the SPECIALIST, in this example, from “Patio Gardens”. Every time someone thinks of starting a backyard garden, they should be thinking of your podcast!
Like I said, you can also offer other services and products, but your advertising, at least initially, should focus on ONE THING: Drive traffic to your podcast with targeted audience marketing.
Take a look at your niche you have chosen and find out what is the SINGLE area you will be marketing. Then start formulating your ad.
By staying focused on speaking directly to that person in a segment of your niche, with just one message, you will start to see download numbers start to increase in your podcast stats and possibly drive additional traffic to your website.