Two Simple Marketing Strategies Every Podcaster Needs to Grow and Make Money
If you’ve ever heard the words “funnel,” “KPI,” or “lead magnet” and immediately tuned out…same. The marketing world loves its fancy jargon, but here’s the thing: you don’t need any of it to grow your podcast audience and make money doing what you love. In this episode of Friendly Podcast Guide, I’m breaking down the two types of marketing I personally use to grow my show and bring in income, and I promise, none of it involves becoming a “marketing bro.” Whether you’re brand new to podcasting or you’ve been at it for a while and just feel like something is missing from your strategy, this episode is going to make things feel a whole lot simpler. These are real, sustainable podcasting strategies that work, and they can work for you too.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
- The two types of marketing every podcaster needs: getting people in the door and helping them buy
- How I grew my podcast audience by 74% in one year using Pinterest
- Why I deleted Instagram and didn’t lose a single download
- My favorite low-effort podcast marketing strategies (Pinterest, Threads, podcast guesting, and SEO)
- How to grow a podcast without social media in 2026
- Why your email list is your most powerful tool for making money
- How my podcast serves my community without being a hard sales tool
- How to know if Pinterest is the right fit for your podcast growth strategy
Links
Connect with me
Unedited Transcript
I know there are a lot of fancy words about the different kinds of marketing, but honestly, when people talk about funnels and KPIs and lead magnets, and all of those other marketing words, I get overwhelmed and tune out.
So instead of trying to use words that make me sound like a marketing bro, today I’m going to tell you about the two different types of marketing that I use to grow my podcast and make money. There’s the marketing that gets people in the door, and then there’s the marketing that helps them buy from you.
Hey, I’m Andy Smiley, and I’m obsessed with helping you grow your podcast without letting it rule your life. I share strategies that actually work, the stuff I wish someone had told me earlier, and conversations with the smartest podcasters. I know Pinterest is my main get people in the door marketing strategy, but stick around because the second type of marketing is where the money actually comes from.
I’ve been using Pinterest to grow my podcast for the past year, and the results have honestly gone above and beyond what I expected. In the past year. My podcast has grown by 74%, and I’ve gained more than 200 email subscribers. But here’s the part that still kind of blows my mind.
I deleted Instagram off of my phone. It was taking a toll on my mental health and honestly just kind of not worth it for me anymore. And even though I deleted Instagram off of my phone, I haven’t seen any sort of drop in my downloads.
That is the beauty of Pinterest. I’ve been able to grow my show without having to quote unquote show up every day. I batch all of my pins for the week or sometimes for multiple weeks, and then I don’t have to think about it again until it’s time to batch more pins.
If you’ve been feeling exhausted trying to be everywhere at once and not seeing your podcast growth match, the effort you’re putting in Pinterest might be the missing piece to your strategy, but it’s not the right fit for everyone. So I made a free checklist called Is Pinterest right for your podcast to help you figure out if it makes sense for your show.
You can grab it at the link in the show notes. Okay. Now back to the two different types of marketing that I mentioned. Pinterest sits firmly in the marketing that gets people in the door camp. Do I sometimes sell a low ticket item on Pinterest? Yes. Does it happen very often? No. The marketing that gets people in the door is usually in a place where people are meeting you for the first time.
My favorite forms of this type of marketing are Pinterest podcast guesting. Threads, which is like Instagram’s version of Twitter, and I’ll throw SEO in there too. I like using these as my, quote unquote, get people in the door marketing because they take me one, maybe two hours a week to do, and they work really well for my audience.
Some other options that could work for you and your podcast are Instagram, TikTok, trailer swaps or feed drops. The goal with this quote unquote first meeting is to let them get to know you and get them to your second marketing strategy.
For me, that is my podcast and my email list. So my main goal is for when someone quote meets me to get them to join my email list through a freebie or follow my podcast on their favorite podcast player. Once they’re on my email list or subscribe to my podcast, that’s where they get to know me and trust me, and then buy from me.
Fun fact, almost all of the money that I’ve made as a business owner is through my email list. A lot of people worry that emailing too much will annoy their list, and I was definitely one of those people until I realized that people spend maybe five minutes of their week reading my emails.
So they probably aren’t sick of me, so I currently send out two emails a week,
and even though I was super nervous when I decided to increase it from one to two. People didn’t seem to really care. There wasn’t a mass like unsubscribing exodus from my list.
While I do sell on my podcast, I’ve noticed that my podcast is a bit less of a marketing strategy and more of a place where I’m able to serve my people, which I guess marketing Bros would call warming up your audience, but that sounds gross, so I’ll never be saying that again.
I’ve noticed that my podcast is where future clients, past clients, and current clients can hang out and learn with me while we all figure out our podcasting journeys together. I haven’t really touched on Instagram in this episode because I already did an entire episode about how Instagram doesn’t really work for me and what I use instead.
I’ll link the episode in the show notes. So if you take nothing else from this episode, please think about looking at your marketing to make sure you have at least one way for people to get in the door and one way to help them buy your stuff. It’s so much easier to grow your show and make money when you have both types of marketing.
If you too hate marketing jargon, would you please share this episode with your podcasting friend who also hates the phrase top of funnel? I’d love to help her market, her podcast and business in a way that feels normal and not like a sales bro. next week I’ll be talking about what I’ve learned from taking Pinterest seriously for the past year.
I’ve got some fun stats and lots of insights into using Pinterest as my main. Get people in the door marketing tool. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next week.
