FIND YOUR PODCAST’S TOP 5 COMPETITORS
21 of March 2017
NoraThere are so many great podcasts on the market, so it’s no longer just enough to upload your podcast and then walk away and hope that people listen and subscribe to it. It’s important for you to know what other podcasts are out there that might be competing for a similar audience that you hope are listening to your own podcast.
HollieBased on my own experience of listening to podcasts I’ve often searched for one topic, for example “true crime”- that’s my podcast weakness. iTunes will give you other related podcasts that you can you can also check out. You may call it ‘judging a book by its over’ but even before I’ve listen to a podcast I’ve been turned on or turned off by the podcast cover art or by the level of information that the podcast gives me in the metadata. Look at your competitors and decided what you find attractive or off-putting about your competitor’s podcast.
VALIDATING YOUR PODCAST IDEA USING COMPETITORS
NoraIdentifying your competitors is also a way to validate your podcast idea. If there are no other competitors on the market today, it is more likely that this is a sign that your topic is not really something that people are interested listening to. If you’re truly passionate about the topic of your podcast however, don’t just use the lack of competitors to decide whether or not to do the podcast. This is not ultimately the deciding factor. The point is not to be scared off by the presence of competitors because it means that there truly is a market interested in this topic.
That brings us to another key idea that you need to consider when looking at your competitors- who exactly is your target market? There’s a lot of information online which will help you to define your target audience, and you can use that to find the podcast which you believe have the same target audience. These are most likely your competitors.
LEARN FROM COMPETING PODCAST BUT STAY UNIQUE
HollieSomething that you should consider when you look at your competitors is that they may not necessarily be in the right. What I mean by this is that just because your competitors are following a certain format, you don’t necessarily have to copy the same script or set-up of those competitors. Let’s go back to my true crime podcast obsession. Some of those podcasts are narrated by a single person while others are acted out as the narrators recreate the true crime events. Both of these are successful formats and there may be other ways out there to present that would work as well. The purpose of studying your competitors is to collect ideas and make adjustments to find that unique offering that your audience will love.
NoraAs Hollie mentioned before, identifying your competitors will help you to be aware of what kind of metadata they provide in the podcast marketplace that attracts their audience. Taking a look at the title of their podcast, the description and the cover art will help you to understand how your podcast fits into the market. In addition to that you’ll want to take some time to listen to some of your competitors podcasts to see if the actual content has elements that you are missing or is missing elements that you have so that you can figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your content.
Identifying these competitors will also give you an idea for what types of advertising opportunities may be available once you’re ready for making money. Considering these other podcasts have similar target audiences, you may also want to contact some of these podcasts in the future for affiliate marketing.
SOP FOR FINDING YOUR COMPETITORS
NoraYou can pass the SOP provided above directly to someone else to help you identify your podcast’s top 5 competitors. Giving this task to somebody else will give you fresh eyes (in this case “ears”) on your own podcast and inspire you with ways that you can continue to improve. The SOP gives step-by-step instructions for how to use keywords to identify your competitors and will ask the person who is completing this task to sample those podcasts in order to find the elements that they like and don’t like about your competitors. Finding this information will help you to improve your podcast which should help you to reach a wider audience as you develop your show.