Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. This week is a really fun, exciting week around here, and I'm gonna take just a second. Hopefully you're okay with it. To let you know. So you may know if you listened to last week's episode, I was in Nashville last week to meet with my mentor and my mastermind and really. Work through some of the really fun and exciting changes that are coming to the business for 2026. Some of the things that I am working on for you, and I cannot wait to share some of those with you in the upcoming episodes, but more than that, this is a big week for me. So my birthday is Saturday and. I am entering a new decade and it's kind of an exciting air, and I'm just looking forward to it. I'm excited to see what the next decade brings. I am turning 50. Oh my goodness, and I look back on the last 10 years. When I turned 40, my little guy was six months old, so I've always said I was an older mom. I was an older mom. I was 39 when I had him. I was still in the corporate world. I was traveling a lot, and I did not have the kind of freedom and flexibility that I have today. So it has been an amazing ride this last 10 years, and I'm excited to see what. Fifties, what my fifties brings. Several of my friends who are a few years older who've already moved into their fifties have told me it's even more exciting. So if you are already past that, mark, let me know. Shoot me a DM on Instagram or reply back to the email and just. Say, you know what? You found what's been great for you. 'cause I'm really curious. I always like to get to know you a little bit better. So that's my little personal update. Alright, now let's pop into, thank you for indulging me in that. I just am excited. It's, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. I'm celebrating with some friends this weekend. Just got back from the trip, making changes to the business. Getting ready for the holidays, like it's an exciting time. So what I wanted to talk about today from a podcast perspective, so you know what's in it for you. 'cause that's what you're gonna ask, what's in this for me? That's what we always have to think about when we're creating content for our audience. We have to think about you, the person listening, and what's in it for you. So today I wanna talk about the best podcast marketing strategies for your business. Now, if you don't yet have a podcast. Please don't just hit pause and move on because I personally believe that a podcast can be the best thing that you do for your business. It has been for me. Mine will be three years old in February, so we're coming up on three years. It has had tens of thousands of downloads. It has generated tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. It has let me really expand my reach, and it has been so beneficial for my business and it can be for you as well. I really do believe that a podcast can be an amazing marketing tool. The barrier for entry is fairly low. You need to have a decent mic. You need to have a computer where you can record. I personally use Descrip and Buzzsprout. I'll put my affiliate links for both of those in this episode. So if you are curious, you wanna think about it, you can find those as well. It's so easy. I do teach podcast, SEO. If you already have a show and it's not growing and you wanna learn how to grow it, get that course. It isn't a self-study, but it's very simple, very straightforward. You don't really need somebody to guide you through it. You just need someone to tell you what to do and make it easy for you. So there's that. If you don't have a podcast yet, there's also a. A podcast Best Practices Guide, right in that it's a a module basically to walk you through how to launch your podcast and what to do. So let's just pretend you've got yours, or you're determined that you're going to start a podcast for the new year. What I want you to do and understand is that your podcast can be such an amazing tool for your business, and if you market it the right way, you can help it really boost your business's visibility online because if you know how to do the right things from a visibility standpoint, you can show up very often in the podcast apps, which makes it much more likely for you. To grow a bigger audience. So for me, you're probably not gonna be real surprised. My number one best marketing strategy for a podcast is podcast, SEO, or podcast search engine Optimization, because making your show easy to find. Increasing your visibility makes it much easier to bring people into your world. The thing I really like about podcast, SEO is that it is easier and it works faster than Google, SEO, or even Ai, SEO. If you have a show and it's not growing, you need to optimize it. If you don't have a show yet. You need to start one, and you need to make sure that it's optimized. Now, if you wanna make sure that you are making money from your podcast, because you, my friend, are a business owner, so we need to think about this from a business owner, entrepreneur standpoint. We don't just want downloads down. Downloads really, truly are not what we're looking for. We are looking for how do the people who find our podcast engage with our business? So we are looking to see are we generating leads? Are those leads becoming customers? Are you making money from the podcast because you're a business owner? You most likely are looking to make money from your podcast, not just to monetize it based on downloads. Now, if you are only looking to monetize it based on downloads, then obviously downloads are your number one priority, but most of us are not. Most of us are looking to use it to be another marketing channel for our business. So what you're going to want to do, the first thing is to just think about. Your ideal listener, who is the person who is popping in their AirPods and listening to you on their walk at the park in the morning? Who's commuting to work with you in their ear, in the car? Who is listening each week, and what information do they need? How can you help them? Because when you are there and you become part of their world and you're there every week, they get to know you. They start to like. They start to trust you because now they're learning from you and they're able to take this tip and they're able to implement it, or they're able to have their world opened up to a possibility they didn't see before. This is why we really wanna make sure we're thinking about our content and we have the right content strategy because we want to make sure. That we're creating content that is going to be engaging to them, that is going to interest them. We're not going off on tangents. We're not talking about all sorts of crazy things. I did indulge myself for a moment to talk about my birthday, but I also made sure it was under about a minute and a half. I tried to keep it focused and I was actually looking to see how long I had been talking about it. You really don't wanna go on crazy long tangents because your listeners. Time is very valuable and you want them to feel that your podcast is a good use of their time. So that's gonna be your first thing is really focusing in on them. The second thing is making sure that your episodes can tie to your sales funnel. So not only do you wanna answer questions, but you also want to encourage them to get your opt-ins and to learn more about your business and to contact you or enroll in your programs, enroll in your services, et cetera. You wanna think about where does this type. Query fall in your sales funnel. And so you wanna be strategic about your content mapping between your content creation and your ultimate sales line. Now, if you're not sure how to figure all of this out on your own, don't feel bad. You can work with me. I have the one-on-one elite marketing coaching where you and I can work on this together and get your show launched or get it optimized. You've got. That is an option. It's a three month done with you program. So it's you and me meeting, going over your business. If you just need a little bit of help with the podcast, SEO side, how to optimize what to do, simple podcast. SEO is an option. It is self-study. You can get that. You can get started with it today. It goes straight into that one. If you need help with your overall marketing, you're like, Rachel, I don't understand how to map my content to my sales funnel, to my lead magnet. I don't quite understand how to add goals into my analytics and like all of these things. There is a new program. If you wanna do the one-on-one, we can do that right now. Otherwise, there's a new program in development, should be released in Q1. Not a hundred percent sure of the name yet. I'm still working on that, so if I knew the name, I would tell you, but I don't know what I'm gonna call it quite yet. I'm still trying to figure that part out. That's gonna be available in q. That will be a six month marketing cohort, and so we're going to work through all the nuances of marketing, each stage of your funnel to see where you're at and how you're doing, and where the leaks are in your marketing so that you know what to focus on to address it. So that you can get the right people, generate more leads, and ultimately make more money. It's also going to get you ready for Facebook ads, meta ads, Google ads, et cetera. If you're ready, you want to scale. This program is gonna help you lay the foundation to be ready to scale, to make sure that you are confident that you are ready to go into scaling. And so now that we've talked a little bit about that, let's talk about how we do SEO on your podcast. So we've talked about this before, but you're really going to want to look for keywords that your ideal customer, your ideal listener, would be searching for in the podcast app. So you're going to want to find those keywords and then you're going to want to use them in places like your show Name, your description. Your episode name, your episode description, et cetera, you wanna make sure that you're using the words that they would be using, the words that you want to have a better chance of ranking for. Because people do search the podcast apps. They do listen to new shows. They do then decide whether or not they like you, they're interested, and they want to become part of your world. There are a couple other podcast marketing strategies that work really well. My favorite, honestly, is guest PO like guesting on other podcasts, and I know I get people who request to be on here regularly. I get pitched multiple times a week. Honestly, multiple times a day from people wanting to be on this show. But this show I don't take guests. Um, it's you and I, it's a conversation, it's a tip, it's a lesson, it's something each week. So I don't really bring other guests in, but I have been on other shows where I've taught their audience, people who do do guest. Guests on a regular basis, and that can be an amazing opportunity for you to grow your podcast. The other thing that's fantastic that you may not realize is that also helps with your Google SEO, because when you are guesting on another show, they're very likely going to ask about your freebies, your website, you know where people can find you, and they're gonna link to that. From their website. And so you're gonna build links. And when you build those good, powerful, trusted links like that, those count towards your domain authority, which you probably remember, you may not remember, is from Moz. It's a score of one to 100. It. And it's an indication of how authoritative your website probably is in Google's eyes, based on what Moz knows of the Google ranking algorithm. And remember, there are 200 factors in that. So it's not a be all end all, but it's a really good indication of like how authoritative your site is. The more authoritative your site is, the more likely you are going to be the one to rank for specific key words. Now the other thing that's really helpful with guesting and having those links and those mentions is that that creates citations. Citations are what's important for ai. Search Chat, GPT and Perplexity and the other AI tools are looking for brand mentions and citations. They don't care whether or not there's a link associated with it. They're just looking to see are other reputable websites talking about this person and this site? Does it seem like. It is a good business. They're more likely to show you two people who are searching for information related to you or pull from your website as a resource and then link to your website if you have those positive citations. So that's another. Kind of plug for an another bonus, another benefit from guesting on other podcasts. Not only do you grow, potentially grow your podcast audience, you grow your reach, you also can increase your domain authority and your citations, which helps you with both traditional and AI SEO. So it's definitely win, win, win. So if you don't have a podcast yet, I highly recommend that you get one because it can help you expand your reach and if you have one. And it's not yet really growing. You're not getting a lot of reach, you're not making a lot of money. Join Simple podcast, SEO. Let me walk you through what you need to do, where you need to make the changes. Make sure that you're thinking about your ideal listener. The content that you're creating, tying it to your sales funnel, tying it to your opt-ins, offering your opt-ins and making sure that you are optimizing it so that it can be found. You're going to look at your downloads to get an indication as to how it's working. That's kind of your first spot is, how's this working? How many downloads am I getting? Have my downloads increased? If your downloads are starting to increase, you are on the right track. All right. That is it for today. I will see you back here next week when I will be 50. Oh my gosh. I don't know if I'm ready for this, but I think I am. Alright, have a great one and I'll see you next week.