How to Create a Successful Facebook Ads Campaign For Your Podcast

One of the most popular ways for marketers to promote their podcast lies in the titan that is social media. Social media advertising is easy, affordable, and can be an effective way to find new listeners while promoting new content; a win-win situation. While Facebook may be the grandad to all the new budding social platforms, it still remains a household staple for advertisers due to its robust advertising platform and active user base of 2.4 billion people worldwide. Roughly about 64% of users on Facebook fall between the 12-34 demographic and this accounts for almost 50% of podcasts listeners. With Facebook’s marketing tools that allow you to promote individual pages and posts that target specific audiences, you have multiple opportunities for your podcast ad campaign to be a success!

 

Creating a Marketing Strategy

 

Before we can jump into Facebook and start creating ads, we need to create a marketing strategy that will get your brand goals aligned and targeted towards your podcast. While marketing strategies can fluctuate based on your budget, industry, and campaign goals, it’s still vital to outline a blueprint to help generate the best chances for ROI on your ad campaign.

 

• To create an effective podcast advertising strategy, you need to find your target audience, search for the right podcasts to advertise on, and choose the best placement of ads according to your budget and advertising goals.

 

• Monitor your podcast ad attribution so that you know which channels are bringing you the most traffic and which ones you need to invest in more. You can use strategies such as dedicated landing pages, exclusive discount coupons, and consumer surveys to measure this.

 

• Make use of podcast advertising networks to find the best podcasts and the optimum placement of your ads to get the best results.

 

• As an advertiser, you need to do research and identify your ideal customer so that you can tailor your podcast Facebook ads to their needs. When you care about your audience and their challenges, your message will resonate with them and make them your loyal customers and fans.

 

 

Creating Your Podcast Facebook Ad Campaign

 

After you have identified a marketing strategy that works best for your podcast, it’s time to hop over into Facebook. If you don’t already have a Facebook page for your podcast before your ad campaign, we highly recommend creating one so that you can leverage the audience on Facebook and cross-promote between platforms. Having a dedicated page on Facebook is great for building brand awareness and building community with listeners who will be engaging with your episodes week to week. If you don’t already have a Facebook Advertising Account, you’ll have to set aside time to create one, set up your pixels, add payment, and get it approved before going live.

 

Here are some guidelines to create a successful Facebook ad campaign for your podcast:

 

1. Before logging into your Facebook Ads account, you need to clearly define your conversion goals. The average Facebook ad costs about $0.24 per click, and that cost is rising on a daily basis. You don’t want to be paying for traffic and then have visitors temporarily check out your podcast, only to bail after a couple of minutes. Rather, you want to generate leads that are likely to encourage them to take an action like subscribe or download an episode.

 

2. Next, you’ll need to create a campaign through the Facebook Ads platform. You’re going to see a few different types of campaign objectives that range from brand awareness, conversions, traffic, lead generation, and more. You want to select “clicks to website” as your conversion goal since your ad will be linking to your podcast website or YouTube channel. This way when people interact with the campaign via Facebook they will then be transported to the podcast website, streaming service platform, or channel where they can engage with it. 

 

3. Most importantly, you want to specify the devices that you want to target. This can be an overlooked aspect of the ad campaigns because people aren’t selective about how their campaign connects to a mobile device. Some people will be watching podcasts through iTunes, while others will be using services like Stitcher or Spotify. Since iTunes is an iOS platform, you’ll want to create a campaign that targets “iOS Devices Only” for your iTunes traffic. You’ll also need to follow the same practice with Stitcher in order to target Android users.

 

4. Another key aspect to creating a successful campaign is knowing your audience, and Facebook breaks down every detail to help place your campaign in front of the right people. Make sure to clearly specify your target audience demographics. Facebook allows you to target people by age, gender, interests, and many other factors. The targeting options you choose, need to be consistent with your target customer. One specific profile that you may want to target is users who have “liked” a similar podcast. If you’re unfamiliar with podcasts that are in your same genre or topic make sure to do your research so you can align your campaign goals to reach similar audiences.

 

5. Don’t forget to post the link to your podcast or YouTube channel page. This is one of the final campaign details and you don’t want to miss it. Attaching a URL can help you track the results of your campaigns to determine which option results in more conversions. 

 

6. You’ll also have the chance to edit some of the metadata for the page you’re trying to promote, including key details like the headline, description, and display URL. You want to put your best foot forward with any copyediting and find concise ways to market your podcast. You need to come up with a copy that looks engaging enough to entice your target audience to click on your ad. Provide a clear overview of your podcast and give a good reason why your audience should follow it. Doing so will help qualify your leads so that you’re only paying for traffic from visitors who meet your conversion goal.

 

Tracking Your Performance

 

Once your podcast ads are up and running on Facebook, you’ll want to start monitoring their performance.

 

Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy to track conversions for podcasts as it is for other conversion goals. If you’re trying to measure downloads, form opt-ins, or CPA leads, you can set your tracking application to fire a pixel when a conversion goal is met. Since you can’t do the same thing with podcasting, you’ll need to get more creative with your analysis to see which conversion goals are worth tracking and which ones are met.

 

If you know what your daily downloads are like before running your Facebook campaign, you can track how they change when your ads are live. If you take this approach, try not to run any other marketing campaigns at the same time so that you’ll be able to distinguish the effects of your podcast Facebook ads from other factors. Facebook can be an excellent way to draw relevant viewers to your podcast, though you may need to experiment with it for a while to find a system that works.

 

Are you ready to get your Facebook Ad Campaign started? Let Iron Roots help you today!