When you’re walking down the street, it’s easier to notice people who are dressed boldly, than those who simply blend into the crowd. When it comes to growing an online brand, first impressions matter too. Your podcast’s branding can determine whether your target audience will find your content worth checking out.
Want to learn how to build your podcast’s branding? We’ve got you covered. In today’s post, we’ll share the 7 podcast branding best practices we swear by.
Ready? Let's get started.
7 Essential Podcast Branding Tips
You may already have an idea of what you want your podcast’s branding to look like. Yet, bringing it to life can be difficult. In this section, you’ll learn some key tips to help you create a cohesive and defined branding for your podcast.
We recommend:
- Having a clear brand purpose
- Researching your competitors
- Identifying your target audience
- Establishing a mission & vision statement
- Creating a unique voice
- Designing a visual identity that feeds off of that research
- Launching your new visual identity and assessing its reception
Let’s take a closer look.
Uncover Your Podcast Brand’s Purpose
You probably created a podcast for more than one reason. You may be inspired by:
- Your passion for a topic/discipline
- An eagerness to share your knowledge and teach valuable skills
- A desire to entertain people
- The need to share your company’s mission with the world
It may take you a bit to truly understand your motivations for starting a podcast. Don’t worry, you'll discover them over time. Ask yourself the following:
- What do you want to accomplish?
- What impact do you want to have on your audience?
- How do you want your audience to perceive you?
- What type of community do you want to foster? How would you define it?
Research Your Competitors
To define best practices and build on them, you need to extract insights from your main competitors.
Ask yourself:
- What are the pros and cons of your competitors' branding?
- What is their color palette and what does it represent?
- What type of images and symbols do they use?
- Is their messaging really effective?
- What are the audience's comments on the brand’s impact?
Try to be as objective as possible. Don’t label things as “pretty” or “ugly”, try to understand why your competitors’ visual identity works (or doesn’t) without considering your personal taste. For instance, instead of asserting that your competitors use “ugly fonts”, ask yourself if they’re legible, if they’re informal/formal enough, etcetera.
Understanding your competitors' branding is vital. At this point, you’ll want to:
- Analyze the best aspects of your competitors' branding and see how you can give them your own spin
- Understand their shortcomings so you can avoid them on your own brand
Identify Your Target Audience
As a creator, you probably want your podcast to have the largest possible audience. But that doesn’t mean that your podcast should be for everyone.
If you have a clear target audience, you’ll be able to:
- Provide deep dives into topics that your audience will love
- Set a consistent and engaging tone
- Accurately predict how your audience will react to certain topics or guests
- Position yourself as an authority in your niche
Having a clear idea of your target audience will also make your podcast branding process extremely smooth.
Ask yourself:
- Who can benefit the most from what you have to say?
- What other shows do they enjoy?
- Is this type of person someone you can relate to? Do you “speak the same language”?
- How would they interact with your content? (e.g., discussing it on Twitter)
- Is this the right audience to grow the brand you dream of?
Creating listener personas is the best way to get a clear idea of your target audience’s key features. What’s more, depending on your podcast's audience, you can have several listener personas. But we recommend you start with one: your ideal listener.
Establish a Mission & Vision Statement
By answering the question “Who does my podcast serve?” you can easily establish a vision & mission for your podcast brand. Specifically:
- Identify & write your brand’s mission. For instance, if you run a podcast teaching marketers to grow on YouTube, your purpose may be “empowering teams to grow sustainably by educating their community.”
- Create a brand manifesto that explains why you started your podcast and the impact you wish to have
People love brand stories: they love to identify with and be a part of them. To achieve this, however, you must be very clear to your audience.
If you want to create strong brand meaning, your podcast history needs to connect well to your brand’s visual elements. Basically, you must create consistent messages on all fronts. So grab a pen (or open Notion) and get creative!
Pro tip: A few paragraphs above, we used the example of a podcast helping marketers grow on YouTube. That brand’s purpose shouldn’t involve YouTube at all. Go beyond specifics and create a brand purpose that can outlive the tools you’re using at the moment.
For example, a mattress company isn’t in the business of mattresses, it’s in the business of helping people sleep better. How can you apply that kind of high-level, long-term thinking to your podcast?
Create a Unique Voice
Different brands have different voices. Some are playful and informal, while others are quite uptight and formal. Some are more informative, others are more enthusiastic. Some are respectful, and others are irreverent.
Now, why is it important to define your brand’s voice?
A brand’s voice is how you communicate with your audience. This voice must be consistent and recognizable across all channels. For instance:
- Advertising campaigns
- Social media captions
- Blog posts
- Brand stories
- And more
Don’t forget that your voice is the foundation of your identity. It’s integral to engage your audience and ensure that your message resonates with them.
At this point, it’s useful to go back to your listener persona.
Ask yourself:
- What kind of voice would best engage your ideal listener?
- What voice would resonate with them the most?
- Is that a voice that feels natural to you?
Design Your Visual Identity
Once you've identified your brand's purpose, your competitors' strategies, your voice, and your target audience, it's time to focus on visual design. But, what’s exactly a brand’s visual design?
A brand's visual design/visual identity is a set of elements that work together to create a system. That system of symbols, colors, fonts, and other elements, is the visual manifestation of who you are and what you’re about. The goals of a great visual identity are:
- To make you instantly recognizable
- To help you project the image you desire
A comprehensive podcast visual identity includes:
- A logo. Your logo must convey exactly what your brand represents, by taking into account both the image and the language of your brand. You may want to go for an icon that symbolizes an idea or just use a wordmark. It’s up to you, your audience’s preferences, and your business goals.
- Color palette. Choose a color palette that stands out from the competition and aligns with your brand's values and vision. Colors are generally divided into functional, background, and accent colors.
- Typography. The world of type is vast and beautiful. Select those that align with your style and are easily scannable.
- Stock photos and illustrations. Pick images that are aligned and match your style. Always consider those that represent your community and reflect what you convey in each of your podcast episodes.
Undoubtedly, having a strong visual identity and a good brand story is the best way to boost your podcast. Therefore, build a strong connection between your podcast history and your visual design. Taking this approach can help you build a more authentic brand identity.
Put Your Podcast’s Brand to Work
Your podcast brand only works if you put it out there. So, now the time has come for your brand to be strong, distinctive, and recognized.
Social media plays a key role in your podcast promotion since it keeps the brand in front of your target audience. In order to build your podcast’s social media presence, you should develop a solid content creation & repurposing strategy.
Make sure every piece of content you post matches your brand’s tone and style. However, writing your brand’s purpose and designing your logo isn’t the end-all-be-all of your branding journey. Brands are iterative, built over time, and bound to change. And that’s great because creators and audiences themselves also change their style and preferences over time.
Boost Your Podcast Marketing Strategy with Engaging Videos
Now you know what it takes to build a brand for your podcast. But, have you thought about how you’ll attract new listeners?
Short-form video is the most engaging content type out there. And, with Audiotease, you can leverage it effortlessly. No need to hire an editor or learn how to use complex software. With Audiotease, you can create eye-catching podcast audiograms, in minutes, from your browser.
Curious? Create your first video today, for free.