How to define your podcast’s listener persona

In this case, the product is your podcast, the consumers are your listeners and what we’re looking to define in this article is the listener persona. 🧐

Why define the listener persona?

By focusing on your core target audience, you’ll be identifying the main commonalities of your audience.

Not the specific, nor the exceptional.

Of course, each of your listeners has their own personal story and their own everyday life.

The goal here is not to dwell on the differences but to focus on what brings your listeners together, no matter how unique they are. 💜

But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you can’t reach a wider or different audience besides your core target.

It means you’ll be more consistent in your communications and therefore more coherent for people who are most likely to become fans of your podcast.

And fans are the ones that are more likely to recommend your show to others. 🚀

How to define a typical listener

To define your listener persona, you’ll need to answer seven basic questions:

1. Who is the listener I’m looking to speak to? 😀

Fill in a fictitious first name, age, occupation and the city where they live. Also identify, if you can, the main reasons your listeners are drawn to your podcast.

To do this, you might want to think of a real person you know who best represents your target audience. Or you can completely invent your persona from scratch.

2. What motivates them to listen to your podcast? 🎧

Put yourself in your persona’s shoes for a few minutes and ask yourself why your listener is listening to your podcast. What are they looking for when they press play?

3. What are their barriers to listening to your podcast? 🙅‍♀️

Take an interest in your audience’s barriers. Why aren’t they listening to your podcast? Is it because of the format? The quality of your podcast? Too much competition?

4. What other types of content is my listener consuming? 📖

Besides your podcast, what content is your persona likely to consume?

Be broad in your assumptions: certain types of movies, magazines or specialized media outlets, other podcasts on themes more or less similar to yours, blogs, etc.

5. What’s a typical day for your persona? ☕

What time do they wake up? What type of transportation do they use to get to work? What are their weekends like? What do they do in their evenings? etc.

By imagining a typical day in the life of your persona, you’re experiencing the same moments as him/her in a fictitious way, and you’ll therefore have an easier time identifying when you can get in touch with them through your podcast.

6. So what are the possible contact points? 🤝

Using the typical day you defined in the previous question, you can then identify the times your listener is available and take advantage of that time to promote your podcast.

7. How do they use communication channels? 📱

Of the major touchpoints you’ve identified, what’s the percentage of time they use each channel? Does your target listener primarily use Instagram or LinkedIn? Do they watch videos on YouTube?

Answering these questions will help you prioritize the channels to focus on. 💪

Ausha’s tips: visually depict your persona

It’s not enough to ask yourself questions and answer them quickly by jotting down the answers in the corner of your notebook.

To be truly effective in defining your listener persona and having the ability to refer to them as often as possible, it’s best to visually depict your typical listener. 🖼️

To help you, we’ve created a listener persona template. You can download it here!

Your turn! 🔥