6 Benefits of a Podcast Branding Refresh
Listen to the full episode here:Thinking about refreshing your podcast branding? Before I discuss the “when,” let's consider how your podcast might benefit from a branding refresh.
What is “podcast branding”?
Your “podcast branding” is one or more features that uniquely identify your podcast. It's the first impression for new audiences, and it's how your loyal audience recognizes your podcast distinctly from others.
Podcast branding is more than only your cover art. It could be the logo insideyour cover art (and that logo can be used for all kinds of things)—and a logo isdifference from cover art . It's the audio and video elements you use throughout your episodes. It's your podcast description . It's in your repeated phrases. It's even in howyou communicate and host your podcast.
A “branding refresh” would then be updating any or all of these elements, but keeping the core of your podcast the same. A “rebrand” would be if you change much more of your podcast , including what you talk about and whom you try to reach.
1. Attract a new audience
Refreshing your podcast branding might help you capture the attention of more people by standing out or appearing more relevant. This might help you appeal to newdemographics or even recapture the interest of people who previously scrolled passed your podcast, for whatever reason.
For example, if your podcast focuses on helping Asian entrepreneurs, then you will probably be more likely to attract that ideal audience by showing an Asian in your cover art (and that might be your pretty/handsome face !). It can be a powerful thing when your potential audience can “see themselves” in your branding or messaging.
Or maybe the description of your podcast isn't communicating your content or purpose very well, so a refresh of this aspect of your podcast branding can better convince people to listen after they've already been attracted by the title and cover art.
2. Increase your perceived quality
I've come to loathe the phrase, “don't judge a book by its cover.” I think that really only applies to people, whose character can be completely different from their unchangeable appearance (but willbe reflected in their willful changeable appearance). But we can, do, and I think shouldjudge other things by their covers! Because if the cover isn't good, how can you trust that the contents will be better? As my friend Mark Des Cotes says, “If your podcast cover artwork looks cheap and amateurish, people will assume your podcast is cheap and amateurish and choose a different show to listen to.”
Instead, a well-executed brand refresh can make your podcast look or sound more professional, which is great even for hobby podcasts! (Please don't think that “professional” is a negative thing for hobbyists! Listen to “Labeling Podcasters: Amateur vs. Skilled ” for some more thoughts on that.) This can improve your potential audience's first impression and entice them to continue exploring your podcast.
Some people or places (including Apple Podcasts) may be more interested to feature your podcast when it has better branding, and less interested when your cover art is ugly or the rest of your branding experience is negative.
3. Adapt to the latest trends
Industries change all the time. What's hot or “standard” now might be radically different in a few years. For example, look at the rise and fall of designing apps and websites to look like objects from the physical world (this design principle is called “skeuomorphism”). Apple very publicly moved away from skeuomorphism in 2013 with the release of iOS 7.
iOS 6 (left) versus iOS 7 (right)Or look at how much wider the selection is for affordable audio branding elements now compared to 2005. Updating your branding can help your podcast catch up with these trends so you're not yet another podcast using music from GarageBand, the picture of headphones around an RSS icon, or anything else cliché!
4. Strengthen or reset your podcast's identity and message
After you've been podcasting for a while, you probably have a better grasp on what makes your podcast unique and how you want to do things. That could mean rebrandingto match your podcast's new direction, or updatingyour existing branding to reinforce what you've realized your strengths are. For example, red is generally seen as a negative design color, but it also has powerful meanings that I realized align perfectly with an audacious perspective. So when I redesigned The Audacity to Podcast‘s visual branding, I intentionally chose red as a branding color because it fits so well. Then, I combined that with strongly contrasting white and black.
The Audacity to Podcast's original cover art from 2010.The Audacity to Podcast's cover art redesign from 2016.I did this because I wanted to reinforce the core that my branding has had from the beginning in 2010: giving you the guts, the courage, the power, the audacityto podcast!
Part of my branding was