The most important question a host will answer while planning a new show is “Who is this show designed to serve?”. Knowing your target audience allows you to craft content they’ll enjoy, select the best marketing channels, and build a community.
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We’re going to show you how to create a listener persona (marketers and entrepreneurs often call this a “customer persona”) for your ideal listener. Let’s pretend you’re creating a podcast about sports. Sports is a very broad topic. One way to narrow it is to consider the listener you’d like to reach. Check out the personas below. Each of these listeners enjoys sports content but their needs are different.

If you decided to create a podcast for Joy, you’d probably focus on education, kid’s sports, fitness or community-building and promote it heavily on Pinterest and Facebook. On the other hand, Thomas’ podcast should focus on college sports and have a more youthful voice. Thomas would expect your show to have a presence on Twitter. For Jamie, you could do a podcast about professional sports in NYC and focus your marketing efforts on Facebook.

We’re working with a new podcaster named Ellen. She’s an artisan in Ohio who has a few young boys in sports. Her family watches sports all the time and she’s learning how to help her sons become better athletes. Ellen decided that Joy is her ideal listener and that Jamie might also tune-in here and there. 

When creating personas of your ideal listeners, it is important to remember that your listeners might come from a diverse range of backgrounds. Think about a single issue, topic, experience, or trait that unites them.