Why you need a trailer episode for your podcast
Starting a podcast may fill you with tiny nervous butterflies in your stomach.
You’ve planned out your episodes, batched a bunch of episodes and it’s all coming together. The whole process is feeling daunting perhaps, but you’ve got a launch plan organised and it all feels achievable.
But have you thought about the trailer episode?
Much like a movie trailer entices viewers to watch the film, your podcast trailer serves as the first impression of your show, enticing potential listeners to hit that subscribe button potentially before it’s even launched.
Why You Need a Trailer Episode
Your podcast trailer plays a crucial role in introducing your show to the world. It acts as a teaser, offering a glimpse into what listeners can expect and why they should tune in. Even if your podcast is in its infancy and lacks a library of episodes to pull snippets from, a well-crafted trailer can pique the curiosity of your target audience and set the stage for a successful launch.
Creating an Effective Trailer
At Bamby Media, we advocate for a simple and concise approach to crafting a trailer, especially if you have a more “standard” style show. Whether that’s an interview style format or solo episodes with some guests, you can create an easy trailer to give the listener a taste of what’s to come.
We recommend a brief five-minute episode, where you can showcase what you’re about, who the podcast is for and why it’s worth listening to.
This format is particularly effective for business, finance, education, and other informative podcasts where substance and value take precedence over fancy narrative forms and the more involved trailers (that we also love by the way).
Going All Out
If you have batch recorded and edited a bunch of episodes and you have a really solid idea of what the podcast is going to sound like, we love a trailer that has high production value.
This could be lots of sound effects (foley), storytelling or snippets from episodes to entice the listener. There are so many things that you can do with a trailer episode if you have content ready to go. It takes a lot longer to craft a high-production-value trailer, and they’re definitely suited for true crime, narrative and even comedy podcasts.
We recommend checking out the Trailer Park podcast if you’re looking for inspiration on how to craft your own trailer. Arielle and her co-host Tim Villegas dive into a trailer in each episode, and you get a great feel for all the different formats there are out there.
Don't underestimate the impact of a well-crafted trailer episode for your podcast. It serves as a gateway to building a loyal audience and sets the tone for the success of your show. Take the time to create a trailer that encapsulates the essence of your podcast and entices listeners to embark on this audio adventure with you.
Transcript:
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[00:00:00] Why do you need a trailer episode for your podcast? The trailer is the first thing that people will come across potentially for your show, especially if it's a brand new show. You might not have a bunch of episodes, but you do have a trailer. The reason why you have that trailer is to try and entice people People into actually subscribing and wanting to listen to your show.
[00:00:28] There's a couple of different ways that you can approach a trailer. The easiest one to do is what we advise clients to do from here at Bambi media. And that's just a simple five minute recording. Why you started the podcast, who you are. who the podcast is for and what people are likely to learn. So this type of format for a trailer goes really well for business type podcasts or financial podcasts, educational content, stuff where you're not trying to like lure them into subscribing because it's some sort of juicy true crime.
[00:00:57] It's just a pretty standard sort of format as a show. So your trailer doesn't need to be Reinventing the wheel and having a bunch of different things in it. Just keep it really simple. The other way that you can attack a trailer is if your show has a lot more moving parts, maybe it's a narrative podcast, or it is a true crime, something that feels like you're trying to entice them in comedy, then that is where a trailer that's.
[00:01:23] It's got a lot of work into it, a lot of sound design, a lot of snippets from the episodes that people are likely to hear. Things that get them in, that hook them. Trailers can be really effective, just like a movie trailer, of trying to get someone to want to listen slash watch the thing. If you feel like that's That's the kind of thing you're trying to get a bit of a cult following or you have a lot of your episodes recorded already and you feel like you could definitely put them together, splice them in with a bit of narrative, then you can build a trailer that is a lot more interesting and potentially even get more subscribers out of that.
[00:01:59] There is a really [00:02:00] good podcast brought to you by Arielle Nissenblatt and her co host. It's called Trailer Park, where they basically review trailers. I'm going to link that too, so that you can go and have a listen to that. It's not a very long podcast and that will kind of help you decide what kind of trailer might work best for you.
[00:02:16] The other reason why you might want to have a trailer is so that you can submit your show ahead of time, ahead of your launch. You can have a trailer episode go live before any of your other episodes. And for your show to appear on podcast platforms, you need one at least for it to turn up for you to submit to all the podcasts.
[00:02:34] platforms, especially Apple Podcasts. If you have a trailer episode, then it means you can tease people without having to showcase any of your actual episodes. You go in, you submit just with the trailer, and then you can schedule your launch out based on all the other dates that you actually want to have.
[00:02:49] That's what we do here at Bambi Media. We'll make sure that the trailer is done and then we schedule that launch week to have multiple episodes within the week so that they can kind of binge as well as the trailer. So I think it's important to note that yes, I absolutely believe you should have a trailer.
[00:03:05] Keep it really simple if you have a fairly standard sort of podcast, perhaps, and you're quite new to the platform. This is your first time launching a show. It is the first place that you can start to get a bit of your chops up to where you have to kind of maybe talk about yourself and you're not used to doing that.
[00:03:22] A trailer is a really good way to do that as well. Another thing to note is you don't have to be awesome. This can be a trailer for now. It doesn't need to be a trailer that is the same one forever and ever. You can update your trailer episode at any time. You can just submit a new trailer to your podcast platform.
[00:03:40] You might have something that you're not like super in love with to begin with and then maybe six to eight months later, maybe once you have a bunch of episodes ready, once you feel like you've got a bit more of a handle on what a podcast. is and what yours is, then you can rerecord a trailer and then upload that and get rid of the old one.
[00:03:58] So I don't think you need to be really [00:04:00] tied down to anything specific. I don't think you need to overthink it. Don't overthink it. Just get it out there. Keep it simple. And if you do have a production team behind you or you have edited a bunch of episodes, please give the trailer more thought than you think.
[00:04:14] Spent some time pulling out some great snippets from the episodes thinking about what is going to entice people to actually listen to the show to subscribe to it and get the best bits and put it together in a trailer that feels a bit meatier. They're the kind of podcast trailers that I love personally to listen to and I think you'll get a lot of value out of doing that as well.
[00:04:35] As I said, I will definitely put a link to the Trailer Park podcast so you can go and listen to a few kind of examples of different ways people do trailers. And shout out to Arielle Nissenblatt for doing that. She's actually been a podcast guest on our podcast before, so if you're interested in that, I'll put a link in here so you can go and listen to all her goodness there as well.
[00:04:55] And just enjoy yourself! Have a great time with your trailer, and if you like this kind of content, hit the subscribe button, follow button, leave me a comment to your trailer. Give me a link to your trailer and if I can get to it, depending on the volume, I would be happy to go and listen to your podcast trailer and see what it's all about.
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