How to Make a Podcast Trailer

A podcast trailer is a short standalone episode, usually 60 to 90 seconds, that tells a new listener what your show is, who it is for, and why they should subscribe before any full episodes exist. You publish it as episode 0 so it sits at the top of your feed on launch day and greets everyone who finds you early. This guide covers writing the hook, choosing a voice, adding a music bed, and exporting the finished MP3 that you upload to your podcast host.

What a podcast trailer is, and how it differs from an intro

People mix up two things that do different jobs. A trailer is a one-time promo episode. It runs for about a minute, sells the whole show at a glance, and usually goes live a week or two before your first real episode so listeners can hit subscribe and get notified at launch. An intro is the short recurring segment, often 10 to 20 seconds, that plays at the start of every regular episode to remind people what they are listening to.

Think of the trailer as the movie preview and the intro as the opening title card. You make the trailer once. You reuse the intro on every episode. If you are still figuring out the recurring segment, our guide on how to make a podcast intro with AI voices covers that piece separately.

Write a 60 to 90 second hook

A trailer script is short, so every line has to earn its place. At 60 to 90 seconds you have room for roughly 150 to 220 spoken words. A reliable shape is: open with the promise, name the audience, give one taste of what to expect, and close with a clear ask to subscribe.

Open with the reason someone should care, not the show name. "Every week we take one true crime case that went cold and follow the one detail everyone missed" lands harder than "Welcome to my podcast." Then say who it is for in plain terms, tease the flavor of a typical episode, and finish with a single instruction: follow or subscribe so the first episode reaches them. Read your draft out loud and time it. If you run long, cut adjectives before you cut ideas.

Choose a voice for your trailer

The voice sets the tone before a single word registers as content. A warm, unhurried read suits a storytelling or interview show. A brighter, quicker read suits news or comedy. If you host the show yourself, recording the trailer in your own voice keeps it consistent with the episodes to come.

If you would rather not record, you can write the script and have AudioProducer render it in an AI voice you pick from the library. If you want the trailer in your own cloned voice, that requires your own voice or a voice you have permission to use. Pick one voice and let it carry the whole minute; swapping narrators inside a 90 second promo tends to confuse more than it adds.

Add a music bed and ambience

A trailer with a music bed under the voice feels finished in a way a dry read does not. Choose a bed that stays out of the way on its own, because AudioProducer has no volume control and no ducking: the mix is set during the render, so which cue you pick and where you place it is the whole lever. A sparse track under the open and the close, with the middle left to the voice, gets the shape listeners expect without reaching for a control that is not there. A short whoosh or a soft ambient texture can mark the transition into your subscribe line, but a little goes a long way in 90 seconds.

AudioProducer can lay a music bed and light sound effects under your script during the render, so you are shaping one finished mix rather than stitching tracks together by hand. If you want to go deeper on layering music and effects, the approach in adding sound effects and music carries over to podcast audio as well.

Export the MP3 and publish it as episode 0

When the read, the voice, and the music sit right, you export the trailer as an MP3. AudioProducer gives you a finished file you download. You then upload that file to the podcast host you already use, mark it as a trailer or set it as episode 0, and write a short set of show notes with your launch date and a subscribe prompt.

To be clear about who does what: AudioProducer exports the audio file. It does not distribute, publish, host, or upload your show to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any directory. You take the MP3 and publish it where you already publish. Once your host has it, submitting the feed to the directories works the same as any episode, which we walk through in distributing your podcast on Spotify and Apple.

Making your trailer with AudioProducer

The full path looks like this: paste your 150 to 220 word script, choose a narrator voice, turn on a music bed, and render. You get an MP3 back, listen once end to end, and upload it as episode 0. The free plan covers 1,200 words with no card, which is more than enough for a trailer script and a few rewrites, and paid plans start from $39.99 per month when you scale up to full episodes. If you are pricing out the whole season, how much it costs to make a podcast breaks the numbers down, and if you are building a scripted show, how to make a fiction podcast picks up where the trailer leaves off. The same trailer approach works for a book launch too, covered in how to make an audiobook trailer.

When the trailer is ready to publish, follow our guides on how to put your podcast on Apple Podcasts and create a podcast RSS feed.