Is Podcast Marketing a Part of Your Digital Branding Strategy?
Last year we wrote an article, “How to Use Podcasting to PowerUp Your Digital Marketing Outreach.” At that time, we were already witnessing the impact of the pandemic on the rise of e-commerce. Online activity had reached record levels. Just about every business pivoted to an online presence if they didn’t already have one. The stats on podcast episodes was impressive, and nothing has changed. In addition, the rise of remote and hybrid work ecosystems has made podcasts even more popular as people tire of screen time.
So, let’s jump in and talk about why podcasting marketing will help you grow your brand in this competitive and volatile global marketplace.
What Is Podcast Marketing?
Podcasting is another type of content marketing—a way to showcase your product or services through audio content. Podcasting is a powerful way to build trust between you and your consumers in an easily digestible format. Create valuable, timely, and authentic podcast episodes, and you’ll develop a loyal following of listeners who will purchase your products or services. Not only that but your consumers will be inspired to become brand ambassadors, helping you grow your brand into potentially untapped markets.
Podcast marketing opens up an untouched landscape of potential customers, people you might never reach through your website, and other digital channels.
Why Should You Employ a Podcast Marketing Strategy?
Let’s look at the stats.
Only 22% of the U.S. population in 2006 were familiar with podcasting. However, by 2021, almost 78% of Americans were familiar with the medium.
According to Apple Podcasts data, there were more than 48 million podcast episodes as of April 2021. Additionally, according to Statista, there were approximately 120 million podcast listeners in America in 2021.
Forecasters predict that the number of podcast listeners in the U.S. will increase to more than 1 billion in 2024.
Neilson survey data from the 1st quarter of 2018 found that:
- Sixteen million Americans are “avid podcast fans.”
- Podcast listeners tune in, on average, to seven different shows per week.
- Additionally, 94% of podcast listeners are active on every social media channel.
5 Reasons Podcast Marketing Is A Powerful Way to Grow Your Brand
Podcasts Are The Perfect Vehicle For Thought Leadership Content
Growing a podcast channel is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader or expert in your niche. A high percentage of consumers listen to podcasts to learn something new. Create podcast episodes that provide educational content around your services or products.
But you want to do more than churn out podcast episodes.
- Focus on consistency and quality.
- If you can’t produce a high-quality, informative, helpful episode every week, then go for a monthly show.
- To be successful with podcast marketing, you need to love the content you produce. Then, your listeners will pick up on your passion and connect to it.
- Provide information on a deeper level than what your listeners might be able to find elsewhere. To beat your competition, you need to have a deeper knowledge base than they do.
Consumers Prefer To Listen To Content Rather Than Read It
A visitor to your website may not take the time to read your articles from beginning to end. Still, they’ll listen to your entire podcast program until the end. According to statistics, 80% stay tuned for the complete episode.
However, don’t forget about those short attention spans. Even with podcast marketing, you need to grab your audience quickly. So jump in early with reasons why your listener should stick with you until the end of your episode.
Podcast Listeners Take Action
Podcast listeners are highly engaged; therefore, podcast marketing is a great way to grow your website traffic. They tend to be loyal followers, which other social media channels do not enjoy.
Following an episode, listeners are more motivated to visit your website or social channels and join your brand community. Once there, you can influence them through impactful CTAs to buy your products or services. In addition, your podcast listeners are more likely to follow your other social networks and share your podcast programs with their friends.
With podcast marketing, you can create a seamless and symbiotic relationship between your digital content and your consumers. Engaging podcast content adds value to their lives, and your website visitors boost your brand identity and reach. In addition, the longer website visitors remain on your site, the more you improve your Google ranking.
- Add a link to a related podcast episode at the beginning of your website blog articles. Then, readers will have the option to listen to your podcast episode if they don’t have the time to read the article.
- Use your most popular blog articles as episode ideas and audience feedback for blog topics.
Podcasts Are Perfect For The On-The-Go Audience
Podcast marketing enables you to share your brand with a captive audience. Listening to a podcast is easy and convenient. As smartphones and smart devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home grew, podcasts became more popular.
The pandemic helped boost the growth of podcast popularity, as it has done with so many other aspects of our digital lives.
Buzzsprout reported that 62% of Americans listen to podcast programs in the car, while driving or while commuting to work. However, as discussed in last week’s article, remote work or hybrid work realities have also changed these stats. Therefore, when developing your podcast marketing strategies, commuting time may no longer be relevant.
Podcasting is the Perfect Format for Telling Your Story
Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to breathe life into your brand. (David Campbell)
Powerful stories stop your listeners in their tracks, emote emotions, and make your brand memorable.
Make your podcast episodes a conversation with your listeners.
- Share your brand’s vision and mission.
- Weave the story of your passion for your brand into your podcast content. Invite your listeners to share their stories about how your brand has helped them.
- Set up a brand community where you can ask for feedback on your episodes and how you can serve their needs. Alternatively, use your email platform to solicit this kind of feedback.
Ready To Start Podcast Marketing?
As we said earlier, podcast marketing is simply a type of content marketing. You’ll want to use the same preparatory information you’ve already compiled for your overall marketing strategy:
- Who is your target audience?
- Where do they hang out?
- What are their pain points?
- What types of content do they like?
Try to gather as much analytic data from your other social media channels to define your target audience further.
In general, podcast listeners
- tend to be younger: 66% are between 12-34 (those aged 35-44 tune in at least monthly)
- are almost equally divided between men and women
- are more educated, with 66% having a college degree.
Statista statistics on podcast genres in the U.S. as of October 2020 reveals that the most popular are:
- comedy
- news
- true crime
- sports/health/fitness
Where to publish?
Globally, the leading publisher in 2020 was iHeartRadio, with 266.06 million unique streams and downloads. Apple Podcast and Spotify were the most popular platforms in the U.S. in 2020, with younger listeners gravitating to Spotify (18-34) and older listeners preferring Apple Podcasts.
Podcast Marketing Strategies
Last year’s article on podcasting provides tips on preparing and distributing your podcast episodes.
Here are the basics:
- Publish and promote everywhere.
- Join a podcast network.
- Use your email marketing campaign to alert your audience to upcoming episodes and links to previous episodes.
- Don’t forget share buttons so your audience can spread your podcast channel to their friends.
- Ask your listeners to leave reviews on your podcast platform.
- Be sure to use relevant SEO keywords in your episode content notes. Include links to previous episodes and relevant website content.
Bottom Line
There are two reasons you might not want to engage podcast marketing as a strategy to grow your business:
- it takes time and money
- you’ll have lots of competition.
Before you jump into podcast marketing, you’ll want to be sure you have the time to prepare, create and publish consistent, helpful, engaging, informative podcast episodes.
There’s competition everywhere, but as noted above, the number of podcast episodes is growing like crazy. So, you might be in a niche that’s still relatively untouched by podcasters.
The best way to stand out in the crowd is to deliver what your audience wants.
- Tell your brand’s story
- be authentic
- make it a conversation
- market your podcast channel
- produce polished episodes.
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