The new world of podcasting has given marketers and business owners everywhere a new way to reach their audience. People are hooked on listening to podcasts. The question is: Is it right for your business?
I am a firm believer that people are always going to choose convenience over tribulation. By transforming your blog posts (and other content) into easily digestible audio versions, you’re helping them do just that.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Would you want to read an entire blog post? Or listen to a fun conversation about it on your way to work, at the gym, or while making dinner? Having an easy way to absorb information is the key to an engaging audience.
Before we get into the real benefits, let’s see if podcasting is a good fit for you by asking two questions.
Where is the value to my business?
Podcasting can open up more avenues of communication between you and your audience and make more paths for them to buy from you. Let’s say your podcast is recorded every Monday at 12 PM. Why not live stream your recording for your listeners on their lunch break. Give your listeners a chance to weigh in on a live chat feed and connect with those people that choose to participate in the discussion.
If people felt like they can sit down and chat with you over a cup of coffee, it’s probably more likely that they would buy into whatever your company offers. Letting people have an insight into what your day to day looks like gives them a new way of getting to know your company without having to step into your office.
Give your customers a chance to see the real you instead of guessing your tone or attitude through a blog post. They can choose to either listen or watch your show and this can create an easier transition for more video marketing in your company down the road.
Plus, podcast listeners are everywhere! You probably already have an audience and don’t even realize it. Figure out what persona to target, find your angle, and start podcasting.
This graph represents the percentage of people living in the U.S. who have listened to podcasts in the last 4 years.
Where is the value to my customers?
The value comes from the content you are providing to your audience. For example, if you are an events based website, you wouldn’t want to create a podcast just to babble about all the events on your websites activity calendar. Being able to give specific insights and reviews of past and future events are going to give your readers more value than just scrolling through an event calendar you have hosted on your site.
Where is the value to my customer? This question is purely based off of your current audience. If you are an expert in your space and know exactly who you are talking to, you should know what questions they are constantly asking.
Starting your own podcast? Not sure where to start? Download a copy of our Podcast Planning Workbook!
Helping your customer can mean a lot of different things. You can help your customer/listener with advice, industry babble, or just giving your company a face. Customers like when they feel a connection with the person or company they’re buying from. Some people feel very shy when they can’t see your transparency. This concept is true for any sized organization. If you have three people or three hundred people, it still makes sense to show your face and make sure people are comfortable with what you’re doing and selling.
So let’s get back to your initial question: Will podcasting benefit your business? In short, podcasting probably has numerous benefits for your business.
12 Benefits of Podcasting for Business
- Personal connection
- Convenience and easy to understand
- Cheap and fast
- No need to watch a screen
- No content saturation
- Easily upload audio files
- Internal company development
- A new way to make money
- Referral traffic/increased traffic generation
- Building authority
- Client connection
- Collecting new ideas
1. Personal connection
Opening up to your viewers/listeners can help your business build relationships with your customers and sell more product.
2. Convenience and easy to understand
People are carrying around an entire library of podcasts in their pockets every day. Your listeners will be able to listen to you on the go and be able to comprehend much more information from a relaxed conversation than a traditional blog post.
3. Cheap and fast
Depending how robust of a set-up you want, setting up an initial podcast can be relatively cheap. You can set up a high quality podcast in an afternoon. So as you can imagine the potential ROI is huge.
4. No need to watch a screen
In a world of screens, it’s nice to get away from the constant reading of blog content on a computer screen. Wouldn’t it be easier to call me and have me tell you this information instead of reading this entire blog post?
5. Come on, everybody’s doing it
So many companies are producing podcasts and they have tons of listeners. Podcasting seems to have the type of set up that prevents content saturation because each podcast is laser focused.
6. Easily Upload audio files
Drafting, editing, and publishing blog posts can be tedious. Quickly uploading an audio file to your hosting service with a quick description can take a lot of the work out of giving your readers new content.
7. Internal Company Development
Public speaking can be difficult for members of your team. Having a podcast is a great opportunity to improve your speaking skills when discussing your products and services.
8. A new way to make money
Connecting to your audience will help you create more ways for them to buy your products. Podcasting also presents a new way for your company to make money if your podcast gets a large enough following. When you have a large enough following, you could get advertisers to pay you for short on-air readings.
9. Referral Traffic/ Increasing Traffic Generation
By having your podcast reference your products/services, people are more likely to check out things on your website. If you were to create show notes (a blog post format recap of the episode) for each episode, this could act as a way for people to get links to things you reference in each show.
10. Building Authority
Whether you are the first or the first of many to create a podcast in your industry, they can help you build up your authority. When people have more way of consuming your content and hearing from people on your team, you become the go-to person or business they want to talk to.
11. Client Connection
We already talked about connecting with new customers, but what about the ones you already have? Clients love hearing from your experiences and might even want to be featured on your podcast. This helps you build a better rapport with your current clients.
12. Collecting New Ideas
When you get together with other co-hosts or do research for each episode, this gives you a chance to collect information you may not have noticed before.
This graph represents the amount of ad spend in millions that was spent over the last 4 years.
Let’s say you go to the podcast app on your iPhone. Pick a category to search and really examine the type of titles, descriptions, length, and conversation found on each one. They’re all different. Podcasts allow for much more variation compared to a blog post. You can customize anything on your podcast. You can have different intro music, conversations, and guests. Sure, blog posts aren’t all the same but they all feel the same, right? Start with H1, give an intro, H2 and so on…
Where The Heck Do I Start?
So you’ve decided podcasting is a good fit for your company. Now it’s time to formalize your plan.
As with any marketing effort, a good place to start is by establishing SMART goals and documenting your strategy for the effort. Even if this contains just a few bullet points in a Word doc or a short outline in your notebook, you should write it down to make your plan real. This document should include your target audience, how you expect them to benefit, how you expect the business to benefit, and a high-level outline of the format your podcast will take.
With the boring strategic stuff out of the way, you can move on to the fun parts: buying equipment, picking your topics, and actually recording your first episode. Hopefully, this article inspires you to take action and begin recording the podcast you’ve always wanted to create. What format do you plan to take? What topics do you hope to cover? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
If you want more tips for your business, tune into our very own podcast, The Stack. You can find us on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, and SoundCloud.
