As marketers, we all want the biggest bang for our marketing spend and efforts. We want to maximize our budgets and see visible returns from all of our hard work. Otherwise we just feel like we’re feeding the beast and adding to the noise.
For people who’ve never created a podcast before, it might seem super easy. You just buy a cheap mic on Amazon and start chatting it up, right? You and I both know that’s not true. Tons of strategy and thought go into bringing a podcast to life, not to mention all the tasky work and logistics. But when it’s all said and done, you’ve got this curated, strategic piece of rich audio content.
You upload your podcast to the everyday distribution channels and “ta-da!” you’re done. It’s time for a cocktail. But have you really leveraged this piece of content you put so much hard work into? Are you truly wringing all the goodness out of your podcast this way?
We’d argue that the fun has only begun.
Let’s say someone from your company gets a thought leadership piece published in The Wall Street Journal. Awesome! Would your marketing efforts stop there? Would you call it a day and just hope people stumbled upon the piece and came flocking? Of course not. You’d take that same thought leadership and expertise and share it with the world in other ways and places—maybe your company’s website, a blog, social media, or other third-party publications. And the same should go for your podcast.
Why Your Podcast Needs a Home Base
One way to maximize your podcast content’s reach and return is simply to give it a home base on your own website. This helps you maintain control and maximize the consumer experience, just to name a few perks. Let’s dive into four specific reasons you’re wasting time and money if you don’t give your podcast a better home.
Maximize Exposure
Housing your podcast on your own site, in addition to the typical channels, means an opportunity to get new ears on your content and new eyes on your brand. Yes, Apple and Spotify are excellent low-barrier entry points for potential customers and fans, but they definitely shouldn’t be the only places people can find and hear your content.
And as you repurpose your podcast into other content formats (which you absolutely need to be doing!) through blogs, transcripts, and comprehensive show notes, you not only serve up a richer experience, but you boost the chances people will find you organically through SEO.
In addition, you have the opportunity to encourage meaningful shares on your own site. You can make one-click shares enticing and easy with shareable quotes, audio snippets, graphics, and more.
Control the User Experience
Like with social media, the podcasting world feels unstable and unpredictable. So it wouldn’t be wise to put all your eggs in the mainstream player basket. For example, Apple has altered what they consider “New and Noteworthy” in podcasts many times over the past year, and other players tend to follow suit when Apple changes things up. Understanding how to “game” the system and ensure visibility for your podcast is impossible.
And when someone finds your podcast through a third-party platform, you have little to no control how you’re represented there. Sure you can pop in a logo and add some messaging, but the way you show up there is otherwise out of your hands.
Giving your podcast a home on your own site means way more control. You can enrich and guide the user experience while incorporating strategy and staying on brand.
Get the Analytics You Deserve
Lack of valuable metrics remains one of the biggest podcast pain points for marketers. But when you send people to your own site to listen, suddenly a whole new world of analytics opens up. You can go way beyond just number of downloads and start tracking all sorts of goodness like:
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- How are users interacting with your content?
- Where else on your site are they going?
- How long are they sticking around?
- Where are listeners coming from?
- Are they sharing and how?
Build Lasting Relationships
The best businesses are built on relationships. That’s part of the magic of podcasts, right? Listeners feel like they’ve pulled up a chair and are taking in an intimate conversation.
This is why it’s time to put out a fresh welcome mat and invite people to interact with you on your home turf. Housing your podcast on your own website provides a more personable, inviting experience with more opportunities for conversation and relationship-building.
The best podcasts leave listeners hungry for more time with the hosts and guests. And if users are listening to your podcast on your site, you can serve them up with all kinds of extra goodness like:
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- Episode bonus materials like photos, cheat sheets, and backstories
- Related episodes from your archive
- Relevant resources like whitepapers, blogs, or online courses
- Interaction opportunities
- Host bios
- Upcoming events, services, or offerings
Plus, your site is a great place for capturing emails to continue that relationship-building down the road. When someone bounces off of Apple or Spotify, you have no way of knowing who they are or how to stay in touch.
Wanna know why we get so fired up about all of this? At Casted, we’re a content marketing platform built on conversations. Everything we do focuses around igniting conversations and getting these content-rich interactions out there to the world.
We love that third-party players make distribution easy. We all could use a little more easy in our marketing life, right?! As marketers, though, we’ve become used to creating really great content and just handing it over. We literally give it away to someone else and not only give up control, but lose the opportunity to see a bigger return on our investment.
