Using the right podcast marketing platform can help you get the most out of your audio and visual content. But why bother creating a podcast at all? Because according to Statista, 82 million people in the United States alone listened to podcasts in 2021. That’s nearly a quarter of the population, and that number is expected to keep going up. In fact, Statista forecasts that in 2024, 100 million Americans will listen to podcasts. That’s a lot of potential listeners/watchers that you can connect and share your business’s value with.
As a marketer, you want to publish content where the people are, and the people are engaging with podcasts. They aren’t just listening to pass the time, either. Podcasts encourage your audience to engage with your brand on a deeper level. This can positively impact your company’s brand awareness, consideration, favorability, and even purchase intent.
But how does podcast marketing work? How do you get the best results out of your podcast? And how do you get started creating one in the first place? In this blog, we’ll cover:
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- How to use podcast marketing to achieve organizational goals
- How to use podcasts to create more content for a variety of platforms
- How to grow an audience for your podcast and your business
- How to publish your podcast
- How to promote a podcast on Instagram and other channels
- How to increase podcast downloads
Let’s dive in!
What Is Podcast Marketing?
Simply put, podcast marketing is publishing and promoting a podcast to market your business and connect with your target audience. Creating a podcast can help your business achieve the following marketing goals:
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- Increased Brand Awareness: As we mentioned earlier, nearly 25% of the United States population listens to or watches podcasts. Because people can engage with podcasts passively while doing other tasks, your audience can consume your content more frequently than if it were presented as an ebook, for example. With a podcast, you can educate people on how to solve certain problems, teach them how to use advanced product features, discuss industry trends, and more — all while your audience is driving, working, cooking, cleaning, working out, etc.
- Deeper Customer Relationships: Podcasts turn marketing into a conversation and create a more social experience for customers to engage with your brand. This form of content adds human voices and faces to your brand through a combination of organic and scripted conversations that invite your audience to get to know you. Relationships are at the center of B2B deals. People do business with people they like, know, and trust. Podcasts are a great chance for your audience to get to know your business, relate to it, and ultimately buy from it.
- Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Podcasts are a great way to reach searchers for two reasons. First, avid podcast listeners will often add “podcast” to the end of their query, which prompts search engines to recommend a list of podcasts related to that topic. The other reason is that podcast marketing platforms can use AI to create accurate transcripts of your podcast episodes, which you can repurpose into blogs. By following SEO best practices, like answering relevant questions and linking your content together, you can help your podcasts-turned-blogs climb search engine rankings and reach a wider audience.
- Established Industry Authority: Trust and authority go hand and hand. Podcasts make your brand more approachable, so your audience is more likely to engage with your content. This gives your business an exciting opportunity to become the go-to for all things related to your industry. The more informative and helpful you are for a variety of topics related to your industry, the more your audience will trust you and come back to you for more information.
- Increased Conversion Rates and Revenue: 91% of customers highly value trust when deciding whether or not to do business with a company, according to research conducted by PWC. When customers trust a company, they are 91% more likely to buy from that company (and 14% of customers are significantly more likely to make a purchase). On the other hand, 71% of customers are less likely to buy from a business that they don’t trust (and 73% are significantly less likely to make a purchase). Despite the importance of trust, only 30% of customers highly trust businesses. Podcasts can help bridge the gap between consumers and businesses, increasing trust — and revenue.
- Efficient Content Marketing: Creating a podcast gives you more content than just that podcast — if you know how to use it. If you make a video recording, you can post the video on YouTube and clips on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok. If you create transcripts of your podcast, you can turn those into blog posts or email newsletters. These are just a few examples of podcast content ideas that can maximize your marketing ROI (return on investment). This method of amplified marketing uses a singular platform to take one piece of content and use it in many different ways.
Those are some examples of how podcasts can fit into your marketing strategy. But do they actually work?
Are Podcasts an Effective Marketing Tool?
The data is in; according to the BBC, podcasts are an effective way to market your business and can result in the following:
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- 89% increase in brand awareness
- 57% increase in brand consideration
- 24% increase in brand favorability
- 14% increase in purchase intent
These podcast marketing statistics are great news for marketers, especially when you consider how versatile this form of content is. For podcast marketing examples, you can repurpose content as:
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- Video: Over 30% of new fans of podcasts prefer watching videos, either actively or in the background, according to a 2022 Forbes article. An audience of receptive video watchers allows businesses to engage users of some of the most popular social media platforms. For example, full-length podcast videos or short clips make great content for the following platforms (2023 user data provided by Statista):
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- Facebook (2.9 billion monthly users)
- YouTube (2.5 billion monthly users)
- Instagram (2.0 billion monthly users)
- TikTok (1.0 billion monthly users)
Video content is consumed by billions of watchers, which makes video podcasts a trend worth following.
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- Blogs: Organic content beats out paid ads when it comes to click-through rates (28.5% for the top organic result on Google vs. 4-6% for search engine ads). When recording podcasts, your hosts and guests will have natural, engaging, and informative conversations. You can take transcripts of these episodes and repurpose them as blogs. For example, if you bring on a customer experience expert, you can turn that interview into a blog titled “10 Ways to Improve Your Customer Experience.” Podcasts repurposed as blogs don’t just engage people who prefer reading content, they also help your website’s SEO.
- Email Newsletters: Email marketing is still effective, as long as you are providing value in enticing and concise communications. Once again, podcasts can help generate exciting content for your audience. Email newsletters are a great way to share highlights from your latest podcast. For example, you could send out the top 5 takeaways from your most recent guest, with a link to the full episode.
However you typically reach your customers, you can use a podcast content strategy to improve results. You can also reach entirely new audiences.
We’ve talked about how podcasts can benefit your business, but how do you create and run a successful B2B podcast?
How Do Podcasts Gain Popularity? With a Podcast Marketing Strategy
To have a successful podcast, you need an engaging premise and an effective podcast marketing strategy. No one will want to tune in if you aren’t discussing something interesting, and no one will tune in if they don’t know you exist. It’s also important to post new episodes regularly, so your audience can look forward to new content.
Step 1: Choose a Topic Your Audience Cares About
Some of the top categories include advice, true crime, business, celebrity interviews, comedy, and book and movie reviews. However, don’t get discouraged if you don’t see your niche B2B topic in this list. As long as you are creating valuable content for a passionate audience, you don’t need an enormous following — just a dedicated one. Depending on what your business offers, consider starting a podcast about:
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- Sales strategies
- Networking
- Cutting-edge technology
- SEO tips and tricks
- Marketing trends
- Product development
- Team management
- Productivity best practices
Step 2: Choose a Format
Within your main topics, you can also try out a variety of formats, such as:
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- Demonstrations: Explain/show how to do things, use products, and solve problems
- Interviews: Follow a question/answer format to gain insight from in-demand individuals in your space
- Free-form conversations: Discuss loosely outlined topics with co-hosts and guests
- Monologues: Let your train of thought run loose in an unscripted or outlined format
- Reviews: Test out products or services and let your audience know how you feel about them
- Expert panels: Bring in multiple experts to ask questions of
For example, if your business offers software that makes virtual meetings easier, you could create a podcast to discuss all things networking — from hosting events to how to make lasting connections with other professionals. For some episodes, you could interview networking experts, and you could even host them virtually to show off how effective your software is!
Step 3: Record Your Podcast
Ensure that you have an adequate space with good acoustics to record your podcast. You also need equipment, like microphones and headphones, as well as editing software. If your podcasts will have a video component, it’s important to spruce up your studio with backdrops, knick-knacks, and other decorations to appeal to your audience.
Now that you have your podcast, how can you make sure people download and engage with your content?
Step 4: What Is the Most Effective Way to Promote a Podcast?
Your podcast launch is a crucial part of your promotional strategy that should include:
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- Syndicated publishing across multiple platforms. This makes your podcast available to more people, no matter which platform they prefer. Consider popular platforms, like Google, Spotify, Apple, and Casted.
- Publishing several episodes right away. This gives your audience the chance to get a better feel of what you will be covering and if they connect with your delivery. It also engages binge listeners/watchers because they will have more content to start with and get invested in.
- Publicized podcast launch announcement. People won’t know your podcast exists unless you tell them. In fact, you can start building up excitement before the launch, especially if you have a few episodes already recorded. You can tease guest appearances, trending product reviews, controversial conversations, and more!
- Continued promotion across your website, email communications, and social media. The job isn’t done once you announce and publish your first few episodes. For each new episode, and each piece of repurposed content that comes from it, let your audience know it exists, why they should care, and where to engage. For the best places to promote your podcast, consider where your audience spends their time. Are they on LinkedIn? Do they use short-form content platforms like Instagram or TikTok, or do they prefer longer videos posted on YouTube? Do they click links in email newsletters?
- Track results. It’s critical to know how often people are tuning in and what your audience’s demographics are. Additional data like average watch time, when people close out, and how people found your content also give you key insights into how to improve your strategy. With these data points and more in a single platform, Casted makes tracking results easier than ever.
What Is the Best Podcast Marketing Platform for B2B? Casted.
Choosing a podcast marketing platform matters for more than just publishing and hosting your podcast. The best platform will also make it easy to repurpose your content to better support your marketing strategy. Here’s how Casted makes podcasts work for you:
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- Publish audio and video content with the ability to syndicate it to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and more.
- Quickly create transcripts, clips, and key takeaways for more content from each episode.
- Use management tools to analyze key metrics like unique listens and new listeners.
Ready to see what a podcast could do for your business? Start with a demo!