Have you ever listened to a podcast? If you have, you’re not alone. According to Demand Sage, 464.7 million people from all over the world had listened to a podcast as of February 2023. For the listener, these podcasts may be educational, funny, creepy — whatever tickles their fancy and keeps them coming back for more.
For businesses, podcasts open the door to a reinvented marketing strategy. With a podcast marketing platform, sharing and promoting your podcast can be pretty easy. Before we get to that, though, you should understand why a podcast is important for your business, particularly in terms of marketing. Let’s jump in.
There are several reasons why podcasts are so popular, but three of them are:
Ultimately, people like podcasts so much because they create a nice mix of education and pleasure. That’s why they work so well in a content marketing strategy framework.
One of the big benefits of a podcast in marketing is their ever-growing popularity. If you create content that aligns with your audience’s existing consumer behavior, you’ll have an easier time attracting them to your podcast. 100 million people in the U.S. are projected to listen to podcasts by 2024. You will have a large audience to draw from should you decide to include podcasts in your marketing efforts.
Another one of the advantages of a podcast is that it’s great for connecting potential customers with your brand. Think about this: 95% of purchasing decisions are emotionally driven, according to Professor Gerald Zaltman of Harvard University. If your audience doesn’t connect with your brand on an emotional level, they’re less likely to do business with you. However, a podcast creates that connection because you become more than a company to your target audience. They get a sense of your company’s voice when they listen to it. They start to see your brand less as a company and more as a human organization with an engaging personality. Your potential customers can hear the emotions behind what your podcast host is saying. They are much more likely to connect with that than an unfamiliar brand name.
You have the ability to expand your audience with a podcast as well. Remember that word of mouth we talked about earlier? If your listeners like what you’re putting out, they’ll probably recommend it to their friends and colleagues. And if those friends and colleagues like it, they’ll tell even more people about it. With a podcast, too, you can attract potential customers who don’t have the time to sit down and read your blog posts or watch your webinars. You’re still providing the value that customers want but in a form that may be more easily consumed by some.
Podcasts are also a great way to advertise. While you shouldn’t spend an entire episode on selling a product or service to your listeners, you can incorporate a couple here and there. A loyal listener base is willing to hear more advertisements if it supports the show. According to Demand Sage, 69% of podcast listeners learn about new products and brands from ads during their podcasts. Why not mention your new products during a podcast? If your audience likes what they hear, they’ll probably be more willing to try it.
There are several ways to ensure that your podcast aligns with your marketing objectives. First, you’ll want to figure out which marketing goals you want the podcast to help you achieve. From there, determine how you’re going to track the podcast’s success. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Then maybe you track mentions to sales or on social media. Do you want to boost audience engagement? Then maybe you look at how many episodes each listener gets through instead. Defining these goals from the start will give you a clearer sense of what to work towards.
Before you begin your podcast, choose a topic that will resonate with your listeners and search engines. Be sure to pick something that you are an authority on. Keep it specific, and make sure it relates to your business expertise and offerings. For example, if you provide managed IT services, you might create a podcast on the latest innovations in technology. Because Casted is a podcast marketing platform, we created a podcast about making this type of content a bigger part of your marketing strategy (you can listen to it here). When you prove yourself an authority on a topic, search engines will rank you higher in search results for that and related topics. Having a transcript to go along with your podcast will also help search engines recognize keywords to better rank it. Casted uses AI so that you can create those transcripts quickly and easily.
Including a call to action (CTA) in your podcast — some sort of action you want your audience to take after listening to an episode — can also help you reach your marketing objectives. You might direct your audience to connect with you on social media, subscribe so they can receive updates when new episodes are released, or check out your website for more helpful resources. CTAs can increase audience engagement with your brand and expand your brand visibility.
With a podcast marketing tool like Casted, you can easily convert your podcasts into other forms of content. AI-created transcripts can be used to write related blogs, videos, and social media posts so that you can get the most out of the information you’ve already provided your listeners with. You can even post your podcast episodes directly onto your social media channels to make them easier to find.
To use podcasts as a marketing tool, you should follow a few general guidelines:
A podcast strategy provides the who, what, when, where, and how of podcast publishing to guide you towards achieving your goals. Before you start creating and publishing your blogs, you need to figure out:
When creating your strategy, you’ll also want to look at how your competitors attract their audience, particularly if they have a podcast. How did they format theirs? What topics do they cover? Where are they sharing their episodes? You don’t have to do everything the same way as your competitors, but figuring out what they do well and what could be better provides a nice jumping off point when creating your own podcast marketing strategy.
Note that you shouldn’t set your strategy and then forget about it. As you track your goals, figure out what areas could use some improvement and make the necessary adjustments to your strategy. To accurately track your goals, you need a podcast marketing platform. You need Casted.
We’ve dropped hints here and there about Casted, but what do we do? We are a B2B podcast marketing platform that gives you all the tools you need to quickly and easily upload, syndicate, and promote your podcasts. Our platform supports both audio and video podcasts. With Casted, you can:
If you want to get the most marketing value from your podcasts, turn to Casted. Schedule a demo to see what we can do for you.