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While SEO, PPC, social media marketing and influencer marketing continue to dominate the landscape of the digital business world, a strong argument can be made for the notion of podcasting, as well. Marketing benefits that this trend brings to your startup are endless but not even this is the main reason why you should utilize podcasting as much as possible. The key thing is the ROI or the effort-to-results ratio that you can hope to get from it. With this in mind, here are eight marketing benefits your startup will have from podcasting.
#1 It can be incredibly low effort
Now before this gets misinterpreted, no one claims that making an episode of a podcast is simple, however, once you get the ball rolling, it is much easier to keep your audience engaged. The greatest thing about podcasts is the fact that it is a great vessel for multitasking. This means that a person can listen to it while driving to work, while running on a treadmill or even while tidying up their place.
Therefore, they will need a lot of material, which means that if they like what you have to offer, they are likely to download every single episode you’ve ever produced. According to one study, an average listener spends about one hour and 45 minutes each day listening to podcasts. So, whenever there’s new content it will be accepted as more than welcome, even as something highly anticipated by your audience. As the matter of fact, platforms like iTunes are even tuned in (no pun intended) to initiate a download a new episode of a podcast you are subscribed in almost immediately.
#2 Extremely engaging medium
As for the power of persuasion or the average conversion rates that these podcasts have, the stats are quite staggering. In fact, about 71 percent of all people who hear about a brand on a podcast is bound to look it up later on their own. Even more importantly, 63 percent of podcast listeners actually bought something that was advertised, recommended or even mentioned on a podcast.
Engagement is key and this is one of the main marketing benefits of podcasting. By creating a podcast and promoting to a targeted audience, your listeners will engage. This is great to build your startup, brand or business while generating leads.
One of the main reasons behind this is a simple fact that a podcast is a medium that isn’t heavily regulated by federal laws when it comes to ads. In fact, during your podcast, you are free to blatantly push for the hard-sell and even shamelessly promote your sponsors. Sure, doing so may not be the best practice, yet you are free to do so, should you feel the need for it. Either way, it seems that these freedoms more than benefit podcasting as a sales vessel.
#3 Starting out can be incredibly low-cost
Amongst the greatest misconceptions about marketing is the fact that in order to be effective it simply has to be expensive. Podcasting is a perfect example of just how misleading this mentality can be. Indeed, podcasting is one of those content marketing tactics that are cost-effective. In order to start podcasting, all you need to do is get some basic audio equipment and find the right topic to talk about. Still, this doesn’t mean that you can keep up in this way indefinitely.
As your brand grows and your audience becomes more numerous, you might need to expand your operations a bit. Luckily, even making your own studio isn’t that expensive. Apart from the audio equipment (which you’ve already purchased earlier on), you need the right space.
Start out by picking a suitable room, soundproofing it and tidying it up. For the last one, all you need to do is explore your options to sell, donate or place all the items you don’t need in affordable self-storage units. At the end of the day, all of this can be done with humble resources, whereas the ROI it brings is not to be underestimated.
#4 Stay in touch with your audience
Needless to say, engaging your target demographic directly and answering questions of your audience on forums or answer sites (Yahoo Answers, Quora), are amongst the most budget-friendly marketing moves at your disposal. Nonetheless, this is also something that can be done over a podcast, as well.
Apart from urging your audience to leave comments with questions and then answering them, you could spend some of your podcast preparation time going through these commonly asked questions on the above-listed forums. In this way, you can ensure that you never run out of the material for your podcast sessions, as well as that you’re constantly up to date with all the latest trends of your industry.
#5 Personal brand
One of the most important things about podcasts is that they have a unique way in which they attract an audience. Most people start listening to a podcast on a WOM recommendation, however, a large portion of your audience will come because they are interested in the topic that’s being discussed. Therefore, topics and ideas represented in a podcast need to be chosen carefully.
For instance, people care about podcasts that are educational or informative, seeing as how they find them useful. On the other hand, if the topic is approached through a condescending point of view or goes to lengths to make a simplistic case, it may be dismissed as pretentious. Apart from this, people like entertaining podcasts, yet, here, they focus more on personalities than they do on actual jokes. The charisma of the anchor is, therefore the key trait in the success of a podcast.
Having a personal brand is very important, no matter if you're in business or want to look for new opportunities. Podcasting will help you build this personal brand and that's an awesome marketing benefit, isn't it? Needless to say, here, we see another instance of how a personal brand can benefit your marketing as a whole. By sharing valid information, information that holds up and adds value, your podcast host is building up a no small amount of credibility. In time, this will result in an overwhelmingly positive following amongst your clients, as well as in no small degree of brand loyalty.
#6 P2P marketing
In the past, one of the most important marketing divisions, when it came to the methodology used was the so-called B2B vs. B2C. Today, both of these trends can easily be substituted with P2P (person to person or peer to peer marketing). When it comes to this, podcasting is incredibly efficient, seeing as how it is much more personal than any other kind of posting.
A written word will never seem as personal as the podcasts, yet, you first have to overcome your podcast fright. For a lot of people, speaking into a microphone seems much different than talking to a live person, which is something that needs to change. Nevertheless, after you manage to get a grip on this, you will realize that podcasting tends to be much less scripted than any other form of online content. This authenticity is something that keeps your audience interested in the first place, seeing as how it gives out the impression of coming straight from the heart.
#7 It is easily integrated with other forms of marketing
Every businessman knows that, in 2024, sticking to a single medium is simply not good enough. Luckily for you, podcasting is incredibly easy to integrate with any other form of marketing campaign that you already have going on. There is nothing easier than integrating a podcasting strategy to your digital marketing tactics or your influencer marketing campaigns.
For instance, if your aim is to generate leads for your website, you can do this quite easily by encouraging your audience to visit your e-store or your blog. Furthermore, if you’re currently holding a giveaway or hosting a contest, what better way to do so than to do it on air. In this way, it all seems more authentic and engaging. In other words, it fits your marketing plans regardless how you look at it.
This is what we love about podcasting: it's cost-effective, engaging and easy to integrate with other marketing strategies. Your brand will benefit so much from a podcast!
#8 A growing industry
Finally, podcasting is a growing industry, which means that any benefits you’re seeing today may feel as minor when compared to the growth you might see in the future. At this very moment, about 15 percent of Americans listen to podcasts, which is yet another reason why you need to get a piece of this action as soon as possible.
Remember what we said about WOM recommendations, as the audience of podcasts starts growing exponentially, more and more people will look up to veteran listeners for a recommendation. Generating positive reviews from them will be much easier if you’ve started this in time.
Sure, today, podcasting is still a mandatory technique, however, in the nearest future, you may not even have a choice. Unfortunately, by then, all of your competitors might already embrace it, leaving you behind to try and fend for yourself as best as you can. It goes without saying that you simply cannot allow this to happen.
So, how your startup can benefit from podcasting?
Finally, when observed historically, it would be simply ridiculous to claim that podcasting is a new trend. In fact, its direct predecessor, audio-blogging has its roots as far as the 1980s. However, this method is still horribly underused in present-day marketing.
With the massive boost in popularity of live streams, more and more marketers (especially digital marketers) are turning towards podcast as another effective method of spreading a message. Overall, marketing benefits of podcasting in 2024 seem to be too numerous for any list.
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