Podcast marketing has now become one of the most essential aspects of content marketing strategies for businesses. Podcast marketing is no more a new option to explore, but in fact, a popular channel for marketing your brand that you can add to your marketing strategy.
Many brands are now using this powerful channel to increase brand awareness and grow their audience.
Podcast marketing is a great way to drive high engagement and build loyal audiences. The audio content of a podcast is easy to repurpose into written or video formats.
Podcasting is a great way to provide value to your customers by educating them. This ensures loyalty and trust. As a result, podcast becomes an influential way to generate leads.
In other words, podcast marketing refers to creating a strategy to promote your audio content to expand your audience and brand awareness.
Nevertheless, there are several podcasts found today in almost every niche that you can name. It is competitive and so you need to create a solid promotion and marketing strategy, that will direct you to create and distribute your podcast most effectively.
Future of Podcasting Marketing
Source: Statista
The increase in the number of podcast listeners across the globe is rapid. A survey by Discover Pods, states that over 55% of podcast listeners have purchased after hearing a podcast ad. The number of podcast listeners and podcasters tends to increase every year.
This paves an effective way for the brands to establish a podcast and reach more audiences by marketing and distributing their podcasts.
Before diving more deeply into podcast marketing let’s try to understand what a podcast is.
What Is A Podcast?
The term ‘podcast’ is derived from ‘pod’ as in Apple’s iPod and ‘cast’ from the term broadcast. Podcasts are an audio form of content. What distinguishes podcasts from other audios is that they are broadcasted on the internet in the form of episodes.
These episodes can be listened to online or even downloaded and heard anytime. Unlike reading or watching other content, podcasts can be heard anyway and anywhere passively.
A report published by Infinite Dial in 2019 showed that almost 74% of podcast listeners are seeking new knowledge, while others are seeking entertainment, staying up to date, relaxing, and getting inspiration from podcasts.
Suppose you are at the gym or just simply traveling, podcasts can be a go-to choice to consume content. On-demand audio is what a podcast is!
Radio is often confused with podcasts. So what’s the difference? Well, it’s about convenience. Radio shows are scheduled and you have to adjust your time to sit and hear them.
But podcasts are something you can hear on-demand anytime and anywhere. This is what makes it popular. Today many radio shows are turning into podcasts, the reason behind this is a large shift in the audience towards on-demand consumption of content.
In a nutshell, a podcast is nothing but an audio file just like any other audio file, uploaded on the internet, which can be heard anytime and downloaded on your device and you are allowed to subscribe to.
How To Publish A Podcast?
Creating and publishing a podcast is a whole process. If you do everything right you have an opportunity to leverage your marketing efforts. Before you know how to publish a podcast, make sure that you perform in-depth research on your niche and target audience and accordingly strategize a plan for podcasting.
Now let’s let jump in, to understand how can you publish a podcast.
1.Recording:
This is an obvious first step that you need to do. You can record your podcast on your phone or computer.
To record your audio on mobile you shall require:
- A recording app
- A headphone/mic
For recording apps, you can explore apps like Video Recorder HD which is available for both Apple and Android phones. For recording equipment, you can use good quality headphones.
To record your audio on a desktop you shall require:
- A recording software
- A USB Mic
- A headphone
You can try free recording software such as Audacity to record your audio on a desktop. Try good quality USB Mics that you can afford. You can try mics from Audio Technica, Maono, Rode, and so on.
2.Editing:
Try to edit and fine-tune the audio that you have recorded on your recording app/software. Make sure that it sounds pleasing, crisp, and clear. You can get hands-on to edit on the app or software by practicing it. Once done save the file as a Wav file. You can later export the Wav file as an MP3 file.
3.Hosting:
Next up is choosing your podcasting host. This is where you will upload and store your audio episodes. The host distributes your podcast to different platforms like Apple podcast and Spotify.
Do in-depth research on your podcast host as this is very crucial. There are many paid and free podcast hosting platforms such as BuzzSprout, Podbean, Anchor, and so on. Choose the one that is suitable for you after a detailed study.
4.Optimize your podcast:
Research the keywords that your audience usually searches for. Write a brief, concise and relevant description for your podcast episodes. You can also include episode-specific tags in your description.
5.Promote:
Lastly, you need to have a strong podcast marketing strategy to distribute your podcast. For instance, if you have a blog, you can embed your podcast link into your blog. This will drive traffic to your podcast.
How Can Podcast Marketing Help You Grow?
Podcast marketing is a significant way to distribute your content and strengthen your content marketing strategy to reach more audiences. Along with this, there’s a lot more than you can benefit from podcast marketing. Here’s how to podcast marketing can help you grow both your personal and company brand.
1.Drive website traffic:
Listing your podcast on networks enables you to link back to your website. This way podcasting can help you drive traffic to your website.
2.A podcast can be consumed passively:
A podcast is content that can be consumed passively. Hence, you have a great opportunity to engross your listeners and create a branding impact by providing engaging and valuable content.
3.Develop loyalty:
Creating and distributing a high-quality and valuable podcast episode regularly will gain the loyalty of your audience. This in turn can help you build trust and generate transactions when you sell your product or services to them.
4.Reach new audience:
Podcasts are usually searched based on topics. If you focus on your podcast niche and plan a compelling content and distribution strategy you have a great potential to reach new audiences who can become your customers.
5.Improve your SEO rankings:
While it’s common to pack blogs and website content with keywords, you can also optimize a podcast with the right keywords to raise your company’s website rankings.
6.Inform listeners about your products:
Statistics show that 67% of podcast listeners have a favorable opinion of commercials. Podcast ads are an innovative yet powerful way to quickly inform listeners about the benefits of your product, special offers, discounts, and personal stories.
Gaining trust, improving your target audience, reaching new target groups, and promoting items are all possible if you do it right.
Best Practices for Podcasting
Following the best practices to lead your podcast journey can help you overcome or avoid certain hurdles in your way. These practices will help you effectively implement your podcast marketing strategies. Let’s have a look at some of these best practices for your podcast:
1.Conduct research:
Doing profound research before you start your podcast will help you navigate in the right direction and take timely correct decisions suitable for your marketing plan.
Conduct research to know about your niche and the audience that you shall be targeting. Also, make sure to choose the best suitable podcast hosting platform.
2.Be prepared to be consistent:
Getting effective results from podcast marketing is time-consuming. Make sure that you maintain consistency and quality to achieve your marketing goals. For this, you can prepare a well-planned publishing schedule.
3.Good pieces of equipment:
To run a successful podcast is not only concerned with creating good content but also giving a good user experience while listening to it. Make sure that you invest in good quality podcasting equipment so that your audience feels engaged and gets fond of listening to your podcast.
4.Actively promote your best content:
Once your podcast grows and you have more episodes you can find the best performing episodes. Try to promote these best-performing episodes to your new listeners. You can do this by promoting these episodes in your other episodes.
5.Optimize your podcast for keywords:
As podcast directories like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and others have algorithms that filter the episodes based on the names and descriptions, you should optimize your podcasts for the appropriate keywords.
As a result, make an effort to develop descriptive sentences for your episodes that explain the subject of your podcast with the main keywords.
How Can Insightus Digital Help You?
Insightus digital is committed to transforming businesses around the globe through its in-depth insights, knowledge, and access to best practices.
By offering the most effective and the most recent upgrades to the table, we plan marketing initiatives that are motivated by ROI.
The professional team at Insightus Digital specializes in various arrays of digital marketing such as Podcast Marketing. We work around the clock to ensure that your company expands rapidly.
You can leverage the benefits of your marketing efforts with our extended team of experts in marketing. Walk through your journey to achieve your business and marketing goals with an effective podcast marketing strategy customized for your business.
Schedule a free consultation call with our marketing experts today to level up your marketing strategy!
Conclusion
The flourishing age of podcasting is here, giving many opportunities for brands to reach more audiences and provide impactful content. This is one of the best channels to connect with your audience and amplify your content marketing activities.
Ensure to do deep research when you are about to start. Podcasting gets improved with time, so be consistent and keep monitoring the performance. This helps you to implement and improvise from time to time making your podcast marketing strategy a hit!
When on one side where podcasting can provide higher ROI and hyper-targeting, you must also consider that podcast isn’t for every brand.
You need to make sure that your products and services are properly aligned with your content, audience, and the presenter. If yes, then podcasting is a great option to intensify your content marketing efforts.
Let us know your thoughts on podcast marketing in the comments.
