Podcasting offers you a way to promote and talk about your business. With a podcast, you can build a community that can become your valuable long-term asset. You can reach as many people as possible as well. Just look at the numbers.
In 2021, a staggering 82 million people listened to podcasts. The number of podcast listeners is expected to even increase to over 100 million in 2024.
In other words, if you’re not using podcasts for your business, you’re missing out.
Not yet convinced? Let’s take a closer look at how podcasting benefits your business.
1. Enhances brand awareness
Brand awareness is critical to the success of any business. How can people buy from you if they don’t know about you?
As mentioned above, the number of podcast listeners has been growing for the last few years. According to Statista, 32.5% of US podcast listeners used Spotify in 2022; 28.5% listened to their favorite episodes via Apple Podcasts.
So how does this type of reach impact brand awareness? Well, according to a study, brands see a whopping 89% increase in brand awareness with podcasts.
The thing is, to increase brand awareness, your podcast episodes don’t have to specifically promote your company or your product. In fact, if you do promote your product directly, chances are, people won’t listen to you.
You want a podcast that offers value and highlights your core principles instead. This way, you can better connect with your audience. We’ll talk more about this later.
For instance, instead of promoting its line of beverages, Coca Cola launched a podcast on leadership, one of the brand’s core values. In each episode, you get executives talking about the challenges they faced in their respective companies.
These are insights podcast listeners, especially those aspiring to climb the ladder or business leaders themselves, will find valuable.
As they listen to the podcast while on their morning commute or while cleaning their homes, then, they become more aware of the Coca Cola brand. To improve brand recognition, you can also include your logo in your podcast and mention your business name several times.
But to get your podcast out there for brand awareness, you must also have a good marketing strategy. True. Since 2019, Google has been automatically indexing your podcast episode if it’s available on Google Podcasts.
However, you shouldn’t just rely on this. Promote your episodes through different media, such as email. Leverage social media, as well. This is also an excellent way to generate Instagram likes, Facebook comments, and retweets.
2. Helps you connect with customers
With the staggering number of people who listen to podcasts, it’s also safe to say the medium can help you connect with current or new customers. Think of podcasts as excellent marketing, advertising and lead generation tools. They help you expose your brand to that group of people who are more likely to buy your products.
But to help you reap one of these important podcast benefits, you need to offer something valuable to your target audience in the podcasting world. Around 74% of people listen to podcasts to learn new things.
So, a podcast that offers email marketing tips, for instance, is more likely to be listened to than a podcast that talks about McDonald’s current offerings. Practically everyone knows what the fast food chain already offers.
If you’re not sure what your podcast should be about, create a listener persona. A listener persona is a fictional representation of your ideal listeners. For businesses, those ideal listeners are usually their target buyers. This is how a listener persona looks:
Gather data for your listener persona by sending your target audience surveys or looking at your website and social media analytics, for example.
Your listener persona should give you an idea of the pain points of your target audience. Then, just need to start recording content resolving those pain points.
Take The Mom Hour, which sells parents’ and kids’ merchandise. In their podcast, hosts Meagan and Sarah churn out advice on how to better rear children. They also give relaxation tips for individuals who deal with stress as they raise their kids.
These are valuable to its podcast listeners who are usually moms and dads, who are also likely buyers of The Mum Hour merchandise. As a result, since 2015, The Mum Hour has seen 13.2 million downloads by parents. That’s a lot of potential customers listening to them.
As we’ve seen, the approach is great for DTC or B2C businesses. But what about B2B brands?
B2B brands can take this a step further. You see, the B2B industry is complicated and tends to have long sales cycles. There’s a lot of required relationship-building with individual customers.
That’s why account-based marketing is a favored approach. You must also demonstrate your authority and credibility to potential customers even more (more about authority in the next section).
As such, it’s not uncommon to see enterprise SaaS companies invite potential customers to every new episode for interviews. This is part of that relationship building to convert prospects into paying clients.
3. Establishes authority
The more high-quality content you publish, the more you’re perceived as an expert in your industry. Therein lies one of the best benefits of podcasting. If you churn out quality podcast content, you can establish your authority and expertise.
When you establish these, you remain top of mind with your listeners. So if they need a product that’s similar to yours, they’ll buy from you.
But that’s the thing. The operative word here is “quality.” If you want to be perceived as an authority in your field, you can’t just produce mediocre podcast content.
As I mentioned a while ago, “quality content” means it should provide value. You can only provide value if you know what you’re talking about in the first place. Don’t launch a podcast on movies if you only watch one movie in a year. Or don’t launch a podcast about email marketing if you’ve never written email copy.
In our The Mom Hour example above, for instance, the hosts Meagan and Sarah are also moms. They’re in a position to talk about parenting issues because they’re parents themselves.
Let’s take this other podcast example. MarketinGROW offers marketing consultations. So, its podcast episodes are focused on helping users learn how to achieve growth through their websites. That’s a topic something MarketinGROW would know.
Once you’ve decided on an umbrella topic, stick to it. To build authority, you need consistency, too. You won’t be perceived as an authority in marketing, for instance, if you only talk about SEO in one episode and then about parenting in another. In this case, every episode should, as much as possible, be about marketing.
“Quality content” also means your video (if you prefer video podcasts) and audio are crisp and clear. That’s why it’s important to choose the right tools for editing. You want tools that allow for studio-quality recording and AI-powered editing.
Once you have your quality podcast content, repurpose it so that other people who prefer other content forms may access it, too. This is a great way to enhance your authority across platforms.
The MarketinGROW podcast above, for instance, has a blog version. If your podcast includes a video, you can also have it published on YouTube.
4. Increases website traffic
Podcasting can help you increase website traffic. The more people go to your website and stay on your website, the higher the chances of them buying from you. In other words, you can improve conversions.
But how can podcasts increase website traffic in the first place? For starters, you can upload your podcast on your website, just like Deloitte does.
So, when people search for specific keywords, the page hosting your podcast can appear in search results. For instance, the Deloitte podcast page appears on the first page of SERPs for the keyword “podcasts on employee experience”:
So, all potential listeners need to do is click on the link to get to the Deloitte website.
But that’s not all. Linkable assets like podcasts are critical components of any retail eCommerce or SaaS link building strategy. So, with this strategy, you can have authority sites linking to your quality podcast, and, therefore, more chances of your site ranking higher in SERPs.
Repurposing podcast content into blog posts, like MarketinGROW did, can also help you increase website traffic. The best part is, your articles can be just simple transcripts of your entire podcast episodes!
The same rationale applies. When people search for relevant keywords, your blog post can appear in SERPs. You’d have to perform content optimization, of course. If you need to include complementary written content apart from your transcript to insert more relevant keywords, do so.
You can also attract traffic to your website through your social media platforms. Create posts with a specific link to your website page hosting the podcast. Then include a clear call to action.
You should also make sure you give your listeners a good user experience once they click on your links. So, when they click on the link, they should get to your landing page easily. Don’t make them wait for too long. According to a Portent study, a 1 to 4-second load time is ideal for conversions. At a one-second load time, the average conversion rate is 40%.
Choosing SEO-friendly hosting for your website is also critical for your listeners to stay on your website.
Setting up your podcast
Convinced about the many podcasting benefits you can reap? Great!
Starting a podcasting channel is fairly easy and budget-friendly. If you don’t have the resources just yet, all you’ll need is a PC or smartphone, editing software, and the internet. Press record and talk. If you have a co-host in another location, you can ask them to make the recording themselves.
Then, edit and enhance each track separately using podcast editing software like Audacity and Alitu. Many of these tools allow you to easily remove any background noise or “dead air” with just a click. Your studio-quality files are also usually saved on a cloud database so you can access them if they get lost somehow.
Once edited, use your chosen tool to publish on a podcasting platform.
You can then invest in other equipment to improve podcast quality once your podcast becomes successful. These include a powerful microphone and headphones.
In closing
Podcasting is not just a fad. Judging by the numbers, it’s definitely here to stay.
As a brand, you can reap many podcasting benefits. You can enhance your brand awareness and establish a personal connection with your podcast audiences. You can also establish your authority and help increase traffic to your site.
The best part is, starting a podcast is easy. You don’t need any fancy equipment or that many technical skills.
Podcasting benefits every business in many ways. There’s a demand for podcasts. So, start leveraging on demand listening before your competitors do!
