How a Podcast Can Benefit Your Marketing Efforts

Thinking about starting one? Here are the ways a podcast can give your organization a more personal approach to reaching potential new customers.

Podcasts have become one of the most common forms of entertainment and communication today. Because of its growing popularity, businesses have taken to the podcast world as a way to market their products and services to a wide audience. Producing a podcast is also generally low-cost, making it especially appealing to startups and entrepreneurs.

Here are several ways podcasts can take your marketing efforts to the next level.

Provide Value to Your Potential Customers for Free

One of the reasons customers may steer away from your marketing efforts is that they’re afraid of the risk. They’re not ready to spend money on your product or service or they’re not certain of the value you provide. It’s your job to show them—at absolutely no cost to them. Whether you’re just starting out in your entrepreneurial journey or you’ve successfully built a thriving business, podcasts are a great way to offer value to your potential customers.

Show You’re the Expert

Customers want to know they’re in good hands. They want to feel comfortable with the person they’re potentially giving their money to. Because most podcasts span from 30 to 60 minutes, they provide you a great platform to demonstrate your expertise. It’s important that you don’t use the full length of your podcast to sell your audience, however. Provide true value with no strings attached.

Build Lasting Relationships with Your Audience

One of the keys to good marketing is realizing that you must build a relationship with your potential customers before they become actual customers. In some cases, this may only take days, while other customers may require months (or even years) before they feel comfortable enough to spend money on your business—especially if the product or service you’re offering is expensive. Podcasts are a very low-risk way for you to slowly warm your cold leads over time.

Create Brand Awareness

Regular listeners of your podcast will be repeatedly exposed to your brand through new episode alerts. This is a great way to stay top of mind for your audience, similar to how consistent marketing emails, online ads or television commercials do. Podcasts also allow users to get a feel for your brand’s personality as they listen to you, or someone from your team, talk on each episode. Listeners will begin to trust you as you appear in their podcast queue regularly. Remember, when it comes to podcasting, and marketing efforts in general, consistency is key.

Reinforce Your Marketing Message without Being Too ‘Sales-y’

One of the easiest ways to turn off potential customers is by coming across as too sales-minded. Although making sales is the whole intent behind your marketing efforts, your audience doesn’t want to feel like they’re constantly being sold to. Podcasts offer a great opportunity for you to provide valuable information to your client and build your expert reputation while you subtly infuse your content with your marketing message. Don’t be afraid to remind your listeners about what you can offer so they have the option of utilizing your expertise and services.

Invite Interaction with Your Listeners

People want to know they have a way to communicate with you. Offering your audience a way to share their questions and opinions is a great way to interact with your potential customers. Not only will this help you to build trust with your listeners, but it also allows you to calm any concerns they may have about your product or service. If possible, it’s a great idea to include a show notes page on your website where your listeners can go to view links for the topics you’ve covered or guests that appeared on the episode.

Ask for a Sale in an Organic Way

During every podcast episode, you offer valuable information to your audience. In most cases, this will leave your listeners wanting to know how they can get more of this fantastic content, and you want to be sure you always provide them with that opportunity. You must make it abundantly obvious what your audience should do next. Let them know where to go and what to do to get more of this value from you. It may feel like you’re forcing your audience to buy from you, but you’re merely providing them the opportunity. If they’re not ready yet, they can continue to listen to your podcast for free.

Conclusion

A company podcast can be a strong support to current marketing efforts as well as a powerful marketing tool on its own. It allows you to draw in new customers with a free value offering, warm cold leads over time, build brand trust and loyalty, and amplify marketing messages.

Photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash.