Podcast Content Marketing Attracts Audiences and Highlights Your Brand’s Strengths

Brands producing a wide variety of marketing content is no longer a new trend — it’s just one of the ways businesses compete. So, how can you stand out among this constant stream of branded media?

You can release digital marketing content that simultaneously indulges your target audience’s need to be entertained and educated, in a form that’s fun and easy to consume. That’s right: You can produce a podcast.

Podcasts can exist in a number of different niches. Some are aimed at continuous learning, spreading in-depth lessons across several episodes. Others are lighter lifts for listeners, giving them something quick and entertaining to engage with on their commutes or while they’re at the gym. There’s truly a podcast for every kind of consumer, and your company can enter this burgeoning field.

Has Your Brand Tried Podcasting Yet?

If your company doesn’t have a podcast yet, you may be surprised at just how many opportunities for audience engagement it opens up.

Admittedly, it can seem intimidating to start a podcast from scratch. There are multiple boxes to check — you’ll need to assemble the right equipment, choose the ideal people to go behind the mic, and work on the technical side and find a concept for the show that fits in with your overall brand strategy. Each of these issues is surmountable, however, and our guide will help you start confidently and competently producing audio content.

What Makes a Podcast So Useful for Content Marketing?

Podcasting isn’t typically the first thing that comes to mind when you think “content marketing.” Mediums like written blog posts, white papers, social media posts and videos are more obvious choices for companies just starting out in content marketing. What podcasting does offer, however, is a unique suite of advantages that no other content type can match.

These distinctive benefits come from podcasting’s status as an easy-to-consume audio medium. There’s truly nothing like podcasting, with plenty of variation under the general umbrella of “podcasts.” Once you start experimenting with audio, you can unlock positive differentiators like:

• Engagement and accessibility: Podcast episodes have no barrier to entry. As long as you release your podcast using a service that makes it searchable on services such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify, it’s easy for potential listeners to start listening to your content. Once they’re in, they can engage with your brand directly.
• Personal connection: The nature of podcast engagement is very direct. With audio content, your hosts are speaking to listeners, which provides a level of personal identification that a purely written blog post can’t match. Your target audience may feel they know your team, without having met them.
• Content versatility: Once you become adept at producing podcast content, you can go beyond pure audio and begin simultaneously recording video. This allows you to engage a new audience that wants visual stimulation, and also helps you cut interesting clips for release on social media platforms.
• SEO and discoverability: Each new podcast episode, accompanied by relevant text, represents a new piece of content for your brand, equivalent to a short blog post. If you design the text to place well on search engine results pages, it can become a part of your inbound marketing strategy.
• Audience growth and retention: Podcast listeners, if they like what they hear, are loyal. This means by launching a podcast and releasing a regular stream of episodes, you can keep connecting with an engaged and growing audience over time, giving them frequent reminders of what they like about your brand.
• Monetization opportunities: A brand podcast that becomes popular enough can begin to recoup its production expenses in ways that go beyond marketing value. Sponsorships, podcast ad partnerships and product collaborations can turn your content marketing podcast into a money-maker on its own merits.
• Cost-effectiveness: Podcast production comes with expenses — however, many of the costs come at the beginning of the content creation process. If you build recording infrastructure internally, then the gear purchases and setup can lead to an ongoing stream of valuable content. The more you podcast, the better the cost math becomes for your brand.
• Influencer collaborations: Influencer marketing is a way to get a potentially large new audience focused on your brand, especially on social media. Podcasts provide a natural platform for influencers to speak with your stakeholders, with guests appearing on your show for mutually beneficial collaborations.
• Analytics and feedback: Podcasting is a form of digital marketing. This means it comes with metrics you can track and analyze to measure the overall performance of your efforts. By seeing how specific episodes perform and learning from qualitative comments in user reviews, you can make adjustments to lock in future success.
• Content for repurposing: Audio from podcasts can become an evergreen source of content for your brand. Like other multimedia productions such as webinars and convention panel recordings, podcast episodes may have a long tail for your brand. A podcast that explains a common topic can educate your audience for years to come.

Examples of Great Content Marketing Podcast Offerings

In Brafton’s field of content marketing, there are plenty of valuable voices that use podcasts to get their messages across. Here are a few of the top performers we’ve observed in the world of marketing podcasts:

• The Mindful Marketing Podcast: Formerly known as the Savvy Social Podcast, Andréa Jones’s show has logged over 300 episodes. The podcast takes on highly specific marketing issues, often with the aid of guests who are deeply engaged in the industry.
• Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield: This podcast publishes on a relentless, multiple-times-a-week schedule, doling out tips based on Porterfield’s own success in the field. The show recently celebrated episode 700, though counting special episodes, there are even more than that for listeners to go back and enjoy.
• The Content Strategy Podcast: Kristina Halvorson uses this show to speak with guests from throughout the content marketing sphere, taking on the challenges and opportunities within the field.
• The Marketing Companion: This podcast sets itself apart with its tone. Host Mark Schaefer calls his show “the world’s most entertaining marketing podcast,” so he makes sure to keep things light while also handling serious industry issues.
• The Digital Marketing Podcast: With three hosts instead of one, this show bills itself as “perfect for your daily commute.” Its episodes run approximately half an hour, without commercials, and each focuses on relevant marketing topics from the week.

How To Create a Podcast That Stands Out From the Competition

So, how do you put your own podcast into the pantheon of exciting and compelling shows within your industry? Good podcasting can come down to a few canny decisions, especially by the person chosen to host your brand’s show. The following are some of the best practices that can put a podcast ahead of the pack:

• Have your own voice: No matter how inspiring other top-performing podcasts may be, it’s never wise to copy another show too closely. Listeners look for authenticity, so a host should be the best version of themselves, rather than a copy of someone else.
• Find your niche: Just as it’s unwise to copy another podcaster’s style too closely, it’s also helpful to stay away from types of podcasts that are too well-worn. Every brand has its own differentiators within its industry, and every podcast on a subject can take on its topic from a particular angle that listeners won’t have encountered before.
• Be an expert in your subject matter: There is value in doing the homework and learning all the necessary information on any subject discussed on a brand podcast. Listeners will naturally find a brand more trustworthy if its show is highly factual and insightful.
• Invite guests, as applicable: Not every show needs to have rotating guests to be successful. In many formats, however, a host can thrive by inviting industry experts with interesting points of view. Once a guest agrees to appear, it’s useful to research that individual and ask good questions, driving a discussion that goes beyond a surface level and entertains listeners.
• Choose the right distribution and hosting platform: Podcast platforms provide the technical backend for a show, hosting the audio and distributing it to services such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify, These are the companies that handle matters like RSS feed generation, making it possible for listeners to find and follow the show. Popular options include:
  • CoHost.
  • Transistor.
  • Podbean.
  • Buzzsprout.
  • Blubrry.
  • Libsyn.
  • Captivate.
  • Simplecast.
  • Megaphone.
  • Spotify for Podcasters.

The Pros of Podcasts

Is your brand ready to start testing the podcasting waters? There’s a strong argument to be made for this medium. A successful podcast can:

• Gain more brand awareness.
• Drive traffic to your other content.
• Connect with your audience on a personal level.
• Achieve more conversions from prospects.
• Prove your expertise in your chosen subject areas.
• Grant your creative teams more flexibility and freedom.
• Serve as a platform for networking and collaboration.

Expanding into audio is a change when compared to other content marketing strategy considerations. It’s this difference, however, that makes podcasts compelling. When your audience wants to listen to your experts speaking directly, there’s simply no substitute for a podcast.