What Is the Importance of Podcasts in Digital Marketing?

If you are only now stumbling across the term “podcasts,” you need to check out the rest of the post. Podcasts are a rapidly growing medium, especially when it comes to marketing, seeing that more than 80 million podcast listeners in China in 2021 alone.

The major difference between radio and on-demand audio (podcasts) is that you can listen to what you want when you want it. You get to set the time and tone for how much you want to hear while working out. You’ve already seen a revolution of sorts online with the visual medium and websites like YouTube. Now, we’re witnessing podcasts undergoing a similar change.

Companies realize that podcasts are ripe for the picking; that’s why most of them are making podcasts to increase their reach.

Streaming podcasts is still brand new, and the current audience is a technically literate, high-income group. Therefore, you need to develop a smart marketing strategy to engage them. It is a no-brainer, to use podcasts in your marketing mix, especially if you hope to target this group.

Check out the various pointers posted below.

Getting started is nice and easy with podcasts

Compared to other digital marketing formats, podcasts are one of the easiest. You don’t require any specialized equipment — you can even use your phone to record the various episodes, provided it has the required bandwidth and space. Moreover, with Apple Podcasts and Spotify, you can get your episodes up and running in short order.

Just make sure that they have the right ideas and insight — that’s what you need to make an impact.

When gaining the first few listeners, make sure you provide your niche with specialized information. And with these ideas, insight, and some marketing on your end, you should be able to get even more listeners to tune in. Remember, almost every company has its own dedicated podcast, so you need to make yours stand out and offer your audience something new.

Of course, once you have gotten the first few episodes up and running — you can always upgrade your recording and production equipment. It should enable you to provide your audience with better quality, and you can even outsource the editing part. This should enable you to concentrate on what’s important — your content!

Transform the free time into you-and-me time

You do not require any formal certification to make your Podcasts. You can use the auditory medium to provide your audience with a new perspective and reel them in.

Many podcast listeners tune in to make the most of the time spent in mentally unengaging labor. So, for example, they could listen to the nuances of social media marketing while commuting to work. Or their live-in partners could be listening to the latest comedy show while cleaning the house. Or they could catch the podcast while working out.

With podcasts, the public gets two to three hours a day to broaden their horizons. Now, instead of wasting that time zoning out, they can use their smartphones and tune in. So, rather than ask customers to read your latest blog post, you can tell them to tune in to your latest podcast episode, streamable via their smartphones; it’s that simple and easy!

You already have the content to make podcasts

One of the perks of a podcast is that you don’t always have to create content from scratch: if you’ve used other media formats in the past, you already have much of what you need. For example, you can repurpose blog content into a viable podcast. No point in reinventing the wheel.

The best place to start would be to assess your content and figure out your top-performing posts. Focus on these, discuss the core ideas covered in them, and your next podcast is ready to hit the airwaves. You should know what sort of content your audience is expecting. Please focus on the same, but tweak it so that your audience responds better. This should enable your podcasts to gain more traction and downloads.

The great thing about podcasts is that they can always be repurposed to suit other marketing channels. For example, you can link to your episodes on your Facebook page and get your followers to download them. This should help broaden your reach organically as followers share your podcast link.

And, of course, if you feel like you are running dry, you can always discuss the inner workings behind your episodes and, in turn, your company and what you hope to accomplish with these podcasts. This should help you generate more podcasts.

Keep them on the hook!

The length of an average podcast episode is usually about half an hour or about 4,500 words worth of script. This is comparable to six blog posts. If you had expected your audience to lap it all up in one go, you are bound to be disappointed.

Here’s the kicker: as per a recent study, nearly 80% of all podcast listeners tend to listen to the whole episode once they begin. Moreover, according to the Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, humans are hardwired to retain double the information when listening to an audio clip than reading a text.

Now, you can sense the win-win situation. It makes sense to create more podcast episodes for your audience, as they are bound to relate to and recall your podcasts better than your blog posts, op-eds, etc.

Free Digital Marketing: Yes, Please

When it comes to utilizing other channels to market your products, you’d often have to spend more time tweaking the ads and analyzing the overall impact. The point is that it’s labor-intensive, where you’d have to spend thousands of man-hours, and money, to retweak your content for a better conversion rate. Even when that clicks in, you’d often have to kowtow to companies such as Facebook and Google to keep your ads running.

But with podcasts, you wouldn’t have to worry about CPC conversion rates. You can quit worrying about paying for ad space as well. With podcasts, all you would need to do is gain the first 1,000 regular members and form your subscriber base.

Once that happens, the podcast platform’s algorithms will kick in and start marketing your podcasts to those who have an interest in checking out similar programs. With other digital formats, you would often have to spend thousands of dollars just marketing your content. But with podcast platforms like Apple and Spotify, it’s all for free — sounds great, right?

Get in on (nearly) the ground floor

When it comes to publishing most digital media content, you would have more competition than you can shake a stick at. The good thing about podcasts is that it is still a new medium with relatively few publishers.

Overall, the field is still unsaturated, with Chinese podcast listeners topping the scale at more than 80 million. Moreover, interest in podcasts is just picking up, and this would be the right time to get in on the ground floor.

To give you a fresh perspective, YouTube hosts over 37 million channels, and there are over a billion blogs across the entire internet. In comparison, podcasts barely reached the 3 million mark last year.

Granted that the numbers may seem daunting at first. But it would be best if you remembered that most podcasts barely reach ten episodes. So, instead, you need to focus on developing unique content and publish it with regular frequency.

Podcasts offer you a tremendous opportunity to boost your growth organically compared to other digital formats. You need to ensure consistency with awesome content and publish them regularly. That should do the trick.

You’re the expert

If you utilize this media format to connect with your listeners, make sure you develop great episodes with regular frequency. This should enable you to develop your niche and get your audience to understand that you are providing them with “free value.” By doing so, you can position yourself as a leading authority, allowing you to further carve your own digital space and gain more subscribers.

Your subscribers need to feel that you are genuinely unique and not something generic. So, you need to tweak your episodes accordingly. Mull it over, and you should get it.

For example, if you plan to purchase a product or service, would you head over to a supplier who overhypes it without proof? Or would you rather go to someone who can provide you with some degree of quantifiable evidence? And that’s what the podcasts are for: a way to assure your audience that you are the real McCoy and can provide them with exactly what they want.

The gold is in the guest spots

Inviting experts to your show is a fantastic idea. You get to pick the minds of those who would be more than happy to share their take on air. Just make sure you land some high-profile experts on your show, which should firm up your position as the lead authority.

Moreover, with an audience keen to check your channel, you can even get them to cross-promote your episodes, especially those with special guests. It should help boost your podcast’s growth exponentially.

And the truly sweet part about this idea is that, if your guests have their own fans and subscribers, they could potentially become part of your audience.

And remember, you can utilize podcasts as a networking tool as well. For example, you can get your special guests to share tips on podcasting and even tips on how to boost the subscriber base. Not bad, huh?

Let’s get personal

Remember that your podcast listeners have come to tune into something genuine and not some overused, trite marketing episode. So get personal, get real. Show yourself as the “real deal”; this should help your subscribers understand your episodes are “one of a kind” and part of a real conversation.

Moreover, with podcasts, you can get your listeners to tune in without the risk of running across reader fatigue, which you are bound to come across in other digital formats.

The wrap-up

When it comes to digital marketing, one fact that you need to understand is that the landscape is ever-changing. What seems to be the norm now may become old, trite, and overused in a matter of months. It may seem that Podcasts are an uncharted virgin territory as far as marketing is concerned. But it is bound to become oversaturated before too long.

By developing podcasts, you get to stay ahead of the curve as far as marketing is concerned. These episodes enable you to establish yourself as a brand, as a lead authority, and as one who can connect with a large subscriber base.

And with the tips contained here, you should be able to establish your Podcasts in no time. Feel free to drop in any questions you may have concerning the same. Good luck!