In the UK alone, podcast listenership has grown to almost 16-million listeners in the past year, with Statista forecasting that number to grow to nearly 20-million by 2024.
The range of topics is vast, and with platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music taking on more and more podcast content, the ease of access for consumers is becoming more and more streamlined.
Why are podcasts so engaging?
Podcasts capture the essence of human connection – conversation. The breadth of a topic and the ability for people to converse about all aspects of it replicates our daily real-world interaction with all sorts of people, from our friends and family to work colleagues and even strangers.
How can you use podcasts to drive your brand?
Before we consider how you can use podcasts in your digital marketing strategy, let’s just frame the point with the following: the challenge, as always, when it comes to digital content marketing, is authenticity.
Are you able to identify content topics that relate to your brand – whether you’re offering a product or a service – that you’re able to talk about in a way that offers genuine value to a listener? You’ll need to steer clear of a ‘direct sell’ and focus rather on generating conversations that help listeners understand something better, give them guidance to help them solve challenges, are humourous or light-hearted, challenge existing thoughts on the matter or advance a listener’s knowledge in some way.
By being an expert in the subject, or even better engaging with an expert in the subject to develop a series of topics and conversations, you should be able to develop podcast content over time that gives listeners value as described above.
By association, your brand is elevated to that ‘authoritative’ state, and by association you’ll be driving more business.
How will podcasts benefit you?
There are numerous benefits, but in essence, producing a regular, insightful, engaging and informative podcast will help you:
- Build long-term personal connections with your clients and customers that will help position your brand as an authority
- Increase brand trust which will help you develop new client bases
- Increase revenue – ultimately, by achieving authority and trust, you’ll be able to convert listeners into customers more easily
- Build a strong network of experts and collaborators – by positioning yourself as an authority and an engager, your network will grow and with it your brand and customer base through referrals
How to get started
Before you get started you’ll need to identify a few things, as follows:
- What topics will you want to cover, and how will you present these?
- What recording equipment will you need?
- Where will you record?
- How often will you record?
- Who will you want to include and how will you brief them?
- Where will you situate your podcast?
- How will you promote it?
There are numerous options to cover the above questions, and we’ll give you a comprehensive run down of these in our next article, “The Practical Guide to Creating your Podcasts”. Look out for this next week in our News section.
In the meantime, take a look at the following platforms that can help you get started:
- Buzzsprout
- PodBean
- Spreaker
- Anchor
Find out more about innovative digital marketing techniques and content marketing that really sells your brand. Contact Realnet today on 01223 550800 or info@realnet.co.uk