To make a business venture successful, it is essential to do thorough market research about the product you will sell and promote. This can take months of study and hard work before taking over the business world with a storm. Today, we have hundreds of entrepreneurs with new skill sets under their belts and exciting marketing ideas to launch and market their products and services. Amongst these marketing ideas is the use of podcasts to market a business and increase its visibility in a digital space.
A podcast is a digital audio file that can be streamed or saved on one’s phone and heard repeatedly. Podcasts are typically done in a series of weekly installments. However, for business purposes, a podcast is used to share information about a specific product or service with the target audience. It serves to connect the people with the company via AV-sharing platforms.
Moreover, while the regular podcast is an audio file, a transcription is attached, summarizing what was discussed in the podcast. These are called podcast show notes, and together with the podcast, they are an indispensable asset in marketing your business. If you’re still perplexed on how, we’ve highlighted a few ways below. Read on.
- Podcasts help build a relationship with the audience.
Whatever your product or service might be, no business is successful without a loyal customer base. And podcasts are an excellent way to enhance customer loyalty. You can use podcasts to engage with your audience, converse with them, and convince them to buy your product while disseminating valuable information. Talk to your audience in an understanding and soft tone. Be thorough with product/service details and specifications. Converse with them on a personal level. This will add a human element to your communication and build trust for a long-lasting relationship.
- Podcasts boost website traffic
Podcasts are imminent in boosting traffic for your website and benefit the whole SEO process in numerous ways. Podcasts can be transcribed into blogs and eBooks, making content more crawlable on the internet. Additionally, the show notes feature enables you to add the transcription to your podcast, making it more SEO-friendly. By incorporating relevant keywords, you will significantly increase your website’s rankings on SERPs and expand your reach, attracting more traffic to your website.
Moreover, by using various marketing tools, you can also further benefit from the use of podcasts. To begin with, you can promote it by sending weekly emails to the audience and try to convince them to subscribe to your newsletter. Moreover, you can also use social media to increase sharability and make your podcasts go viral. All of this will develop a relationship between you and your audience and eventually increase brand awareness, trust, and traffic to your website.
- They are highly engaging
The internet is overloaded with information shared in the form of writing. To break this monotony, the use of podcasts as a source of information-sharing is pivotal. It acts as an excellent alternative to reading endless pages of written material on the internet and creates a unique user experience. The audience feels a personal connection with the voice in which each podcast is recorded, and thus, they tend to listen to it more and are influenced by it as well. You can also add variation to the element of sound by inviting guests and stirring exciting conversations and debates related to your business niche.
Moreover, to further strengthen the engaging power of podcasts, the recorder can answer questions or conduct polls during an episode. This helps to create a sense of belonging and inclusion amongst the target audience. Listeners can engage with the podcaster in the comments section, creating a more enriching experience for the podcaster, the audience, and the brand itself.
- Podcasts are easier to create
As per tradition, making a video is not an easy job. It requires a whole tactical team, a handful of equipment, and a considerable amount of post-production expertise. Not only does this take up a significant chunk of your marketing budget, but it also requires time and human resources. On the other hand, podcasts are an easier affair to manage. All you need is a minimum of two people talking at a slow pace, possibly a script and a good microphone, and you are good to go. Podcasts are a cheaper and efficient way of creating quality content that you can use to market your product on the internet.
- Information sharing
The purpose of podcasts is to communicate with people easily. In the world of business, this means delivering the right information about your business to the target audience. Podcasts allow you to connect with existing and potential customers at a much more personal level than conventional marketing channels such as TV ads, billboards, social media, etc.
They have also proven to be much more efficient as they are easy to download on personal smart devices and can be heard on the go. This greatly enhances their accessibility and makes business information more readily available.
Moreover, you can also provide the audience with detailed information and knowledge about your product or service with a one-on-one experience. Similarly, you can also ask them to give feedback or ask queries and get back to them in the next episode. All of these steps bridge the communication gap between you and your audience and keeps them involved with every little step that your business takes. By doing so, you gain their trust and create a loyal clientele.
Conclusion
The top 3 most used marketing methods are videos, social media posts, and billboards. Podcasts are still a lesser-known branch of marketing. However, their popularity as a useful marketing tool is rapidly increasing as brands have started creating audio and video podcasts in abundance. In the years to come, podcasts are expected to play a pivotal role in spreading quality information business information. In a highly tech-savvy world where content diversity will be the driving force behind digital visibility, podcasts will shine.