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Podcasts for Marketing?

What about Podcasts as part of a Marketing Strategy?

Podcasting Growth

A few years ago, before podcasting became popular, research showed that 15% of Americans aged 12 and over listened to a podcast in the previous 12 months. Although that is a huge number, tens and tens of millions of Americans, the amount of podcast views has been growing steadily, and in our Covid-19 restricted days of remote working and living, Podcasts do seem to have become a lot more popular.  

Things to Remember about Podcasts

Due to music licensing and royalty fees, podcasts are mainly spoken broadcasts. In a normal radio broadcast 20% of audio is spoken word, and the other 80% is music.

People who are interested in news, perspectives, current events, comedy and sports have always been a win for podcasting.

When podcasting was in its early days, there was a lot of tech podcasts which represented the available audience, and they were generally people who understood how to download a podcast, sync it or subscribe to it and transfer it over to an iPod.  it has become easier and more cost effective in recent times.

Listening habits

Two-thirds of people listen to podcasts on a mobile device. The rise of smart phones has allowed people to listen to content in multiple environments, contexts and at different times of the day which were previous unavailable.  Quite often the listeners are doing something else at the same time as listening to the podcast, be that making the tea, walking or filing.

The average listening time is about 4 hours of audio daily, whereas the podcast listener may listen to 6 hours of audio daily - most likely this is because so many books are now available as podcasts and people also listen in their cars, on public transport, in the gym, on walks, doing gardening etc.  Although not everyone will have in-dash entertainment systems, listeners find other ways to listen to podcasts in cars such as, cassette tape adapter – yes, these are still used – USB plugs, Bluetooth or an audio patch cord.

Podcast future

A podcast is audio on-demand. Audible, the audio book platform with Amazon Prime publish podcasts, although it does not use the word ‘podcast’ anywhere and it is all about the ‘show’.

Getting Google Ranking from Podcasts

One other thing to consider is Google; if you want to your podcast registering with Google searches, then a simple way of doing that is to make it into a quasi video and load to YouTube - however it's preferable to notmake YouTube your primary podcasting outlet if the aim is to gain followers.  To use podcasts on Youtube, you need a good photo image to cover the audio, but it can be as simple as a picture of the speaker and content title; or a bullet points. Then convert the mp3 to an mp4 and off you go; it’s quite a reasonable and effective line extension for clients who want to make increased use of their material but isn’t quite ready for a full blown original video production.

If you'd like more information on creating podcasts as part of your marketing strategy then do give us a call and we'll be happy to talk your through the options and best practice solutions for using audio as a medium for marketing.

 

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