Using podcasts as the center of your content marketing strategy ensures you are providing an engaging experience for your audience: an experience proven to drive awareness, purchase intent, and more, writes Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO of Casted.
 The early 2000s brought many things to existence that changed the way we live, work, and communicate. Innovations like social media, Google, and brand blogging all blew up as the internet became more and more accessible. While new and improved iterations of these inventions have since been released, brand blogging remains central to many companies’ marketing efforts. If we are not using the first version of Instagram or searching the web using the first iteration of Google, why are we still pulling marketing tactics from the past?
Don’t get me wrong. Traditional content such as ebooks, whitepapers, blogs, and the like are still incredibly valuable to your overall strategy, but relying on them to drive your content marketing efforts is as outdated as saving your documents on a floppy disc. Technology, marketing tactics, and modern audiences have evolved over the last twenty years, and the content we produce needs to change as well. So, it is time to throw out the old playbook and start producing better, higher quality content to create an engaging experience for our audiences.
So, we introduce the podcast. Letting the authentic and meaningful conversations of a podcast drive your marketing efforts increases audience engagement and conversions while also allowing for the production of more content. No longer will you spend hours brainstorming keywords and word-smithing the same old message over and over again to create less-than-engaging content. Brand podcasts provide a world of new content from just one conversation. These conversations can in-turn drive the entire marketing strategy through supplemental blogs, whitepapers, social media posts, emails, and more.
Using podcasts as the center of your content marketing strategy ensures you are providing an engaging experience for your audience: an experience proven to drive awareness, purchase intent, and more. Let us break down why you should be using podcasts to capitalize on your content through conversation, as well as how to do so effectively.
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Conversations → Conversions
Conversations inherently create a connection between those speaking to each other. However, podcasts also allow that relationship to form among those listening in, sparking a connection between audiences and the podcast hosts and guests. Since the featured speakers are associated with your brand, the audiences form bonds with your brand as a result. Once the audience establishes a connection with the voices behind the podcast, they are more likely to become a customer of the brand. The personal nature of a podcast affects listeners’ perceptions of the brand in a positive way.
Don’t believe me? Here are the numbers to prove it. A BBC studyOpens a new window from last year found conversational podcasts improve:
- Brand awareness by 89%
- Brand consideration by 57%
- Brand favorability by 24%
- Purchase intent by 14%
Armed with an effective media channel, many marketing teams now utilize brand podcasting to grow overall interest. Yet, few B2B marketers are using their brand podcast as the driver of their entire content marketing strategy.
Let us dive into how easy it is to capture the conversation within a podcast and use it as the engine of your content marketing efforts.
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Unifying the Marketing Content Strategy With Podcasts
If you build content out of the conversations featured in your brand’s podcasts, you don’t have to waste time worrying about where your next blog post will come from. Just one episode provides so much content to pull from, and it can be repurposed in a variety of different ways and across other channels. Podcasts allow content marketers to serve as conversationalists rather than journalists, letting the stories come to them instead of digging around for an engaging story.
Simply using conversations upfront helps teams be more effective and efficient in content creation. The best part? You don’t need to hire a podcasting specialist to be a successful conversationalist. It is easy. Record a specific conversation, and you are almost done. To become a podcasting powerhouse, follow these five easy steps.
- Start talking — Find a subject matter expert in the topic you want to talk about and record a conversation with them.
- Edit and share — Edit the conversation for flow and share the interview on channels like your website or a podcasting platform for audiences to listen to and engage with.
- Promote — Share snippets of the podcast on social media or other marketing channels. Edit and clip the episode to meet your needs.
- Measure and reflect — Record and assess the metrics around the episode. Look at them holistically and reflect on how the podcast is fueling your future strategy.
- Rinse and repeat — Find another subject matter expert, and repeat the steps 1-5.
Your audience expects to engage with content that intrigues and connects to an overall message across all channels. Why should we stick to the same old tactics to get the job done? Marketers are always fighting for their audience’s attention, and teams must pivot to meet those needs. Fresh content will help your efforts to stand out. Using a brand podcast as the engine of your content marketing strategy creates an engaging experience for your audience while also driving better awareness, favorability, and purchase intent for your brand.