Why Starting A Business Podcast Is The Best Marketing Idea For 2021

Video content has slowly been on the rise over the past decade and, given the events of 2020, we only expect it to explode in popularity in 2021 and the succeeding years. Whether it’s live or prerecorded, podcasting is one of the best means of audio-visual content when it comes to reaching potential customers.

You may have heard jokes that everybody seems to be starting their own podcasts nowadays but there is some truth in it, online content creators, influencers, and business marketers have all realized the power that a well-executed podcast can give you and your brand. They’re great for background listening, ensuring engagement in even the busiest of demographics, and can foster active communities centered around your brand and online identity.

Consider this a call to action for your business, it’s time to join the audio boom. If you’ve been thinking of starting a podcast, this is the push you need. Read on to see why starting a podcast could be your newest online marketing strategy and how it’ll help your business moving into and past 2021.

Freeform Content

Podcasting is relatively freeform. Now, do not mistake this for us saying it’s easy or that you don’t need some kind of script to work from, but once you get into the swing of things you can easily get hours of good content out there for people to eat up instead of producing shorter videos that must be recorded and edited individually. This makes it relatively time- and cost-efficient to produce while having great results.

Oral storytelling has been around for thousands of years, so it only makes sense that audio-based content like podcasts hooks into the same parts of our brain that saw the emergence of storytelling as a phenomenon. You don’t even need to be physically engaged since most podcasts don’t have or rely on a visual component, you can listen while driving, typing, cooking, or cleaning as long as you have an ear to spare. Even if your podcast will rely on visual content, there are still people out there who’ll sit and watch if that content is up to scratch.

Many podcasts are also free to access, they’re not buried behind forms or gated pages, so hours of free content is an attractive proposition for interested parties that lures in patrons who appreciate that openness. It doesn’t take much to subscribe to a podcast, it’s free, unintrusive, and gets you an audience that you can work with later to benefit your business.

Convertible Content

We’ve already touched upon the question of if your podcast will have visual elements or not. Many podcasts get by on just audio since it’s not necessary for the overwhelming majority of them. One of the most popular podcasts in the world, the Joe Rogan Experience, has a visual element that isn’t necessary unless you absolutely need to see the UFC commentator making great ape impressions or sucking on a cigar. 

Podcasts with video content are easily converted into audio-only, especially when put up on the more traditional podcasting platforms. If your podcast does have visual content that’s necessary to the experience, it’s a good idea to have it sparingly amongst content that can be listened to, so you can tell your audience to pay attention for a brief few moments before going back to listening to you in the background. This kind of versatility in audience interaction is something that’s hard to replicate in other content forms like blogs and articles. If you have an active readership on a blog, it also might be worth transcribing podcasts and posting them as article content.

Speaking of versatility, hosting the podcast on multiple platforms is a great idea. Unless you’re landing some multi-million exclusivity deal as Joe Rogan did recently, you want to have a rabbit hole of content with as many entryways as possible. It’s a new take on an old marketing tactic, casting a wider net so that you can get more people looking at your content.

Community Content

Podcasting is a great way to organically generate a community that’s based around your content. If they’re orbiting your podcast, they’re orbiting your brand, so you can figure out how that’s beneficial when trying to get a business off the ground. Podcasting is an intimate medium since it takes the form of an informative lecture or a personal conversation, listeners get to hear and understand the personalities of the hosts they’re listening to and the core dynamic of each podcast. This isn’t something you get on Reddit or Twitter, where dry posts are up to interpretation and it’s harder to get to know the person behind the screen.

They’re also credible. What do we mean by that? Not to burst your bubble but when you see a copy online from a big-wig in the business world, that copy has been passed through multiple different writers and editors, if that big-wig ever wrote the original copy at all. With podcasts though, you’re getting the info straight from the horse’s mouth (no offense) since it’s you or another member of your business speaking directly to your audience. This is even better if your podcast has some audience interactivity like Q&A or call-ins.

Informed Content

The rise of video and podcast content coincided with the proliferation of smartphones into everybody’s life. As you can imagine, this has glorious SEO implications, if the mobile SEO gold rush we’ve seen over the last few years is any indication. With a podcast, you get listener experience data that tells you how long a user listens and if they even reach it to the end, as well as when they skip ads, if at all. These kinds of analytics are great for tailoring your marketing and SEO strategies.

Of course, you don’t want them to skip any ads you might run. Podcasting makes advertisements much more palatable however since they can be integrated so they don’t interrupt the flow of a video. Think of podcasting as the new radio in this regard. Ads tend to go down better when done on live podcasts since people pay more immediate attention and there’s a sense of unpredictability in how the ad is delivered.

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