So you’ve got a website, you’ve got a newsletter, you’ve even started a company blog. Your business can rest easy knowing they’ve got all their content marketing bases covered, right?

Wrong.

If your business isn’t capitalising on the growing popularity of podcasts, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with and engage your potential customers. Not convinced? Let us talk you through a few reasons why we believe every business should consider adding a podcast to their marketing mix.

Podcast listeners are a rapidly growing, active market

Recently, Edison Research undertook a “Share of Ear” study to examine the scope of audio consumption in America. One of the most remarkable findings was people who listen to podcasts daily listen to podcast audio more than any other kind of audio including AM/FM radio, streaming platforms such as Spotify, and owned music.

Even for those who don’t listen every day, the study concluded Americans listen to approximately 21,117,000 hours of podcast audio in total each day.

A similar Australian study has not yet been conducted. However, if our previously comparable media consumption habits are anything to go by, this suggests there is huge listening potential just waiting for Australian businesses to tap into.

The interest shown by daily listeners of podcasts indicates podcasts can be addictive and can hold people’s interest over a long period of time. Imagine having someone keenly awaiting your content every single week.

Podcasts are quicker to produce than blogs

If you’ve ever been charged with writing a blog post, you will know how time consuming it can be. If you haven’t, take it from someone who is writing this very article and trust me they can take a seriously long time. There are the first drafts, the second drafts, editing, rewriting, deliberating, receiving feedback, publishing - the list goes on. Easily, each blog post I write can take me several hours.

Conversely, it takes the Brand Newsroom podcasters about 20 minutes to record a podcast and just a few minutes more to publish it. Of course, they spend time beforehand researching and inviting guests to the show. However Brand Newsroom - and many other podcasts like it - runs like a radio show so everything is done in one take.

Podcasts have a wide reach

One of the reasons podcasts have taken off in recent times is because they appeal to a common attribute most working people share: a lack of time, yet a desire to work more efficiently. Many people listen to podcasts that target their specific areas of interest so that they can learn and stay up to date in these areas while multitasking with other activities. For this reason, listeners will actively seek out your podcast using popular hosting sites.

Luckily, most worthwhile sites will provide free hosting services or only charge a fee once you begin to accumulate larger volumes of episodes or listeners. Popular podcast hosting platforms include:

Many of these sites have an accompanying mobile app so listeners can easily download your podcast to their own device. If listeners have subscribed to the podcast in these apps, the episodes will automatically download as soon as they are released.

The key player in distributing podcasts, however, is not a site and is not mentioned above. It’s iTunes.

I don’t need to tell you about how wide an audience iTunes can reach, but just in case you wanted exact figures, at last count iTunes had 800 million accounts registered. With iTunes, once you have your podcast hosted elsewhere, you can submit the feed to them for inclusion in their podcast category. iTunes requires cover art and a description for their hosting and it can take a couple of weeks for approval. But any hassle you encounter will be worth it as iTunes is arguably the best way to get to a wider audience for your podcast.

Most importantly, through its association with your brand, publishing an engaging podcast is a great way to deliver quality content to your existing audience and help drive more traffic and new users to your site. You can also create accompanying content such as show notes and transcripts to assist in your SEO rankings without much additional effort.

Podcasts are a portable medium

You can listen to podcasts in your car on the way to work. You can listen to podcasts on your smartphone at the gym. You can listen to podcasts off your tablet on a flight. You can play them through a sound system while you cook dinner. Essentially, because of the handset culture existing in the world today, podcasts can be played and listened to any time your ears don’t have to be actively engaged elsewhere. This bridges the gaps other marketing efforts such as blog posts, social media, and print and television advertisements cannot. Podcasts can move with your consumer, and therefore they can play a vital role in any marketing mix.

Find out how you can create your own podcast. We can provide you with a recording studio to produce them in.

What do you like about business podcasts?

By Carla Young

Image credits:

Jonas Christian Sansen ‘Easy Listening’ Flikr