I’ve had many questions from B2B marketers about podcasting. They range from how do you get started to what is the return on investment? Effective podcasting requires you begin with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish? Who is your target audience for podcasts? And how will you measure success? There are two important factors to consider in podcast marketing:
- Content
- Delivery
What content do you have that is of interest to your audience? This is often the easiest question to answer because you could have a lot of useful content. So, how do you decide what content to put in a podcast? Consider topics you can break up into segments or episodes. Each episode should stand on its own merit. But each episode should also leave your audience interested in another episode.
Allow the content to be your primary marketing. Don’t sell your company or products too aggressively or at all. It’s ok to plug your company a little bit but let the primary marketing message be the value of your content. In time, you’ll get people contacting you if your content is of interest to them.
The delivery of your content can make or break your podcast. Who will record your podcast? Will it be someone who can engage listeners for ten or twenty minutes? BTW, most business podcasts shouldn’t be longer than about twenty minutes. Consider an interview style of delivery. Interview styles can work well especially when the people involved can be somewhat spontaneous and very natural. They should not sound scripted at all. Podcasting offers marketers a lot of potential.
This blog post is very brief but offers some food for thought based on my experience with my podcasts. I can send you a survey report citing statistics about podcast usage among 3900 business and I.T. professionals surveyed. If you want to receive a copy of this report send an email to podcasts@findandconvert.com and mention podcast survey in the subject line.
Happy podcasting!
