Sales / Sales Process

Should you mix podcasts in your sales marketing campaign?

Lidia S. Hovhan

Updated: Dec 11, 2023 · 9 min read

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Should you mix podcasts in your sales marketing campaign?

An ideal sales and marketing strategy involves more than just running ads and cold-calling prospects. The right marketing mix can be a daunting task, often likened to rocket science. It requires talent, effort, expertise and consistency.

Developing the perfect campaign requires you to first understand the business and how your product fits into the market. As you assess the competition, figure out what motivates the target audience to make purchases. The data you get from this forms the foundation of your sales and marketing strategy.

Thanks to the many developments in technology, you do not have to worry about the delivery of your content to prospects. The only major problem that most marketers face is understanding the correct channel to use. While there are numerous ways, such as blog posts, webinars, videos, etc., that can be used to market your brand, it is never a guarantee that your target audience will be found there.

One of the latest entrants in the field of marketing is podcasting. There are currently about 850,000 active podcasts with over 30 million episodes. The use of podcasts for marketing is one of the most powerful platforms a business can use to reinforce their message. It is much preferred due to the convenience it provides to both the marketer and the audience.

To clearly understand whether you should mix podcasts in your sales marketing campaign, it is prudent first to get to know some of the key sales and marketing strategies to implement in 2020.

Leveraging Sales and Marketing Strategies

The global market is highly competitive, and to survive, you have to curate the right message for the right audience, and through the proper channels. There is a clear need for increased visibility by the brands to improve sales.

However, to get visibility, businesses have to spend lots of money. But what happens if the well runs dry?

Fortunately, there are certain things that you can do, even on a shoestring budget, to reach more customers without breaking the bank.

Take a look at these three tips that will ensure that your sales and marketing campaigns succeed:

1. Defining your ideal buyer profile

Before delving deeper into your marketing strategies, you ought to identify your potential buyers. Furthermore, you need to define which buyers you might help and which ones you can’t. Some marketers blindly chase after unproductive leads; hence, consuming too much time, which would have been put into profitable use.

Such leads might never purchase anything from you, regardless of how well you nurture them. Defining an ideal buyer profile varies from B2B companies to B2C companies. Here are some of the things you should consider when creating an ideal buyer profile for both:

For B2B

  • Size of the company
  • Size of the department
  • Job duties
  • Business location
  • For B2C

  • Demographics
  • Geographic area
  • Income level
  • In a nutshell, you first have to understand your company and what you wish to concentrate on selling. After doing that, make a list of existing customers and identify their purchasing patterns. What kinds of people or companies are they? What drives them into getting your products? And finally, what did the buying cycle look like?

    These are the things to consider when implementing your sales and marketing strategy, otherwise, you will end up chasing unproductive leads.

    2. Start with a small niche market

    The secret to survival as a business is to set yourself apart from the competition. Whether you want to open the business in a unique industry or one that is already saturated, you have to find a specific niche to target. This makes it easier for you to modify your strategy to accommodate the audience.

    Evaluate yourself and find out what you are good at, and invest in it. While aiming to become an industry leader, you should first strive to be the authority in a particular area. This becomes easy for you to find other people with the same pain points to whom you can easily provide solutions.

    3. Going All-In for Digital Marketing

    Regardless of the industry or sector, embracing technological trends and cultural shifts is vital if you want to thrive on today’s commercial battlefield. Investing your money and energy in your digital marketing strategies is a wise move.

    The ROI of digital marketing is much better compared to other marketing strategies. They are easy to customize, and most of the campaigns won’t cost you too much.

    Almost everything we do is impacted by technology. The digital age has made it convenient to access many services from one device, such as a smartphone. On average, people spend more than four hours on their phones daily.

    In today’s market, you must have a strong online presence for your brand to be felt. This goes beyond having a basic website and sending out emails. There are many more ways to take charge of the digital space through mobile phones. The use of social media is hands down the main contender when digital marketing is mentioned.

    There are also other mobile-friendly channels to use, one of the latest ones being the use of podcasts. Podcasting has been around for a while now, but it has lately attracted more attention than usual. But why is this the case? Read on to find out why podcasting is a must-have marketing tool.

    The Benefits of Podcasting

    A podcast, sometimes referred to as radio-on-demand, is a set of digital audio files that are uploaded to the internet and can be downloaded. Some are available on websites where the listeners would stream the content. Podcasting has become the new talk radio on mobile devices, ever since the popularity of smartphones hit the world.

    Before you make a decision to start your podcast, first take a look at how podcasting can be beneficial to your business:

    1. Low competition

    The content marketplace is super competitive, and it takes many resources and skills to beat your competition if you’re using the same platforms. When you want to market your business, one of the most obvious solutions is to use social media platforms.

    But let’s face it, there are over 80 million Facebook pages, all trying to promote a business. Out of that number, you’ll get a few thousand or million advertising the same business as you.

    Even though the numbers have continued to grow over the years, there is still minimal competition for listeners. This means that you can easily start getting your own loyal audience, to whom you can speak to about your brand.

    2. Convenient for listeners

    Compared to other channels of advertising, podcasts are much more convenient for the listener. It is the perfect type of content for multitasking, something most of us do all the time. All they have to do is hit play, and they can listen to your message as they carry out other tasks, such as driving, cooking, jogging, etc. Other forms of content, such as reading blogs or viewing videos, require the audience to stop everything else they’re doing and focus on the message.

    3. Highly engaging

    The use of audio to engage customers is a welcoming break from the monotony of text. The speaker is able to appeal to the emotions of the listeners, who might eventually become their brand loyalists.

    According to a recent survey, 63% of the 300,000 podcast listeners interviewed revealed that they bought something the host promoted. This is a clear sign that podcasts can be used to influence buying decisions positively.

    4. Easy to create

    There aren’t any sophisticated steps to be taken when launching a podcast. The equipment required is reasonably priced and easily found. Having a decent microphone, headphones, a computer, and fast Wi-Fi will get you off to a good start. Everything is even much easier if you have already decided which platform is best for your show.

    For a more professional touch, you should also consider investing in editing software before releasing it through your distribution channels.

    5. Growth in popularity

    The number of podcasters and listeners is growing fast. While there were about 48 million weekly listeners in 2018, the number is expected to reach at least 115 million weekly podcast listeners by 2021.

    The Drawbacks of Using Podcasts as a Marketing Tool

    Although podcasting continues to grow in popularity, it still has a few challenges it poses to the marketers. Some of them include:

    Creating a podcast is time-consuming

    A lot of time is put into the planning of a podcast episode. You have to set up the equipment, organize the talking points, and spend even more time editing the sound file before uploading it to the internet.

    Copyright issues

    Hosting a podcast is more or less like hosting a radio show. Everything you play on your session should be your intellectual property, or you must be licensed to use it. If you try to play something during the session, even if it is your favorite tune, you must get a copyright license to use the materials. Failure to do so might land you in legal trouble.

    How to Get Started

    Having gone through the pros and cons of podcasting as a marketing tool, you now have a better idea of how to go about it. Here is a summary of how to get started with your own podcast:

    Identify the right audience:

    1. Provide valuable content

    2. Use the podcast to build brand loyalty

    3. Promote your content everywhere

    4. Ask your listeners to act through a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of an episode

    Bringing Your 2020 Marketing into Focus

    It is never too late to integrate podcasting into your marketing strategies for 2020. It can help you grow your overall marketing campaigns directly and indirectly - just like blogging does. It is just another useful medium but with other rules. Once you make a decision to start your podcast, be prepared to open up a different world for your brand.

    Writer Bio: Lidia S. Hovhan is a Digital Marketing expert and SEO guru. She contributes articles about how to integrate digital marketing strategies with traditional marketing to help business owners to meet their online goals. You can find really professional insights in her writings.

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