In 2015, people were asking, “What is a podcast?”
Fast forward five years to 2020, businesses and individuals are relying heavily on podcasts to stay in the conversation about topics that mattered while the world quarantined during the pandemic.
Listen to the full conversation here.
Our Founder, Tom Schwab, had the opportunity to be a guest on the Authentic Brand Mastery Podcast with host Adam Force.
With over two million podcasts in existence, 400,000 of which are active, podcasting is not only well known now but also becoming a critical marketing strategy for businesses.
Fifteen years ago, blogging and guest blogging were mainstays for inbound marketing strategy. If you could get a blog on another person’s website linked to yours, you could convert 1%–2% of their audience into customers of your own business. Today, podcasting has a similar yet exponentially more significant effect. Podcasts have a unique way of allowing people to understand who you are and what you are about in a way blogs cannot. With one podcast, you can convert up to 25% of listeners into followers and customers.
Adam Force, host of the Brand Mastery podcast, mentions he was able to get $15,000 of business from being on only one podcast. Getting in front of audiences—yours or someone else’s—is now an invaluable resource to lean on when growing your brand and business. It’s no longer arguable.
Some myths about growing your business and brand with podcasts are constantly perpetuated. However, when weighing the return on investment in podcasting, people get a lot of things wrong from the start. They look at other people’s successes and assume podcasting will bring the same expansive success for them, right? Wrong
Before you get busy creating your podcast, here are Seven Myths you need to know.
7 Myths about Growing Your Brand and Business through Podcasting
Myth 1| Starting your own podcast is the only way to be involved.
There are multiple ways to grow your business through podcasting. Starting your podcast comes with a significant upfront investment and learning curve to which not all companies are privy. It is vital to know that you aren’t going to have a million listeners and sponsors right out of the gate. It takes time to build a platform like Joe Rogan or Seth Godin.
Sometimes it makes more sense for your business to guest on other people’s podcasts. Guesting involves little to no up-front investment, and the return is exponential, like Force’s $15k ROI. Guesting on other people’s podcasts then becomes a no-brainer. Not only do you avoid footing the bill for the podcast’s production, but you can also appear on several podcasts that have different audiences; allowing you to tap into many geographical locations and niches. It will enable you to test the water with various niche audiences to tests where your product or service will hold the most value.
While hosting your podcast allows you to nurture a relationship with your returning listeners, guesting will enable you to tap into different audiences. It’s easy for podcast hosts to say, “This way works; you should do it this way.” But that approach is like going into a grocery store and only using lane two every day because it is always the fastest and best experience. What is missing from this advice are several other factors like time of day and who’s shopping at that time. That lane two rule isn’t going to work every time. Likewise, podcasting “rules” aren’t going to work for everyone. You have to determine what approach will work the best for your business, audience, and industry.
Myth 2| You need your podcast to make an impact and be successful.
False, false, false. There are a lot of up-front costs and trial-and-error that come with starting a podcast. A podcast can be more of an embarrassment than a marketing tool if done incorrectly. Take it from the stats: only 400,000 podcasts out of two million are active, meaning 1.6 million podcasts aren’t successfully creating content. In simpler terms, 75% of podcasts are more of a liability for their business than a marketing tool. If you don’t have the time and capital to do a podcast right, why not leverage podcasts that already exist? You don’t have to worry about the time, money, and resources need to make a podcast successful; you may be more successful leaving the production to others and being a guest.
Myth 3: You will have millions of followers and sponsors overnight.
There are a lot of misconceptions about how much work, time, and effort that goes into creating and producing a podcast. Some people enter the game assuming they will have X number of followers and sponsors right out of the gate. We know 75% of podcasts aren’t successful, so we have a good idea now that listeners and sponsors aren’t easy to come by. Growing a podcast takes commitment and perseverance.
Myth 4| You need a bunch of experience to guest on someone else’s podcast.
You do not need a lot of experience to appear on someone else’s podcast. All you need is an angle that will be interesting to their current audience. Although you don’t need experience, it is crucial to spend time researching the podcasts you want to appear on. You don’t want to appear on just any show. Get to understand who they are and who their audience is. This will enable you to: ensure your message matches the market, better position your pitch, and therefore a greater impact on your brand and business with your appearance. That brings us to our next myth.
Myth 5| Quantity is better than quality.
Appearing on a couple podcasts that are synergistic with your brand is far better than firing off a bunch of scripted emails to any and all hosts. Force agrees, stating he gets many random pitches from prospective guests that don’t fit his show, some even referencing his podcast title incorrectly. Tom says he gets pitches from people asking to be a guest on his show when he doesn’t even have a podcast. It shows you haven’t done your research and ruins any potential opportunities you might have had. It’s better to be more intentional about your guest appearances. As Tom often says, “bigger isn’t better, better is better.”
Myth 6| A podcast is one and done.
Nope, not even close. Not only does a podcast exist on the internet indefinitely, leaving a permanent digital footprint of your association with that show. It generates social media traction, networking opportunities, and best of it, it’s a great way to repurpose content. One podcast can easily be turned into a multitude content through social media posts or a 1,000-word blog post. The conversations from each podcast interview can be used in many other forms, cutting down on the amount of time you need to spend creating content for multiple platforms. For this reason its beneficial to bring fresh content to each interview to keep your creation machine flowing with rich content to repurpose. A single podcast can benefit you for a long time, and when you guest on many different podcasts, you multiply that impact exponentially.
Myth 7| Podcasting isn’t suitable for every business model.
Many people don’t think about this before entering the podcast arena, but it might not be a good investment for your business. One business model where podcasting doesn’t work is a service or product is geographically focused. It wouldn’t be worthwhile to promote your brick-and-mortar store in a small town when the podcast can be heard worldwide. Low-lifetime products and services, like an event or book launch are possible but can get tricky. Typically, 80% of listens happen within the first month of a podcast going live, but it can be difficult predicting when that will be because some shows record months, and up to a year, in advance. Working with a podcast booking agency for time specific launches or events can alleviate this issue since they have a working relationship with the podcast host to negotiate timelines for you.
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