In 2004, BBC journalist Ben Hammersley combined the word pod (from the Apple iPod) with the word broadcast and coined the term podcast.
At that time, podcasting wasn’t easy. Apple’s iTunes was required for you to subscribe to the podcast feed and download the audio file to a local computer. When you were ready to listen, you’d plug your iPod into your computer and synchronize the files.
Today you can open your smartphone, search for a podcast and play it instantly. It’s now simple to find, subscribe, queue, and listen to podcasts. That simplicity, combined with the ability to connect to apps or our mobile device via our commute, is increasing listenership significantly.
According to Edison Research, 24% of internet users listened to a podcast in the last month. Edison Research also reports more than one out of five listeners listen to three to five hours of podcasts per week. Bridge Ratings has called 2017 the breakout year for podcasting, reporting that 45% of light podcast listeners turn into weekly listeners year over year.
Podcasting comes in different formats:
- Episodic Series. Podcasts like “This American Life” are producing amazing content, like the series Serial. Don’t be surprised if more production companies dive into these, monetizing them through subscriptions, sponsorships, or commercials.
- Storytelling Or Documentary. To illustrate digital transformation, Dell launched the Trailblazer’s podcast, which is incredibly produced and narrated by the amazing Walter Isaacson. These productions are immersive experiences, with sound effects, background music, characters, narration, and a story from beginning to end. In the first episode, “Lights… Camera… Disruption,” Isaacson opens with the story of Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, walking into a movie rental store, paying a late fee, and coming up with the idea of digital rentals. You even hear a cash register ring as he discusses the penalty. The episode then walks through the history of music images and the digital transformation of the entertainment industry.
- Interviews Or Roundtables. Perhaps the most popular format, interview podcasts like our MarTech interviews expose the audience to experts from our industry. It also helps us to create relationships with influencers and thought leaders. Interviews like this enable businesses to build value with their customers by bringing in experts that can educate them, motivate them or provide them with a different perspective on your industry. Companies can also build awareness through podcasts by interviewing influencers. The influencer shares the interview, expanding your reach to a relevant audience. You can also use podcasts to bridge a relationship with prospects. Interviewing the decision-maker of a company you’ve been looking to introduce yourself to is a great opportunity!
- Solocasts. One person and one microphone are plenty if you want to provide your audience with some news, tips, thought leadership, or consultation.
Be sure to close your podcast with a call to action for great results. Agent Sauce produces a podcast with weekly marketing tips for real estate agents. Host Adam Small closes each podcast with an offer of a free 30-day trial to their real estate marketing platform. Remind your periodic listeners to subscribe and remind all listeners to review your podcast. Reviews drive up your visibility and subscriptions drive up listenership.
Podcasts Are Engaging
The timing couldn’t be better for companies to launch a podcasting strategy. Search a podcast directory for your industry, and you’ll often just find a handful of podcasts. Even in a busy real estate market, Agent Sauce’s small podcast is one of a handful of podcasts found on iTunes that focuses on the sales and marketing strategies of real estate agents (there are a lot more on real estate investing). Little competition with a growing audience provides companies with an incredible opportunity. Audio equipment is both affordable and a fraction of the cost and complexity of produced or live video.
And chances are that your city already has experts who have already built professional podcast studios that can be rented with or without audio engineers. Indianapolis already has a handful of podcast studios — within months of opening, there were half a dozen companies launching their podcast series out of our studio. Search for a city with a podcast studio and you’ll find that dedicated studios are popping up in every major city, from Boston to Boise. In fact, searches for podcast studios in the United States have tripled in the last five years.
While other formats are struggling to deeply engage visitors, podcasts provide a unique experience. On the consumer side, your listener is devoting time in the car or has headphones on. On the producer side, the medium offers superior engagement, whether it’s a quickcast of a few minutes or an epic multi-hour conversation with a passionate roundtable.
In fact, 88% of listeners reported they listen to all or most of a podcast they started. Over 168,000 podcast listeners were surveyed and 61% stated they made a purchase based on a podcast they listened to.
Midroll
Podcasting is effective, affordable, and growing in popularity. Just as blogging transformed the way companies could communicate to their prospects and customers a decade ago, podcasting is now transforming the way we can speak to them. Consumers can listen to the passion, intellect and humor that our companies have to offer. With the availability of studios, the costs of production dropping, the demand of consumers increasing, the technology advancing, and plentiful bandwidth, there’s no better time than the present to begin producing your podcast.
As you investigate engagement across channels and mediums, think about what offers the most time engaged with your brand. The mean time spent listening to podcasts weekly is five hours, according to Edison Research. Compare this to reading your latest brand tweet, your latest Facebook post or even an article or video on your site. We often measure dwell time on site in seconds or minutes; according to Wistia, even videos lose half of their viewers after just five minutes. When is the last time that you could spend hours engaged with a prospect?
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