Podcast Advertising: Your Quick-Start Guide to Understand It Perfectly

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Podcast advertising is a great tool that allows companies and solopreneurs to get a return on reaching audiences that love listening to audio snippets in their car, during their commute, or at any other point in time. However, starting your own podcast advertising journey requires a big investment in content creation, and certainly a bigger one in proper training and education.

We want to help you kickstart your podcast advertising venture, so you’ll find all the necessary information to understand what podcasting is all about and why people love it that much. Creating audio content that entices users on a global scale can really boost your bottom line, and podcast advertising is growing at unprecedented rates. If you don’t start now, competitors will profit.

What is Podcasting and Why Do People Love It?

Podcasting is the act of recording a non-live session regarding a certain topic or idea that is popular among your user base. This idea is usually shared between two people: the host and the speaker (or guest). It’s important to have a speaker because it allows sparking a conversation rather than hosting monologues, which are not that popular among listeners.

Podcasting has been around for almost a decade now, but people never fully realized that Apple itself (the company) built the concept of recording yourself to an audience. Ten years ago! And what’s even stranger is that Apple seems to have completely forgotten they actually invented a revolutionary medium, because they do not pay much attention to it at all.

Instead, it’s “underdogs” like Spotify that are now investing all of their efforts into creating amazing podcasting platforms for advertisers and content creators alike. But let’s not stray away from the main point; podcasting is here to stay, and you need to learn the basics of advertising via this channel if you want to reach this newly formed audience. How? Find out in the next section.

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Podcast Advertising in a Nutshell

When you think about podcast advertising, you’re looking at three main areas of adverting that you’ll be targeting:

Pre-roll » Fifteen to thirty seconds at the beginning of the show.
Mid-roll » One-minute ad in the middle of the show.
Post-roll » Fifteen to thirty seconds at the end of the show.

There’s a lot of trial-and-error involved with podcast advertising, but once you get it right, it starts showing its teeth. The problem is, there’s not much documentation out there on how to make it happen the right way. Platforms are just now building analytics tools for podcasting, and while some podcasters already know what they’re doing, many advertisers have no idea whatsoever.

The best way to start with podcast advertising is to actually find a podcast that you like. Browse the podcasts yourself and listen to a few. Listen to them in your day-to-day life. Save those that are related to the niches you work in and figure out how long they’ve been in the game. Can they provide long-term investment opportunities? Is the information provided actually useful?

These are all questions you have to ask yourself as an advertiser. Why? Because podcasting is not a tool for lead generation, it’s a tool for gaining exposure and brand awareness. This means that you have to cater to your spending thinking the person on the other end: what do they do in life, what do they want to achieve, and do they even know that you exist? You want that to happen.

So, podcast advertising is a long-term game. It is absolutely more about your image than it is about getting people signed up for your service… And while that might sound scary at times, it does pay off in the end. Industry-leading content marketing SaaS companies say that podcast advertising is not always all about measurable ROI. It’s more about brand authority.

How to Make Podcast Advertising Work?

Ok, podcast advertising is an investment for the long-term. But you’re a business, so you want to make sure that whatever money goes out will allow you to triple the amount in terms of sales, conversions, and whatnot. That is perfectly understandable. So, what’s the process behind starting your own podcast advertising journey and making money off of it? It goes something like this:

Set a budget for your advertising campaign.
Find a suitable podcast and make sure it aligns with your brand’s tone.
Learn about their pricing packages and availabilities.
Create copy and delivery for that specific podcast.
Enjoy and listen to the shows when they air.
Always keep in touch with the host.

There is a lot of back-and-forth between you and the host at this point. It is important to keep track of specific metrics and all the different assets that you put into this project. However, you do also need to find podcasts that are slightly more established, otherwise your investment will go to waste. If you’re a smaller business, try looking for a middle ground between cost and delivery.

Once you’ve found suitable podcasts for your marketing campaign, learned more about their background. Talked a bit more about the strategy that will go behind growing your brand’s presence online. You will have to do some of the work on your own. Look up whether the podcast audience is active on certain forums, or especially on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Figure out what people follow the podcast by looking at their followers online. Understand if there are key influencers who are following the podcast, and which would be interested in spreading the word. Podcasts have a rippling effect that spreads throughout other channels. So your best chance for actually getting your many backs (and more) is to build a network out of podcast advertising.

Should You Start Your Own Podcast?

A big question in podcast advertising is whether you should start your own podcast or not. That’s something that is entirely up to you. But we’ll give you some insight on what podcasting actually looks like so that you can take a more informed decision:

Podcasting is a time-consuming process; don’t expect to go in and grow your audience overnight. Your podcast will be relatively unknown at the beginning, and if your marketing strategy isn’t already strong enough, you’re losing out to competitors who are quicker and more efficient than you in producing audio content for the masses.
Podcasting is resource-intensive, but not terribly expensive; all you have to have in order to start your podcast is a good mic, a quiet room with no echo, and a platform to upload your content to. Sure, you will have to write some sort of script to get everything done well, but generally, you’re looking at a relatively inexpensive, easy-to-consume medium.
Podcasting is still growing; it’s a medium that’s been growing for the past decade, but it only really boomed into super-growth recently, making it one of the hottest places to be in when it comes to marketing, advertising, and more. If you’re looking to start your podcast, you should do that now. Competition is already building up, so hurry up!
Podcasting is profitable, but you need to love networking; podcasting truly is all about networking. You invite guests to your podcast so that they can explain industry-specific topics to a growing audience of professionals, and therefore you need to have people in your network to retain your audience and let them know you really care about them.
Podcasting is fun; let’s be real, having the opportunity to talk about what you love and engage an entire community is absolutely thrilling. Podcasting allows you to do that and more, making it not only a fun activity but one that will allow you to generate more and more income down the line. If you trust the process, the rest will come on its own.

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Final Words

These are the main points that you have to consider if you want to start your own business podcast. Think about what your business goals are, and write a strategy that caters to your own audience. Then, once you set a topic, look at the competition. What other podcasts are there that are already talking about your niche? Are they missing something? Target that something ASAP.

Of course, you don’t need to build your own podcast in order to get into podcast advertising. But if you do want to create a fully-fledged solution for your own business, then investing in making content is the best thing you can do. Paying other podcast hosts might be a great choice if you find that they are a good fit for your business. But it’ll probably cost you even more down the line.

This article is written by Gaurav Agarwal. Gaurav is the founder of ImaPRO - Digital marketing Agency Bahrain, providing 360° Digital Marketing solutions across the globe for the last 16 years. With his years of experience and expertise in Digital Marketing, he serves businesses from a wide range of industries, including Retail, Fashion, E-commerce.