What do you do when you’re in the car, or on the treadmill? Maybe you make phone calls or listen to the radio. These days, a lot of people are finding new audio entertainment in the form of podcasts. In fact, podcasting has exploded. The latest stats report over 600,000 podcasts are available and over 28 million episodes have been produced. And with new technology making it easy to find and download new podcast content across more and more devices, agencies can now leverage podcasts to prospect at the speed of sound.
This is great news for your agency’s business development program, as podcasts offer numerous benefits over text- and video-based marketing content. They are surprisingly easy to create, convenient to consume, and they can expose new audiences to your agency.
Though commonly overlooked by marketers, podcasting is a growing avenue for digital content, and getting started doesn’t have to be difficult. Use these three simple secrets to create a podcast that builds an audience of prospective clients as a lead-generation tool:
1) Commit to delivering great, helpful content.
You have to make the commitment that your podcast is going to be about your audience first and foremost, not just about yourself and the promotion of your agency. You have to commit to providing your audience with meaningful, helpful, or educational content that makes them better at what they do because they listen to your show.
Probably the easiest way to do that is to focus your podcast on helping the listener solve problems. If you’re just going to make this an infomercial, it’s not going to be very successful. So produce a show that helps the audience and that you’re proud to claim.
2) Deliver your content on a regular schedule.
Just like blogging, podcasting requires a commitment to a schedule and an audience. Once you announce your publishing schedule, your audience is going to be looking for your show based on that schedule– so you need to stick to it. Keep in mind, your audience is busy. So if you publish erratically, it becomes easy for them to forget that they haven’t seen a new episode from you.
Regularly scheduled episodes help your audience remember when to tune in. To ensure that you’ll meet this ongoing commitment, it’s helpful to establish a content calendar where you preplan the content of your shows many weeks (or even months) in advance.
3) Develop a personal relationship with your audience.
This one is huge because it’s the difference between reaching and connecting with your audience (sales prospects). Just as onscreen talent makes or breaks your video marketing, selecting your podcasting on-air talent drives the success of your show. That’s why you really need to give a lot of thought and care to selecting a host for your podcast. Don’t just assign this role to the biz dev person, the President, Creative Director or the owner of the agency. The host not only must have a great voice that’s easy to listen to, but more important, the host needs to have the ability to reach through the microphone and connect with the audience. If the person can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how much knowledge he or she possesses or what their title is—no one will be listening.
Remember, your goal here isn’t just to entertain or build an audience. Your goal is to share your experience and become known for knowledge. You want your sales prospects (audience) to value you and consider you a leading thinker in their space. Better yet, you want them to love you so much they want to come on the show themselves (if you choose an interviewer/interviewee format).
If you’re looking to change up your digital marketing strategy and attract new clients, why not give podcasts a try?
For more information on using podcasting as a new client prospecting tool and other tips just like these, pick up a copy of The Invisible Sale, with an entire chapter devoted to creating and using podcasts as sales lead generation tools.
Tom
THANK YOU