As entrepreneurs, we spend hours upon hours trying to provide the best content for our audience. Today, we’re going to uncover the most underrated marketing strategy out there, podcasting. You heard it right. Podcasting as a marketing tool can be just what your business needs.
It’s often overlooked, and today I want to go through and explore why and how a podcast could just be the marketing tool that you need.
Is Podcasting the Most Underrated Marketing Strategy?
Podcasting can be an underrated marketing tool. It’s overlooked, and mostly because there are some big misconceptions about podcasting that hold people back.
I’m talking about those limiting beliefs that we often hear.
I’ve had them. I know some of my clients have had them before starting their show.
People can think that podcasting can be too time-consuming, that you need to be this stellar speaker, that you have to know all of the tech, or you have to be the expert on what you’re talking about. Well, the spoiler alert is, those are not true.
Have you ever felt like you’re just drowning in a sea of content?
Or maybe you’re the opposite, and you’re struggling to come up with enough content to.
Entrepreneurs everywhere are facing burnout, constantly pushing out posts that get buried in their ever-scrolling feed.
Not knowing which platform to post on. Not knowing where their content would be best.
They’re getting burnout from posting three to four days a week. Some people are trying to post three to four times a day, constantly coming up with content ideas that drive zero sales back to what you do that just get buried, or they disappear in 24 hours and your ideal client never had a chance to see it.
You know what you’re doing, and have ideal clients who want to work with you.
You have this wealth of knowledge to share, whether you think you’re an expert or not, but you struggle to come up with these short form content ideas to post. Or knowing what will be the next big thing to story about so that people want to buy from you.
Chances are you already are listening to podcasts.
Think about these podcasts that you listen to each week.
Look at the app you use. Who are you learning from? What do they talk about?
Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, that there are people out there who need to hear or want to learn from you?
You have so much to teach somebody about what it is that you do.
Think about that one person out there who is lost. They’re unsure of what to do.
Maybe you’re a copywriter and they just are staring at a blank screen. Maybe you are a health and fitness coach and some mom out there is struggling with what to do.
You might be that person to help them. They need to hear from you.
Maybe you’ve thought about it before, this starting a podcast thing.
Maybe you’ve even bought a mic. You’ve downloaded some recording software, but you have no clue where to start or what to do, or you get in your head about all of the different things.
Maybe the mic gets put back up in a closet because that idea fades away and you just start from scratch and you just keep posting.
Long-Form Podcasting vs Short-Form Content
Let’s go back to that content for a minute. Let’s talk about why long form content like a podcast can be a game changer.
So think about it. Creating hours of short form content to build trust in your audience, that’s going to take time.
If you make a 10 second reel, most are shorter, some are longer, but just for the sake of math, you make a 10 second reel. You write this amazing caption, you post it and you hope for the best.
For that same 10 second reel, it would take you 90 of those reels to give the same amount of content as a 15 minute podcast episode.
How long is it going to take you to create 90 reels?
Now, do I still create reels? Yes. I’m learning to find the fun in them. I’ve been posting some just random ones lately and I’ve been getting feedback on them.
Am I relying on them? No.
Who’s to say that even a third of your followers even see the reel?
But with a podcast as your marketing tool, your audience can spend that quality time getting to know you. They learn from you. They learn the way you are, the way you speak.
Let’s Save Some Time
You may think that having a podcast is just one more thing to add to your plate. That it will take up so much of your time, but hear me out.
Are you posting stories, reels posts?
That’s a lot of postings, but are you doing all those things?
Are you on TikTok? Are you on Threads? Is Threads still a thing? I got on there one time.
How much time is all of that posting taking up?
I’m going to tell you right now, it is taking up so much more time than planning out a long-form strategy.
Here’s the beauty of a podcast. They are always there for your audience. No worries about content disappearing after 24 hours.
If someone discovers you at episode 150, they can go all the way back to episode one and catch up on your journey if they want to.
What you may not be realizing is that creating long-form content is what will make you be seen as the in-demand authority in your space. The one to turn to if someone wants to get more information or learn more about whatever it is you’re doing.
For instance, I’m hoping that my audience [I’m speaking to you] will come to me to get advice, tips, or information all about podcasting as their marketing tool.
Think about how hard you work to create that next Instagram reel that you hope, you cross your fingers, is going to be the one to get you a new client, or to get you more visible. Only maybe not much engagement happens.
You may get some traction, but does it drive sales? Does it give you leads? If it does, oh my goodness, stay with it. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing if it is bringing you an income.
If it’s not, I want you to give podcasting a little bit more of a thought.
Your podcast, should you have one, is always there no matter when you posted it.
I have a current client who just celebrated her 100th episode. I do her monthly analytics, and she still has people going back and listening to episode one. And I’m not just talking about one or two people. I’m talking about hundreds of people who go back and listen to those first 50 episodes.
That’s amazing!
Getting to Know You
With a podcast, people get to know you.
If you listen to podcasts, think about how many hours you spend trying to get to know that person.
You develop trust in them, and learn about them.
I heard on another podcast once that it takes about seven hours of content to get someone to trust you and to make that buying decision. Think of having to make seven hours worth of short-form content for your ideal client or customer to get to know you. I do not want to take that much time to make those reels or captions or whatever else it is needed.
I think I heard that it adds up to around 1,600.. 15-second reels. That’s a lot.
What could be so much easier is having someone jump over to your podcast and consume those seven hours in maybe 14 episodes if they’re around 30 minutes long. Maybe a little more if they’re shorter.
That is going to get you so much closer to them trusting you. They’re going to get so much more information within that content than a reel. That may not even be seen anyway.
Your podcast is basically this library or list of content to choose from.
They can go look at all of those episodes and pick what they want to listen to.
It will never go away, ever, unless you delete them or unless that podcast app decides to shut down randomly…which there have been a few that have done that, but they always try to manage to push it somewhere else.
So it’s not like you just get on your Instagram one day and your account’s gone. I see that so much more often now than I have in the past.
They think that the person running it is not that person and they’re like, but it’s me. They’ve worked so hard to get to where they are and then it’s just gone.
Or maybe the algorithm is not pushing out your content to certain people because they missed you for a day or two.
If someone finds you on someone else’s email or social media, they find out you have a podcast, they can go back and listen to the previous episodes. You have a much better chance of them learning to trust you a lot quicker than if they were to just go over to Instagram and wait to see what you have come up with next.
Once someone is subscribed to your show, new episodes are just going to pop up in their app without fail. You don’t have to hope that someone is going to see what you post.
They’re going to see it. If you release it, if they’re following you, it’s going to show up.
Maximizing the Benefits of Repurposing Your Podcast
Now let’s talk about some of these other benefits of repurposing your podcast.
I still use social media. I love it. It is more of a tool. I use what I do on this podcast and I can push other content out, but I didn’t recreate it each time.
So let’s talk about how you can release one 15 to 30 minute episode and use that for social media.
With one podcast episode, find three, four, five, six little nuggets of info from that episode, and create an Instagram post with a caption.
You can create an email, or that reel if you want to. You can talk about it in your stories. Create an audiogram or a videogram, but it all comes from one podcast episode versus creating each one of those separate pieces of content.
And all of those pieces drive them back to the podcast where it came from.
Don’t recreate the wheel each and every time. That’s costing you time.
Authenticity and Building Trust Through Podcasting
So we’ve said that podcasting allows a person to get to know you. They end up liking you, they trust you, they keep consuming your content. It’s building that relationship with you, and it’s providing that content that’s going to get them to want to work with you because they’ve learned from you and they trust what you say.
We sometimes follow the trends of what others do because we start to believe that that is what others want. But if you look at those who you love to follow, are they doing that?
Are they sharing their own ideas or are they just sharing what other people believe?
You have to do what feels good to you. Share your content, and have the audience you want to be able to follow you.
Now, this is something that I’m completely owning up to this, too, but some of us like to hide behind those reels and images and not truly get our voices heard.
I was like that. I would put up a post with words, put a caption in, and hope that, you know, someone would want to work with me. It doesn’t work that well.
Until I had this podcast, I’m not sure that people truly understood my personality.
I’m getting better about showing my personality on Instagram, but again, I can get behind this mic and just feel more comfortable.
There’s no trends in podcasting. You’re using your voice to provide the content which is more easily understood by your listeners than reading something.
Think of text messaging. You may write something and somebody takes it completely the wrong way because they didn’t hear it in your voice. The tone.
I feel like that is such a wonderful benefit of podcasting.
Podcasting is a Long Game
So podcasting is a long game.
Not everyone is going to be Mel Robbins who releases her trailer and was in the top five of podcasts. She also had a humongous audience before that.
I’m going to guess that many of you don’t have millions of subscribers or followers.
If you do, then you’re going to be a little bit ahead of the game.
But for those of you that do have a smaller audience, it is going to be a long game.
I’m not going to hold back on my podcasting journey.
It’s been up and down from when I very first started this almost a year ago.
I took four or five months off because I second guessed whether it was worth doing it.
I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted right away. And I’m here to tell you that’s just the way it goes. It takes a while for people to trust you.
I talk a lot about this in episode 20, about just me overthinking it.
But I had to start realizing you have to just have this strategy in place and give it time. So that’s what I’m doing.
I’m going to be here every Wednesday.
I told myself I’m giving every single Wednesday for the entire year of 2024, and then I will adjust from there.
Sometimes that’s what you have to do. You just have to try it.
I tell my clients that you cannot just put up episodes and expect to see clients flooding in right away.
Most people that you want to have as your audience still might not even know you have a podcast…yet. They’re going to find out, but you have to keep sharing it and letting people know that you have a podcast.
We also hope, with that little fun SEO, that new people are going to find you through your podcast.
Podcasting apps are SEO searchable with the name of your titles. We talked about this in another episode with the title of your podcast, with your episode descriptions.
Those are all going to be searchable within the app.
So if you are a health and fitness coach, I don’t know, specializing in postpartum or whatever, something very specific, they could type that in that search bar and your show hopefully will pop up.
When I first started this podcast, I had this idea that it was just going to put my content out there and I was going to make this world of difference in someone’s lives and that I would see great results.
And am I seeing results? People are listening.
Is it like in the thousands of downloads an episode? No, that’s going to take time.
I can assure you even Jenna Kutcher, who gets millions of downloads, I don’t know, a month, probably a day…who knows…did not see that when she first started.
So just remember it takes time and it takes 7 to 17 hours of someone’s time to learn to trust you before they buy.
Depending on the length of your episodes, it’s going to take them some time. But I’ve heard many, many times that people come around years later and they’re like, oh yeah, I listened to you a while back and now I’m ready.
So just keep going!
Podcasting is not a trend. It’s not going anywhere. In fact, my personal opinion is, I think it’s just getting started.
I think it’s really just starting to become this great marketing tool.
There are millions of podcasts out there, but there’s only hundreds of thousands active. So it’s not saturated.
People think it’s so saturated. Somebody already has a show about that.
Well, they also have an Instagram account about that, but you might still have an Instagram account. So you’re still competing against them in a different way, but don’t look at it as a competition.
Look at it as, I’m a different voice that might provide that different aspect to whatever it is I’m talking about. It is an amazing, powerful tool.
I’ve seen it work for my clients. I’ve seen it work for other people who I don’t even work with. And it can work for you. And I’m here to prove that it is worth it. Not just to you, but also to myself.
I would love to see more entrepreneurs getting their voice out there.
I’ve said this many times, but a podcast changed my life.
And I want you to be the one to do that for someone else.
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MORE ABOUT SHE PODCASTS WITH PURPOSE:
She Podcasts With Purpose is a show designed to help female entrepreneurs amplify their voice and find their purpose to help grow their business through podcasting. I am Allison Nitsch, a former educator turned podcast manager with a clear mission: assisting YOU in the creation and growth of your own podcast.
Discover how a podcast can elevate your business visibility and contribute to your overarching purpose. This show will help you determine if podcasting aligns with your goals, and provide you with a strategic roadmap to bring your podcast to life, reaching the ears of your target audience.
Join the engaging conversations to gain deeper insights into the transformative power of podcasting. Each episode I will provide you with tips to initiate, manage, and amplify your podcast, occasionally featuring expert advice from industry leaders to ensure your podcast’s success.
Tune in weekly as we delve into the intricacies of podcasting for business growth, grounded in purpose!
Make sure to subscribe to the show so that you never miss an episode, and to help others find it as well…please leave a rating and review!! That would mean the world to me. I would also love to connect with you on Instagram. You can find me @allisonnitsch for behind-the-scenes content and daily life adventures. And if you are ready to launch a podcast, or would like your time back by having someone in the podcast space take over your show for you, visit my website at allisonnitsch.com.
Let’s embark on this podcasting journey together, driven by purpose and vision. See you soon!
