By Alison Osborne | January 2019

Brands are realizing the power behind podcast content and are investing in adding it to their marketing strategies. But what are the most effective ways to use them? Podcasts aren’t only beneficial to increase awareness and build a community around your brand, there are several ways they can benefit your business.

1) Thought Leader & Awareness Podcasts 

Thought leader and awareness objectives are the most common types of branded podcasts. Brands use podcasts to establish themselves as an industry leader on a specific topic that’s relevant to their business. For example, if you’re a mattress company you might have a podcast that’s all about analyzing interesting dreams that people have had. 

The biggest key here is to ensure that your podcast isn’t a sales pitch. Obviously, you don’t want your podcast to be a 30-minute infomercial for your brand (no one wants to listen to that), so choose a subject matter that’s interesting for listeners but relevant to your product, service, or brand values. Some of our favourite branded podcast series include:

• Why We Eat What We Eat, a series created in partnership with Blue Apron and Gimlet Creative;
• Three and a Half Degrees, created by Facebook;
• Meet the Breadwinners by Country Harvest;
• Hackable by McAfee. 
  

2) Lead Generation Podcasts

For B2B brands, lead generation and relationship building are key to business growth. Podcasts offer a strategic way to create warm introductions to relevant leads. For example, if you’re a MarTech company focused on selling your product to CMOs in the hospitality industry, create an interview-based podcast series that discusses tactical marketing strategies for hotels and restaurants. This will give you an easy way to reach out to potential leads for interviews and show off your knowledge of the problems they’re facing during the recording. Keep in mind that the selling happens once the mics are off. 

3) Event Podcasts

Event podcasting can be super useful whether for a large scale conference or a small meetup. For large events like conferences and trade shows, it’s easy for attendees to miss sessions, have a difficult time fully comprehending the information provided, or want more in-depth information about a speaker or topic. Podcasts are an easy way to achieve this. Either plug into the conference main stage to record directly from the speaker’s microphone or host a side interview with some key speakers to get more in-depth insights. But whether it’s for a larger or smaller event, podcasts improve attendee engagement, retention and attraction. 

4) Internal Communications Podcasts

Larger organizations, especially global ones, are realizing the value of podcasting for internal communications. Provide your employees with quick company updates, let them get to know each other through employee features, or keep them in the know with industry news. Podcasts can make it easy to communicate all of this information in a quick, convenient, and scalable format. It’s been proven that productivity can increase by 25% when employees feel more connected and engaged. Yet 74% of employees state that they feel like they're missing out on company information and getting to know their co-workers. Podcasts for the win! 

Overall, however, you decide to use podcasts as a brand in 2020, we expect to see budgets grow steadily throughout the year whether you already have a podcast or are looking to start one.