Podcasts work nicely with other marketing collateral

Over the last few years, I’ve become convinced that audio content, including podcasts, can help businesses to build value, cultivate relationships and gain new clients. In the B2B world, a podcast can allow you to trim the sales cycle, because your prospect already has a feel for who you are and what your company or product or service can do.

I can’t tell you how many era someone has met me at a conference or phoned me and said, “Because I’ve heard your voice on your podcast, I feel that we already know each other!” The conversation usually continues from there and we find a way to work together.

A podcast rarely succeeds alone. In fact, this medium plays along nicely with your blog, case studies, white ID and other marketing collateral, adding the warmth of the human voice to the mix.

Case studies + podcasts

Over the past few years, I’ve worked on several projects where we produced written case studies based on interviews with my clients’ theme-matter experts and their customers. In addition to the traditional written case studies, we published podcasts of the interviews, which went deeper than the print material. Listening to the customers engage verbally with the experts gave the clients’ prospective customers a higher level of confidence in the solution being offered.

When I do my webinar on Podcasting 101 for Communicators and Marketers, I point to these benefits of podcasting for listeners:

• Fantastic learning opportunities from podcasts all over the world
• Portability
• Time shifting; listen when it fits your schedule
• Can listen on desktop, portable player, smart phone
• Can do something else while listening
• Content is free

Then there are the benefits of podcasts to content producers:

• Relatively low cost to make a podcast
• Appeals to auditory learners
• Adds value to unfilled corporate and marketing comms
• Builds relationships with listeners
• Boosts search-engine rankings (when combined with show notes)
• People can subscribe to your podcast, which means they’re saying: “Send me more content!”

Have you used podcasts in your marketing efforts? Please share your experiences.