25- Small Businesses Can Turn The Podcast Boom Into A Win

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In a recent article in Forbes.com, Alex Gold discusses how a startup or entrepreneur can turn this explosion of podcasts today into a winning strategy for the business.

Issues like these are starting to grow like weeds in the podosphere, because (as is mentioned in the article) there are 700,000 podcasts available out of the original 1 Billion specified earlier as just a raw number of those published since 2005).

In the article, Alex gives the signs of maturity and the possibility of having gold in the hills of the podosphere for the newcomer, as well as for the experienced entrepreneur (and still mainly from advertising):

“Is podcasting finally maturing? On a larger level, it certainly seems so. While it was once the province of hobbyists and political activists, podcasting has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry(paywall). According to TechCrunch, we now have over 700,000 active podcasts to choose from; that’s up 27% from last year. The podcast advertising market is projected to grow to over $1 billion in annual revenue by 2021…that due to the emerging and still diffuse nature of the space, opportunities still exist for entrepreneurs to exploit the medium as a cost-effective channel to grow their audience — and by extension, their business.”

In order to accomplish the rags-to-riches story, he gives several suggestions:

Partner with influence (and with high-level influencers as guests);
Focus on distribution and analytics;
Release or Publish as much content as possible;
Become part of “the next acquisition channel.”

As Alex mentions, high-level influencers will help to promote your show, as they also want to promote their influence as a guest on other podcast shows. This is a win-win situation for the entrepreneur, as the podcast episode can be promoted and leveraged to increase listeners, but also to generate multiple levels of leads — from the suspect, to the prospect, to the lead, to the customer. This is especially important if your firm has offerings, offers, products or other digital intellectual property for sale at a price — or as a membership site, for instance.

In addition, Alex says: ” If you are marketing your podcast, you should look to distribute your podcast on all available platforms to ensure the largest possible audience traction.” He discusses options that include resources like Chartable, which ” provides podcasters with a technology called “smartlinks” that can enmesh any podcast file and act like a “cookie” from the online advertising world to track the source, origination and even demography of a podcaster’s audience.” Another such resource is that of Podtrac, so that the podcaster can see audience data and tracking statistics.

And lastly, publishing a great deal of content is one of the key recommendations to turn your podcast as a tool for getting repetitive messages out to various audiences: “Podcasting is no different. As a content marketing and thought leadership channel, successful podcasts benefit from a regularly scheduled cadence with as many episodes as possible. Entrepreneurs who are looking to create a podcast should develop a comprehensive content calendar outlining each episode in detail months before its prospective release date. This content calendar should contain potential guests, run time, distribution channels and any production cost challenges.”

The latter sounds like an updated episode map, don’t you think? As we have mentioned in this podcast show, a good episode map is vital to planning your podcast show for the best quality, schedule and content possible — because it allows you to see the big picture and tweak or fine-tune the details.

So the final question that Alex asks of his readers is: “Is Podcasting the Next Acquisition Channel?”

And to this, Alex ends with his experience over the past 5 years tries to summarize his end . But actually, my own experience over 15 years is that the “golden era” is really a second renaissance of podcasting, as it is now finally taking off very much like the beginnings of the podosphere in 2005 — but recent podcasters who have been podcasting for less than 15 years consider only the time they have been in the arena of the podosphere. For this last question, Alex summarizes by recommending the entrepreneur to produce his own podcast: “Over the past five years, podcasting has entered what we could arguably call its first “golden era.” Ambitious entrepreneurs looking to promote their businesses should take advantage of this channel by producing their own podcasts.”

And with the availability of all the new tools to make podcasting easier, along with the announcements of podcast studios (either for hire or for rent), there is no need for the startup or entrepreneur to learn the painful steps of creating a podcast, do the recording and planning and editing, do the production and publishing, and finally do the promotion and monitor the success of the podcast show — there are now resources to help accomplish this. So if the entrepreneur adheres to the mantra of several startup firms where the small business owner should “work ON their business but not IN their business,” then Alex posits that the path is clear for them to take the road into podcasting by being basically an executive producer and not a grunt-level content creator or podcaster.

Well, for this podcast reporter, the role of Alex Gold’s recommendation may sound similar to the role of a driver of an automobile who does not need to be a mechanic in skills. However, from my experience, knowing the details about podcasting can help with the planning of a good show and especially the distribution, analytics and monetization ends of this resource as a good tool for the business. For, if the entrepreneur only knows about podcasting from the highest level in general, then it may be easy for the startup to lose a good competitive differential advantage when he enters what is rapidly becoming a very crowded environment of podcast shows that need to provide VALUE to get the loyal listeners and followers that would eventually be needed to help monetize the podcast show. In other words, using the automobile analogy, you may be stuck in the mud with a flat tire without knowing how to fix the flat or decide what to do next to get your automobile going again — especially if there is no mechanic or towing service available.

Thank you for your attention.