Marketers are using all sorts of content creation models to generate new leads, but not too many formats have been experiencing such a continuous popularity increase as podcasts. The digital audio content is on the rise, with more than a quarter of Americans listening to podcasts at least once a month.

It’s a great strategy to engage your audience and present yourself as the key opinion leader in the targeted niche. However, raising awareness might as well be the biggest advantage of this marketing tactic. In this article, we will show you seven highly practical steps to promote your brand with podcasting. Let’s begin!

1. The Benefits of Audio Content

Although podcasts are getting more popular, some people still can’t figure out the benefits of this channel of brand promotion. There are so many reasons to create podcasts, but here are only the most important advantages:

• Accessibility: Podcasts are available to every smartphone, tablet, or laptop user, which basically means the content is globally accessible.
• Easy content consumption: Most people who listen to podcasts like this format because it’s easy to consume and digest. It takes less effort and attention than reading or watching, and it’s hard to get any simpler than that.
• Commuters love it: A report shows that 22% of users listen to podcasts while driving. Commuters make a large portion of the global workforce, so you can count on many potential listeners.
• Cheap technology: You don’t have to buy expensive equipment to record podcasts.  All it takes is a functional microphone, an SD card, headphones, and some basic audio mixing software to craft quality content.
• Simple creation: It’s very simple to make a podcast. The process is much faster than blog writing or video creation.

2. The Best Podcast Creation Tactics to Boost Brand Awareness

Now that you’ve seen the basic podcast-related information and its major benefits, it is time to discuss a few practical suggestions on how to promote the brand through this type of content. We prepared seven actionable tips to help you out:

Make a plan

The first step in this process is to make an action plan. We suggest you keep the episodes short, up to 30 minutes, because it’s the optimal timeframe that keeps users interested. Create a schedule of activities, publishing podcasts weekly or two times a month in order to build anticipation.

Although you need to make a content plan, you should also try to exploit trendy topics to grab the attention of your followers. Don’t forget to write the outline and bulletins for each episode – a podcast may be a free form, but you don’t want to make it look too random and disorganized.

Branding

Audio forms are considered to be resistant to branding, but you can actually add a few details to raise brand awareness. Give your podcast an official name that closely relates to your business and keywords. Create a cover art to make its thumbnail recognizable among other pieces of content on Google Play or iTunes. Besides that, your podcast needs a catchy introduction tune.

Trust Building

Audio content gives you another privilege, which is to reveal your voice and personalize the podcast. The reason is simple – people often get used to the speaker’s voice and familiarize with his narration. Engagement is yet another advantage because you can invite listeners to ask questions online, while you get to answer their inquiries.

The Q/A tactic increases the time spent listening to your content – studies prove that 85% of podcast listeners claim they consume “all” or “most” of each episode. All this leads to trust-building because you show users that you care for their opinions and dedicate enough time to answer relevant queries.

SEO

Using a simple keyword strategy, you can turn podcasts to the full-time SEO drivers. The only thing you have to do is to add a transcript of each episode and search engines will be able to index your audio content. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to publish the full transcript. Episode bulletins will do well for you, but make sure to use the targeted topic-related keywords.

Conduct interviews

You don’t have to make your podcast a one-man show. On the contrary, this format gives you the chance to invite different people to the studio and conduct interviews with industry thought leaders. It’s a win-win situation for both parties since you all get to reach the new audience. Doing so, you can generate some fresh leads and strengthen the reputation as one of the key opinion leaders in your niche.

Content repurposing

Podcasts are extremely fruitful in terms of content repurposing. It’s a valuable marketing tactic that allows you to create various posts based on the same materials.

Content creators at EssayOnTime claim that podcasts represent the best repurposing resource: “We always prepare well for our podcasts because it gives us a plethora of repurposing ideas afterward. As soon as we’re done with one episode, we use it to create the corresponding blog post, video, or even infographic.”

Brand promotion

A podcast cannot completely revolve around your brand, but you can seize the opportunity to promote your products or services in a delicate manner. Keep the discussion informative and educational, but you are free to mention the brand if you can make it sound natural and non-pushy.

Conclusion

Audio content is getting increasingly popular over the last few years, thus giving you the opportunity to introduce another very powerful content creation model. In this post, we explained to you seven steps to promote your brand with podcasting.

It’s a highly practical marketing tactic that requires just a little bit of tech skills and close to zero investments, so don’t miss the opportunity to raise brand awareness this way. Make sure to use our suggestions and let us know in comments if you need any additional explanations – we will be glad to answer!