Why Podcasting for small businesses can be a huge customer acquisition channel

We are a premier provider of podcasting and moderation services for small businesses. In this article, we would like to explore how you can get a lot of new potential clients through effective podcasting as a small business. 

Of course, we’d like to put our hat in the ring as a consultant and moderator in this ‘podcasting for small businesses’ space, but this article should also serve as a good basic introduction to the concept of creating powerful audio tracks purposefully to drive marketing needs even if we don’t end up working together. 

Small businesses stand to benefit generously from podcasting or affiliated audio – especially those with larger competitors – you can set yourself aside as a strong candidate to your ideal customer demographic.

Read on to see how you can benefit as a small business with podcasting as a purposeful marketing channel. 

How can a podcast be a broad channel for marketing?

Podcasting is a means to an end, but it is also part of a holistic approach to providing full-spectrum marketing and conversion support for potential clientele. Many potential customers want to be marketed to, they just want it to be authentic and positioned to benefit them at the right time for conversion. 

No customer that converts is not acutely aware they are being marketed to, and converted. But when you’re a welcome and valuable resource to a client, they are OK with this interaction. 

Podcasting is approachable because it’s completely opt-in, and the long-format allows listeners to add a leisure component to their research. Because they are in control of the flow of the content, and the ‘deep dive’ aspect of podcasting, they are more likely to return to the audio. Their voluntary return to listening builds an easy to nurture relationship between you and them. 

Because you have a more engaged audience, it can translate to better SEO metrics, increased upsell potential and better total credibility. 

SEO and content connected to your digital footprint, and specifically your website

More often than not, businesses think of SEO and content as structured and hyper optimized written words that have a purpose. And in theory, that isn’t wrong. However, SEO can also be strengthened by the words and context that surrounds it. In the case of podcasting and of content in general, it’s important to recognize that not every single page on your website must be targeting a specific keyword. 

Additionally, pages without keywords can also rank, and may uncover additional avenues for revenue or potential conversions that a small business might not be aware of. Adding content that is strategically connected to the brand, but not necessarily connected to a specific keyword on a specific page can be an important addition to your SEO work. 

This can be enhanced further, by utilizing written versions of the podcast content, or offering some commentary in written form that coincides with heading tags, and some keyword optimized information that can introduce or provide context to what’s being shown on the audio clip. You could also use a video format even if you don’t record live video in your podcasting sessions, to improve the ability to be crawled for video content on your website.

These are more active opportunities regarding SEO on your website in conjunction with starting a podcast for your small business. There are plenty of other passive benefits to having more content on your website, including being able to properly internally link your website so that certain pages get more value and are more crawlable thanks to adding those internal links.

Not everything we do as small businesses for SEO needs to be related to optimizing a specific page for a specific keyword. Sometimes potential clients will search through a website to get context to make decisions about doing business with a small company. Often, that research involves just getting a feel for how the company portrays itself online.

By virtue of how that process would be happening organically, it’s almost the exact opposite of how we optimize from a search engine optimization perspective for “organic traffic”.

Traditionally we want to provide the most accurate result on the internet for a given search query and the underlying intent of that search query. But, the most organic conversion that can take place from a consumer or potential client with a small business, can’t be manipulated or gamed into existence by using such a practice. 

The most organic conversion that can happen would be having a potential client see what’s on your website and convert as a result of being impressed by that portrayal of what your small business does. You can’t optimize for that type of consumer interaction through what we traditionally do from an SEO perspective. So, at its heart, it is truly an organic conversion. 

Brand awareness, and marketing reinforcement with easy conversions, thanks to audio content

When people get to know you, the chance of their conversion on your product or service increases. People want to work with companies and figureheads that they know and trust.

Very few economical opportunities exist to brand build, aside from finding that magic viral spark with some content. Most small businesses are finding it very difficult to build their brand without massive budgets and a lot of extra work. Podcasting is economical, and while it isn’t the simplest or easiest methodology (it requires some strategy and work), it is something that has longevity, and gets significantly easier over time. This learning curve matures relatively quickly, and you’ll be a pro at it in no time.

Let’s explore those concepts a bit more in-depth:

Advertising can build brands well. But it’s expensive, even in PPC/CPC/SEM channels, where it’s been much more affordable than legacy marketing options. Podcasting has an upfront cost that is virtually negligible, and can be nurtured with reasonable costs over the long term.   

It’s also important not to seed all control to other third-party services or companies that will have a major impact on your financials as a small business. One example might be Google or other search engine marketing companies that allow you access to visitors and potential converting clientele in exchange for ad spend. In the end, you aren’t gathering a lot of data about those interactions and you own none of the conversion or data gathering processes. If you stop funding the campaign, you have no more access to the leads/conversions.

Alternatively, building a podcast following can improve your overall economies of scale and offer you something SEM and PPC/CPC cannot offer you. You maintain control over the messaging and no third party company will be able to tell you whether your content can run or who it can be seen by. (Ad disapproval or changes to TOS’s can be exceptionally annoying – Especially when you’re starting to make money at it.)

That isn’t to say that SEM, PPC and CPC isn’t important, it is. However podcasting can give you an opportunity to maintain a lot more control over your marketing channels and improve brand building economically while controlling messaging as well. Together SEM, CPC/PPC, SEO and podcasting, as well as other marketing options need to work hand-in-hand to ensure you have the ability to confidently and comprehensively build your brand following and nurture potential clients into converting clients. 

Please note: we do not want you to think that this means we are downplaying the benefits of using PPC/CPC properly. A properly constructed strategy in SEM/PPC/CPC is a powerful tool in small business marketing. We offer premium services for SEM for small businesses.

Is podcasting as a small business easy?

No marketing opportunity is truly easy. Even traditional SEM, PPC and CPC methodologies are  not as cut-and-dry, and easy to establish as they might seem to be on the surface. And, like all other competitive marketing opportunities, podcasting is no different. However, podcasting becomes exponentially easier as you get through the first few episodes or audio tracks. 

It’s important to understand that once you get into the flow of just speaking about what you do as a small business, it becomes easier and easier. People begin to understand that you’re comfortable with it, so they become easier to convert over time. 

Additionally, when you work with a partner that understands how to produce content easily and inexpensively and can help you with the editing process or with marketing it after it’s produced, you can lower your total exposure to the workload. This keeps your costs consistent and predictable. Of course, we produce podcast content for a lot of our clients, and would love to work with you to do the same for your small business.

We try to be realists when we talk to our clientele and our potential customers about what they can expect when working with us, so we tend to be a little more transparent about the workload and the process. This may not be the type of transparency you normally get from a digital agency. We’d like to believe we show you a more realistics view of what’s to come. 

We also offer a full service option that takes most of the work off your plate if you want to begin working on some form of digital marketing with our agency. Contact us for details about starting a podcast with figureheads from your company featuring on the audio. 

We can also help you find experts – Feel free to ask us to find experts to talk about topics that are important to your ideal client demographic. Both of these methods are potential ways to benefit from a podcast as a small business.

As a small business what do you need to create a podcast?

It depends on whether you’re working with a partner that can help you from a technology and production perspective, or if you want to do all of your podcast creation production and editing work in house. While this is an article aimed at talking to small businesses that want to partner with a production crew to produce content that makes sense for their clientele, while offering their in-house resources and assets as the center of the podcast, some small businesses may not have a budget to produce that work with that partner (Ideally: Our Agency). 

For those that do not have a budget to work with a partner (it can be surprisingly affordable –  call us today to see what we charge), you’ll want to look into the following technologies/components as a consideration of doing the process in house.

• High quality microphones
• Sound isolation software, or rooms, or podcasting software
• Editing software for video if you plan to distribute through channels like youtube, etc.
• A qualified service provider to help you with editing/production work

Ancillary benefits of a podcast as a real-time indicator of marketing success

People will start interacting once they realize you are talking directly to them. And that’s what podcasts do: they showcase your willingness to talk to your potential customers about things they want to be talked to about. 

Conversations about converting will be more accessible. They will realize that you are engaging with them in a way where these types of discussions have less taboo, or standoffishness. These conversations will often lead to actual conversions. 

You’re going to become more invigorated about your business when you begin talking about it in long-form audio format. You start to shape specific pitches, and refine your business proposition. Most importantly, you become comfortable talking about your business in different ways. It’s easier to talk about sales, and it’s easier to realize that more sales are realized by not pushing sales for certain customers. Podcasting can help you streamline segmented client conversion. Podcasting helps you become more comfortable with the real-time interactions about your business. 

You get more consistent at producing content and promoting that content. Maybe not in Episode 1, but definitely over time. You start to share things that create value for clients, and potential clients, and people feed on your confidence and start to help you promote the content. 

You start thinking of innovative ways to bring in more people to the ideas surrounding your business, and you start to market to underserved channels in your ideal clientbase. 

Does it have to be a podcast? Can’t it just be audio?

It doesn’t have to be a podcast. A podcast seems to have a connotation of professionally produced, long-format audio, that has commercials and interviews. But that’s not necessarily the only thing that qualifies as a podcast. Sure, it can improve your audience’s perceptions of you and your business when it’s highly produced, but it can also be super approachable when it isn’t highly polished and produced. 

You can cut up longer tracks and use them as FAQ sections on your website, or to populate a post about a business service on your blog. 

You can do Youtube shorts with the content, and start to build an interest in technical or other business related content that can lead to direct visits from new audiences. 

The point is: Audio is powerful and it humanizes your brand, your business and your offering. 

People want to interact with things that are more approachable. Audio can do that, and it gets better over time. No matter what format or how highly polished it is beyond the minimum best practices, you’re going to see a lot of ancillary benefits from recording and distributing audio content – podcast style or not. 

Why do I need a moderator as I’m exploring podcasting for small business?

This is important: you don’t need a moderator to do podcasting. In fact you don’t need us at all, either. We hope that you will consider us as a partner for growth in this space, as we utilize this technology quite effectively for a lot of businesses. We can also consult on a limited basis if you want to run with it yourself.

However, this article is intended to be a holistic view of podcasting for small businesses, so we’d like to include some reasons why having a moderator can be important, especially if you’re new to podcasting or recording audio for marketing your small business. 

• A moderator can help ask tough questions that consumers would ordinarily not ask or be interested in, but for which the answers would be helpful
• A moderator can make transitions easy
• You can get a “lay-up” or a “meatball pitch” or get a question “tee’d up for you” – enough with the sports analogies – you can get a moderator to subtly position your closing pitch in a given scenario for you, without it being super obnoxious
• A moderator will be able to ask questions that are higher level than most consumers, which can lead to higher levels of engagements from potential clientele, and increased credibility
• A good moderator will sound super professional and offer easy ways to showcase lesser known value for your business
• The moderator will usually be able to cover you and help you stay focused so you have less dead air, and better, smoother conversation
• Podcasts are generally accepted by listeners when they have an interview or question and answer component. Listening to one person talking can be ok, but “overhearing” a complex and nuanced conversation between multiple people is much more intriguing. Audience members feel like they gain insights and psychologically, they feel more comfortable listening, because it’s like background noise with intent, more than a sales pitch. 

Not all of these above points are 100% accurate for every scenario, but they clearly show some value for a moderator. 

The podcast you’re considering is a good business move, and it’s OK that you haven’t micro-managed every strategic decision yet. Podcasting should feel organic and comfortable and in the stream of consciousness. That’s how so many people view a podcast, and why it’s so endearing to potential clients. 

We have had a lot of success internally, and with our clients in delivering audio content in long-format, and particularly with podcasting, so we hope the article above will lead you to consider moving forward in producing some audio content as a marketing tool