In accordance with our 2022 Advertising and marketing Traits Survey report, 34% of entrepreneurs plan to cease leveraging podcasts or different audio content material in 2022.
It’s doubtless due to the key roadblocks that entrepreneurs nonetheless face within the podcast advertising area. Two podcast specialists weigh in on the most important challenges and techniques to sort out them.
Natural Discoverability
At the moment, there are two foremost methods to find podcasts: Search by means of top-ranking podcasts in varied genres or get suggestions based mostly on what you’re already listening to.
This makes it very exhausting for lesser-known reveals to get found organically.
“It is actually exhausting for podcasters who’re creating superb content material and are nice creators to determine methods to get in entrance of their viewers,” says Alanah Joseph, head of creator partnerships on the HubSpot Podcast group.
At HubSpot, Joseph says our podcast community addresses this by leaning into our cross-promotion technique – this implies inserting advertisements throughout varied reveals throughout our community whereas guaranteeing viewers alignment.
“As a substitute of going out and looking for new audiences, we’re leveraging the audiences that we have already got and sharing these audiences in a manner that helps enhance discoverability for the podcasts,” she says. “After which, additionally as a result of we’ve a neighborhood, we will leverage that advert stock.”
Nonetheless, not each model can go this route. Companies with entry to a big advert funds go for paid promoting, as that ensures you’ll acquire extra publicity and attain your required viewers.
“Brief-term [discoverability] methods will most frequently be paid media, like selling on a podcast participant or working Fb advertisements,” says Principal Podcast Producer at HubSpot Darren Clarke, as a strategy to sort out discoverability. “These performs often give nice outcomes, however will not essentially be ‘sticky.’”
Different techniques embrace cross-posting on a number of channels and rising your social media presence. Many podcasters submit the video model of their content material on YouTube to broaden their attain and get an web optimization enhance.
On social media, discovery is far simpler. You possibly can construct a neighborhood there, market your podcast, and direct site visitors to your collection.
“A lot of these natural progress methods take a very long time to register any important outcomes, however over time, if achieved nicely, will primarily offer you far more management over your distribution,” he says.
Rising a neighborhood is one other key manner to assist with discoverability. Issues like attending podcasting occasions and reaching out to fellow podcasters will show you how to construct a community of people that can share their audiences with you.
As an example, being a visitor on one other podcast whose viewers aligns with yours might be extremely precious for manufacturers with restricted assets.
“The viewers will get to satisfy you, will get to find out about you, get to grasp your values, [and] why you may have a podcast,” Joseph says. “All of these issues are necessary for not solely driving site visitors but in addition constructing retention and loyalty.”
Clarke echoes this sentiment, saying that while you visitor host, having a compelling message and an inviting name to motion is critical for it to function a progress lever.
He additional cautions that promotion, advertising, viewers constructing, and neighborhood improvement are all progress mechanisms that require totally different approaches. As such, they’ll require a special set of expectations and ROI.
Information Insights
As entrepreneurs, knowledge is our lifeline. It tells us who our viewers is, what they’re responding to, and far more. Joseph says with podcasts, knowledge insights are restricted.
“With monitoring and reporting, the most important difficulty within the podcast trade is as a listener, you aren’t capable of settle for cookies,” she says.
Which means podcast entrepreneurs are restricted within the info they’re capable of collect on their viewers, notably monitoring how they’re behaving after listening to an episode.
What you usually get is the next:
- Geolocation
- Listens (distinctive listens, common listening time, and so on)
- Subscriber depend and traits
- Downloads (complete downloads, common downloads, and so on)
And sometimes, Joseph says, you must compile knowledge from a number of sources which isn’t all the time correct or dependable.
One key piece of information that’s lacking is listener demographics, comparable to gender, age, and schooling. Because of this, constructing out a powerful social media presence turns into much more necessary in understanding your viewers.
From LinkedIn, as an example, you’ll be able to uncover an individual’s title, determine the place they’re of their profession, and why they’re tuning into your podcast.
Regardless of these roadblocks, Joseph believes that tech is lastly catching up with the world of podcasting.
“There’s loads of innovation proper now and lots of people are growing cool expertise to help this massive group of creators,” she says. “So, I really feel optimistic that a few of these issues will probably be solved.”
Range in Voices
Whereas this problem isn’t particular to podcast advertising, it does have an effect on the trade as an entire.
Joseph mentions that there’s nonetheless loads of work to be achieved relating to the range of voices in podcasting.
“At first [of building the HubSpot Podcast Network], extra so than now, that was the large problem that I confronted,” she says, “How do I create a community that is reflective of the American workforce?”
That is very true within the enterprise style, the place top-ranking reveals aren’t led by BIPOC creators. As a community, you need to have a listing of robust reveals however you additionally need to ensure it’s balanced in illustration.
“I would like to see extra ladies and extra folks of coloration rise to the charts in our style particularly,” she says. “That is one thing that we’re actively attempting to work by means of and have been for some time.”
There’s little doubt that there are nonetheless loads of challenges inside podcast advertising, as platforms and engines like google catch as much as this thriving trade. Nonetheless, there are nonetheless many workarounds that manufacturers can leverage to succeed in their goal listeners and develop their subscriber base.
