Podcast Marketing: Learn How To Augment Your Existing Content Strategy To Grow Your Brand

by Kim Garmon Hummel

Content marketers and business owners listen up: it’s time to grab that microphone. Podcasts are booming, and there are no signs of them slowing down. Part of our responsibility as marketers is to leverage appropriate channels to communicate our brand message. If you’re not taking advantage of audio, you’re missing out on opportunity after opportunity to nurture leads and become a community thought leader.

This is why you need to revisit and revise your content strategy. Podcasts are a significant time and energy investment, but they can be the driving force of your entire content pipeline.

Here’s how a podcast instantly helps your content and brand thrive:

Boost discoverability on audio and video platforms that your target audience use
Build both transactional and trusting relationships with your target market
Develop an extra entry point to your sales funnel
Repurpose podcast points, moments, outlines or anything else into newsletters, social posts, and more

Smart companies don’t start from scratch. They look at all of the data from past work and build on the foundation. That’s exactly what you need to do here. Take your existing content strategy and augment it with podcasting! This is the right move for most industries. But before you consider the shift further, ask yourself one question: is my industry transitioning into podcasting or not? If it is, you need to get on it! And if not, well, you’ll be the first to lead the pod pack.

Why Bother With Podcasting?

Why exactly does your brand or company need to podcast at all? Customers show up anyway. Is it really worth all of this work?

The short answer is yes. It is absolutely worth the time and effort to build a sustainable podcast for your business.

Here are three reasons why podcasting is essential in 2022 and beyond:

More listeners: podcast listener growth is skyrocketing. For some podcasts, that is over an hour of dedicated listening time and nearly interrupted attention. A digital soap box!
Extra organic traffic: search engines and social platforms will index your podcasts for the future. It’s the same reason why blogs have dominated the last decade.
Streamline your internal content development workflow. Save time and maybe take an extra break or two!

Multimodal Podcasts Are Here Now

Video podcasting is a great tool to create something new and repurpose it again and again. Here’s what a typical, optimal video podcast looks like for businesses:

Audio recording available on streaming services that are 30-45 minutes in length
An accompanying video podcast of the same episode available on social platforms
Video podcast snippets about two minutes in length that generate engagement
Script or quotes pulled from the podcast for text or graphics-based social media posts
Text transcripts that are manually generated or auto-generated for accessibility

A podcast that is just audio is good. A video podcast is even better. Think of the two as separate pieces of content. You can even gate the video podcast behind registration or subscriptions.

Because you’ve created a multimodal product, you now have access to hours and hours of repurposed content. Here are just a few examples of how you can turn a video podcast into an entire content strategy:

Organic search: host your video podcast on YouTube, Vimeo, or Patreon and your audio podcast on Spotify or Apple Music.
Email marketing: turn your newest or oldest episode into a nurture campaign, just to name one possible idea.
Social: share your podcast on your social media platforms.
Sales Enablement: use podcast episodes as collateral in your sales process.
Website: your podcast can function as a driver to a landing page or site page through organic and paid search as a dedicated webinar.

4 Tips For Your Video Podcast

Here are a few suggestions if you’re just starting out with a podcast:

Templates are your friend. At Sauce Marketing, we leverage Agile and ClickUp to template and track our work. It changes the game when we work with clients on podcasting and content production.
Build content strategy first, then fill out your episodes with relevant guests. That’s how you keep the podcast about a single controlling idea that keeps your content on message. That’s a little tip from Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework.
Ask yourself how you create. Do you prefer to plan plan plan or keep things loose? Keep that in mind as you craft a podcast template and plan.
Invest in the right equipment and people to make your podcast a reality. It’s easy to assume a laptop microphone and a single employee that listens to podcasts is equipped to develop, produce, and publish a podcast for your company. Don’t make that mistake. Before you get started, you need to set goals, create a budget, and work with an internal or external team with dedicated experience at podcast strategy planning and development.

That last bullet is where we come in. At Sauce Marketing, we work with every client to develop a robust content plan and strategy for digital media and marketing. We’ll work with you every step of the way so that you are in the best position to launch your podcast.

Ready to pod it up and grow your company? Click here to set a meeting with one of our Growth Guides.