Author: Michael Brenner / Source: Marketing Insider Group Listen. Well, that’s what your target market may be doing right now. Listening
Listen. Well, that’s what your target market may be doing right now. Listening to an interesting podcast on their smartphone or tablet.
Podcasting is still a small piece of the content marketing pie overall. As of 2015, only half of all Americans even knew what a podcast was. Still, this certainly is a medium to keep an ear on. Podcast consumption is on the rise, with a 23% increase in listening between 2015 and 2016 – and a 71% jump since 2013.
Even though podcasts aren’t new – they’ve been going strong since the early 2000s – they never really took hold until now. Most notably in the past three years, there have been a handful of wildly successful efforts and growing interest with everyone from Buzzfeed to the Wall Street Journal creating audio content of their own. You may even listen to a few great marketing podcasts yourself.
What’s Driving Audio Content?
The trend is being driven by two factors. One is mobile usage. People are listing to podcasts on the go. With mobility, listening to podcasts has suddenly become remarkably convenient, launching this content form into the present day as the original podcasters, like Dave Winer and Christopher Lydon had intended.
Listening is, quite simply, one of the most practical ways to spend the modern phenomena we all experience almost daily: spacious time – waiting at the doctor’s office, sitting in traffic, or going nowhere on the elliptical at the gym. You can daydream or meditate, feel frustrated because you aren’t really getting anything done, or, you can listen to the latest Freakonomics episode.
The second is quality. Big brands are already taking advantage of this still nascent evolution in content marketing, with companies like GE, Netflix, and State Farm all investing in high-quality audio content. But, they aren’t just dishing out audio and infusing it with promotional material and direct brand messaging, as many brand blogs have done. They’re partnering with creative audio creation companies who know how to tell a story. Setting the bar high from the outset is helping to drive interest in this previously shrugged off marketing medium.
The Art of Branded Podcasts
We’re talking Huxley’s Brave New World and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar type of fascinating content. “The creative bar for branded podcast is much higher than blogs or other online written and snackable content…I don’t think as many brands are going to be able to make that commitment,” says Shoshana Winter, the Chief Strategy Officer for Vizeum.
The major brands who are jumping into podcast marketing are clearly well aware of the ad-weary consumer. They realize they aren’t going to get anywhere with a long commercial. People may watch a minute-long promotion video if it’s good enough, but no one’s going to tune into a…
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