Do you want your podcast to reach your target audience and gain recognition? Then it’s not enough to simply upload episode after episode to Spotify & Co. In this Insight we talk to Valeska Fuhlenbrok about the successful marketing of a podcast.

Podcast – stays longer in your head

A podcast is the perfect medium to sustainably strengthen a product, company or brand. Voices that go straight to the ear create a certain intimacy with the listeners. Good stories entertain and/or inform the audience. Loyalty to the host is automatically built up over several episodes. The length of the episodes does not play a big role – even among the young audience of digital natives, who do not have a great attention span with all other media.

Our Senior Content Manager, Valeska Fuhlenbrok, is also aware of the importance of brand loyalty through podcasts. In the following interview, she reveals how companies can market their own podcasts or advertise in formats they already know.

More podcast know-how is available in this article: How to Podcast – from the idea to the live performance.

Valeska, how do companies generate reach with their podcast?

Before we go into the individual marketing instruments, it is important to understand the key factor: the corporate podcast, just like its counterparts from the general entertainment spectrum, must create relevance. There are various possibilities for this:

1. engaging experts for a topic area:

Many media formats today only offer superficial information due to lack of time. The podcast has the great advantage of being a secondary medium and is usually received longer and also until the end. With one or more experts, a niche topic can be dealt with much more deeply. The listener rewards such formats with his loyalty.

2. acquaintances from politics or companies: 

Politicians, CEOs or other outstanding personalities in top positions are particularly suitable as guests in a corporate podcast. They have life experience and usually have something exciting to tell.

3. celebrities and influencers as hosts:

A well-known personality who best fits the brand or the company creates relevance simply by being known. Of course, celebrity guests also make sense and have a positive effect on the reach. But here, too, the following applies: The guest should fit the theme and not be chosen arbitrarily.

Once the concept is in place – which channels are suitable for distribution?

In principle, the corporate podcast should be uploaded on all relevant channels. Omnichannel is the keyword. This includes the well-known platforms such as Spotify, iTunes and Audible, but a separate homepage/landing page for the podcast is also useful. The podcast page can be fed with further information and equipped with an audio player. The player eliminates the hurdle for listeners to first search for the podcast on one of the platforms. In addition, the social networks should also be used for distribution. Instagram is particularly suitable for addressing the podcast community directly. The information about the live broadcast of an episode should be posted there, but also additional material should be published: Making of content, audio samples, events etc.

Are SEO measures important for the success of the podcast?

SEO naturally plays a decisive role in podcasting. A crisp and inviting description of each episode as well as all metadata on all channels should be used so that the podcast can rank as high as possible.

What else is important for the publication?

Very important, as several statistics show, is the rhythm of publication of the episodes. In general, I recommend uploading the podcast regularly and preferably weekly. Of course, it depends on the format and the topic. If the overall concept requires it, a 14-day rhythm can also be useful. However, the corporate podcast should not be published much less frequently. With news formats, short daily episodes are also conceivable.

How do companies deal with the evaluation of their podcast?

Preferably very open! If a podcast is of high quality, but still quite unknown, a lot of commitment can bring a huge boost to your ranking. Podcast managers should diligently share the episodes on the channels and respond to audience reactions. In the best case, they rate the podcast with five stars and thus increase its popularity. In principle, a lot of cross-channel activity also attracts a lot of attention and is rewarded with a strong ranking, especially by platforms like iTunes.

Are paid advertisements promising?

Here it depends on the environment. Ads can be switched directly on the known platforms like Spotify, but the ROI is not very high from my experience. The ads can be quite expensive.

Social media, especially Instagram and Facebook, already attract more attention as a paid ad channel. Advertising is more noticed there, even if the actual jump to podcasts is not so frequent. Native advertising works best via a landing page.

If I do not operate my own podcast as a company, can I still use the medium?

Of course. Many well-known podcasts from various subject areas also place advertisements and are open to sponsors. Statistics show that advertising within a podcast is very rarely (less than two percent) skipped. The reception of the advertising message is also very good if the advertisement is spoken by the host personally. What counts are not memorized advertising texts, but authentic and free monologues of the host.