Podcasting as a Marketing Tool for Small Business

Duct Tape Marketing has a post on the usefulness of podcasting as a marketing tool for small business.

The hype surrounding Podcasting, especially among early adopters and those who tried to make a quick buck, eventually led to a backlash and a subsequent hype about 'the end of podcasting'. But as the writer notes: "the usefulness as a marketing tool for the small business is better than ever."

If you have a small business, he continues, think of Podcasting as:

● A great way to feature the stories of your best customer - interview your customers and post their stories for prospects to hear. It doesn’t matter if you have a large audience for your podcast, your customers will dig the attention and you’ll get content on the fly.

● A great way to open doors - when you contact an author, industry leader, or expert of any kind with the offer to interview and feature them on your podcast, you’ll be amazed at the quality of guest you can secure and then the quality of content and exposure that can bring. If you run a print shop in the middle of Des Moines Iowa you can offer your customers and prospects access to the leading design, print and color experts from around the world - would that be valuable?

● A great way to build and solidify your strategic network - By routinely interviewing the members of your network of partners that you would like your customers to meet you can build a stronger network and make referrals to that network more easily because of the focus you can bring with an interview and audio content featured on the partner section of your site.

● A great competitive advantage - Does your competitor have an interview with the current president of your trade association on their site?

● Two for one - hold live web conferences using either interviews or presentations, record and viola, podcast episode.

From the beginning, podcasting has been a very promising component in the marketing mix. Now that the hype (either way) has died down, actual practice is finally defining the terms.

Annual Study on Podcasting Use in the US

A few weeks ago we reported the first results of the annual Arbitron-Edison Media Research study on Podcasting use in the US. More results have now been published and are available here (pdf).

Its principle findings:

- Awareness of podcasting has stabilized. 37% had ever heard of podcasting, the same percentage as in 2007.

- The audience for both audio and video podcasts has grown considerably since last year. Americans indicating that they have ever downloaded and listened to an audio podcast grew from 13% to 18%, while video podcast consumption grew from 11% to 16%.

- Podcast listeners enjoy additional listening opportunities. The time spent listening to all forms of online audio for podcast listeners is approximately 90 minutes longer per week than it is for other online audio consumers. The portability of podcasts has enabled new contexts and environments for listening to downloadable audio.

- Podcast consumers are extremely attractive advertising targets, though difficult to reach via traditional interruption models. Podcast users are far more likely to have attained at least a college degree, and are also more likely to live in households earning in excess of $75,000 per year, than Americans who have not consumed podcasts. Furthermore, Americans who have watched or listened to a podcast are more frequent online shoppers and spend more money online than other Americans. Podcast listeners and viewers are also far more likely to block pop-up ads, SPAM, and use non-traditional means to view television.

- Podcast consumers are heavily involved with social networking. Over a quarter of persons 12+ who have ever consumed an audio/video podcast have a profile on MySpace, and the percentage of podcast consumers with profiles on other social networking sites is significantly higher than the percentage of non-podcast consumers. Podcast consumers also spend markedly more time on the Internet every day than the average American.

Studies: Podcast Ad Recall Rates Impressive

Advertising during podcasts has been thrust into the limelight, thanks to recently released data from a series of ad effectiveness studies.

Podcast audiences are loyal to their regular hosts and pay attention to the advertisers that support their favorite shows, according to online and podcast show network, Podtrac and TNS.

Podcasts attract niche audiences that are more receptive to the carefully targeted brands being advertised or that are sponsoring their favorite shows. So much so, the average unaided ad recall among Podtrac’s respondents was 68%. Podtrac’s CEO Mark McCrery says this is “considerably higher… than in other offline and online media.” He’s not wrong. Industry benchmarks currently put unaided recall for ads in streaming video at just 21%, mobile ads 20% and television 10%.

Some experts believe that ad recall might not be such a viable measurement of an ad's effectiveness. However, Podtrac's studies showed a "73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product which is an indication of successful targeting, the unique relationship audience members have with the hosts of today’s online shows, and their ability to quickly move audiences from awareness to consideration to purchase,” said Velvet Beard, Podtrac’s vice president of products.

So what of the future of podcasting? According to eMarketer analyst Paul Verna in his report “Podcast Audience: Seeking Riches in Niches”, the podcasting audience is set to rise 251% to 65 million in 2012. The same goes for spending which will he predicts will rise from last year’s $165 million to $435 million in the next four years.


Courtesy of Helen Leggatt - Bizreport.com

Podcasting Industry News

The podcasting network Wizzard Media announced that it has signed a content licensing and advertising agreement with YouTube.

As a YouTube content partner, Wizzard will have its own brand channel that will enable users to access video podcasts from the Wizzard Media Network. Through this agreement, YouTube will run ads against the shows in Wizzard’s YouTube channel. YouTube will share with Wizzard any ad revenue generated by the streamed Wizzard podcasts.

In addition to the ad revenue generated by increased audiences and advertising opportunities, the agreement with YouTube will also allow for content from the Wizzard Media Network to be incorporated into the Google AdSense Network. Wizzard will receive a share of revenues for certain ads displayed in connection with the playback of Wizzard Videos on the Google AdSense Network. Wizzard has opted to share a percentage of these revenues collected with the show’s creators.

In other news, Data Call Technologies, known for its Digital Signage technology, is acquiring Podcast Ready. Both companies are based in Houston.

Data Call said the acquisition will strengthen its business strategy focusing on emerging new markets for audio and video content. Podcast Ready has an existing infrastructure through which it can provide advertisers with content verification, enabling those advertisers to match their ads with content that is custom-tailored to specific demographics.

Podcast's technological capabilities integrate easily into Data Call's technology, products and services, said Jim Ammons, Data Call's chief executive officer. "Crossing the two technologies of Data Call's Digital Signage with PRI's podcasts technology and services contributes significantly to both entities ability to grow significantly. In the world of marketing, it's all about exposure," he said.

Report: Podcast Growth Continues but Concept Still Poorly Defined

About 11 percent of broadband users in the US, or 12 million consumers, listen to podcasts at least once a month, according to a survey by The Diffusion Group (TDG), a research and professional services firm. 16 percent have listened to a podcast at some point. 54 percent of respondents use a portable device and on average those users listen to 5.4 podcasts per month. Overall 70 percent rely on iTunes to access podcasts.

The report predicts that the number of podcast listeners will swell to 24 percent of broadband users in 2012, or 38.5 million Americans. Yet the report also notes that in spite of the continuous increase of podcast listeners, podcasting is still considered too complex and the quality and quantity of content available for podcast consumption is not estimated.

“Despite the fact that the Oxford University Press selected ‘podcast’ as Word of the Year in 2005, most consumers have a very poor understanding of the medium or the variety of content available for consumption by podcast,” said Dale Gilliam III, author of the report. This lack of understanding, notes Gilliam, is due primarily to the multiplicity of ways in which pundits and marketers have used the term.

“At the end of the day, the way consumers come to understand a new medium such as podcasting will strongly determine the types of experiences and value they attribute to the concept. When those in the business of articulating and promoting this new medium use language inconsistently, the power of the concept to attract and engage users is diluted.”

Marketing Companies Add Podcast Divisions

Advances and changes in technology not only affect enterprises but also the marketing agencies that represent them.

An example is Patty Briguglio of MMI Associates. Her firm recently made a significant investment in cash and personnel to help clients create podcasts. And at some point MMI will offer video services as well.“Today, people are changing the way they gather information,” Briguglio told WRAL Local Tech Wire. “Previously, the majority of the population relied on mass media outlets to filter their ‘news’ for them. That is all changing, businesses and news-makers are now by-passing traditional media and going directly to the consumer, removing the gatekeeper.

“Parallel to this shift, communications has developed into a dialogue format that encourages interactive participation,” she added. “Because of this, tools such as podcasting allow consumers to hear directly from decision makers, giving them the ability to then post comments and feedback about the content of the message, which encourages a dialogue.”Asked how marketing firms must adapt changing technology, Briguglio said the driver is not just client needs.“It is not about the client, it is instead about being a student of society and continuing to learn and study the evolution of communication and how changes in communication habits tie into the public relations and marketing objectives of the client,” she explained.

Briguglio also said embracing changes in technology is more than a differentiator. “It is a differentiator in the fact that not many other firms currently offer podcasting services, but we see it as an extension of our current service offerings and a way to give our clients added value and a competitive edge in the market place,” she said.Her company is investing some $15,000 inn the podcasting effort, including time, space and equipment. “One of our staff members is knowledgeable about podcasting and did all of the research and project coordination to develop the studio and our distribution platform,” Briguglio said. “Once this was complete, we had training sessions for all other staff members to instruct them how to use the hardware and software within the studio and mange the audio files.”Podcasts continue to increase in popularity as more people use iPods and other portable players.

“The emergence of iPods and other digital music players, combined with faster internet connections and cheaper hard drive space, have made it possible to consume more multimedia content,” Briguglio said.And video is next.“We believe that video is the next step and it will, of course, be another large investment,” she explained. “However, it is just as important as podcasts, traditional media, and news releases for distributing information to a public that is becoming a larger consumer of multimedia news and information. We are currently in the process of purchasing equipment and up fitting space to perform the video capture and editing.”Briguglio’s firm has 18 people with staff in Cary and Arizona. She opened the Cary office in 2003, having moved to the area from Arizona when her husband was transferred to a Triangle operation.

Contributed by Localwire.com