Why does your business need a podcast?
Let's look at the data:
How can your business make a podcast?
We've got that covered for you. Here's how your business can easily make a podcast. No excuses, you can do it with a one-person team and make it part of your daily or weekly marketing routine.
You don't have to be fancy. 🙂
How often should you make it? Our data says that when you go from monthly LONG episodes to daily or every-other-day 1-5 minute episodes, your listenership increases.
How to distribute / How to promote your Business Podcast?
In terms of distribution, Anchor.fm has that covered for you. They instantly distribute your podcast to all of the platforms listed here.
Promotion is another story. You have to weave your podcast into everything you do. Social media, blog, even Google Ads can be necessary ways to get the word out about your business podcast.
You can't expect people to just find it. It's much like promoting an Alexa Skill, you have to tell people about it in meetings, put it in your email signatures, email them individual links to it 1:1 where appropriate; eat, sleep, live, breathe the fact that your podcast exists.
"Didn't read our last article? Here's the audio version," needs to become part of your marketing vernacular.
It's about making a version of your content that is more easily consumable to your target audiences. They can listen while they workout, walk the dog, or even while they work or watch TV.
How to Monetize your Podcast?
Now that we've covered why you should make a podcast, how to make it, how often to make it and how to distribute/promote it, let's cover how you can actually make money off of your podcast. Not that you'd want or need to make money on it, because it's already going to be doing an amazing job of getting you new clients and recurring business from previous and current clients, but, here goes...
- Anchor.fm, the best place to make a podcast, has added a feature called "listener support," where you can actually ask your listeners to support your podcast by making one-time donations or recurring donations.
- While I understand most people are horrible at asking for money, if you're providing value to your listeners and/or to your network of people (who may not be listening to your podcast), letting them know that they can help you by donating to your podcast can generate some momentum for you.
- If you're a business development person for a larger company that has a podcast, and you spend your time meeting with people who want to meet with you but rarely buy from you, it's reasonable to ask for their support in this way, especially if you have strong relationships. $1/month? It's the least they can do. For real.
- If you're a younger person, say a high school student, college student or in your early to mid 20s and find yourself wanting to build an audience around your content, regardless of subject matter, I love this idea for you. Let's say I would have had Anchor available to me from 2006-2011 when I was heavy into my Fantasy Football Website, NoOffseason.com. I would have put out a daily podcast, and hit up everyone I know to support it for $1, $5 or $10 per month. I could have brought in a lot of extra coin.
- Regardless of who you are, you should have an intro or outro to your podcast that basically says - if you liked this content or if I bring you value in any way, I'd sure appreciate it if you visited https://anchor.fm/paulhickey (or your URL on Anchor) and clicked Support This Podcast to help keep it going!
Let's be honest, that wasn't what you were expecting was it? Well, there's certainly other ways to monetize your podcast, but not as easy or as turnkey as this one.
Hit me up with any questions anytime at paul@datadriven.design.
Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day!
KEEP MARKETING!
