There’s more to podcasting than true crime and documentaries. Fourteen Forty colleague – and keen podcaster – Ellen Bencard discusses how short podcast series can support specific business goals including sales, employer branding, and training.
Rules are there to be broken. But only if you understand why they exist in the first place.
My first rule of podcasting is that you need to approach it as a long-term strategy. Subscriber bases take time to build up. New listeners tend discover one episode, then feast on your archive.
The longer you’re publishing, the more differentiation you’ll build in a packed podcast marketplace. A short-run podcast is a recipe for marketing disaster: all the effort and expense of production but limited chances to connect with your audience, and no chance of a long payoff or relationship.
There is, however, an exception. Short-run podcasts can be an excellent tactic to accomplish very specific and immediate objectives. When it comes to breaking the long-term strategy rule, success depends upon a laser-focused purpose and a tightly defined and easily reached audience. When you start with these, you negate the reason for the rule exists.
Examples include:
- Collateral that supports a business proposal
- Training required for employees
- An exploration of company culture for the year’s graduate recruitment
- An enhancement to applications (planning permission, funding, award nominations, etc.)
In each of these cases, the audience is already vested in what you have to say and the purpose clear. Instead of worrying about how to attract listeners, you can double down on your story and its differentiation, both of which enjoy distinct advantages with podcasts.
Audio offers a break to the monotony of print. Younger audiences may prefer it. It does a better job of conveying personality and individuality than text.
While more expensive than print, podcasts are considerably cheaper than good-quality video. Most important of all, podcasts let busy people do something else while listening. They’re ideal for a time-poor audience used to multi-tasking.
I recently hosted a six-part series that helped a services company land one of their biggest “must-win” deals of the year.
The competitors for this multi-million pound contract operate in a market where there’s little differentiation in the tools, technologies and processes used to deploy the work. In an even race, clients make choices based on personalities, performance history and how their suitors make them feel.
The podcast tapped into that reality. In each of six episodes we looked at a different part of the proposal and the people who would work on it, focusing on “the people who will soon be working with you if you choose us.” We kept episodes short, at no more than 15 minutes each. I interviewed either one or two people for each segment. More in such a short time frame makes it difficult to give each person space to shine.
I did a prep call with all of my guests in advance, so we’d outlined the best topics for conversation. I got a feel for the team and how to bring out the best of their personalities while they got comfortable with me.
I did not send out specific questions. Long experience tells me that if I do that, people can’t help preparing scripted answers. Unless you’ve trained as an actor or presenter, almost everyone sounds wooden when reading text. That undermines the charm of podcasts: authenticity.
I sent out a general idea of the conversational flow and a series of topics instead, and emphasised to people that we were having a casual chat.
While it was all meant to feel effortless for the guest, I was paying close attention to the key messages of the company’s sales pitch and what the Request for Proposal (RFP) most wanted to know.
Episodes may have felt like upbeat, informal conversations, but they were each crafted to make very specific points. At the same time, our format brought out just how clever and charismatic all the team members were in a way that even the best-written corporate biography couldn’t have conveyed.
Guests were also able to weave numerous proof points into their comments, assuring listeners that they were exactly what the proposal promised.
Biographies, case studies and many more details were available in the proposal. The podcasts didn’t necessarily say anything new. They just said it in a more human and easily-consumable way.
The proposal was the required response. The podcast the icing on the cake. All the materials lived on a password-protected microsite.
This gave the proposal team the added benefit of seeing exactly who listened to each podcast episode and for how long. More than 70% of the prospective client’s review team listened to at least some of the podcasts and the completion rate once they started was much higher than the average consumption for general marketing pushes.
The company won the deal. The proposed plan of work, price and track record were the foundations of that success. But everyone involved was confident that the short-run podcast was a deciding factor in differentiating them from the competition.
If you’re trying to differentiate yourself to a defined audience … particularly when the traditional channel is text based … a short-run podcast may be just what you need.
Find out more about our podcasting and events capabilities, or drop us a line if you’d like to talk further.