Do you actually need a podcast?
How to Know If a Podcast is Right for You
It seems like everyone has a podcast these days. Brands are launching them, founders are hosting them, and businesses across industries are using podcasts to reach their audiences.
So, does your business need a podcast, too? The short answer is not necessarily.
A podcast can be an incredibly effective marketing tool, but just having one isn't a strategy. Before investing the time and resources into launching a podcast, you need to know what you want it to accomplish and whether podcasting is actually the right way to get there.
Is a Podcast Good for my Business?
A podcast can be especially valuable for businesses that depend on trust, expertise, education, or strong customer relationships.
Think about professional services, healthcare organizations, real estate companies, financial advisors, nonprofits, consultants, and founders with valuable expertise to share. In businesses like these, customers often aren't making impulse purchases. They want to understand who they're working with, whether they can trust them, and if they actually know what they're talking about.
Podcasting gives these businesses the space to demonstrate that expertise instead of simply claiming it.
A 30-minute episode can show your audience how you think, what you know, what you value, and how you approach the problems they care about (and need you to solve for them). Over time, those conversations can help potential customers become more familiar with your brand before they ever speak with you directly.
What Are the Benefits of a Podcast for a Brand?
One of the biggest benefits of podcasting for businesses is that a single episode can do much more than generate podcast downloads.
A strategic branded podcast can help you:
Build trust and authority by consistently sharing useful expertise.
Educate potential customers about problems, solutions, and topics related to your business.
Nurture leads by giving people a way to spend more time with your brand before they're ready to buy.
Strengthen relationships with customers, partners, industry leaders, and guests.
Create long-form content that can be repurposed into video clips, social posts, newsletters, blogs, and other marketing assets.
Improve your brand's visibility in search by turning valuable conversations into written and video content that can be discovered beyond podcast platforms.
In other words, the value of a podcast doesn't have to begin and end with the number of people who press play.
When Should we NOT Start a Podcast?
A podcast probably isn't the right investment if you're starting one simply because everyone else seems to have one.
It's also important to set realistic expectations. If you're expecting your new podcast to go viral overnight, attract thousands of listeners immediately, or instantly generate sales, you're probably going to be disappointed. Building an audience takes time, and podcasting works best when it's connected to a larger business and content strategy.
That's one of the biggest misconceptions we see: downloads are not the only measure of whether a business podcast is successful.
For some brands, 500 highly relevant listeners could be far more valuable than 50,000 people who will never become customers, partners, donors, or advocates.
What Should the Goal of My Podcast Be?
There isn't one universal goal for a branded podcast. Your podcast might be designed to establish your company's executives as thought leaders. It might help educate prospective customers about a complicated service. It could deepen relationships within your industry, give your organization a platform for important conversations, nurture existing leads, or fuel your broader content marketing strategy.
The important thing is identifying that goal before you start recording. Otherwise, it's easy to spend months producing episodes without knowing whether the podcast is actually working.
How Do You Know If my Brand Should Start a Podcast?
Before launching a podcast for your business, ask yourself one question: What business goal am I trying to accomplish? Then ask whether a podcast genuinely helps you accomplish it.
If your audience would benefit from hearing your expertise, if trust plays an important role in your sales process, if you have valuable conversations or ideas worth sharing, and if you have a plan for using that content beyond the podcast feed, podcasting may be a strong fit for your brand.
If you can't yet identify what the podcast is supposed to accomplish, that's a sign to work on the strategy before you worry about microphones, cameras, cover art, or episode titles.
The goal isn't just to have a podcast. At Wavestream Media, the goal is simple: create a podcast that moves your business forward and have some fun while doing it.
This article is part of Wavestream Wednesday, a series from Wavestream Media about building better podcasts with a strategy behind them. Check back next Wednesday for more.
