Q&A: How To Sell Podcasting To Your Team

Summary

So, you believe in the power of podcasting (or video, or content in general) and you want to get the team on board.

How do you frame the conversation? What’s the best way to get buy-in?

In this episode we talk about how you can pitch a podcast concept to your team and highlight the value of it.

Episode Highlights

Now is the best time to start a podcast.

Actually, the best time was probably a couple years ago, but the best time you can start one (if you haven’t) is now.

Podcast listenership has gone from 1/25th of radio to 1/8th of radio over the last 5 years. In fact, there are now 100 million monthly active listeners. If you can start a YouTube channel and still get attention - even though there’s 30+ million of them - then you can certainly get attention with your podcast given that there’s “only” 1 million or so (at the time of this recording).

Even though podcasting is more of a brand marketing channel, there are still measurable side benefits you can expect.

These include:

• Inbound leads and website visits
• Shorter sales cycles (namely for B2B)
• Backlinks (your organic team will love you)
• New relationships built
• The ability to turn each episode into 20+ pieces of content and inform your other content marketing channels

You shouldn’t start a podcast unless you have the basics down pat.

If your website has a massive drop-off rate, your product has bugs, your sales team can’t close, your paid channels don’t convert at all, you’re still discovering product-market fit, or anything like this - you probably want to hold off on podcasting.

Brand marketing > direct marketing, and podcasting is primarily a brand marketing channel.

Brand marketing is largely unmeasurable. At least, not to the degree direct marketing is.

With direct, you can measure impressions, clicks, signups, downloads, conversions and so on. With brand, it’s a bit harder.

But brand wins in the long run.

If you always have to pay another channel to get in front of their audience, the price will always go up and the audience will always move somewhere else. But when you have a strong brand, people come looking for you. They seek you out. They share you with friends. They talk about you.

So if you want to build a brand, there’s no channel quite like podcasting. Because the audience is hearing your brand’s “voice”, tuning in for a longer time, and coming to be either educated or entertained, it has the ability to:

• Build trust: establish yourself as the expert, or as a generous brand that’s giving freely to your audience to try and bring them value.
• Grow awareness: get in front of more listeners and build your own audience rather than paying to reach someone else’s.
• Increase affinity and loyalty: you’ll find that your customers will have greater loyalty to your brand.

A good brand is a moat. Your competition may copy your tech or features. They might steal your ideas. But they can’t copy your loyal fanbase and the brand that customers rally around.