A lot of companies have dipped a toe into podcasting and then given up almost immediately. I can’t tell you the number of times a businessperson has said this to me, or something just like it: “Oh yeah, we tried podcasting. Our communications manager did some interviews, and we put up on our website. We only got a few hundred listens, and I don’t think they were new customers. Podcasts are cool and all, but I just couldn’t see the ROI.”
Teach a Brand to Fish
This is a heartbreaking little story to hear, because it shows a series of missed opportunities—places where a different way of thinking and working could have changed everything. Investment in a branded podcast series can yield results that are nothing short of revolutionary to a company’s bottom line. But to do this it has to be made well. It has to be conceived and produced in a way that understands the strengths and possibilities of the medium.
A podcast is not like a social media campaign, where a Tweet or Facebook post can be dashed off quickly and quickly replaced. This is content marketing in the purest sense, where you are asking a listener to spend a significant amount of time consuming something—20 minutes or maybe an hour—and so you have to create content that is worthy of that investment of time. If your only considerations are to make something quickly and cheaply, you will not draw people’s attention away from all the other things they could be doing with that same 20 minutes.
A small, short-term, underfunded and underconsidered “test” of podcasting for your company is like throwing an unabated hook into a sidewalk puddle, then using that as evidence that there is no value in fishing. With the right bait on the right line in the right patch of ocean, the results would have been very different. Creating a stream of media that an audience really cares about builds bonds of connection in those people’s brains and hearts that are incredibly strong. If they love your podcast they will love you by extension, and that love will turn strangers into connections, connections into fans, and fans into evangelists.
From Beer to Books
In order to do this, though, a branded podcast series has to do two things well, and neither of them are easy. First, it must effectively convey who you are as a company and how you want people to feel about you. Second, your podcast must create real value for the audience. The first of these requires genuine clarity about your brand identity. The second requires empathy, imagination, and skill.
And the ROI? It’s not about monetizing the content, at least not directly or right away. One of my favorite case studies in the history of content marketing comes from England in the early 1950s, where an executive at the Guinness beer company was thinking about promotional strategy. What was their brand identity? Comfortable, familiar, the old friend at the pub. And who were their customers? Men, mostly, who liked to spend time at the pub with friends. So how to connect with them more deeply? The trick was not to think about what Guinness was, but who those men were, and how to be of service to them. What do men hanging out at the pub like to do? What would they find useful? Well, they like to talk about sports and have friendly arguments. This seems like a thin opportunity for expressing brand identity, but this particular executive did something brilliant with it.
He noticed that at the time there was no handy reference for sports statistics, so there was no way to settle those arguments. Who’s the winningest cricket bowler of all time? Who has the current fastest time in the 100 yard dash? What’s the largest grouse ever hunted? Arthur says one thing, George something else, Harry disagrees with both of them. Who’s right? Who knows?
So, he thought, what if Guinness solved that problem? What if we printed a book with all the current sports records and distributed it to pubs all around the country? We could update it annually. Maybe we include agricultural records, too—a lot of those men are farmers, after all, who might discuss the world’s largest pig or what chicken laid the most eggs. Maybe we throw in some silly things like the world’s longest moustache. That would be fun! Et voila, The Guinness Book of World Records was born. Now, every time a bartender or bar patron reached for that book, they’d think about Guinness, at least subconsciously, and we’d be there with them, no matter what they were drinking. We’re their friend, part of the conversation.
This particular stream of content marketing was so successful that it soon went on sale in bookshops and became a profit center in its own right, eventually spinning off to be an independent company. But the first big win came from giving the books out for free, and letting them inspire people subconsciously to have good feelings about Guinness. There’s no question that this helped firm up Guinness’ identity as not just a drink, but an essential cornerstone of English pub life. The ROI was the way it incorporated the brand into people’s daily routines in new ways, and backed up the brand identity presented in its ads with tangible evidence.
This is what the best branded podcasts will do in the future: build affinity with their audience by being of service to them. Giving, not asking for. Monetizing is fine, but it should be a secondary or even tertiary goal, if it’s a goal at all. The minute a piece of branded content turns into a sales pitch, the audience is lost along with all their goodwill. But if you can maintain a stream of content that is genuinely useful and entertaining to the audience you care about, you can earn their loyalty for a lifetime.
The Road Not Taken
Long-form audio is particularly poised to be used in this way. Rather than the quick hits of TikToks and Reels that everyone is running towards, traditional podcasting—content that is audio-only or audio-primarily and delivered episodically to mobile devices—is not about spending a minute at a time with 30 or 60 different creators, getting a quick laugh or burst of indignation from each, and barely noticing who they are one to the next. Rather, it’s a vehicle for spending real, quality time with a series—30 or 60 minutes at a stretch—and welcoming it into places in your life where other content cannot go: the car, the shower, the kitchen, the park, the bus. This is a recipe for real intimacy and therefore real affinity.
So who is taking advantage of this opportunity? What brands are making long-form, immersive audio series a cornerstone of their marketing strategy? Remarkably few. B2B leaders, consultants and the like, have been using podcasting for years to expand their networks and present themselves as experts in their spheres, but B2C brands and retailers have barely scratched the surface of what is possible in the medium. This includes not just the interview shows that have become the default image of “podcasting”, but all sorts of programming: journalism, immersive documentaries, game shows, radio dramas, comedies, advice shows, how-to programming… Really, the sky is the limit.
If you could take a large group of people who normally think of your brand for a few short moments while looking at an advertisement or standing in the aisle of a grocery store, and instead have them spend 20 or 30 or 40 minutes a week, every week, generating good feelings about who you are and what you stand for, what would the ROI of that be?
(David Hoffman is the Founder & Principal of CitizenRacecar)