Host-voiced podcast advertising is the most effective promotion available
You have great products, are ready to help customers, and have dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. Now what? Well, to use an 80’s reference, if you want to hear a song, you have to put a dime in the jukebox! But how does one rise above the noise of today’s hypermedia, socially-networked maelstrom? Let’s explore why host-voiced podcast advertising is surprisingly effective!
For advertising to be effective, the message needs to:
- Reach the correct targeted audience.
- Be heard from a trusted source.
- Be experienced and understood by future customers.
- Be compelling and believable.
- Be encountered enough times for the messaging to stick in the future customers’ psyches.
Podcast advertising checks these boxes better than any other form of promotion. To understand why, let’s take a brief walk through some history of advertising.
Remember print, radio, and television?
We won’t go too far back, but before digital advertising, the three major forms of advertising were print, radio, and television. Getting messaging to the consumers via these media had its challenges. It is easy to ignore printed ads. If someone was not already looking for the product offered, the ad would get no more than a glance, if even that. And a potential customer would need to open the magazine and turn to your page even to have a chance of seeing your ad.
Radio had the advantage of being part of the audio stream of the programing. However, the listeners soon learned to channel surf away from the ads and back to content they enjoyed. And they did. Radio presets made this the norm.
And television advertising suffered the snack break and potty break fate. What’s more, while television was flashy and included audio, it was limited to the viewing time of the customers. For example, customers could not watch TV while driving, working, running, or doing other activities. They had to dedicate time to sitting down and watching.
What about digital marketing?
Then came digital marketing. Google banner ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube! In the early days of the internet, the novelty of surfing the web made banner ads super effective. But we humans cannot be gamed that easily. Soon we learned what to ignore to get to the content we desired. Then e-mail marketing became all the rage, followed closely by anti-spam tools and anti-spam laws. It is not uncommon for less than 10% of e-mail recipients to click open an e-mail, and then very few if any of them actually click a link toward a conversion funnel. It has become noise. Noise. Noise! NOISE!
We humans filter out nearly all the information that comes at us. It is called sensory gating and it not only keeps us sane, but also allows us to focus on what is really important. When there is a jaguar stalking you in the jungle, you don’t need to hear crickets or feel the breeze or gaze at the stars. You need to hear the twig snap behind the bush!
How to get people to hear your message above all the noise
Host-voiced podcast advertising is effective!
This is the beauty of podcast advertising! It addresses all the advertising challenges noted above.
- Use host-voiced ads–not print or banner ads which are ignored. PodDivvy it!
- Listeners listen while doing other things like driving, exercising, or doing chores. While one could fast forward through podcast advertising, they don’t when they are doing other things. There are no channel presets for channel surfing like radio. PodDivvy it!
- AND–this is a big one–podcast listening is portable. It goes where the listener goes and is listen-on-demand. One does not need to dedicate screen-viewing time for it. Those snack and potty breaks? The podcast goes with the listener. PodDivvy it!
Trust and allegiance are key
Human nature explains why podcast ads are heard rather than ignored. There are more than two million podcasts today. No joke. So, podcast listeners effectively have unlimited choice on what they choose for listening. They select podcasts carefully by subject and host. They listen because they choose to! And the format is intimate, often with earphones putting the host right in the listeners’ heads. Remember that jaguar? Well, the host is the jaguar. When the host, who the listeners have chosen and who has become a trusted source of entertainment and information, tells the listeners about a worthwhile product, the listeners listen. Customers hear your ads.
The trust relationship between the host and the listener is powerful. But so is the allegiance listeners have for their podcasts of choice!
Edison Research reports that podcast listeners listen a lot; on average eight podcast episodes per week! Customers will hear and remember your ads.
Of course, in today’s marketplace, companies do need to have active social media promotions going. But for more bang for your buck, companies need a generous slice of podcast advertising to really drive brand promotion and sales.
Do it right! PodDivvy it!
