Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins, one of the chief writers at Mashable, laments the lack of advertisers in podcasting. Does that mean podcasting isn’t a viable business model?
I don’t think so. It may be difficult to get advertisers, or sponsors, for your podcasts, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Even if you can’t profit from the advertising, you can turn your podcasts into a marketing vehicle. Contrary to popular opinion, viral video marketing hasn’t killed podcasting. It’s just one more medium and you can use it to effectively market your business. Here are some ideas to help you understand how podcasting can be used as a marketing tool:
- Produce a weekly podcast radio show that covers important changes in your industry.
- Make an instructional podcast as a free download for your customers. This won’t work for every business. But it could work for yours. This will work well if you have a good voice for audio, you are not photogenic or amenable to video marketing, or your topic doesn’t fit in well with the video visual presentation format.
- Interview someone in your field who is prominent and has a name. If you find the right person to interview, you might be able to find a sponsor for the podcast who will pay you just for your time. Or you can share the podcast with others in your industry and allow them to download, distribute or use your podcasts any way they like as long as they give you attribution.
There are any number of ways you can use podcasting, but the most powerful seems to be as a free distribution vehicle for your audio content. Advertisers or no advertisers, if you can get new targeted traffic to your website using podcasts then why wouldn’t you?
It isn’t impossible – I hope I didn’t make that impression when I ran the original editorial. I’ve had advertisers, some that ended up paying more than a few month’s rent, before.
Advertising networks – i.e., those you hire to go get ads for you, have almost without exception been huge headaches in the long run (with the exception of Podango – they weren’t able to continue with us through no fault of theirs).
Still, studies show that audio is more valuable of a ad tool in terms of ROI for advertisers than text. It should, theoretically, be more than a loss leader – it should be a profit center.
I’m continually frustrated that it isn’t.