We recently caught up with Jason Allan Scott who has previously used our podcasting room, The Studio, in Ministry Venues - Borough for himself and his clients. Here are his top 9 reasons to start a podcast for your business.

The top 9 reasons to start a podcast:

1. It’s a Great Content Marketing Tool

Content marketing is the practice of providing valuable information to your target audience to build a long-term relationship of trust with them. Once your audience knows, likes and trusts you, they’ll be more likely to purchase from you when they’re ready. 

And what better way to develop a relationship of trust than with a podcast? It’s a great content medium for building a loyal audience base that connects with your topic choice, host personality, and delivery style. Also, according to our previous EventHuddle speaker, Jason Allan Scott, there is far less competition for your ears than your eyes in today's competitive attention landscape! 

Podcasting is also an easy way to repurpose content you’ve already made (or vice-versa) and get more traffic to your site through SEO and getting multiple eyeballs on your content on multiple social media platforms - while only having to do one action, host a podcast! Many birds, one mighty stone! 

2. It’s Very Affordable

You don’t need a massive budget to start a podcast—in fact, it’s possible to create a professional-quality podcast with £500. 

3. It’s a Great Way to Network

Hosting a podcast is also an excellent opportunity to connect with other experts or major players in your field. You might invite them on as guests or even become guests on their shows. 

After all, a podcast is essentially a recorded conversation, so what better way to network and get to know others in your space? Plus, thanks to a pandemic we will not name, you have all the practice you need to be a great podcaster simply by doing all those zoom and google hangout meetings you were forced to do! 

4. You Can Build Your Brand and Establish Your Authority in Your Industry

Hosting a podcast lets you demonstrate your expertise by making your conversations, insights, and monologues public. With an established podcast, you can build a backlog of examples of your authority and knowledge of your field. You can then link back to this in other blogs to come or send clients there to show provenance and build trust. 

5. Statistically, Podcast Listeners Have Money to Spend

45% of podcast listeners earn more than 250,000 in yearly household income (yes this is in USD as we can’t seem to find Ofcom's report). That means they’re a great audience if you want to find potential customers. 

But before you get excited about the prospect of landing more sales, remember the basic principle of content marketing: you provide value over time so that your audience trusts you. It’s a slow process, so don’t be overly sales-eee, or your listeners will be turned off.

6. Podcasts Can Be an Added Source of Revenue

And, of course, an engaged audience means you can create additional income streams from your podcast, make partnerships, and test new products and services for your business without having to pay for an audience. 

For instance, if your catering company starts a podcast, the manager of a local wedding venue might be interested in making an appearance on your show. You can have conversations about wedding food tastes that interest your audience while everyone gets some publicity and then start a relationship with the venue, so you can later sell your catering.

7. Podcasts can easily be converted into more content

To make the best of your podcast, a good idea is to repurpose it into other content material. Some people prefer to consume content through written text than hear everything audibly. You can easily use the transcripts of a podcast to create blogs, articles, and even online course written materials. This helps boost search rankings, creating more traffic possibilities for your business’ site. 

Another idea is to convert your podcast into shorter shareable segments to share on all social media platforms. This not only entices listeners to hear your full podcast, but this can serve as a great way to provide short snippets of content for different channels without going through the effort of having to create something new. Make once, share multiple pieces of content. 

8. Get more clients from a new audience 

When you start podcasting for your business, you can tap into a whole new audience channel. While some people are less reluctant to read content or buy a service/product through advertising, they might be more interested in listening to a podcast. 

Through podcasting platforms, you also place your brand in a new space. This means you can reach audiences that originally might not hear about you from other marketing channels. A larger audience means you could earn yourself more clients and for this reason, podcasting for small businesses starting out is great for attracting new leads. Though, this is equally helpful for bigger businesses looking to grow their client base.

9. Podcasts are effective advertising tools

Although your business podcast is not a traditional advert, this type of marketing can be highly effective. In fact, according to research, podcast ads have high recall rates. Podcasts have 4 times better brand recall than display ads and in a Nielsen survey: 62% of respondents say that podcasts have made them consider buying a new product or service. Another strength of podcasting for business is that you can make advertisements more organic. You don’t have to read out a super salesy podcast ad, but instead, you can mention your service more naturally in conversation.