Podcasting as a Marketing Strategy

Have you thought about adding a podcast as part of your marketing strategy? No matter what your industry, there are ways to incorporate having a podcast as a marketing channel.

In this episode Michelle talks with Hazel about the different podcasts she manages, why podcasting can help get the word out about your company, and how to think about using podcasting in your marketing strategy. Hint: figure out what your audience wants to hear, and where they look.

Questions about how to start a podcast? Michelle has a presentation about that! You can check out the slides and a recording from WordCamp Montclair at this link.

If you start planning a podcast (or already have one) we want to know!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to Audacity Marketing with Hazel Quimpo and Michelle Frechette. On this podcast, we’ll challenge you to think differently and break free of the same old strategies. We’ll push you out of your comfort zone and encourage you to think outside the box. So take notes, make bold decisions, and be audacious.
Speaker 3 00:00:33 Hey, Hazel.
Speaker 2 00:00:35 Hello Michelle. Great to see you again. Nice
Speaker 3 00:00:38 To see you too. We’ve, we have a, a regularity of not being regular a podcast,
Speaker 2 00:00:45 But, but that’s the thing. You can tell when you have like those kind of buddies, and I bet you have lots of them in your life though, the kind that you’re like, oh, we haven’t talked in a while, but let’s just pick it on up. It’s not a big deal.
Speaker 3 00:00:54 I love it. Exactly. It’s like, Hey, it’s so good to see your face again. So, um, I love that. As a matter of fact, one of the things we, we, we always have this list of potential topic ideas between the two of us. I love Slack for that because we can always scroll back up and go, what was it that we were talking about? But, um, we’re talking about podcasting today and how podcasting is not just like a, Hey, I wanna give my ideas out there, but you can use podcasting for marketing. And this is a marketing podcast about marketing. I mean, go figure. It’s like inception. So what are, what are some of your thoughts about that?
Speaker 2 00:01:30 So, podcasts have taken off, obviously people know like crazy. And I think it’s like anything else where you get two camps of people. Someone wants to start a podcast and they wanna have the website and the funnel. They have to build a whole thing. And I think that’s great. I also think you could build, you could just do a podcast kind of casually and build all of the content and continue the work and it builds around it. Cause a podcast is probably one of the most high value and most forgiving content forms in my mind. Mm-hmm. .
Speaker 3 00:02:03 Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 2 00:02:04 And
Speaker 3 00:02:04 There’s, there’s so many different genres of podcasting, right? Like, I don’t like true crime. Podcasts are like right at the top. It’s like almost too bad that there’s not a lot of WordPress crime be like. And next up we’re gonna talk about the,
Speaker 2 00:02:20 All of the articles of the lowercase ped sightings .
Speaker 3 00:02:24 Yeah. That’s not as exciting as like the WordPress ax murderer
Speaker 2 00:02:27 . It’s not, it’s not nearly,
Speaker 3 00:02:30 But the genre of business marketing. So talking about your, your product and talking about how it impacts your customers and your client base is something that I think is, it’s, it’s not new, but it kinda is new as far as finding foothold and understanding how to do it in such a way that your audience isn’t just entertained, but learns from you and you actually are able to grow business around it.
Speaker 2 00:02:55 Absolutely. I’ll, um, me being someone deep in marketing, I’m like the world of one person marketing teams for years. Mm-hmm. You decide that you discover the parts of marketing very well that you like and the parts that you hate. And technical seo, I feel like I understand quite well and I always feel like it’s the most over-engineered thing in the world. And all the technical SEOs I’m gonna get, I’m gonna get emails after this, but my SEO strategy is they ask you answer. It’s not my strategy alone. It’s uh, I believe, I don’t know his name. There’s an author there that we’ll talk about after they ask you answer. And it’s great for podcast topics, right? Um mm-hmm. to me, it’s not only that, it’s not FAQs, it’s not FAQ that they might ask about your business, but it is, you know, I am someone who sells leather wallets.
Speaker 2 00:03:40 So the questions will be all that, the questions that people might ask before they even know that I sell leather wallets would be like, oh, what are trendy wallets? What kind of leather is like eco-friendly? What type of things? And all of those things. I love to start with a podcast episode these days. In the old days, yeah. I would start with a blog, but, uh, I was telling you a little bit about this earlier about uh, podcasts, but Michelle, before we go into that, you do so many podcasts and I think you are the queen of doing them like, efficiently and without drama. And, and I say without drama cause I’ve dealt with lots of other podcasts and people trying to make them, and it’s just drama of your own creation. Cause you get stuck in it. Yeah. How do you, how do you do it without all that drama?
Speaker 3 00:04:23 Um, for me it’s about good conversation, right? So first of all, I’m not a one person podcast. All of my podcasts, I’m either interviewing somebody or I have a partner like you. And so it’s about having a conversation that other people would be like, oh, I wish I was there and could talk to them while they’re having this conversation. So it’s inclusive, right? It’s not preaching, it isn’t teaching. There’s no proselytizing. I know, I think I just gave three words about the same thing. Uh, cuz I have a resource in my brain. Um, but it’s, it’s none of that. It’s all about helping to educate through conversation and the people who are listening to the podcast feeling themselves a part of it, even if they’re not in the room with you. It goes back to, if I can, this is gonna sound very farfetched, but way back we’re talking maybe, uh, 25 years ago, probably 28 years ago, oh my God, I’m old. 28 years ago I had to have an MRI of my shoulder. And when you have an MRI of your foot, you don’t have to be in a tube, just your foot goes in the tube. When you have an MRI of your shoulder, your whole body is in a very small tube. And as a claustrophobic person that is Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:28 Is extremely triggering
Speaker 3 00:05:29 The thing of nightmares. And I was driving myself so I couldn’t even take anti-anxiety meds for that. But the, um, the, the tech person, this was before podcasts, this was before Spotify, the sport anything, gave me headphones and asked me which radio station did I wanna listen to. And it was in the morning. And I knew I had met before two of the radio station personalities in my area. And so I said, would you put on that station? And so while I’m in there with my eyes closed that I could picture myself elsewhere. I’m listening to this morning talk show basically. And the two people who I knew, cuz I’d seen them on tv, I’d seen them in ads and I’d seen them in events before talking, and I’m imagining myself as part of the conversation in the room with them. And that’s what got me through that, because it wasn’t preaching to me, it wasn’t salesing selling to me. It wasn’t so inane that I couldn’t feel like part of the conversation, but I felt like part of the conversation and could see myself as part of the conversation even if I wasn’t technically there. I think
Speaker 2 00:06:28 That’s the most romantic, like yeah, that’s aromantic description. I’ve heard of podcast. I love it though. It’s like such a, like, so it evoke such imagery
Speaker 3 00:06:36 And, and what people often tell me is when I have guests on podcasts and things like that is especially people who are first time, like they get really nervous. I’m gonna be, oh my God, I’m gonna be a guest on a podcast. And I remember the first time I was a guest and I was like, I wasn’t sure if it was video or not. So like I had my whole room looking nice. I had like everything adjusted so that I could sit there and like, oh my God, if my technology fail. Like all of those kinds of nervousness things. Um, but people tell me, well, that was so comfortable, that was so conversational, you put me at ease. That wasn’t once we started, I forgot my fear. And I think that’s what’s important is you’re talking to real people. You are people talking to each other who are sharing information to real people. And the more you can make it conversational and yet edifying, so whether somebody’s learning something or just feeling like they belong more, um, is, is kind of the trick. If there’s a, if you could say there’s a trick or a hook or whatever is just be authentic.
Speaker 2 00:07:28 And I I’ll say, I bet this is, I know it’s true for you and I I suspect it’s true for a lot of other folks, is the process of creating content for a podcast is so much more enjoyable than almost any other form. Um, you’re not sitting down to write a blog, you’re not trying to edit a video all the ways. Sometimes podcasts come with that. You’re not trying to, you know, make social media graphics, um, a podcast at it’s heart, you know, you can do a conversation pretty easily and mm-hmm. , I think what I’ve been using a lot is kind of starting with a podcast format. There used to be a style of, this is gonna get nerdy into content marketing, but me tell you little bit tricks here. The way that I used to start marketing was like, you have an idea.
Speaker 2 00:08:09 And then it’s like, cool. Then you have a blog post. It was always the key. Have a blog post and then go into video, go into whatever else, go into Instagram. I 100% recommend starting with a podcast episode or short YouTube video these days because of AI tools being able to pull out that content and turn it into the rest of the content. Um, people are kind of starting backwards, right? They’re trying to have AI write a blog post from nothing. Why not have AI write a blog post from the content you’ve already created? Mm-hmm. . Um, and I think that’s what’s really powerful about podcasting from a really straight up financial perspective.
Speaker 3 00:08:42 Absolutely. And, and does it, you don’t have to sync a ton of money into podcasting. You could spend a lot of money on great microphones. You could spend a lot of money on processing equipment. You could make sure you have the best, uh, video camera out there, but you don’t have to, you could literally podcast from your phone. Will it sound very polished and very, you know, um, like, like the top podcasters out there. No, it’s not gonna sound that way. But as you grow, you can invest more. And as you determine that this is something you wanna invest money into, you can buy a better microphone. You could great get better headphones, you could do those things, but there are free tools out there to be able to process your sound. I use Audacity, um mm-hmm. , which where Audacity working. I use the audacity, the Free Audacity. Oh there you, you know, um, uh, software to edit audio. Um, I do have a, a very, um, inexpensive subscription to Adobe and I use Adobe Rush to, to do all of our video. And so I think I spent $20 a month on processing, um, which is nothing really, right? No,
Speaker 2 00:09:43 No, not at all.
Speaker 3 00:09:44 My first microphone was 35 bucks off of Amazon. Now I have like a $200 microphone because as I’ve gotten better, I’ve invested in better equipment. But sure, you can do it very inexpensively because it’s about the content, it isn’t about the equipment.
Speaker 2 00:09:59 And I’ll say exactly like when I’ve heard people go down that rabbit hole, I’m like, my first question is, have you listened to a podcast
Speaker 3 00:10:08 ? Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:10:10 I mean, there’s a few that are really well polished, but have you listened to most of them? Like it’s fine. Like yeah, I don’t know who’s walking around angry hearing that someone popped their pees or whatever
Speaker 3 00:10:23 Have pop filter on this one.
Speaker 2 00:10:26 Um, so I think it’s great. And I think, um, what this all comes to is I’ve been really interested in this idea of how much value human just humanity and human connection has every day that AI becomes more and more powerful sound like in the ma I’m in the Matrix right now, , but it’s, uh, connection, marketing touchpoints that you can have mm-hmm. that are real, um, are few and far between. Uh, and I think podcasting is a really key human one of it. And we’re training the robots just to be able to come back and do it better than us, unfortunately. So let’s write it out while we can’t .
Speaker 3 00:11:04 Exactly. Thanks. Exactly. Next week is gonna sound like Hazel and Michelle, but it will be AI .
Speaker 2 00:11:11 Do you see the new Black Mirror episode about that, by the way?
Speaker 3 00:11:13 Not yet, but I’ve heard about it. . Yeah. I’ll have to, I’ll have to tune into that. I tried to watch it yesterday and my Netflix was only in German. I have to figure out how to fix it back to English, so.
Speaker 2 00:11:24 Well, sounds like you’re in Black Mirror
Speaker 3 00:11:27 probably am. Exactly. Like it’s a funny thing, but, but yeah, so I think podcasting is a great way to get involved. So I, I, I have, um, I, I’ll put it in the show notes here. I’ve given a talk on called, so you wanna launch a podcast before? I’m giving it again this weekend at Word Camp Montclair where there’s lots of tips and tricks, um, things to think about before you get started, why you don’t have to invest a ton of money in equipment, things like that. But the one thing that I do say about podcasting, which is the same as I give to somebody about, um, starting a blog, is make sure you can think 12 episodes ahead. Make sure you can think that there’s enough that you wanna talk about. Like you and I may not know what we’re gonna talk about next week, but we know we have lots of options.
Speaker 3 00:12:07 We know the things we wanna talk about. If you wanna get really niched down into your podcast, can you actually sustain it for a year? If you did one episode a month? And, and that’s what it’s about, right? Like you and I, we joke because we haven’t been real consistent cuz I travel, I was sick, like all of these things mm-hmm. we’re like, well it’s been a month unfortunately, but , um, you know, but, but we come back to it and, and it may not be a consistent day of every month, but we come back to it and we keep pushing forward. Um, a lot of people think they’re gonna start, they invest a ton of money, they get three episodes in, then they’re like, I don’t know what to talk about anymore.
Speaker 2 00:12:39 It’s like the treadmill with the hangers on it. .
Speaker 3 00:12:42 Yes, exactly. And, and the same, and the same thing happens to bloggers, right? So like, you think I’m gonna start a blog, I’m gonna monetize my blog and you don’t realize that nobody’s reading your blog yet your three, you know, you had three blog posts in and you’re like, I don’t know what to write about next. Well you’re never gonna monetize something that you don’t know what to write about next. So there’s a lot and I, you really have to plan. I you really just have to plan ahead and make sure that Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:13:03 I, and I think the way that you’ve broken it down, Michelle is really smart. So I recommend everybody look at that and don’t go buy some ridiculous thousands of dollars podcasting course because Yeah, just go start it and you’ll be good. Mm-hmm. .
Speaker 3 00:13:16 Exactly. And then the other thing is you have to market it you, you have to tell people it exists. There’s my favorite, uh, play on the podcast is there was a TV show, it’s, it’s, it closed a few years ago called The Middle. And it’s this middle, you know, middle Midwestern, um, mid everything, uh, you know, middle, middle, uh, middle class, uh, family. And the son is, is he is on, he is on the spectrum and he is obsessed with fonts and he loves fonts. And so he decides he is gonna start a podcast about fonts. Okay? He does what? One episode. He goes to the second episode and he decides, that’s his last episode cuz he said everything he ever wanted say about fonts and he is very sorry to his one listener.
Speaker 2 00:14:03 So I love that. That’s, that is, that is
Speaker 3 00:14:05 Not the, that’s not the perfect example of doing it. Right? Right. So you have to um, actually build the content. Think, think ahead and then absolutely get out there and talk about what you’re doing. Post it on social, write it on your blog, send out a newsletter if you have one. And make sure that people are aware that you’re doing a podcast so that you actually get some listenership and you get some engagement there as well.
Speaker 2 00:14:24 Sounds like you’ve done this a time or two.
Speaker 3 00:14:27 Oh, one or two. . .
Speaker 2 00:14:29 Awesome. Well this is great. Thanks so much Michelle for all your Thank you. How you’ve done podcasting. This is, I think it’s the fun way to look at it from too, like the systems way and the like, hey, like go do it way, like good mesh up it all. So absolutely that.
Speaker 3 00:14:42 Well, thanks for partnering up with me on this one cuz I enjoy it. And, uh, you know, if you, if you’re listening to this, you have ideas, we would love to talk about the things that you think are pertinent too. So if you have ideas about ways to be audacious in marketing or just wanna know more about different venues of marketing and new things that are coming down, we’ll do the research, we’ll talk about it and we’ll share it with you. Absolutely. All right, see you next time. Bye everybody.
Speaker 1 00:15:07 This has been Michelle Frechette and Hazel Quimpo with Audacity Marketing. Dare to Be Different and Dominate Your Market with Audacity.