(This is part 4 in a 6-part series on podcasts – if you’ve ever considered starting your own podcast, or know someone who has, let’s explore together!)
Your brand is a reflection of who you are, what you believe, and how you use your goods and services to help people. Your podcast should serve as an extension of your brand in a way that utilizes longform content to further your mission, vision, and values. By connecting your brand to your podcast,, it will allow you to serve current and potential customers in a deep and meaningful way without coming across as pushy or salesy.
Where do I start?
The first thing to do is to think about who you are and how you help your customers. These deeper-seeded feelings and emotions of why you do what you do should inform topics in your podcast. When you understand your brand, your customers, and your competition, you’ll be able to develop a podcast that connects to your brand.
Find a platform
Figure out what your company’s unique positioning is in the eyes of your consumer. I’m sure you have competitors, but there’s something that your company does in a slightly different way than competitors in your category. Utilize this platform as the basis of building your podcast.
Connect with other podcast brands
Connecting with other podcast brands will create a cross-pollination of audience. You will be able to share your audience with other brands and, hopefully, they will share some of theirs with you in a way that will help both brands. Through connection and collaboration both brands build credibility in the marketplace and a podcast episode becomes more rich in content. Make sure to connect with brands that are complimentary to your business and not direct competitors to your business. You wouldn’t want to inadvertently lose customers (or steal their customers) by partnering together on a podcast. The best way to think about collaboration with other brands is by thinking through who else out there can help solve your customers problems that you cannot directly solve.
What should I talk about?
Planning your podcast episodes can center around three basic topics or ideas. Try to think through these concepts to determine topics and ideas that will engage your target audience.
Think out what problem you are solving for people
People will listen if you can generate answers to problems that they have in their lives or businesses. If you can identify what problems it is that your business solves, you will grow your podcast audience. Utilize your area of expertise to demonstrate to listeners how your solutions benefit them. This will grow your podcasts authority and will also grow your business as people feel confident in your solutions.
Find who you are solving the problem for
Who are your primary customers? Does your product serve men, women, business people, blue collar workers? Make sure you understand the demographics of your customer base. It’s most likely that the groups that you serve now are the types of people that you will serve in the future. Tailor the messaging in your podcasts to these groups in order to grow your influence and potential customer base.
Have conversations with your people
Utilize guests in your podcast. Have conversations with some of your current customers, staff, and network in order to grow the knowledge base of your podcast. Guest Podcasts are a great way to have a variety of perspectives. Podcast guests also break up the monotony of a self-hosted podcast and give listeners something to look forward to.
What are some examples of podcasts connected to brands?
As you are thinking through how to best connect your brand with your podcast, here are a couple of podcasts to check out. All of the below podcasts do a great job of creating unique content that their target audience would like to hear. They do so without being too salesy. Here’s a top 10 List of Branded Podcasts from Castos.
- 1. #LIPSTORIES by Sephora
- 2. Slack Variety Pack by Slack
- 3. Why We Eat What We Eat by Blue Apron
- 4. Shopify Masters by Shopify
- 5. Open Account by Umpqua Bank
- 6. The Sauce by McDonald’s
- 7. Open for Business by eBay
- 8. The Distance by Basecamp
- 9. Innovation by Johnson & Johnson
- 10. .future by Microsoft
Chris LaFay