The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential
Are you looking to leverage the power of podcasting to elevate your brand and connect with your audience? Welcome to The Power of the Podcast, brought to you by Pedal Stomper Productions where we understand the unique potential of branded podcasts.
We delve into the essentials of creating effective branded podcasts that help you connect with people by going beyond the hard sell. You don't want to be one of those podcasts that sound like one giant sales pitch or offer bad information. Instead, we focus on helping you to deliver the right message and achieve your marketing goals without sounding like, well...marketing.
Here’s what you can expect to learn:
- Building a Strong Foundation: We cover the basics of branded podcasting, including defining your brand's educational niche and developing consistent content pillars that will keep your audience coming back for more. We emphasize the importance of defining where you excel in educating your audience.
- Strategic Planning: Discover how to build out a strategy to make your branded podcast successful. We guide you through conducting a brand audit by looking at your podcast purpose, brand values, mission, and target audience.
- Audience Connection: Learn how to identify your ideal listener, who often aligns with your ideal customer, and understand their pain points and informational needs. We believe in addressing those needs and providing value to ensure your podcast resonates.
- Content that Converts: We explore how to develop content that aligns with your marketing goals and maps to your sales funnel. We discuss strategic calls to action that are more of a soft sell, like offering free resources or inviting listeners to your online community.
- Standing Out in a Crowded Space: We provide insights on how to differentiate your podcast by focusing on your unique value proposition and ensuring high-quality production. Learn the importance of engaging storytelling to connect with your audience.
- Building Know, Like, and Trust: Understand how podcasting is particularly effective at developing that crucial "know, like, and trust" factor with your audience. By offering consistent value and educating your listeners, you can build deeper connections than other ad formats.
- Leveraging Podcast News and Trends: Stay informed with our take on podcast news, particularly how advertising works with smaller podcasts and the effectiveness of branded podcasts as a marketing tool. We discuss how smaller, targeted podcasts often have a more engaged audience.
- Measuring Your Success: We touch upon the importance of understanding your podcast analytics and determining the return on investment for your branded podcast. Learn how to look at listener retention and website click-throughs.
- Community Building: Discover how to use your podcast to build a community around your brand, encouraging interaction and fostering a sense of belonging among your listeners.
Whether you're just starting your podcast journey or looking to refine your existing branded podcast strategy, we offer valuable insights and practical advice drawn from our experience in podcast production. We believe that a well-executed branded podcast is a powerful marketing asset that can help you reach a targeted audience, build brand awareness, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Tune in to learn how to make your branded podcast a successful and effective marketing tool for your business!
If you want to connect with us, sign up for our No-Pitch Podcast Consultation
The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential
Podcasting for Business: Why 2025 is the Perfect Time to Start
Ever thought about starting a podcast but felt overwhelmed by the process? Or maybe you’re wondering if you’ve missed the boat on podcasting? The good news—2025 is still a fantastic time to start, and in this episode, we’re breaking down why podcasting is more relevant than ever for businesses looking to create powerful marketing content.
We’ll cover:
- Why it’s not too late to start a podcast in 2025
- How to make sure you're truly connecting with your audience
- The must-have equipment (without breaking the bank)
- Simple ways to record and edit like a pro
- The magic formula for getting listeners and growing your audience
- Why monetization isn’t the best strategy for business-focused podcasts
Podcasting doesn’t have to be complicated, and it’s one of the BEST ways to connect with your audience, build authority, and create content that works for you 24/7. With more people consuming podcasts than ever before, businesses that start now can establish themselves as industry leaders and create evergreen marketing content that keeps working long after an episode airs.
If you've been on the fence about launching your podcast, this episode will give you the motivation and actionable steps you need to make it happen. We’ll bust common podcasting myths, give you simple strategies for getting started, and show you how to create content that engages your ideal audience. Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or marketing manager, podcasting is a game-changer for building credibility and reaching new customers.
If you're looking to talk podcasting and get more information on how to make your podcast shine, our 30-minute "no pitch" podcast consultation is right for you! Click the link to sign up for a time.
https://pedalstomperproductions.as.me/no-pitch
Staying up to date on the latest podcasting news and trends doesn't have to be difficult. We can deliver them right to your inbox.
https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/
Want to start your own podcast? https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/contact-bedford
Book your time in our state of the art studios: https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/podcast
Join our Discord Server and let's chat about your podcast https://discord.gg/CWk9aUuNtM
Want to read about this? Check the blog!
https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/blog
I'm getting asked all the time if 2025 is too late to start a podcast. What? Unequivocally, I'm going to say no to that. But why? The other things that we're going to cover, we got a new format and what should you be doing to grow your podcast? All that. First, you got to stay tuned. So I want to thank you for being here. I am Josh with Pedal Sniper Productions. I really appreciate the fact that you are here. Do me a favor. I'd appreciate it even more if you would make sure that you subscribe if you're on YouTube or follow if you're on one of the podcasting platforms. It really, really helps us out. Additionally, the only thing that I will ever ask of you is for your comments and feedback. I want to know what it is that I can do to help you in your podcasting journey. So by all means, if it's a review on Spotify or any one of those platforms or a comment, there, or YouTube, whatever, give us that feedback. I would love to hear it. I would love to help you out with that. With that, we are changing to a new format that I'm actually really excited about. So there's going to be two main pieces, and the second piece is one that's going to be somewhat interchangeable. The first piece is, is it? We're going back to the education. We had some pod creep in there where I was bringing in guests after guest after guest, and some of the guests were getting off of the topic, especially off of the topic of podcasting. We got a little too far into some of the marketing side of it, which is good. It's great knowledge to have and it's all applicable. I sometimes have a tough time saying that one, it's all applicable to podcasting, but in the same sense, we realized we really need to just stick to this, this more solid information that's more rooted, I guess I would say, in podcasting. So that is a huge thing, a huge part of the shift. So that's why we're going back to this educational piece. I've got a list of things that we are going to talk about in here that I am really excited to talk about. Now, like I said, we are totally ditching guests. We are going to have guests in on occasion. That will be in the second half of the podcast. So we may do some guests. The other thing that we're going to do is we are going to cover some industry news, because there's a there's a lot of big industry news out there that like who bought what or whatever, that doesn't really matter. But there is some industry news that a lot of people are missing, like when Spotify started to offer video, like, do you know that Spotify, you can put clips in there now the same way that you can with YouTube shorts or the same way that you can with Instagram Reels. You can put those swipe up or clips in Spotify. Spotify is 100% coming after YouTube. They're like, look, YouTube's like the largest, the second largest search engine out there. YouTube is currently the largest streaming platform out there, bigger than Netflix. Keep that in mind. YouTube is much bigger than Netflix. So Spotify is like, hey, we want a chunk of that pie. Those types of news pieces are going to be the thing that we're going to cover. So to me, I'm really excited because it's news, but it's still that educational piece. Some weeks we will have guests in. I've got a few of them lined up that I'm pretty excited to talk about, that do some of the stuff in this area that it's going to be a really interesting mix. That being said, let it. Let's dive in to the first half of this and we are going to talk about the education piece. So for educational piece this week we're going to we're going to answer that 2025. Is it too late to start my podcast or can I grow my podcast in 2025. So I want to talk about a couple of pieces in that that will both kind of give you reasons as to why. Yeah, now's a good time to do it, but more the what you need to do in order to make sure that your podcast is successful in 2025. And a lot of these things are some of the the reset that we've taken in doing this, on demand media is the king. I had this conversation in the podcast in class that I teach the other week. A lot of us remember growing up with four channels. That was it. You only had four options, and whatever was on was on. There was no choices in the matter. Everyone has choices. We'll talk about attention span and one of the one of the later episodes here. But everyone has choices on what they're going to watch or, and or listen to and when can you imagine? I mean, if you caught up on the nightly news in your car, because that's what most people do now. So on demand, on demand content truly is king. It's all about meeting people where they are now. That being said, one of the keys to capitalizing on that is making sure that you have a targeted reach. You need to connect with your specific audience. I talk about this all the time, and this is one of the things that we even craft away from is we have a specific a group of people that we talk to. It's it's one person. I always tell people, talk to one person if you stand, if you go out into a room at a dinner party and you just start talking, no one's going to listen to you. A few people may even look at you like you're the crazy person standing in the corner talking. What I always tell people, if you talk to one specific person, if you have a conversation with one specific person, as long as that's an interesting conversation, you're going to notice other people who aren't your target audience. Because remember, it's that one person is your target audience. Other people are going to start to listen to you. They won't if it's not interesting. So once again, make it that targeted audience, make it that really niche down. Get to where you're you're 100% groove is. But do that to make sure that you're connecting with your specific audience. That is one of the biggest keys, and it makes it so. It takes the algorithms a while to figure out what and who your audience is, but once they figure that out, they will start showing it to those people. The trap in this is everyone's like, I want to talk to so many people. I want to talk to everyone. The problem is, when you do that, these algorithms, they can't figure out who your target audience is. Who should I be? They're like, who should I be showing this to? I'm not showing this to everyone. I there's so much great content out there for individuals. Why am I going to show this to a broad audience? So that's why you really need to hone in and talk to the specific people that you want to talk to now, in that you are going to start to build that trust. You are going to start to gain that credibility with that audience. Then as you start to do that, that is where that builds is when you have that niche. Once again, if you start talking general, you're not going to get any attention because there's so much content that is specific to you. The example that I would like to get to give on this is that if let's say you like baking, are you going to watch just a general cooking show when there's 15 shows out there that are specifically about baking? Let's say you you love to grill. Are you going to watch a show that deals with baking? Probably not. Are you going to watch a show that deals with everything? Probably not, because there's so many shows out there that deal specifically with grilling, and they're going to talk about those things. So that is why I'm saying we really need to build in that targeted reach there. And once again, you're talking about the areas that you are an expert in. And that's what I'm working for us to do to. There's an area that I fit in very well, and I need to make sure that I am talking to all of you about that. I want to talk to you specifically, because if I try and talk to everyone, I'm going to end up talking to no one. The other thing that is interesting with podcasting right now is it has changed. I mean, it podcasting, the original kind of the origin of the name of podcasting, comes back from the original old Apple iPod. I mean, that's that's where it comes from. Now with that, it didn't really have video on it. In fact, in a lot of cases, it just had a monochromatic screen and it would store a number of number of songs for you. It, it stems from that. It has grown into a multi-platform type of setup. So with this we can now do the audio. We can now do the video. We can now do the short form video. All of these things that are there things that come out of a podcast. Now, how you do those is is a discussion that I maybe we need to have or something that you at least need to consider. Are you building your podcast because you want to be a top podcaster, or are you building your podcast because you're creating marketing material for your business, the marketing material for the business that is the that that is our niche, that is the who we help. That is who we work with for us. We work with people to make sure that the content that they are creating is geared towards creating those short, scrollable clips. We want to help people build that social media platform. We want to help them build that content so they can be in front of people every day. Now. Additionally, with that, the structure that we help people build is also to help them build like SEO. Well, how do we do that is through letting them build a blog post, because the transcripts that we can take from this are things that we can build into blogs with that we have to make sure, though, that once again, we're talking to the specific people that we want to be talking to. Stay in that lane, stay in that niche. That is what especially now in 2025, will give you that leverage to keep moving forward. I want to address monetization, so many people that they they start a podcast with the goal of modernization and to start that in 2025, I'm going to let you know. It's a tough row to hoe. I don't want to discourage people from doing it. I do want to give people realistic expectations on what it takes to monetize. When you look at it, the modernization of podcasts, I guess I would say would be very similar to how the music industry is. There are tens of thousands of people that are creating content, creating music, creating podcasts. So the top two, three, 4 or 5, 10% are the ones that are getting all the rewards. Anything below that is creating some great content and creating some versatile content. But those aren't the ones that are taking the big giant checks to the bank. So realize if monetization is your goal, you need to be looking at that from a different angle or a different lens. To me, we encourage people to do the podcasting because they love it. You should love it. This is a ton of work, but be it really is, is to create that content to support those other items. If you are creating that content to support other items, and the podcast will grow on its own and we will help you, we will support you in growing that. But it really it does help you in the creation of those other items and works on those other items to help you move those things forward. The monetization piece is one that you want to make sure that you go at with appropriate expectations. The thing that I will, point out with a lot in the monetization piece, when you see a lot of these top performing podcasts, many of them come from people that already had a certain amount of fame. There's already some built in audience there. That's a piece that you want to make sure that you're looking at with it. The thing that I love, especially with podcasting, is the community that you can build with this. So many times people aren't looking at it as building a community. We're all, I want to talk specifically about podcasting for business marketers because that's the community I want to build. We got away from that. So we're going to come back to that. There's people that will use the podcast to help them give them discord channel chats. There's people that are doing that for their email content, for their blog content. All of that is to build that community is to build that brand awareness once again, it's to keep those things around. And now the reason why I say some of those things is because of the fact I want to make sure that you realize that the podcast can kind of be one of those spokes in the wheel. In fact, I think it's more like a hub because the podcast helps you build all those other pieces. That is why I love to encourage people to start a podcast in 2025 and say, look, it is not too late. Is it too late for you to be Joe Rogan? Possibly, but it is definitely not too late for you to start a podcast and to reap a ton of benefits from it. That is what I want you to encourage you to do. With that, I want to make sure that you take the time and get signed up for our newsletter. We're going to have the link in the show notes below, or the description, depending on where you're watching in or listening to this. Get signed up for our newsletter. I want to make sure that we can get this type of information out to you. In the podcast with this is huge. We are going to talk here in the next few weeks about how valuable that email can be for both me as a podcaster, you as a podcaster, but also your listeners, your community and building that community. To me, I'm going to sum all this up real quickly. It's never too late to start a podcast. When you look at the number of people that are getting into podcasting. Last number I saw, if I remember correctly, it jumped from, it was right around 51% to 64% of people say that they regularly, regularly. Did I say that right? 64% of people regularly listening to podcast in the US. That's a huge jump. I only expect that to get to those numbers to grow. We've got a younger population that's coming of age. We've got a population that's kind of aging out, but even some of the aging out population is picking up their phone and saying, hey, I want to hear something entertaining, or I want to learn something, or this is where I want to get my news. When it comes to this content, something else that I want to talk about as the last piece of this, the media shift, I will revisit this last year during the election. No matter what you thought of it. I don't want to get political no matter what you thought of it. Joe Rogan had more of an audience than CNN and MSNBC combined at any one given point in time, consider that how big that audience is, how many people are paying attention to podcasts. And then ask yourself the question, is it too late? I think you're going to come up with the same answer I did. It's definitely not too late. I am going to be right back with some news for you. Oh, so here's our news section. I've got a couple of quick things for you, and these are going to be interesting. We're going to talk a little bit about TikTok. We're also going to talk about how downloads and reach grew, especially for big publishers in October of last year. They're talking about that third and fourth quarter of last year. Let's start with TikTok. Where's it at? Well, I heard this week that the app is back up, but is it or will it stay up or is it coming back down? Who knows. This is something that it's a topic that I always tell people. This is why I love podcasting. Because once again, you're not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Like, there's so many TikTok creators out there that when TikTok closed down, they're like, what am I doing? But with this, Edison Research is a big podcasting research platform. They they feel like a lot of younger creators are experiencing a small dip in listenership because of TikTok going away for that. That period of time, younger listeners often are discovering podcasts through TikTok. This is why we say those small clips are pretty essential. Once again, it's yeah, it's the younger demographic is the risk is the risk here? If you're targeting 4050 year olds, you're probably not going to see as much of a change in this. You're not going to see a decline in the number of new, new followers or anything like that. But it is something to be aware of. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure that you are diversifying with that and that you are not relying just on one singular platform. Now also, we're going to look back here to October. Downloads and reach grew for big publishers in October. So we're talking about some of the bigger publishers like the Vox Media or other ones like that. With this they saw Download and Reach Growth in October. Earlier in this episode, we talked about is it too late to start a podcast in 2025? To me, that is unequivocally saying, yep, go ahead and get this started. In terms of rankings for that, iHeart radio is still number one in Pod track ranking. Pod track is a ranking service, that ranks downloads and things of that nature. Now, if you're looking at the number one platform for listening to podcast currently, I know a lot of you are going to say Spotify. Spotify does phenomenal with it. They just got past YouTube, just past Spotify in terms of, pod podcast downloads and that. Keep that in mind. Do not sleep on YouTube. The big thing that they are noticing, growth has been driven by new content and existing show strength. Now, when they say existing show strength, they're saying that these shows are continuously putting out really good episodes. The new content that's coming out is really good content. That is what they are looking at with this. So keep this in mind. There is still a ton of growth in this additional key. Make sure that you are putting out good quality stuff and by. When I say good quality stuff, I don't mean it needs to be filmed in the studio here. What I do mean is you need to put out good quality information and make sure that it fits your audience. Did you notice how this came full circle? Me too. With all that being said, I'd love to hear your opinion, your take on how this week went. I'm already looking at some things I need to polish up a little bit, but I feel pretty good about this. I would love to get your feedback, put it in the comments, put it in the, feedback. Whatever you can do. Would love to hear about it. As always, make sure you take care of yourself and if you can take care of someone else, I will see you very soon. Be oh oh. Everybody get.
