The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential

Make Your Business Branded Podcast Stand Out in a Crowded Market

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche • Season 2 • Episode 3

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With the podcasting space more competitive than ever, how can you make your show stand out? If you're a small business owner or marketing manager, leveraging a podcast can be a game-changer for brand awareness and customer engagement. But how do you rise above the noise? In this episode, we dive into the key strategies that will help you differentiate yourself and attract the right audience. From defining your niche and crafting a unique value proposition to improving production quality and leveraging AI for efficiency, we cover everything you need to know to elevate your podcast and turn it into a powerful marketing tool.

We also explore the latest trends in AI and podcasting—how tools like ChatGPT are revolutionizing content creation, discoverability, and audience engagement. Whether you're launching a new show or refining an existing one, these insights will help you maximize your podcast's impact and reach.

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. 
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We get asked a lot how you're going to stand out when podcasting is becoming as hot as it is, and a lot of people focus on the numbers on that. But we're not going to do that because you can't control the numbers. What you can control is what you do. That is what we're going to talk about this week. How do you stand out in the podcasting space? Stay tuned. It's oh, thanks for coming along. I am back in the studio. For me, it's always a good time to be in here, whether it's just me or there's other people behind this desk, and I'm over there. And in fact, this week, we're talking about how you're going to stand out in the podcasting space. I have a new haircut. The headphones kind of cover a little bit of it up as I look at the monitor over there. But, that is not how you do it. There's a few other ways that you're going to be able to do this, and one of which is talking about. I mean, everyone always says the riches are in the niches or whatever. I hear that all the time. And frankly, I hate a lot of those sayings, but some of them really are true. So many people are afraid of talking of missing out on people that they try and talk to. Too broad of an audience. You as a podcaster need to talk. Or I mean, especially as a marketer, if you're marketing for your business, need to talk to one specific person that is your dream customer, that is the one person that you want to talk to. When you go broad, no one's no one's going to pay any attention. No one's going to listen to you. To me, the example that I always like to give and it's it's the example that I give in the podcast class that I teach. If you go like, let's say you've got a very crowded room, you're at a dinner party or something like that. You go to the corner of the room and you just start talking. No one, absolutely no one, is going to listen to you. People may kind of peek over out of the corner of their eye and be like, what is wrong with that person? No one's really actually going to listen to you or what you're saying. Now, the other thing that I bet you notice, though, is get engaged in a conversation with one person and make sure that whatever you're saying is specifically for them. The same way I'm talking to you right now, I am talking directly to you when I talk to you. Someone else is probably going to pick up on the conversation. They're going to hear what one of us is going to say. They're going to start to listen. When that person listens, suddenly someone else is going to listen. Suddenly someone else is going to listen. Mind you, this conversation is specifically for that one person, but other people outside of that are going to start to listen in. That is the example that I always like to use when it comes to some of the marketing stuff, because of the fact if you don't pick a person and you just start screaming at the entire room, everyone's going to look at you like you're nuts and no one's really going to listen to you. We want someone to listen. So make sure that you're talking to that specific person. For me, I'm talking to business podcasters. I'm talking to people that are trying to support their brand with a podcast. That is what we do. That is who I'm talking to now. I'm sure there's others of you that are adjacent that are listening to this, and I am so glad that you're here. But once again, you start to see how that that that works. There. When you talk to someone specific, it's a very, very different game. If you look for people that are using branded podcasts to support their business. That field is much, much, much smaller. That's where we fit. That's that's who I'm talking to. Now, once again, other people are going to find this information useful. And that's a huge part of the reason why we do this. We don't need to necessarily talk just to our specific customers. We want to support the community at large in the same sense. We want to make sure that we are getting the best information that we can to the exact people that we can. Does that make sense? I'm hoping so. If it does or if it doesn't, fill something out in the comments. I would love to get your feedback about that. And I mean, are you are you making sure that you're narrowing down what you're doing? The other piece to that is your unique value proposition. What is that? Everyone always asks that to me. It's what makes your podcast different. Now, as a business, what makes your business different? What's the what's the area that you specifically serve? What's the the advantage that you have? What makes I mean, what makes Wendys different than McDonald's? What makes Chick-Fil-A different than Burger King? These are the like base examples that I like to go to when I'm talking about this stuff is what is your unique value proposition? What's unique about what you do? For me, it's not enough to say we talk about marketing or we talk about podcast. It's the unique insights that to me that I have that our perspective of where we sit in the industry and the experience that I have and the rest of my company has, it's those things that make us unique. It's those things that make it so. We have a unique understanding of where we're at and how we can help you specifically. It's that same message that I try and convey here in the podcast. It's what we do that is unique. We're talking about business, podcasting. We're talking about branded business podcasts. It's all about creating material that supports your brand. That is where we sit. And I want you to take a few seconds and think about, okay, what is your unique value proposition? Where do you sit as a podcaster? As a business, as a marketer? What's that unique thing? What's the special sauce? What's the secret ingredient? What are those things that that allow you to do something differently than your competition or anyone else really in the field? When you've defined that, you need to you need to make that your highlight. For us, it's the business branded podcast. That's what we do. That's what we're highlighting now in that the other piece with that is to is part of our unique value proposition, is our core value of success as a shared thing. We we want to educate people. We want to help people. And that is part of our I mean, our unique value proposition. We are here to help. And that is that is a big, big, big piece of that. So when I say that, I'm not saying that necessarily to hammer home what we do, I mean, okay, it is a little bit in there. But overall I want you thinking about that. What is your unique value proposition? What do you bring to the table? What's different than what other people have that you are bringing to the table that you are offering to people? Now there's another piece to this too, that when it comes to differentiating yourself, we've all tuned them in. There are a lot of bad, bad, bad, terrible podcasts out there in business podcasts. I'm not saying you need to invest in a studio like this, that that's not necessarily what you need to do. What I am saying is show that you're willing to put forth the effort into high quality production. Once again, it's not going out and spending tens of thousands of dollars. What it is, is it's showing your audience that you're willing to put in the effort to make sure that you deliver a quality product to them. That's the biggest thing. Your podcast should match the quality of what you're trying to deliver to your clients. We want to make sure that our clients know we're delivering something of high quality. So that's why we have the studio. That's why we do this the way we do. I see so many people that have like a high end coaching firm, and they show up on a zoom meeting using the crappy laptop microphone, the crappy laptop camera, no headphones, and they're doing an interview with someone that's halfway across the country doing the same thing. It sounds terrible. It looks terrible. While sitting in front of a window, the cameras pointed straight up their nose. I mean, it's just like it's this plethora of things that they're doing wrong. So when I say high quality production matters, I'm not saying you need to be in a studio. What I am saying is invest in you can you can get away for 150, 200 bucks and look and sound really, really good. Make that investment most of all, make the investment in yourself. Make sure that you are doing the the lights right. And most of all, make sure you're presenting to your audience. Make sure that you are you're you're showing up for them, and you're offering the educational bits that you want to be offering. It's all about making sure that the pre-production, the production and the post-production are all that quality that you want to convey. Like I said, I've seen a number of companies that I mean really well, I mean, well standing companies that I mean, typically high quality of work is what they put out. And you turn on their podcast and you're like, oh dear, this just isn't good. It reflects on their brand. And it's not something that you want to have. The other piece that I want to say is clear audio is non-negotiable. You need to make sure that you are doing the things that you need to for your audio to come out, representing the quality of your company. Any time I turn on a podcast where it sounds awful, I'm probably turning it off. I just don't want to listen to it. Especially I gotta crank it up and I can't listen to it with the windows down because it sounds that just no, don't put your prospective clients through that. Make sure it's going to sound good. Once again, it does not need to sound like it's done in a radio booth. It does not need to sound like it's done in a studio. It does need to sound like your brand. Engaging storytelling is another huge key of building, of differentiating yourself, of getting yourself out there and getting yourself in front of people. Whether it's audio, video that's got that's got to come through storytelling. It is just the key in that you're going to use compelling narratives. You're going to you're you're going to do that. You're going to use those personal antidotes. You're going to use case studies. You a lot of cases, you can use interviews. We've done those before too. What you're doing with that is through those stories you connect with people. When I tell stories about people that we've had in the podcast duty or people that I've worked with over the years through their podcast productions, it it builds that connection. That type of connection is is a big part of what we talked about last week with the building that know, like and trust. The storytelling is one way to do that, that engaging storytelling, because once again, it's a personal story. It's a personal thing. It allows that connection. Now, one thing that I changed in doing this week was I mentioned the new haircut. It's not that new. It's kind of the same style, a little bit shorter in some spots. But once again, I mentioned a personal detail to get that personal connection and the little bit of the story with it. Right now I'm telling you the story of why I did that. It's it's once again, it's building that personal connection through that storytelling that is something that you really want to make sure that you have built in to whatever you're talking about. Now, in a lot of cases, if you're talking about your brand and you're talking about what you do with your brand, you're going to want to make sure that you build that in. How did you start? How did things continue? What was a hard time? What was an easy time? What's a fun story? Anything like that? Build that into your podcast. If it's a case study, if you do a lot of research, if you deal with numbers, people are like, I'm just not going to sit here and read data. Holy cow. You can tell the story of those numbers through your podcast. That is going to help build that connection with people. That's that engaging storytelling that's going to pull people in for you. Now, in the same sense, to add to that, if you are on video, there's the visual storytelling piece of it too. Now that can include graphics, animations. You can bring in B-roll footage. All of those items are very, very possible in the same sense. Just the fact that you're sitting here now, you guys occasionally see me look down at my notes. I want to make sure I'm talking about everything for you, but I'm engaging with you. You can see that I'm looking directly at you. I am talking with you. I that makes that connection. That's a differentiator. I see in so many cases where people, I guess I would say ignore the camera, or they look just off to the camera or whatever. It's not that direct engagement piece. The other pieces to that, I see so many people, they sit there like this that I mean, I've got my arms down, I've got my hands between my legs, and I'm just like, okay, I'm just going to sit here and not move. First off, it's very difficult for me to talk without being on the move my hands. But second off, you can see how I animated Am You that that visual element is a huge part of communication. That's what's going to allow you to get that emphasis behind the story, the charisma behind the story, that the people will see what you have going on with that. The next piece to this that I want to talk about is all kind of the marketing piece to it. So we've talked about kind of how to do your podcast and how to be on your podcast. Let's talk about some of the back end pieces of that. One of which consistent branding. I talk about consistency in podcasting all the time. If you're going to say you're going to do this every week, by golly, you got to show up every week. If you say, hey, I'm every other week or whatever, you have to make sure that you show up on time every time that that's that's part of that consistency. The other piece is logo name, things of that nature, artwork. When you look right up here today, there's the logo. Also here's the logo also, it's right here on the front of my computer too. I mean, I don't want to say that's all intentional, but look, I've got the logo everywhere, so there's that consistent branding. The logo is the same in all of these spots. It's over there. It's over there. I mean, it is the same with this. One of the things that I talk about all the time with people is it's those touch points. I mentioned the pickup truck, I believe it was last week or the week before where it's like, hey, I you don't see a pickup truck, I don't think, yeah, I'm going to buy a truck today. A pickup truck car doesn't matter. You don't see that ad and think, yep, that's how I'm going to do. What happens is, is you've seen that ad enough times that when you're like, you know what? My truck's broken. I need a new one. Guess what? You're going to do that ad that you've seen time and time and time and time again, you're going to come back to that. And guess what? Those emblems on the front and back of those pickup trucks has not changed in decades, a lot of them a century. So when you when you look at that type of stuff, it's those touch points. That's one of the things that you're building with this. If you don't have consistent branding, you don't build that. That's one of the things that I always, I always worry about with people is when they say, hey, look, we're not we're not putting our logo up here. We want to do something different with this. No, no, no, no. Make sure that every time someone sees you or anything that you're involved with, there's a logo, there's the branding, there is. It's you doing things the same way each time. So it's recognizable. They know it. Another piece to that, that I want to go back to is kind of funny. Is a lot of us have smells that bring back memories and it's it's interesting. There was, a few months ago, someone walked past me and I caught a whiff of them, and it was actually a very pleasant smell, and it brought up a pleasant memory. It made me think it's. The person obviously had the same perfume that my grandmother did. My grandmother has been gone for 35 years, but once again, it made me think of her. That's how branding works that same exact way. So be it. The look, the sound, all those things. That's why I encourage you to typically have one person that's always the same person on the podcast, that builds that recognition, that builds that consistency. Those are the things that you're going to see with that. So many people I have also seen don't do the strategic promotion piece of it. Wow. With that, it's one of those things that by golly, you just have to do it. Podcasts are a great platform. They will help you get out there. They will help you get in front of more people. They also help kind of close some of those loops, like social media. You post it, maybe a couple of people see it and they like it, but then what? Mount on to the next thing. When you've got the podcast that can help close the loop, that can help really bring them into your ecosystem, that can do those things. But you can't just post it and I mean build it and they will come does not work at all. It's just not going to happen. You need to actively promote your podcast, be it on social media, be it through email marketing. Collaborating with other podcasters is a great way to do it. Find people that do something similar. Collaborate with them, talk to them. Get on those podcasts. The other thing that you can do is consider running ads for your podcast to get on to reach a wider audience. There's paid ads that you can run the same way, that you can run other paid ads for a product or service or anything like that. You can do all of that to promote your podcast. One of the cool things about when you promote your podcast is typically, it's not this one and done when you post an ad, whether it let's say you bought a television ad for laughs and giggles, when you buy that TV ad, it goes up, it goes away, and it's gone. When you post, when you, pay for an ad for your podcast, if that person clicks on that ad, they're now part of your ecosystem. You've got a chance to talk to them. Every single week. And if you send them the right emails and if they maybe read your blog, maybe you're talking to them a couple of times a week. That is huge. Absolutely huge. So make sure that you are bringing people into your into your advertising ecosystem. When it comes to the podcasting that's only done by making sure that you are strategically promoting things, word of mouth isn't going to cut it. Make sure that you are putting it out there. Now. I mentioned to that you can collaborate with other podcasters. One of the ways that we've done that in the past is we've had other people on our show fight someone on if they can speak to, a piece that you're working on or something like that. If they're an expert. Great. One of the things that I always say is if, like for marketing, when someone says they have a marketing firm, there's so many pieces to that. There's the social media piece, there's the blog piece, there's the writing piece, there's a website piece, there's a, a promotional piece. There is. I mean, there could be a hard advertisement piece. There could be a journalistic piece. There's all sorts of pieces. So if someone says they are a marketer, great. They're a generalist. There's all sorts of experts that they can call in underneath them with what we were doing in the show before, to me, it was a calling in a lot of other experts to talk to them, to hear what they're doing in their specific area that we can apply as a bit more of a generalist. That made a huge difference in how we're able to help our customers, and it also allowed us to get out to other people and to talk to other people. A lot of them were willing to promote our podcast too, which made a huge difference for us. Make sure when you do that, you are doing thoughtful and engaging questions. I hate it when I mean, we have a podcast host that, she had a book. She was speaking on a ton of podcasts. It was Chrissy Myers speaking on a ton of podcasts. And one of the things that she would get asked all the time when she was on a podcast. So what's your book about? Oh geez, people, I mean, read the book. At least read the back cover for crying out loud. Ask decent questions. Base level questions. Don't do it. Ask that deep question. Ask the insightful question. Ask the question that is going to that is going to allow you to build on that conversation. Additionally, you kind of use your podcast for community building. This kind of goes to that strategic promotion piece, kind of ties in with that, but encourage people to interact with you and each other, set up a community, Facebook communities. I mean, look, it's one of the thing, one of the only reasons why so many people log on to Facebook now is those communities. There's a number of them that I'm a member of that I truly enjoy, and there's good information out there. Another one is I start a discord server. Discord server is your free start one. Some people even charge for membership to the discord, but if you start a discord and say, hey look, I will be in the live chat from this time to this time and we can hang out and talk together. It it really can be a game changer because it allows you to build that connection once again, that goes back to that know, like and trust. That goes back to those connections that we talked about earlier in the episode. You can see the thing that I love about so much of this stuff is it's it's circular. It all builds on itself. It builds on each other and on itself. The podcast, the blog, the email, the I mean, right back to the, the, other, to the website at any of those things to social media promotion. All of those feed each other in this circular fashion. And it's it's what really brings people into your ecosystem. The other thing I'm going to say, too, is I've seen podcasters that do a great job of asking for comments, and then they never respond to them. Oh, does that drive me nuts? Make sure that you respond to comments in a timely manner. Those should. I mean, I always feel like those should get responded to before a text message. Even make sure that you are getting the notifications for that on your phone. Respond to those things as soon as you can. That is someone that wants to hear from you, that is willing to spend the time to speak to you after they've already watched your podcast or listened to your podcast, make sure you engage with those people. Though the last two pieces that we've got here, one is repurposing that content. We talk about this all the time, create blog posts, social media snippets, infographics, break it up into the smaller clips. There are all these ways for you to repurpose that content to. Once again, this is all about grabbing people and bringing them into that. That podcast ecosystem. Bring them in, make them feel as a part of the community they will want to hear from you. Then they will look forward to that email. They will look forward to that blog post. They will look forward to that community chat that you're hosting on discord. They're going to look forward to all of those things. So make sure that you're working on building those items in that content. Repurposing. It's something that we help a lot of people do. I realize it can be time consuming, but it is well, well, well worth it. When I say time consuming, one thing that I want you to realize with that is it doesn't always have to be. What I'm going to tell you is to set up tools, find tools, create tools, find help. But make sure you're setting up that circular flow for your podcast. So that way when it goes out, the email goes out. The blog goes out. People are excited to hear from you. Make sure that you stay front of mind for them or top of mind, whichever way you want to look. Maybe you want to be in the top and the front cover their entire mind. That's what we're going to go with today with all of that. That is my educational bit for this week. I have some exciting news about AI in podcasting and what's coming up and how it's being used. I'll be right back. So this week in the news that we're going to talk about at least is I, have you been hiding under a rock? If you have, you probably haven't heard about AI. If you have seen daylight in the last, I don't know, two years, you have probably heard something about AI. The question is how is it having an effect on podcasting? There was just Acast just released some research showing that AI tools like ChatGPT are rapidly changing podcasting landscape. And that is a quote from Acast to me. I have seen it, and we use a ton of AI tools and helping support you with your podcast. A big piece of that, 68% of podcasters surveyed believe that I can significantly reduce production time. I gotta tell you, that is 100% correct. We have seen what used to take us. I mean, there would be podcasts or is an hour long show. We're cutting clips out of it. We're having to edit the audio because it wasn't all that good. We would have an hour long show that we would spend five six hours on. That is not the case anymore. We are spending vastly less time on that. With that, 52% are already using AI for brainstorming and content creation. If you're not using AI for brainstorming, for the content creation to help guide you in what you're supposed to be talking about, let's talk about this. This is something that I absolutely love helping people with it. Part of our No Pitch podcast presenter edition, if you want to sign up for that and have me just talk to you about some AI tools that you can use. Most are free. Let's spend the time and do that because to me that is well worth both of our time. I always seem to take something away from it. When I learn about people's businesses and what they do, and I always learn a new trick with the AI as I'm working with it, we're happy to show you how to do that and how to get some of that, that that better content with it. 45% believe that I can help them reach new audiences through better discoverability and translation. I don't know 100% if I agree with this one. 45% of people do say they they've seen this. I think I'm in the 55%. There is. It depends on how you're looking at this. I guess if you're looking at it from the clip standpoint, like what we we use a lot of AI tools and helping us with the clips from that standpoint. Sure. It can help. Is it getting the discoverability? The clips definitely are. So I don't know. I kind of on the fence with this one. There's there's some tools that people are talking about using AI. We we've tested a few of them. I haven't seen the results from some of those. So I'm there's ways, but I'm going to be a little bit on the fence with this. One thing efficiency is key is, is something that was highlighted in this article. Podcasters are primarily using AI for tasks that increased efficiency and reduce manual work. No kidding. That is what everyone is using AI for. If you aren't using AI for that, it is time to start looking into it. It's really doing some amazing things for a lot of people. The big thing that I was curious about, we are all curious about tomorrow, especially with AI. It is changing so incredibly quick that it's I don't want to say it's tough to keep up, but yeah, it's kind of tough to keep up. But it's it's tough making sure on where we're going with it. That being said, that AI, the the entire study basically said AI's role in podcasting will only increase with potential for personalized listening experiences and advanced analytics. To me, those are really key points. And it may sound, I guess I would say innocuous show like advanced analytics. Well, that's that's those are buzzwords that people throw around all the time. And I get that. The difference that I see with that is if we are able to pinpoint things better, you know, how you receipt, like if I talk about something a couple of hours later, it's appearing on my cell phone in an ad. If we're able to do that with podcasting, that is really, really a game changer. There's there's two pieces with this, and it's somewhat nefarious and somewhat not is, I guess, what I would say with that, the the good piece to that is we will connect with the exact people that want to hear from you. Are we going to connect with a thousand people that you may want to know? We're going to connect with the exact group of people that so desperately want to hear from you. And to me, that is a great thing. We've always talked. We want to engage with a hundred people that are raving fans instead of 10,000 people that are me. I don't really care that it that to me is is a is a key. And what we're seeing, it's something that we are keeping an eye on. It's something that we're watching and we've got our ear to the ground just to just to hope to see what we hear coming down the pipe. With that being said, I'm hoping that you want to hear more. Do me a favor. Give us a follow. If you're willing, leave us a review. If you have a question, by all means put that in the comments below. We would love to hear from you. Make sure you're subscribed if you're on YouTube. With all that being said, yes, I changed cameras for this. Do me a favor. Take care of yourself if you can take care of someone else too, I will see you very, very soon. If you owe me. Oh. Hey, everybody!

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Josh Troche

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