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

Marketing vs Sales: Fix Your Brand Awareness Strategy With Better Podcast Content

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche

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Many small businesses fall into the same trap: confusing marketing with sales. 

In this episode of The Power of Podcast, we break down the critical difference between marketing vs. sales, and why understanding this distinction is essential for small business podcast creators and marketers alike.

You’ll learn why podcasting for business is not your closer but instead a powerful tool within your sales funnel. We explore how podcast marketing fits into your content marketing strategy by focusing on lead nurturing, building brand awareness, and driving audience engagement through consistent, valuable content.

We discuss how a podcast can scale marketing education, answer common client objections, and accelerate relationship building by positioning you as a thought leadership authority in your industry. You'll also discover how this medium supports every stage of the customer journey and enhances the marketing content lifecycle with evergreen, discoverable material.

If you’re serious about creating impactful marketing content that aligns with your content lifecycle and moves prospects through the funnel with intention, this episode is a must-listen.


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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You know, I love talking about podcasting. And, you know, I love talking about marketing. And, you know, I like talking about marketing as a podcasting tool. But let's talk about the elephant in the room that so many business owners and so many marketers are doing wrong. Marketing is not sales. What do I mean by that? And how does that relate to podcasting? That is what we're going to talk about this week. Stay tuned. Welcome back. But look, I gotta say this kind of differently right now because this is not, I guess I would say welcome back. If you're just listening, you have no idea. But if you are watching, you will see, like, I am in a totally foreign place. I am actually in the studios at Corporate College East, up here at Cuyahoga Community College. I usually say tri-c. Most people call it Tri-C, but I am in the corporate college studios today. We had a number of recordings we produced for the studio up here. I actually this is where I teach my podcasting class. So I thought, look, we've got a lot going on this week. Let's record while we're up here. So we may record in some of the other spots that we're going to be using. We're going to see how the next few weeks go with that. But I thought, why not? Let's show off this studio. It's kind of a cool studio in here. There's a couch over there. Nice big fluffy chair here. It's a little bit different than the ones in the studio, so I thought, let's do this. Let's get into it. And I really let's let's start off like the elephant in the room marketing type of funnel. Too many people treat it like it's the closer. I just had a conversation with someone the other day where we were talking about this and I said, look, you can't just do marketing and expect the cash register to ring. That is not how this works, especially especially when it comes to stuff that's business to business. It just doesn't. It. It just does not work that way. So let's let's do the dive into what what is marketing? What the heck are we doing this. I mean, if it's not going to make the cash register ring, why do it? Marketing's primary role. It's to attract attention. It's to build awareness, and it's to generate that interest. Now we got to realize there's different stages along your sales funnel here. There is that bottom very bottom of the funnel. And I mean, it's called the funnel because you start with a wide swath of people. You start with a large number of people, and slowly that number of people gets narrower and narrower and narrower until you find a customer. Hopefully there's a lot of customers in that funnel. But really it is about getting that attention, because when you get attention from people, not all, not all the people you're going to get attention from. Are your customers. Hard fact. We are like in marketing. We are going to do our best to find the highest probability candidates. I mean, we don't want to waste time. We don't want to waste resources. We don't want to waste effort finding people that aren't going to be viable clients or customers for you. That's that's just not the right way to do it. We are going to find the highest probability people. But once again, we're talking probabilities. We're talking a eight. There's a number a set number of a larger number that are possible clients for you. And those are the ones that that really marketing is going to try and drill down for you. It is it is very much about opening the door and finding those people that are interested in what you do or what you have or what what's there to offer. It's letting them know that you're there, that you exist, and that you're available. Huge pieces to that. I mean, let's face it, we have to kind of let a wider swath know. Otherwise, the small people that truly are interested are never going to hear about it. So I guess what I would say about it is, is that there was an analogy that someone told me a while ago, when it comes to marketing, is you want to think of it as that inviting storefront. It's not it's not the cash register, but it is that inviting storefront. You have to get people in that store before they're going to make the cash register ring. If you don't have an inviting storefront, I mean, we've all looked at places online where you show up and you're like, ooh, this, this is where I'm supposed to buy this from. We've all seen that. That's not going to attract that foot traffic. It's not just going to draw people in. So make sure that you've got that inviting storefront, meaning make sure you've got good marketing that's reaching out and and finding those right prospects. The the fundamental differences. And let's, let's take a, take a half step back to cover that business to consumer is marketing. It can lead to that sale. Maybe it's higher likelihood of it even leading to that sale. But those are typically smaller ticket items. Those are typically items that are can even be an impulse buy. Anyone that's ever been in the target and has come out with a I mean, you walk in with a basket and you come out with a full cart. Those are those impulse buys. That's where like I mean, it's why the Twix candy bar always gets me every time at the cash register. It's there. It's marketed well, and that can directly lead to it. Business to business. Let's face it, the sales cycles are usually longer. There's there's usually more involved. It's often a larger investment of time, money and resources. There's usually more than just, hey, I'm pulling my credit card out and slapping it on the counter involved with that. So there's there's a human touch to that, that that's often missing. So should we not do the marketing? No. We desperately need to make sure that we do the marketing, because if they never hear about us, there's no chance to have with that. Anyways. So I told you that I was going to talk about podcasting and it like, where does this fit? Because I've, I've done a bunch of trashing on marketing. You think, well, why am I going to do this? Why am I going to do a podcast? There's there's absolutely no reason to do this. You're probably half, half in tears right now thinking that everything I've done is for not. That is definitely not the case. There's a there's quite a few pieces where especially podcasting fits into marketing. The first one to me is that say that scalable education and awareness. How many times do you get the same question about one of your products over and over and over again? There's those questions out there that you know, you're just going to pick up the phone and like the person's four words into their first sentence and you're like, oh, do the thing. And you, you can answer those questions so much more thoroughly with a podcast and have an episode about whatever that big question is. Those foundational questions that you're answering hundreds of times. Save yourself that time and be like, hey, look, the simple answer is this. If you want the detailed answer, go here to our podcast. There's a video there for you. There's all this information for you. Those are the things to me that could be huge time savers because that, let's face it, we've all been in situation where it's now the 700th time you've gotten this question and you're irritated by the question. Now, that's the first time that specific customer has asked that question. So your irritation is going to come across if you can say, hey, look, there's a simple answer with this. I mean, here's what this is, but if you want the deeper answer, go listen to the podcast. There's plenty of information there. We've got a great, like, in-depth thing. So now you've given someone a half an hour of information and you've spent 30 to 45 seconds with them. To me, that's a once again, it's a big time saver. And let's talk about this too. It's a really efficient way to build that widespread awareness. You've got a question you're getting asked all the time. Why not solve that customer's problem? And in solving that customer's problem, turn it into marketing material at the same time that is going to raise awareness for your business. Let's kill two birds with one stone. To me, that is a huge, huge piece. I mean, that right there is enough to make me say, let's do a podcast. If you want to do a podcast, we know some people. Do me a favor, put it in the comments below or by all means. This is one of those times where I will encourage you to slide into the DMs, and we will be happy to answer your questions. With that. Additionally, why are we doing a podcast for marketing? You're going to build some pre-qualified leads. If you put out valuable content, you're first off, you're educating people. You're giving them the information that they need. You're answering their questions upfront. So now they're going to show up better educated. They're going to have more of the information. You're probably going to need to spend less time with them because they've already gotten this information. Additionally, if they're interested enough to listen to your podcast and be interested in what you're talking about and then call you, well, they're pretty heavily invested. They've got a ton of time in this. That typically means that this is someone that is just I don't want to say, ready to slap their wallet down, but they are much, much closer in that process there, further down that funnel than just that top line. Hey, I saw your ad on television. If they're invested in your podcast, that can make a huge difference when it comes to that. The next step in this, and we did a whole episode about building know, like and trust this. We're going to start calling podcasting the know like and trust accelerator. They're going to hear your voice you guys I mean you know my voice. It's it's echoing through your car in your earbuds or annoying you on your run right now. They're going to they're going to hear your voice. They're also going to understand your perspective. They're going to start to absorb some of your expertise. And the other thing is, is once again, it's consistent exposure. We talk about all the time in any form of marketing. People need to see you like now it's they're estimating anywhere. But it used to be between 7 and 8. Now they're estimating between 15 to 20 times before someone even acknowledges that you exist. That's a daunting, daunting, daunting number. How do I get in front of someone 15 times? Do I have to buy the same ad 15 times before I'm there? I mean, to me that when we talk about that from a marketing perspective, I mean, I very much it takes me back to being the the seventh grade boy at the junior high dance. What do I have to do to get noticed while do I have to walk past her 15 times before she's going to ask me to dance? Probably 30 or 40, actually. And at that point she's just going to start pointing and laughing. But back to the the marketing piece of it, really. If it takes that many times to get noticed by someone. Make sure that you're doing everything that you can to get in front of people as many times as you can. The more often you get in front of people, the better your odds are of moving to them. Moving them to that next stage of the funnel and the next stage of the funnel, and the next stage of the funnel. The like I said, the more contact points we get, the further down we're going to get there. Another thing I want to look at here is you can sometimes address some objections before they arise. Proactively, I mean, tackle common objections and misunderstandings. Whether you've got a product, service, whatever, it could be industry wide. You can address those. And it's one of the reasons why. I mean, I talk about our 30 minute no pitch podcast consultations. The link is below. If you if you want to sign up for one, if you want to talk about your podcast, we we record or we we transcribe a lot of those and we look at most of those in terms of the information that we're going to get out of those for that. That's what are people asking. We're going to have an episode coming up here very soon. From all the data that we've gotten from those where it's, look, here's the items we're talking about, here's the items that we're working with consistently with people. Let's help you take care of those. Let's get those. Just let's get those taken care of up. Well, in so many cases, those are objections that people have like, hey, this is why I'm not doing this. Well, if we can take care of that in a podcast form when they first started listening, does that make the rest of the transaction easier? You betcha. It's that preemptive education. It's going to make it so your sales team. And if maybe you're you are your sales team, you're going to spend less time on that basic education that basic information, like here's how our thing works and go from there. The other thing, and this is one, you're going to demonstrate some authority via thought leadership. And to me that's a big one. You're you're an expert I tell people this all the time. If you're doing something 40, 50, 60 hours a week, you're you're an expert at it. That's just that's kind of the definition. Hear it, talk about it. People want to hear what you have to say about that. And as they hear that, they will. And they see the stuff that, oh my God, what what that person said is right as they see that that once again, it build your authority. It establishes you as that thought expert. Huge huge huge. I mean, for once again that goes back to know, like and trust but building that authority. So that way when it comes time to to really say look, who do I want to buy from? It ends up being you. The other thing I like about this, and this is this is as someone else presented this to me and they said, you are creating warm introductions, not cold calls. Let's say it's someone that's watched your podcast before. To me, that's always awesome. I mean, when and I still have to give a shout out to to Bill on late to grad because, the way he handles that is the best. When someone says, hey, I listen to your podcast, he's like, oh my God, you're the guy I love. When he does that, it's amazing. But to me, and Bill loves it when I give him a shout out in the podcast, too. So thank you for listening. Bill is you get warm introductions to your podcast because once again, it's always awkward to be initially introduced to someone. But if someone if someone in that party feels like they know someone else, there's there's that initial connection that's already been made. People of people have listened to you for a long time. If you're doing the podcast, they've heard from you. They like they they've agreed with you in many cases. And that's why they've they've stayed listening to you. It's these types of things that create that deeper connection, which means you can quicker get past that cold calling that that cold, difficult part of the relationship. In any sales relationship, there's that cold stage and that's tough. This gets you into that warm area sooner. Two more big points that I want to cover with this. You also from your podcast and this this is the marketing piece that I really like. There's a lot of marketing that goes out there that is the quick hit and then it's done. It's gone. And think of a lot of traditional ads that you've seen. Most ads have not lasted terribly long. I mean, I talk, okay, granted, if you're old enough, you remember where's the beef? Brilliant ad campaign. And they ran that for quite some time. But beyond that, there's not many ads that last very long. And look at the ones that pop up on your TV now. They change all of the time with a podcast, you're getting evergreen content. That content is going to be out there, and eventually someone else is going to look that up and they are going to refer to that episode that's two months old, that's two years old. That's two decades old, because we're coming up on some podcast being that old, they live on, they can be shared, they can months, years, whatever. They can be discovered later on. It's it's continually serving as your, your sales support material. Whereas if you run like a normal video ad, it's one and done. It's out there. They saw it. It's out. The podcast is going to be out there for people to find, I guess, and for years to come if they want to. The last piece with this is you're going to nurture those long term relationships. If you do a podcast long term and you invest that kind of time in it and look, people are going to invest their time in listening to it. You're both now invested in that relationship. Then from the listener side, you from the production side, it it's great. It it gives you it gives you that long term relationship there because you've already established it. Now granted, it's not a direct relationship, but there's the correlation there. There's that contact there. People feel better with that once again, that that long term relationship helps you get past that cold stage of, sales and into those warmer areas. So how do we how do we how do we work with this? How do we create these episodes that are going to do these things for us? The first one I want to talk about is we want to do some intentional content. Every episode has to serve a purpose. The purpose for our episode this week is to talk about, like, look, where does your podcast sit in your sales funnel? That's what I want you thinking about. That's what I want you looking at. So make sure that like your episodes as you're structuring them. What purpose does that serve? How how does this I mean, where is it at in the funnel and how does it help people get to the next stage? Because the last thing we want to do is have random conversations. This is a podcast that is I mean, your podcast is geared towards helping you market things. Make sure that you're just not random conversations all over the place. Conversation. In a word, I'm willing to bet someone needs to look that up and let us know. But nonetheless, you need to make sure that there is a point and you are driving people towards that. And that point should serve the purpose of educating them and bringing them down to that next stage in that sales funnel. The other piece to that is the human element in this. There's so much AI stuff coming out right now. People are getting bombarded with a AI text. It's out there. It is everywhere. In fact, there's even a lot of AI Video. Just the other day, I saw a video of Washington going across the Delaware and it was George Washington talking about what they were going to do, but he was talking about it as if it was 20, 25. I mean, look, AI is doing a lot of that stuff. You're human. People are going to get to know you. The interesting piece about that is, is there's there's a lot of people say, look, I will replace my face on the camera. And it sort of kind of could. But the difference I'm going to tell you in that is, is they cannot go meet that AI yet. Not for I think there's, quite a long time before that's going to happen. They can, after they've watched your podcast, call you up and talk to actually you, they can meet you someplace and sit down and have an actual cup of coffee. So there's those pieces that can really add into things that once again, we've now connected that human element to things that just makes the world a difference. Even with the best marketing, you're not going to be able to address specific needs that are going to happen in person. You're not going to be able to overcome it. Like all the objections you are with this type of marketing going to be able to build that, like that personal rapport, that's what that person rapport is going to be necessary to close that deal. And that's what you're going to be able to build with the podcast. The podcast. I mean, a couple of points that I'd like to make to conclude this here is we really start to wrap this up. The podcast prepares the ground. It is think of this. I mean, it is the plow. It is the disc. It is what sets up everything else for success. Then the seeds get planted, the crops grow, and you make the harvest. The podcast is what helps prepare that ground. It makes sure you can throw seeds out of your window. Maybe something grows. Probably not. If you spend the time cultivating that ground and getting things ready, you're going to be amazed at what you're going to get out of the other side of that. It you need to make sure that you're doing your marketing with intention to get the attention that you need. If you aren't doing things with intention, you're not going to get the attention. When I saw that, when I was like, oh yeah, I like this. Make sure that you are creating your podcast with the intention of it getting attention. And as sales support, if you design your podcast as sales support and not sales person, you're going to find out your podcast is going to get more downloads, more views, and is going to be a ton more effective than if you're trying to use your podcast as your sales person. That also, to be honest with you, goes for the rest of your marketing. With all that being said, I got a lot here today. A lot of information, lots of actionable items for you guys to work on. Do me a favor, take care of yourself. You can take care of someone else too. I will see you very. Very soon.

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Josh Troche

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