Standing out from the crowd is the biggest challenge new businesses face today. With the internet and a smartphone, any modern consumer can easily find millions of businesses via a simple search. Consumers are also bombarded with ads any time they watch videos, read blogs, or even just scroll through their social media. So why should they pay attention to you?
Content marketing is the art of answering that question. With a strong content marketing plan, you can make genuine connections with your customers, communicating how your products and services fulfill their needs without advertising them explicitly. Content marketing is the most effective way to build interest in and desire for your product in the 21st century for a very simple reason.
In between ads, people are consuming content. Instead of making ads that they will mute, ignore, or scroll past, produce content that makes them sit up, pay attention, and voluntarily advocate for your brand with shares and likes..
The average adult spends over 7 hours on the internet a day. This makes the internet the best place to reach customers because it's where your customer’s attention is most likely invested right now. Online advertising as a whole holds many advantages over traditional advertising, and affordability is one of the most obvious of these advantages.
Unlike traditional advertising, organic marketing encourages you to reach thousands of people at a relatively low cost. Organic marketing also allows you to target your market with much more precision, meaning you spend less for better results. These clear benefits are one of the reasons why online advertising, with organic marketing at its core, is slowly eclipsing traditional advertising in businesses around the world.
Businesses around the world have quickly adopted online advertising over the last two decades. Today it can be considered the marketing standard for businesses of all sizes— from single-employee side hustles to global conglomerates. Without an online advertising plan, your business will struggle to stay visible among a customer base that is growing increasingly attached to being online. Online advertising has transformed the way we approach marketing, giving businesses unprecedented access to their customers.
While the internet has given the customer more choice than ever, it has also empowered your business with more opportunities to advertise to reach your customer than ever. One of the most exciting forms of marketing to arise from this field is podcasting.
Podcasts are highly effective in spreading ideas and establishing brands because they allow for the perfect blend of entertainment and education that many people on the internet are looking for. With a charming or charismatic host and premium production, you can position your brand as a premier leader in your desired niche and connect with other leaders in your field.
We have written several blogs on how you can improve your podcast’s chances for success, including how to improve your look and sound to a few simple steps you can take to promote your podcast. Podcasts are a great base to build an organic marketing strategy around, and below we take a look at some additional steps you can take to improve the success of your podcast.
What’s the first thing you do when you have a question you desperately want to be answered? More likely than not, you type the question onto your phone and hit the search button. Then you let Google do its thing. A couple of microseconds later, you find a list of websites that have the answer you’re looking for. Using search engines is something virtually everyone does on a daily basis. Many people never even think about how search engines work. However, if you can master the search engine, you can gain a significant advantage for your business.
Put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes. Imagine what kind of questions your customer is likely to ask; what phrases are they most likely to search for? For example, if your business is a hair salon, your potential customers might search for the latest, most fashionable hairstyles. Your potential customers might also be curious about how to take care of their hair. What products should they use and avoid, and how should they use them?
A website is an excellent way to answer all these questions. While many businesses simply treat their website as a storefront, it can be so much more.
By employing SEO best practices, you can position yourself as a trustworthy source of information. This is an investment that has relatively low costs and yields incredible returns. Let’s expand on our example from earlier for a clear illustration.
Imagine there are two hair salons that are almost identical in every way. They’re in similar cities, make similar revenues, and have similar management styles. Let’s call these similar hair salons Tasha’s & Sasha’s. One day, Tasha’s decides to start writing blogs that feature neat tips and tricks for people to follow to take care of their hair. The blogs don’t instantly go viral, but they do see several hundred people visiting the page every week. When these people visit the page, they sometimes realize it would be easier to just have a professional do it. When this happens, which salon do you think they are more likely to use, Sasha’s or Tasha’s?
A blog is one of the best ways to attract new customers to your business. Blogs build trust and establish your authority in a way few other advertising methods can compete with. This ability is incredibly valuable for businesses geared towards personal services, such as salons, mechanics, tailors; or any business that requires your customer to trust your knowledge.
The final strategy we’re going to look at is influencer marketing. ‘Influencer’ is a relatively new term in the marketing world. It is mostly used to describe social media users who have amassed a significant following on social media. These are people who have, in one way or another, managed to gather a captive audience. You can think of influencers as modern internet celebrities.
Influencers can be found on just about every social media platform there is. From popular vloggers and podcasters on YouTube to well-liked meme pages on Instagram, any social media user with a sufficiently large enough following can be considered an influencer. Influencer marketing allows you to tap into the vast audiences gathered by these influencers to sell your product.
Many fashion designers send their clothes and accessories to Instagram influencers for free, for example. They do this because their clothes being worn by influencers can greatly improve their public image, bringing them to the forefront almost overnight. Influencer marketing is a highly effective way of getting your product or brand in front of many people in a relatively short amount of time. Influencer marketing is also highly effective because you can get started at virtually no cost.
A great way to utilize influencer marketing around your podcast is to feature prominent members of the community where you aim to establish your podcast. Invite people you look up to or your audience is interested in to come on to your show and weigh in on certain topics. Not only will your audience appreciate the added value, but the person you invite may also draw their own audience to your platform, greatly improving your visibility.
Do you think a podcast is the best way to expand your brand visibility and establish authority? Get started on your own podcast today! Contact our team at poddster and we will produce your entire podcast from concept to distribution.
