It is amazing how Podcasting has developed into a mainstream medium for any online publisher who want to get their message out. Savvy marketers have realize this is a way to zero in on their target market in a more lively way than ever before.

Podcasting has all the power you can find in blogging, plus more. In fact, I find it beneficial to take advantage of the blog platform to publish your Podcasts. Let’s not get into that for now. But the idea that makes Podcasting so powerful is that it is audio based.

To start with, these are some of the ways Podcasting can help your business as a marketing tool:

1. Keep in touch with prospects and customers - Prospects only buy from people they know and trust. This is a great way to build relationship with your prospects and customers. You can get in front of them, provide information related to your industry and sell to them whenever you like.
2. Position yourself as an expert in your niche - Be an authority or thought leader in your field. Share events, thoughts, new innovations or provide customer service at the same time.
3. Lead generation - Podcasting allows you to reach wider target market than you can through many traditional media, websites and blogs.
4. Increase your revenue - Presell your prospects with samples of your product or service before they actually buy. Cash in your content with subscription model. The sky is the limit.
5. Boost business productivity - Large corporations use Podcasting for idea sharing, collaboration and many creative applications.
6. Advertising - Even if you can’t start your own Podcast, you can tap into the same pool of traffic by advertising effectively on related Podcasts in your industry.

You might realize blogging shares the same benefits as those listed above, like I’ve said before.

Think for it for a moment. The audio part of Podcasting is important to realize. Nowadays, text is clearly more usable than any other format. It is the easiest to consume. But voice provides unique feature not available through static text and image.

Voice brings personality and expresses emotion, which are two very important things when it comes to marketing.

The power of online audio goes much further:

• Some people prefer to listen than reading. Audio provides alternative learning and content consumption method.
• Some information are better presented through audio, such as music and songs.

Sometimes it is hard to measure the final effects Podcasting bring to the table. Like blogging, while you can measure the revenue, traffic and more tangible factors, it is extremely hard, if not impossible to measure the branding and viral effect.

The same applies to Podcasting. While you can quantify the value per download or dollar per subscribers, it is harder to measure what the medium can bring to you in term of customers or clients even years from now.

If you are trying to reach as many targeted prospects as possible online or simply prefer to talk than write, I don’t see a reason why you can’t start Podcasting. The technology is here and you can start on a shoestring.

Read also: Marketing with Podcasts.

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