Why Everyone (Especially That LinkedIn 'Guru') Approaches Branded Podcasting 'Arse-About-Face'

I remember it like yesterday.

I was sitting in my office room in my tiny two bedroom flat in North London, tapping at the mouse button on my Dell desktop computer with its 10GB hard drive, excited to hear my own podcast, via a major publishing platform, reliably, for the first time.

It was 2006, and the word 'podcast' was still a geeky term that tech nerds were using to describe audio that you could download over iTunes. And we'd only been doing that for a few months.

I'd become one of the first customers of the new syndication platform Libsyn, and this had helped me publish my content, stress-free, into Apple's new podcasting ecosystem.

Previously, you'd have to hope that the website builder you were using allowed you to upload mp3 files. I'd been using Moonfruit.

It was clunky, slightly 'pirate radio-esque', and you had no real idea who was listening.

Branded what now?

The point of this history lesson is to put in perspective how many hoops we had to jump through, back in the day, in order to produce our 'art'.

There was no such thing as a branded podcast.

That is, unless you count the one or two tech geek and ecommerce themed shows that were produced with little-to-no-reference to the companies these guys represented.

Why weren't they shouting out their brands?

Because podcasting felt like the naughty extra-curricular thing activity that people were doing so they could swear without fear of censure.

See, at that point, satellite and digital radio wasn't really a thing yet.

You had FM radio, internet streaming radio, and this weird new podcasting thing.

And internet radio still had some 'rules' about what was being streamed.

Not to mention, it was really expensive for the level of audience it gave you.

Where we are now: over-saturation?

Roll forward some nearly twenty years later, and podcasting is so accessible, anyone can do it. And they usually do.

Obviously, this means mixed results, from half-assed conversations recorded via laptop microphones over Zoom, to high-end, high-production, high-concept celebrity interview shows that are all style, and little substance.

The barrier has disappeared. And this has led to an attitude that somehow, there's a 'discoverability' problem for branded podcasts thanks to 'over-saturation'.

Podcast gurus claim that launching a branded podcast is a fruitless task unless you're creating a YouTube version with video.

"There's simply too much competition, and you need to be where the millions of podcast listeners are!" they claim, in their deepest bro voices.

This is absolute bollocks.

I'm sorry, but it is.

The truth

The reality is that branded podcasts have just as much chance of success now, as they would have done in 2006.

There is no such thing as a 'discoverability' problem in podcasting.

What they mean is there's an 'ability to get their podcasts discovered by their ideal listeners' problem.

And that, my friend who's hungry to try podcasting but find yourself put off by the negative sentiment and fearmongering, is a problem I solve.

Let's ignore the bro messaging and concentrate on some statistical facts, shall we?

You know, so that you can make an informed decision about whether it might be time to pop a plan for a branded podcast in your marketing plan for Q4.

And one that's informed by facts, not some attention-hungry LinkedIn influencer with a million bought followers and some engagement-pod inflated posts about how you want to give up on podcasting and instead do YouTube.

There are currently 312,047 active monthly podcasts according to the latest data from the all knowing 'podcast index'. This is a third party body that collects data for every single podcast released.

Of those, only 100,000 are producing weekly releases.

Of those, roughly 10% are labelled for the business category.

10,000 business podcasts.

This means, at the top level, you're only competing with 10,000 other content creators for attention to your branded podcast.

And the listeners you're targeting are highly engaged, loyal, and are listening regularly, to more than a few titles each week.

And if you drill down further into specific niches and industries, that number you're competing with will be far fewer.

YouTube - the sexier, younger newbie who uses filters on all her socials

But on YouTube?

Well, if that's your big marketing plan, thanks to the convincing bro guru on LinkedIn who's insisted that "Say less. It's the world's second largest search engine! You gotta be on it!" - well then you'd better be ready to invest more time, effort, production value, and style than the nearly 400,000 business themed videos being launched every day!

How did I arrive at that comparison?

With some research. Yep, that thing the bros don't bother with, because they know their hook template will be enough to convince you to waste your money on their warez.

There are 4 million new videos being released every day on the channel, of which 9% are business themed.

Now, tell me again why you're not prioritising a podcast (which can also cover off your YouTube presence anyway) as part of your marketing plans?

Are you getting it now?

In order to be successful with branded content, you need to go where there's less competition, not more.

Imagine if you were a small convenience store and you were based in a large town with a lot of other convenience stores, and a business coach told you that you needed to base yourself in a huge shopping mall in an even bigger town with loads more convenience stores...

You'd think they were nuts, right?

So why are you listening to these gurus who are telling you the only way to grow your branded podcast, is to use the most populated platform, with the most competition, and the least interested audience?

If you want to learn more about the opportunities that exist for your business, using a branded podcast, get yourself booked into my diary.

Let's chat.