Why podcasts deserve a place in your content marketing strategy
Cast your mind back to the early noughties. Did you have any idea what a podcast was? Probably not. If you’d typed ‘podcast’ into Google on 1st October 2004 you’d have seen just 2,750 hits. But unlike shutter shades and bootcut jeans, podcasts were in it for the long haul.
In 2005, there were more than 100 million searches for ‘podcast’ and the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. This was also the year that Apple added the podcast feature to iTunes.
Fast-forward 15 years, throw in a marked improvement in affordable podcasting tech and the ability to stream reliably from almost anywhere – including your car – and it’s little wonder that demand for this type of audio storytelling has skyrocketed.
Ian Macrae, Ofcom's Director of Market Intelligence says, “Podcasts are transforming the ways people listen to audio content, just as on-demand video is changing how people watch television.”
(It’s telling that even Ofcom has its own podcast now.)
Podcasts are the up-and-coming darlings of content
According to Ofcom, around 7.1 million people in the UK now listen to podcasts each week. That’s one in eight people, an increase of 24% in the year leading to August 2019 and more than double the growth of the past five years. More than half of listeners got involved in the last two years.
These figures speak for themselves. If you’re not already on the bandwagon, now’s a good time to explore the world of podcasting as a way to spice up your content mix and reach new audiences – and you don’t need a huge budget to get started.
How can podcasting work for my visitor attraction?
Many attractions are already producing their own podcasts. Check out the podcast series by English Heritage, Historic Royal Palaces and the British Museum for inspiration.
Since it launched in October 2016, the National Trust’s main podcast has achieved 1 million downloads. The Trust also publishes podcast mini-series to mark major events or anniversaries. Series such as Women in Power, marking 100 years of female suffrage in the UK, and Prejudice and Pride, which explored the lost and hidden LGBT stories from National Trust places to mark the anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, have had downloads in the tens of thousands.
There’s more to it than achieving highly respectable listening figures though. Podcasts are a great way to show a more human side to your attraction and invite a deeper connection. The medium also helps to open the doors to an audience that can’t physically visit, whether that’s due to COVID-related lockdown's, disability, budget or living on the other side of the world.
“One of the great things about podcasts is that they’re immersive, somewhere between a video and a book. Our presenters are often visiting the place for the first time themselves, so the listener is on a journey with them. Our microphones record voices and sounds as close to possible as the human ear hears them, so listeners can sit back with a glass of wine, close their eyes and imagine they’re at one of our places,” says Sean Douglas, podcast producer at the National Trust.
Where to start
Launching your own podcast is a big commitment, but think of how far you can make that new content go. You can re-purpose the podcast content across other platforms: post quotations on social media, publish top tip articles derived from podcast-based discussions on blogs and newsletters, or share video recordings of the podcast on YouTube*.
If you’re not quite ready to dive in headfirst, there are other ways to dip your toe in podcast marketing. The field is ripe for collaborations, or you could guest on podcasts that share your target audience, or go down the paid advertising route.
Who listens to podcasts?
Listeners skew young, are better educated, earn more than the average population, and tend to be highly engaged.
Paid advertising offers the potential to reach a huge – and growing – audience or niche down to connect directly with the right listeners for your attraction. With more than 850,000 active podcasts and 30 million+ podcast episodes you’re likely to find a podcast that’s the perfect fit for your attraction [source: MusicOomph]. (That’s up from 2018’s 550,000 and 18.5 million respectively).
Unlike radio, podcast fans tend to be active listeners, and the private nature of listening to podcasts can make it feel like more of a one-to-one connection, especially if you opt for host-read advertisements. After all, 92% of podcast listening is a solo activity [source: Rajar data release, Q1 2020].
Reasons to be wary of podcasts
That’s not to say that podcasts are the marketing magic bullet. Podcasting is still fairly new and it can be difficult to measure its effectiveness.
It’s a relatively small market (a predicted US$1 billion for the global podcasting market this year compared with radio’s US$42 billion, according to Deloitte), and with so many podcasts already out there, discoverability can be an issue.
With that in mind, it’s best used alongside more traditional mediums, such as digital, TV and print, to maintain reach to mass markets.
*Incidentally, YouTube is the most popular service for accessing podcasts among 18-54 year olds, while BBC services (iPlayer, Radio, Sounds) were most popular in the 55+ category [source: Ofcom’s Media Nations 2019 report].
