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Do you want to start a podcast for your business?
If you are a small business owner or solopreneur that's interested in podcasting, read this carefully. It could be that you already have a podcast, or maybe you are thinking of starting a podcast for business. You like podcasting and you are interested in using it to grow your business.
You should stop thinking of creating a random show.
Instead, you need to ask the hard questions upfront. Who is this show for? How will it align with my business? How can I have fun creating the podcast while making it extremely useful for my clients and listeners? You are a business owner and you are in business for a reason. A bad podcast can ruin the image of your business. How do you make sure the podcast and your business are in perfect alignment?
You need to position the podcast for your business.
And that's what we discuss in this episode of The Launch Plan podcast. You'll learn:
Show Transcript
At the World Wide Developers Conference in 2018, Apple announced that there were over 550,000 podcasts in iTunes. Can you take a guess how many podcasts are there today?
Well I’m not sure about Apple Podcasts. But at the end of August this year, Spotify confirmed it has 5,290,396 podcasts on the Spotify platform.
Going by these numbers, that’s been a ten times increase in the number of podcasts.
In just the past week, two of my clients checked with me about starting a podcast for their business. While they want to start a podcast to help them grow their business, they were not sure how.
How to position a podcast for your business? That’s what we discuss in today’s episode of The Launch Plan.
If you have been considering starting a podcast for your business or repositioning an existing podcast for your business, this episode is for you.
So without any delay, let’s jump right into the episode and look how you can position a podcast for your business. In the rest of this episode, we’ll not discuss one, but five positioning options. You can pick one of them, or a combination of them for your podcast’s positioning. Let’s get started with the first approach to positioning a podcast for your business.
A relationship-building machine.
No matter how new or old your business is, building relationships with your clients, customers, prospects, subscribers is key to our business. A podcast is a very good relationship-building machine. Let’s look at a couple of ways you can use a podcast to build relationships with your audience.
Bring in your personality. A crucial part of building relationships is for the other side to see you as the person you are. They know you as the store owner, course creator, coach, or whatever else you do as a business owner. A podcast is a great way to show your other side. Perhaps it’s about talking about a hobby, sharing something you fear about. It may not resonate with everyone in your audience. Maybe it’s just a few in your audience that share a hobby with you. Some others may resonate with a fear. And some others with a favorite dish. These are just examples. But you see how bringing in your personality can be a powerful way to build relationships with your audience.
Spotlight your clients. One of the most powerful ways to build relationships with your clients is to shine the spotlight on them. The hero of your business is not you. It’s your clients. By inviting your clients or audience to join you as a guest on your podcast, you are offering your platform. But there are more ways you can turn the spotlight on your clients with a podcast. For one, you can interview them so they can share something valuable to your listeners. Second, you can interview your clients to understand their journey with one of your products or services. By doing this you do more than just shining the spotlight on them. You also get them to talk about your products or services from their point of view. Interviews like these can serve as powerful testimonials for your business.
So that’s the first approach to positioning your podcast. As a relationship-building machine. Let’s now look at the second way to position your podcast for your business.
A alliance-building machine.
We’ve discussed alliances inside the MMMA Framework. And a podcast can become a powerful alliance-building tool for your business. Let’s say you have a coaching business where you help entrepreneurs with mindset and habits. While you are an expert with mindset and habits, there are topics that are related to mindset and habits that your clients will still need help with. You can use your podcast as a platform to bring on experts like maybe nutritionists and fitness experts to fill in the gaps. That way, you are shining the spotlight on your alliances and your listeners, and using that as a leverage to build new business opportunities with these partners.
That’s how you use a podcast as an alliance-building machine for your business.
Let’s now look at the third way to position a podcast for your business.
As an authority-building machine.
The most common idea people have about podcasting is interviewing people. I’m saying this after having spent considerable time teaching podcasting related courses online. For some reason, podcasting has been associated with interviewing. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, this very podcast is a good example. We don’t do interviews all the time. Yes, we do bring on guests. But for the most part, it’s a solo show. And I, being your host, use this show to build a relationship with my audience…that’s you…and play to my strengths. Being a copywriter and a marketing strategist, I stick to my strengths. We focus a lot of the MMMA Framework that we created to help you with growing your business. With every episode you listen on this show, you learn something new on marketing or messaging, or monetization, or building alliances. And that is how I build my authority in this space.
And you should considering doing it too. If you don’t know where to get started, use the 90-Day Marketing Plan. Because you need to nail your audience and your message to get started, and the 90-Day Marketing Plan will help you do that. When you have your message ready, use that to create a podcast that’s aligned to your business.
A content-marketing machine
Content is a necessary evil when it comes to running a business. Yes, I did mean any business. Even if it’s an offline business. You need content. And when I say content, I don’t necessarily refer to listicles like 10 Ways to Lost Weight. Case studies, white papers, customer interviews, are content too. Depending on what kind of a business you run, it’s important you think about content. And a podcast that’s positioned as a content-marketing machine is a great way to think about it.
Let’s quickly see how this works with a couple of examples. An offline business and an online business. Let’s say you run an offline business. A jewelry making business. You make handcrafted jewelry for women and men for special occasions and to make them feel special every day too. You could be interviewing gifting experts, wedding planners, crafters, gift store owners, apparel designers, and so many others. You can turn these conversations into coffee table books, case-studies, tips on look-books, and many more.
If you run an online business, you could be turning each conversation into podcast episodes, blog post interviews, listicles, articles on a specific sub-topic, and you can do all of these in blog form, videos, or more podcast episodes too.
And finally, let’s look at the fifth way to position a podcast for your business.
As a Monetization machine
Well, Monetization is one of the M’s inside the MMMA Framework. And you can position your podcast as a monetization engine. And the best way to think of monetization is to the offer. What can you possibly offer in your podcast, that your listeners or a subset of them will be willing to pay for?
Think of your offer in three parts - what you offer, it’s perceived value, and the price. This topic is one that we could potentially do a full episode on, or a complete course on. But let me make it really useful for today.
What can you offer to your audience while they are listening to your podcast, or after they finish listening to the show? Can you offer something extra outside the show? Can you offer something extremely valuable? Will people feel the value to be equal or more than what you give? Finally, how much will you charge for what you’ll offer?
You can offer a podcast subscription for a small monthly price that will give access to bonus episodes and some more bonuses. Maybe you teach something on your podcast. Can you offer a bonus course that teaches the same topic in greater detail for a price?
And finally, can you design a podcast marketing funnel that will turn listeners to buyers or clients automatically?
Think of a podcast monetization engine as a bonus positioning. In fact, you can combine any of the positioning ideas we discussed in today’s episode.
Lets do a quick recap of everything we discussed today.
First, we looked at positioning your podcast as a relationship-building machine.
Next, we saw positioning your podcast as an alliance-building machine.
Third, we saw how to positioning your podcast as an authority-building machine.
Fourth, positioning your podcast as a content-marketing machine.
Finally, fifth we saw how to position your podcast as a monetization machine.
Let me know which positioning you decided to go with for your podcast. You can mix and match them. So, yes give it a shot. If you have a podcast, do this exercise and see how it dramatically improves focus and engagement with your audience too.
