By this point, many businesses have a podcast as part of their content marketing strategy. They know some of the potential benefits of the medium in helping to build brand awareness, establish authority in their space, and drive organic growth. 

But, many still utilize their show as part of a disconnected, segmented multichannel marketing strategy with podcast content siloed off as its own separate entity. This common mistake can limit your podcast’s reach and power, and hinder your content marketing’s overall success.

The alternative is a fully integrated and cohesive omnichannel approach where your podcast actually leads your content strategy and is your most valuable asset in that effort. 

In this blog, I’ll explain why podcasts are so powerful as part of a marketing strategy, and how the benefits of podcasting compound exponentially when fully integrated into an omnichannel approach. I’ll also break down how you can incorporate your company’s podcast into a more effective marketing plan that harnesses its power in a thoughtful, holistic way.

Advantages of including a podcast in your marketing strategy.

Investing in a podcast is one of the best marketing decisions your business can make. Podcasts have unique and significant advantages over other forms of media that allow companies to better reach and engage with their target audience. Businesses can use their podcast to establish expertise in their field and gain more credibility among listeners.

“No one wants to listen to a 10-episode podcast about how great ZipRecruiter is at finding a job or helping hire the right applicant. But if we can create a show with someone like entrepreneur and author Seth Godin about what it means to be successful and being the most productive person around, that’s going to appeal to exactly the kind of people that ZipRecruiter wants to reach.”

Lex Friedman, Chief Revenue Officer of Art 19 

Part of the power of podcasts is that they are accessible anywhere, anytime, whether you’re driving to work or cleaning the house. Because of their convenience, podcasts draw an especially captive audience and therefore have a tremendous advantage over other visual media channels that have to compete for a viewer’s attention. 

Other benefits of including a podcast in your marketing strategy include: 

• Low barrier to entry. Podcasting is extremely cost effective compared to other forms of marketing making it easier for companies to answer the demand for great content.
• Improved SEO. Podcasts are a great way to drive more traffic to your website.
• Ability to humanize your brand. Podcasts offer an intimate listening experience that allows you to connect with listeners on a deeper level than other forms of marketing communications. 

A podcast can offer a wealth of value to your business’ marketing strategy, but it’s important to approach the process with intentionality so you glean all the benefits possible.

Multichannel vs. omnichannel marketing: What’s the difference?

The terms “multichannel” and “omnichannel” marketing are often used interchangeably, but there is a subtle, yet significant difference between them. So let’s define our terms.

Multichannel marketing is when a company uses multiple individual channels to target customers, like print or digital media. Each channel is managed separately with its own content and message. 

On the other hand, omnichannel marketing focuses on creating a unified experience across all channels by distributing integrated and connected content via various touch points.

When podcasting with an omnichannel approach, your content exists as part of a larger connected customer experience. It serves as an effective platform to share valuable and unique content with your target audience in an entertaining and engaging way. You can use it to build trust, loyalty, and relationships by allowing your listeners to get closer to your brand while they listen to content they find valuable.

So, now that we’ve established why the omnichannel approach is the most powerful method of leveraging a podcast, let’s look at how you can intentionally integrate podcasting into this type of marketing strategy to ensure it provides the maximum benefits to your company.

The implementation: How to have an omnichannel approach with your podcast. 

With the right implementation, podcasts can be a powerful tool to amplify your message and create a connection with your target audience in a more engaging way than traditional marketing tactics. But how do you do it?

Repurposing your content is one of the most powerful ways to leverage your podcast for all its worth. Repurposing podcast content into other formats allows you to reach a broader audience, increasing the likelihood of engagement from customers across multiple channels and ensuring that your messaging is consistent and unified no matter where it appears.

You can repurpose your podcast into virtually any type of content, including: 

• Blogs. Once you transcribe your episode, you can format it into an entire blog for your website to increase traffic and boost SEO.
• Episode players in existing blog posts. Review your existing blog post articles. Identify sections that could be further explained and embed relevant episode players in those sections. I’ve gotten a 3x increase in listens for episodes I’ve done this for!
• Expert Q&As. Make a transcription of your podcast interview. Reformat it and edit it down into a written Q&A style article for your website.
• Expert roundups. Find 3 to 5 episodes that discuss a similar topic. Create a post that summarizes your guests’ point of views on that topic.
• Video. If you record video of your podcast, you can split it up into short or long-form segments and distribute it to YouTube, social media, etc. 
• Infographics. This format lets you condense a lot of information into a value-packed, synthesized graphic that you can use in a variety of ways.
• Social media posts. You can use snippets from the three above pieces of content plus quotes from the episode to make engaging social content. 
• E-books or online courses. Collect and synthesize information from your best episodes and put together an e-book you can use as a lead magnet or make available for purchase. 
• Physical books. Convert multiple interviews into a book. “See Tools of Titans” by Tim Ferriss or “#AskGaryvee” by Gary Vaynerchuk.
• Live presentations. Using your podcast transcript, you can piece together a talk on your topic for a presentation or live event. 
• Webinars. Combine all of these content elements and create a powerful webinar with slides, including text, images, and videos, to reinforce the content of the podcast episode. 

A podcast has the potential to be a content powerhouse with so many built-in opportunities to repurpose your content into other formats for maximum engagement and podcast promotion. 

Now, let’s look at how to make the repurposing process efficient so you can make the most of your time and resources.

Create a content repurposing workflow to streamline the process.

Creating a content repurposing workflow can help inform how you repurpose each podcast episode, and streamlining this process can make it even more efficient. Once you create your podcast episode, follow these four steps:

1. Transcribe your podcast episode. Use a podcast transcription tool like Otter.ai to get your podcast episode into text form. Once you do this, you can pull text from your episode more easily and repurpose it with minimal effort.
2. Ask yourself what your goal is for your repurposed content. Who are you trying to reach, and what is its purpose? You may want to upsell or nurture a lead, for example. Knowing your specific goal will help you tailor your content in a way that supports them on the customer journey. 
3. Decide what type of content would help you achieve your goal. Consider what formats are the best fit for your goal. For instance, repurposed a video clip might help convey a short message; whereas, an infographic might be more helpful for breaking down a lot of information into an easy-to-digest piece of content. 
4. Execute your plan and measure the results. Being quantitative about your content will help you determine whether or not your efforts are paying off, determine your podcast’s ROI, and whether or not you need to make any adjustments to your strategy.

When you first start out, take one of your highest-performing episodes and think of a few ways to repurpose it across several channels. If you have an information-dense episode, turn it into an infographic. If it’s an interview, create a video around the main points of discussion. Starting small is a great way to prime the pump and get your ideas flowing. 

The benefits: Direct ways podcast repurposing improves your marketing.

Creating a podcast with consistent, high-quality episodes is a commitment, but there are significant time-saving benefits after the fact. The benefits of repurposing your episodes ultimately save you time from having to create new, distinct content for all your channels. 

As I mentioned earlier, content repurposing helps to unify your company’s message, simplify your strategy, and stretch your content far beyond an isolated episode. But efficiency is just one of the many potential benefits of this approach. Other benefits of podcast repurposing are:

• Increase newsletter subscriber numbers. Repurposing your content gives listeners more ways to hear and connect with the message. As a result of the increased exposure and engagement, you could also see more website traffic, which could convert into newsletter subscriptions.
• Generate more leads and increase ROI. People need to see a brand’s messaging multiple times before they act on it. Repurposing content into other formats makes this much more doable and heightens the opportunities for engagement and conversions with your target audience. 
• Boost SEO. The more ways you repurpose your podcast, the more opportunities you have to link back to your website and boost your SEO. When you give Google more text to crawl, it increases the chances that your episodes will appear in search results and get discovered by more people.
• Increases brand awareness. Breaking podcast content up into multiple, smaller pieces lets you reach more people and get more eyes on your content. 
• Establishes authority on a topic. Creating multiple pieces of content from a single source allows you to stay top-of-mind with your target audience and build a stronger understanding of the topic. 
• Make monetization more successful. Breaking up a podcast episode into multiple formats makes it more powerful and increases its value, allowing it to be monetized more effectively.
• Saves time and resources. Content repurposing means you don’t need to create new content whenever you want to reach a specific audience. This effectively reduces marketing costs while resulting in greater customer engagement across multiple channels. 

As you can see, with podcasting, a little bit of planning on the front end can pay you back in dividends later. 

Final thoughts.

Investing in a podcast is one of the best marketing decisions your business can make. The medium has significant advantages over other forms of marketing and is unique in its ability to engage and connect with listeners in your target demographic. 

I hope this article helped to clarify the importance of intentionality when using a podcast in your marketing plan, the incredible value available of the medium, and how you can maximize the benefits of your podcast to ensure optimal success.