Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

The ROI of Podcasting is Not What You Think

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 318

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In this episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast, I'm diving deep into the world of podcasting and exploring the true value it can bring to your business! 

Podcasting isn't just about monetizing your content; it's about building relationships, growing your audience, and establishing yourself as an authority in your niche.

I'll discuss the various ways you can measure the ROI of your podcast, from increased brand awareness to networking opportunities and more. Plus, I'll share some insider tips on how to maximize your podcast's potential for success. 

Don't miss this insightful conversation that will change the way you think about podcasting and its impact on your business. 

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Neal Schaffer:

data, it's all about the data. You got to understand marketing data and apply those insights to improve your business. But how do you do so? I think this is a challenge that I face that a lot of marketers and businesses face and I believe you my podcast listener faces as well. That's why I decided to reach out to an expert on this very topic to teach us how to best leverage marketing data to fuel our business growth. This is going to be a free masterclass where I'm gonna know Russell, CEO and co founder of one of digital marketing's best kept secrets. A digital marketing ROI dashboard, called Digi advisor is going to come and present on 10 ways to use data to transform your digital marketing and drive business growth. Tuesday, May 30 11am, Pacific 2pm Eastern free masterclass, go to Neal schaffer.com/did your visor dash webinar, this will be in the show notes as well, but Neal schaffer.com/di GIVIZ e r dash, w EB i n AR divisor dash webinar, Neil's here at our comm slash divisor dash webinar. Don't make me repeat that again. I will see you on May 30. Podcasting what is the ROI of showing up every week and doing this podcast? Or maybe you're curious as to why your business or you as a content creator might want to podcast as well? Well, I'm here to tell you that the ROI of podcasting is a little bit different than what you might think, but exponentially more valuable. I'm gonna explain all the deets in this next episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick talking LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer. Podcasting. Whether you are a business or a content creator, you might be wondering, what is the ROI? How can we make money from podcasting? I've been podcasting for more than a decade. And I have come to this conclusion, that is probably going to surprise you. So I hope you keep listening and watching to the end. But we're going to start with I believe that there are three main components to podcasting ROI. Is there money to be made? Sure. I mean, there's money to be made blogging, there's money to be made on YouTube, on Tik Tok on Instagram, on LinkedIn, there's many, many different ways as a business or content creator, to monetize your content, podcasting is definitely one of them. There are ways of getting sponsors for your podcast, that is an easy one, there is advertising that you can do for your podcast. But I will tell you that because the number of people that listen to podcasts, versus the number of people that watch YouTube videos, or that engage with tick tock videos, or Instagram posts, what have you, is going to be smaller, meaning that the opportunities become I believe, a little bit more limited. Is it possible to do? Yes. But trust me, I have spent a lot of time banging my head on the wall, trying to get one more additional download, you know, one more interesting sponsor, what have you. And I think there's a better way to think about it. And this is the conclusion that I've come to very, very recently. It's taken me some time. So let's cover these three C's that I want to talk about. The first C of the ROI of podcasting is the connections. It's the people. I have been on podcasts, where it was basically part of a marketing automation. Well, I won't say a marketing automation, it was part of a funnel, right? They looked for people interested in X. I applied to be on the podcast. And then I was actually sort of sold on the X after the podcast ended. And I was that was a real eye opening experience for me that someone could use a podcast as part of their funnel and it gets You thinking, right? I don't necessarily think that is where the ROI is. It's really in the connections that you can make. Think about it. Now I'm working with a small business right now. And I think it's even more powerful for b2b businesses. Now, a b2c business can also do this, don't get me wrong. But I think b2b businesses that often operate in environments where they need to partner with other companies, maybe they're part of an ecosystem, they have, you know, partner channel marketing going on. This makes a lot of sense that basically, who are the people that we want to work with, who are the companies that we want to work with? Who are the subject matter experts in our industry, who are the potential clients that we want to work with, if you frame your podcast in the correct way, with the right name and the right mission, you can be using it as a vehicle to meet with the companies and the people that you want to do business with, that you want to partner with? I think that one of the classic examples of this in marketing is the marketing book podcast by my friend, Douglas Burnett. And he started that podcast, he has a company called the sales artillery, right sales, but he started the podcast, because he wanted to meet the people that wrote the marketing books that he read, this is just a great example. But think of you are really targeted as a business, to try to reach those people that can really change that can transform your business. That is the way to think about it. And I mentioned it because I talked at the very beginning about all those different forms of, you know, content, you can create, we have YouTube videos, we have blogs, and tiktoks, and what have you. But of all those mediums, the only medium, where we can say that the interview is one of the most popular, if not the most popular format, is the podcast. So you might try to do that with other mediums, hey, we're doing a blog post you want to contribute, you know, hey, we're doing a YouTube video, do you want to like create a one minute video of yourself talking that we can, it's just not the same as actually being able to interview someone. And as you interview that person, you are creating a deep relationship with them, because you are together, right? Either virtually, or if you could do it in person even greater. But that is a true relationship building exercise. And that if you can just get one client from that, that might be worth a year of sponsorship revenue, a year of advertising revenue. So I hope you, you know, have figured out where I'm going with this, right? That is tremendously greater ROI. So connections, and it could be a lot of different connections, like I said, Who are the people that you need to meet for your business to grow? Think about it that way? What are the topics that you need to talk about? To make it enticing that they would want to accept your invite? Right, you know, x x, you know, whatever, name your industry experts. And then when you invite your clients or prospects, they already look like an expert, because it's in the name of the podcast. So that's the mindset I want you to have. If, for your business, or as a content creator, if you want to do podcasting, think of the connections of the relationships, you can build strategically, with targeted people that can help your business grow. So that's the first see. So Neil, what are the other C's? So see, number two. And I think by far, this is the most powerful thing here is yes, content. Now, if you listen to a recent episode of mine, or watch the recent video mine, I talked about how live streaming changes everything. This podcast is currently being livestream, even though it is just me talking into a camera looking at you on the other end. But the fact that it is live stream is not only because it makes it more like Hollywood, you know, I got to show up, I gotta have energy. It's on video, right? I can't sit just behind a microphone in a closed office. It creates a new energy. It means that if I'm going to show up live, I need to put a little bit more planning Yes, for every podcast episode, you put some planning in, but you put a little bit more planning when you know you're going to show up live. And you know, you have friends that are popping up to say hi and whatever and you know, even potential business clients, what have you that show up in the stream? So that's why I believe when you start podcasting, well when you start live streaming your podcasts, it increases your content level, but more importantly, the ROI of podcasting from the sea level and I think that it would live streaming is the content. So think about it. You have a podcast, it goes out into a podcast player. Yes, you can create a blog post for a podcast. If you go to podcast dot, Neal schaffer.com, you'll be able to see all the show notes from all of my episodes and be able to listen to it, even if you don't have a podcast app, or you want to listen to it on your desktop. But adding video to the mix, opens up the door to be able to publish content anywhere in everywhere. In social media, and really in digital media. I talked in the beginning. You know, you can monetize content in many ways. But when we think about evergreen, long form content that is picked up in search engines, there are three main types of content. You have textual content, this is mainly blogs, you have video content, this is mainly YouTube, although Tik Tok obviously is becoming its own search engine. And then you have audio content, which is picked up in podcast players like Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, et cetera, et cetera. But if you're only have a podcast, if this was only audio, and maybe text sure, you know, podcast players, definitely, they're going to pick up this episode. Blog. I'm not so sure. You know, the SEO ROI of podcasting, I don't think is as great as a lot of people do. If your guest podcasting and you want to get a backlink to your website, yes, I get it. But as a podcaster, I will tell you, the traffic i get from having about 350 episodes published is not as great as you would think, when you create blog content that's targeted for search engines, not for podcast listeners, is when you begin to get a lot of great traffic for content. But we're missing the video. And that's why when you live stream a podcast, that's where you begin to get just a treasure trove of content. Think about it. I am currently live streaming, right, this is currently being live streamed Well, you don't know that if you're listening to the podcast. But this is being live streamed on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Could I have added other channels, maybe I just started with YouTube as my main channel, added LinkedIn. And now I've added Facebook, it just makes sense to do. So now I'm hitting three different platforms. When you create a live stream schedule, you're creating an event. Well, on YouTube, you're creating a placeholder for that YouTube video. But on LinkedIn and Facebook, you're actually creating an event, it's actually going into the feed that you're going to be live streaming. So that's an additional touchpoint. I've even experimented with a boosting that Facebook event that's been created. Or I should say the update that's been posted, you know about the live stream coming up hope you can make it. So those are additional touches you're getting with the live stream. Plus, once the video is done, once you're done live streaming, it still sits in the archives now in LinkedIn. In all honesty, I think the archives are a little bit harder to find. But in Facebook, the videos are archived and YouTube. Now it goes on a separate tab where your live streams are. But that content can show up in search results like any other content. So now we have added both through the live stream and the archive content. We have added amazing, amazing content assets. So instead of getting 300 listens, or 500, listens or 5000 listens on a podcast app, now we're able to get additional exposure for that content. That additional exposure now is happening on video. And it's happening on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, going forward, though, I haven't even hit it what the real ROI of the podcast is visa vie content. Because now this is something that I've started to do. If I do a 1015 20 3040 minute recording, I can now slice and dice that content. If you structure your content when you're preparing for your podcast or your interview correctly. If you're asking five questions in an interview, each one of those questions could become its own content. It could become its own horizontal content on YouTube, which is exactly what I am doing and repurposing my podcasts for that. Could it become short form? Absolutely. You've probably seen podcasts interviews are just people talking to the camera. You probably seen those on Tik Tok on Instagram. And did those originally come from podcast episodes? Or did they just show up in front of a camera? We don't know. But if you have the podcast content, you can always come back to it. You can always create the content from it. I'm about to go out and contact all those people that I did interviews with before because they were primarily recorded on video. They recorded on Zoom and I can broadcast those as live stream and ask the person they interviewed to show up and say, Hey, would you like to show up? Just so you know if there's any comments, you can respond to them, you know, live what have you. Podcasting, I believe, because of that special interview format, and because it becomes the vehicle, I believe it is at the top of the content marketing pyramid, right? If you can do a podcast, a live stream it, you can create content for any network that you want to, does it require resources to repurpose? Absolutely, no, I am a scrappy solopreneur. For those of you that know me, I am working with various people to show that this can be done without a big budget, will you require a bigger budget than you would for podcasting than for, you know, maintaining a blog and blog writing? Absolutely. But I do think it's worth it. Because you get all that content. And that is the exponential value, you'll be able to show up in any format on any network with the content. I mean, the whole idea of podcast is you want to share that content with the world. It's inbound marketing, you want to be exposed, Why limit it to just audio players? Right. So the final C, we covered connections, we covered contents. The final C is commerce is business. I've shared this before my podcast. But when I launched my digital first mastermind community, I asked people, you know, where did you find out about me? This is for my family members. You know, my super fans, you know, where do you consume my content. Now, of course, everybody was already on my email list. Otherwise, they wouldn't have converted into becoming part of that community. But the number one place where people consume my content was the podcast. So think about that. You don't see clicks, from podcasts, from when people listen, you see download numbers, but it is the hardest of all those mediums to really track as to your success. But especially if you're in b2b, it does not take that many listeners to generate a year's worth of income. I mean, you you land that dream client. And that's tremendous ROI. So podcasting, it lurks in the shadows, right, the ROI when it comes to commerce. And, yeah, there's the other monetization that we talked about earlier, the advertising of sponsorships, but think about it to get clients. Because if you can get one or two pay clients, that more than makes up for everything that I've been talking about, because at the end of the day, if your objective for podcasting is just to make money, it's going to be a long grind, might be successful might not be successful. But when you add in these other elements, right, if you're a content creator, you should be an entrepreneur, what are the services that you are going to offer? On top of just monetization and sponsorship? How can you help other content creators or other businesses? That is, if you don't have that, before you start the podcast? Like you can target prospects? You know, if you're a startup, and if you don't have a product or a service to sell, then yeah, the ROI is just going to be that much harder to glean. But if you do, and if you have a podcast, I really want you to ask, you know, ask your community with a Client Onboarding form, ask them what, you know, content they consume, do your own, you know, data, podcasting doesn't touch everybody. But for the people that it does touch from an audio perspective, you're building a deeper relationship. But it's the three C's, right? It's everything above and beyond that, which leads to connection, which leads to content, and which leads to commerce that provides the greatest ROI. I'm not going to say of any of those content mediums, but it is extremely powerful. And very, very few people are doing it when compared to a tic toc when compared to a blog or YouTube channel. So yes, there's still opportunity. Most people quit. I think the stat is, you know, two thirds of podcasters quit without reaching 10 episodes. So there's definitely room and the more you do it, well, the more content you have to share to drive your content marketing, your inbound marketing, and that, you know, you're podcasting may be easier to monetize on youtube if you're able to enter the YouTube Partner Program versus a podcast just because there's greater demand for video content and audio content in general. So I'm not going to evangelize podcasting, right. It's not for everybody. It's not for every business. But if you're in a b2b business, especially, I think there's tremendous value in even if you're not in a b2b business, hopefully, by looking at this different way of looking at podcasting ROI, you can see the value in it. Well, I think that's a wrap. I really hope that I changed your perspective on podcasting. and how we see the business value of it above and beyond the immediate mana to zation. So that's it for another episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast livestream edition. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.