Content Marketing’s New Frontier Has Arrived – Podcasting

2016 is the continuation of the golden age of content marketing that emphasizes science, substance, story, speed, and simplicity. To remain competitive in such an environment, marketing departments need to better leverage their thought leader’s most accessible skill, talking. They also need to include podcasting as a viable content distribution channel. In fact, with 66% of B2B content marketers dissatisfied with results, I consider podcasting a content marketing game changer. Here’s why:

Marketing’s New Golden Age

There is a compelling McKinsey report called ‘The dawn of marketing’s new Golden age’  that addresses five over arching trends in marketing that I feel are bringing about a new frontier in content marketing—Science, Substance, Story, Speed, and Simplicity. Essentially, these five trends make a logical case for why marketers need to keep things simple to succeed.

1. Science: The first of the trends is the increasing importance of science in marketing. There is no surprise here that senior leaders in the marketing departments need to be more analytical with effective quality controls in place to prevent dirty data and assure accurate customer insight.
2. Substance: When marketers do have the right science and the right insight, they can create substance for your other departments. So with proper insight, marketers gain substance to share with other departments. Whether it’s new functional benefits that the customers want or new products and services that marketers suggest, this knowledge must be shared throughout the company.
3. Story: The third trend is to learn how to tell a story. If you can’t tell the right story at the right time to the right person you are not going to get customers engaged. This means you’re not going to create any quality data, insight, or substance to share with other business units.
4. Speed: The fourth trend is speed.  “Consumer preferences change with stunning velocity, as do the dynamics of markets and product life cycles.” according to the McKinsey report.  “This culture of urgency means that marketers need a new agility, plus the management skills and organizational clout to bring other functions together at a higher clock speed.”
5. Simplicity: Everything in marketing is so darn complex now and the battle is to make it simple. Why? Complexity is the enemy of speed. So follow the KISS design principle; keep it simple stupid to remain competitive.

Keeping Content Marketing Simple

So if content marketing must keep things simple, where is the complexity? What is the most time consuming and complex part of the content marketing’s workflow? One could argue it’s the analytics but that is downstream and dependent on many upstream activities to go right. Given this, I feel the problem is with the production of the content.

In other words, the content production process needs to be simple. And what’s simpler than capturing content by “just talking” with a thought leader and recording the call? From the recorded audio, marketers can then produce tons of content with minimal demand on the time of their internal subject matter experts.

This audio can then be leveraged and repurposed into a number of different types of engaging content—including podcasts. Here are five reasons you should consider podcasting straight from marketing thought leader, Jamie Turner:

• Scale: An estimated 39 million Americans have listened to a podcast in the past month. (Source: Edison Research)
• Share: Podcasts are the second most listened to audio source. Only AM/FM radio has more share of listeners. (25.9% listening to podcasts vs. 27.5% listening to AM/FM radio.)
• Frequency: One in four podcast consumers plug their MP3 players or smartphones into their car audio system nearly every day.
• Connectivity: 50% of new cars sold in the U.S. will have internet connectivity by next year. By 2025, all cars sold will have internet connectivity.
• Opportunity: There are about 30 million active blogs on the internet, but only about 250,000 active podcasts.

Another reason why you must get involved in this new frontier is the fact that there’s a “podcast rush” currently underway that your company may miss out on. Why are company’s rushing into podcasting?

According to The Columbian Journalist Review, “Podcast consumers listen to an average of six episodes per week. Once they find a podcast they like, they tend to be devoted. The medium feels intimate. Unlike the audience online, which tends to click through and then bounce away quickly, podcasts draw people in for the duration of the episode. They feel a deep, personal connection with the hosts. In an era when other ad rates are plummeting and publications are trying to position themselves as membership organizations, this level of fervent fandom is something that most media outlets would kill for.”

Bottom line is this: According to a recent Forrester research, your own company thought leaders are the next wave of differentiation on B2B Marketing. So if your company does not produce regular podcasts that gets your previously untapped thought leaders talking, it’s a missed opportunity. Your competitors will surely capitalize on it soon if they haven’t already.

Next Steps:

• Sign up for our upcoming webinar “How to Create a Thought Leadership Content Engine” on Wednesday, May 20th at 2 p.m. EDT to learn how to to edge out your competitors by dramatically increasing engagement from your content marketing efforts.
• If you don’t have the internal resources to do this yourself, check out Backbone Media’s “Just Talk B2B” content production service.