How to Start Lifestyle Marketing with Podcasts

Marketing constantly has to keep up with consumer taste. In 2023, only having a brand, logo, and customer personas no longer makes the cut. To stand out to potential customers you need to appeal to their emotions and aspirations. You need to convince them that they will be a better person with your company’s products. Sounds hard? It is.

This school of thought is called lifestyle marketing, and in this article we’ll more concretely define lifestyle marketing and provide 3 ways to use podcasts for your lifestyle marketing campaigns.

What is Lifestyle Marketing?

It’s difficult to find a consensus on the definition of lifestyle marketing, but in every conception, the main idea is the same. You are trying to sell your product or service that allows a customer to achieve an aspirational lifestyle they wouldn’t be able to without your company’s help. When lifestyle marketing is successful, your brand doesn’t just sell products, but a way of life.

One of the most famous and illustrative examples of a lifestyle brand is Nike. When you buy their running shoes, you aren’t just buying comfortable shoes. You are participating in a culture of dedicated high-achievers, best exemplified by their slogan, “Just Do It.” Nike’s lifestyle marketing is so successful that just a basic t-shirt with their logo is imbued with the same champion attitude as their more specialized equipment.

Lifestyle Marketing with Podcasts

Podcasts are a powerful medium for your lifestyle marketing efforts. In this section we’ll dig deeper into 3 methods of lifestyle marketing using podcasts:

Podcast Advertising
Branded Podcasts
Podcast Guesting

Podcast Advertising

We’ve written a lot about why podcast advertising is effective. In short, podcasts are popular, audiences are more receptive to podcast ads than other mediums, and podcast advertisements are highly cost effective.

But podcasts provide another unique benefit for lifestyle marketers. Podcast audiences feel a kinship with their favorite hosts. Not only that, but there’s also an aspirational element. For example, movie fans look at Blank Check hosts Griffin and David, and wish that they too could have the same film knowledge, and that they too could make money discussing their passions.

As an advertiser, you can tap into the aspirational relationship fans have with their favorite hosts. Blank Check is often sponsored by Mubi, a highly curated streaming service. During the ad reads, Griffin and David often excitedly gush about the niche film-buff movies they’ve seen on Mubi. Because of this, Mubi isn’t just a product, but a gateway for listeners to become as knowledgeable as their favorite hosts.

Podcast Guesting

Podcast guesting leverages the host / audience relationship in a different way. Instead of advertising on those podcasts, you’re booking an internal thought leader as a guest.

You’re still benefiting from the aspirational lifestyle of the host, because being invited to the host’s show is an implicit endorsement to their audience. In addition, podcast guesting gives you much more time than an advertisement to share your company’s message.

If you’re curious about podcast guesting, we’ve written a bunch of articles to help you get started…including:

Branded Podcasts

Branded podcasts are podcasts owned and produced by a specific brand. Beyond that, branded podcasts can be anything. Some are interview podcasts, others storytelling podcasts, and some are even serialized dramas. Branded podcasts provide creative freedom, allowing your company to tell your story in whatever method is most effective for you.

Branded podcasts are great for lifestyle marketing because of this creative freedom. You have so much time and flexibility to expand your brand identity into a lifestyle.

Once again, Nike is a great example of how to use a branded podcast for lifestyle marketing, with their show “TRAINED”. Every episode, the hosts interview “athletes, psychologists, researchers, physicians, trainers and other experts — reveal the most powerful, practical and surprising lessons in holistic fitness.”

With TRAINED, not only is Nike highlighting aspirational figures aligned with their brand, but teaching listeners how to be more like them.

How to Find Podcasts for Lifestyle Marketing

The first step for any of these lifestyle marketing tactics is to find podcasts to work with. You need to find podcasts within your niche, with the right audience demographics, reach, and then you need contact information.

Luckily, Podchaser Pro, the world’s most comprehensive podcast database, provides all this information in one place.

With Podchaser Pro, you’re just a few clicks away from knowing almost every podcast’s contact information, sponsor history, reach, Power Score™(cross-platform popularity), demographics, and more.

Request a free demo to see why Forbes called Podchaser Pro, “an incredibly useful tool for podcast marketing or booking guests or promoting to media or for research and development.”