The Ultimate Guide to Branded Podcasts

What are 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.

Benefits of Branded Podcasts

One thing that branded podcasts are not: infomercials. Your focus should be creating entertaining and informative content instead of directly selling your product or service every episode. Only when you focus on content quality can you take advantage of the benefits of branded podcasts, which are:

Brand awareness
Brand engagement
Builds authority
Niche content

Let’s dig deeper into each of these benefits.

Brand Awareness

The number one benefit of branded podcasts is brand awareness. 74% of listeners come to podcasts to learn, so people will naturally discover your brand when they are seeking to learn about topics in your niche. Unlike traditional advertisements, this means that potential customers are engaged from the get go.

A study from BBC Global News on branded podcasts found that this engagement dramatically increases brand awareness. They found that 89% of listeners had increased brand awareness from branded podcasts.

Brand Engagement

Brand engagement means creating an emotional bond between your brand and a potential customer. Podcasts are uniquely situated to do this because of the intimacy and casualness of the medium.

A study by Mindshare found that audio stories have 21% higher emotional engagement compared to their visual counterpart, including a 18% higher rate in positive emotionality.

Branded podcasts are a great way for brands to take advantage of the inherent engagement advantages that podcasting has to offer.

Builds Authority

As we mentioned earlier, podcast listeners love to learn. When listeners learn new things through your branded podcast, your brand becomes an authority in your area of knowledge.

Over time, listeners have come to trust information from podcasts over other mediums. According to Acast, 36% trust what they hear from a podcast host when talking about a brand or company, compared to just 18% for radio.

Niche Content

Podcasts thrive on niches. From pens, to fashion history, to rock climbing there is a podcast audience for every topic. This allows niche brands to connect with audiences in a way that is much more difficult in more broadly focused mediums.

You don’t need to find these audiences, they’ll find you because lovers of niche topics are hungry for more information about their favorite hobbies and interests.

How to Start a Branded Podcast

We’ve written tons of articles about starting and growing a podcast, from ideation, to publishing, to content. Instead of reiterating everything here, we’re going to provide links that you can peruse as you need.

Creation

Promotion

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The Best Branded Podcasts

More Ways to Utilize Podcasting as a Brand

As a brand, the value of podcasting goes way beyond branded podcasts. To effectively utilize the medium your brand should dabble in more than one marketing channel. In this section we’ll talk about two other important channels for your brand to explore.

Advertise on Podcasts

In 2021, podcast advertisers spent a total of $1.33 billion, with that number expected to grow to $1.74 billion by the end of 2022. If companies are spending more money each year on podcast advertisements, you know they’ve found something that works.

To advertise on podcasts, you need to:

Click above to read our in-depth articles about how to perfect each of these steps.

Guesting on Other Podcasts

At Podchaser we are huge evangelists of podcast guesting and all of its promotional benefits – we’ve written about it extensively. Guesting on other podcasts provides an in-depth way to share a message with minimal work, while also providing free traffic to your client’s website and social platforms. All of that with only a few hours of work!

To learn more, peruse our articles:

Final Thoughts on Branded Podcasts

While branded podcasts are an amazing opportunity for your brand, you also need to set expectations. Podcasting is not a quick-hit advertising tactic, it takes a lot of time and money to do it right. Not just the time and effort it takes into making a podcast, but also gaining an audience. It takes time to grow an audience, so we recommend producing an ongoing series rather than a limited run of a few episodes. You need to keep the podcast going continually to help build the snowball.

It’s about quality of leads over quantity of leads. Your audience may be small at first, but if you produce quality content, you will gain their trust and they will naturally transition to loyal paying customers.