Branded Podcasts

Four Ways Brands Can Use Podcasts

Last updated on: 
August 2, 2022

There are 4 main ways that brands can use podcasts as part of their marketing strategy: brand awareness, lead generation, events, and internal communications

Brands are realizing the power behind podcast content and are investing in adding it to their marketing strategies. But what are the most effective ways to use them? Podcasts aren’t only beneficial to increase awareness and build a community around your brand, there are several ways they can benefit your business.


1) Thought Leader & Awareness Podcasts 

Thought leader and awareness objectives are the most common types of branded podcasts. Brands use podcasts to establish themselves as an industry leader on a specific topic that’s relevant to their business. For example, if you’re a mattress company you might have a podcast that’s all about analyzing interesting dreams that people have had. 

The biggest key here is to ensure that your podcast isn’t a sales pitch. Obviously, you don’t want your podcast to be a 30-minute infomercial for your brand (no one wants to listen to that), so choose a subject matter that’s interesting for listeners but relevant to your product, service, or brand values. Some of our favourite branded podcast series include:

2) Lead Generation Podcasts

For B2B brands, lead generation and relationship building are key to business growth. Podcasts offer a strategic way to create warm introductions to relevant leads. For example, if you’re a MarTech company focused on selling your product to CMOs in the hospitality industry, create an interview-based podcast series that discusses tactical marketing strategies for hotels and restaurants. This will give you an easy way to reach out to potential leads for interviews and show off your knowledge of the problems they’re facing during the recording. Keep in mind that the selling happens once the mics are off. 

3) Event Podcasts

Event podcasting can be super useful whether for a large scale conference or a small meetup. For large events like conferences and trade shows, it’s easy for attendees to miss sessions, have a difficult time fully comprehending the information provided, or want more in-depth information about a speaker or topic. Podcasts are an easy way to achieve this. Either plug into the conference main stage to record directly from the speaker’s microphone or host a side interview with some key speakers to get more in-depth insights. But whether it’s for a larger or smaller event, podcasts improve attendee engagement, retention and attraction. 

4) Internal Communications Podcasts

Larger organizations, especially global ones, are realizing the value of podcasting for internal communications. Provide your employees with quick company updates, let them get to know each other through employee features, or keep them in the know with industry news. Podcasts can make it easy to communicate all of this information in a quick, convenient, and scalable format. It’s been proven that productivity can increase by 25% when employees feel more connected and engaged. Yet 74% of employees state that they feel like they're missing out on company information and getting to know their co-workers. Podcasts for the win! 

Overall, however, you decide to use podcasts as a brand in 2020, we expect to see budgets grow steadily throughout the year whether you already have a podcast or are looking to start one. 

Alison Osborne

Director of Growth Marketing

A passionate storyteller, Ali is Quill’s Director of Growth Marketing, previously the co-founder and CMO of the branded podcast agency, Origins Media Haus (acquired by Quill). She excels in merging creativity with data in order to successfully build and grow a brand.

Platform
Price
Pro’s
Con's
Anchor

Free

  • Easy to use
  • Automatically distributes your podcast to major platforms.
  • Embed media player.
  • Great if podcasting is a
    side hobby
  • Very basic editing
  • Since it’s a free tool, you don’t have full control over the monetization of your podcast.
  • Not the right platform for people taking podcasting seriously
Buzzsprout

Free for 2 hours of content per month

$12 for 3 hours per month

$18+ for 6 hours and up

  • Very user-friendly
  • Caters to both long term and beginner podcasters
  • Advanced analytics
  • Easy distribution of your episodes
  • They measure their size requirements to hours not megabytes
  • Bonus: get a free $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up for any paid hosting plan!
  • Advanced features like dynamic ad insertion need some work
Libsyn

$5/month for Monthly Storage 50mb

  • Oldest podcast hosting site.
  • Easy distribution to major platforms and great for scaling once your podcast gets bigger.
  • Hosted over 35,000 podcasts.
  • An iTunes Podcast partner.
  • Allows you to publish your podcast to specific directories.
  • Embed media player.
  • Price is based on storage
  • 50mb storage for $5 won’t be enough if you are publishing weekly so you’ll end up with a higher price point
Podbean

Unlimited audio package: $9/month

Storage space:

Unlimited

  • Great support & customer service features
  • Unlimited audio.
  • Pages are easy to customize
  • Can schedule podcast release dates.
  • Easy to use.
  • Uploads and changes to podcast titles and/or descriptions are automatic to Spotify.
  • Embed media player.
  • Simple Analytics
  • Analytics aren’t as advanced as other platforms
  • Upload and changes to podcast titles and/or descriptions take a day to change on iTunes.
  • Not an iTunes podcast partner.
  • The process to send a podcast to iTunes is more tedious. But, you will still be able to get on the platform.
Blubrry

Classic

$5/month

Monthly Storage

50mb

  • Podcast Wordpress plugin and management.
  • If you want to record a new introduction or conclusion, add in a sponsored ad or upload a new version of a podcast, it doesn't count towards your storage usage per month.
  • Blubrry allows a 25% storage overage each month
  • Prices are based on storage.
  • Usability is okay.
SimpleCast

Starting: $15/month

Recommendation: $35/month

Monthly Storage: Unlimited

  • Hosts your audio files no matter what the size!
  • Dynamic insertion for podcast ads or edits.
  • Incredibly detailed analytics including number of episodes completed and listener location tracking.
  • Embed media player.
  • Easy to use.
  • Great distribution! Easy access to all major podcast platforms.
  • Customizable podcast
    website.
  • Prices are slightly higher than other platforms, but well worth it especially if you have a branded company podcast!

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