Top of Mind: Podcasting Offers A Sound Technique

- Albert Maruggi

To PODCAST or not to podcast? That is the question companies should be asking. The answer lies in the growing number of people producing and listening to—and actively seeking out—podcasts as an alternative to television, radio and print.

According to iPodder.org, a Web site hosted by podcasting godfather Adam Curry, the Internet is now home

to more than 4,400

podcasts.

Finding independent and alternative voices on the Internet is nothing new. Look at the recent and still booming trend toward blogging, podcasting's predecessor. In less than five years, blog writers grew out of geek playgrounds to become purveyors of national news with White House press passes. A blog increases retention by prompting interaction using the written word; the blogger offers information and analysis, and readers contribute their comments and criticism.

Podcasting goes further, dramatically increasing retention of the material by tapping into the sense of sound and giving consumers exactly what they want, when they want it.

Whether that material is breaking news, informational commentary, brand positioning or explaining the benefits of a software solution, podcasting offers a creative way to reach a targeted, interested audience.

It's easy for marketers to think only of a young, music-oriented demographic when they hear about the iPod, but podcasting has a much greater reach than that.

For example, the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review is available in audio format and can be heard using any audio player, portable or otherwise. It's just one of hundreds of business-oriented information sources available in audio format.

The name podcasting is a misnomer. It's derived from the name "iPod," but it specifically refers to a method of delivery rather than to the audio content. Podcasters produce audio files and make them available online, accompanied by a blog and an online syndication technology called "Really Simple Syndication."

Listeners use special software that watches for new installments of podcasts to which they subscribe (for free, of course!) and to automatically download the audio files to whatever device will be used for listening.

Podcast presentations, which are really just MP3 audio files, will play on any PC or Mac computer, as well as all sorts of portable audio devices. Marketers can fire away at market segments by targeting the subject, genre, business title and demographic.

If you're the type who reads the Wall Street Journal, for example, you might also be the type who listens to KarmaBanque Radio, a podcast that provides an alternative take on business and financial news. You can't read the Journal while you're driving to work, but you can listen to KarmaBanque, and you can pause it when you stop to pick up your morning coffee.

The beauty of podcasting is that you target your messages specifically to the people you want to reach, and the people who want to hear what you have to say actively seek out that information. Through free subscriptions or podcast-monitoring software, often called an "aggregator," listeners get the newest content provided directly to them automatically, and they can listen at their convenience, free from the chains of a radio news director or a television producer. Whether your message goes to five subscribers or 5,000, your costs—time and money—remain the same.

Like blogging, podcasting will come into its own at Web speed; look at how quickly blogging shifted from a medium for digital diaries to a business-friendly medium for marketers and professional communicators.

Businesses are constantly looking for better and more creative ways to reach narrowly targeted audiences with valued content.

B2B marketers have relied on printed material, with telephones and occasionally radio as the audio media of choice, to reach decision makers and buyers. While those methods are still part of the game, podcasting is the new all-star on the field.

Podcasting provides dozens of ways to enhance brand loyalty and educate audiences for up-selling and cross-selling. Coupled with print and e-mail

tactics, podcasting gives marketers ample cost-effective opportunities to boost retention and motivate customer behavior in both B2C and B2B environments. As printing and postage costs increase, podcasting stretches the marketing budget.

Podcasting delivers targeted marketing messages through the sense of sound, riding a wave of a new technology that society is quickly embracing. Marketers should use 5% of their budget to explore podcasting. Those who launch this new tactic now will keep ahead of the competition and develop an expertise for this useful and evolving technology as it moves into the mainstream.

The logic for doing so is sound.



Albert Maruggi is president of Provident Partners, a marketing and public relations firm in St. Paul, Minn. Contact phone:

(651) 695-0174.