Why You Need More Than Podcasts for an Audio Content Marketing Strategy

Growing up, my father would play the radio while we drove. He was funny that way, because we didn’t live in an area with particularly good reception. But rain or shine, it was a habit we could depend on, regardless of how much we begged to pop in a tape or CD.

There was one particular drive I remember—back long before I even knew what a content marketing strategy was—that stuck out to me. A static-filled song had just ended, and after a pause it was followed by an ad for a local car dealership. It had every element you might expect: a loud and energetic announcer, an event name consisting of an unremarkable pun, and no narrative beyond the deals being offered. As the ad signed off, however, it piped a seemingly random collection of sounds through our speakers that made us all jump in our seats. No slogan. No jingle. Just noise.

“Why do they do that?” my little sister asked my dad.

“I guess to make sure we were paying attention,” my father answered. “Shouldn’t they know we’re already listening, though?”

It’s an answer that’s stuck with me into the present more so than the dealership’s ad itself. With audiences hungrier than ever for content in all shapes and sizes—and marketers on the hook to deliver that content—there seems to be an odd gap where audible content is concerned. Sure, some brands have found success with podcasting. But what are other ways that brands turn their audience into listeners?

A Traditional Approach Made Modern

While old-school radio is still around and gracing automobiles with melodic static hum, the majority of listeners have begun to migrate toward streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, or Apple Music. Specifically, Edison Research’s latest edition of its Infinite Dial study found that an estimated 155 million people were listening to media from online radio services.

In this, marketers can infer a few things about their audience that they weren’t able to in the past. It would be easy to assume that a large portion of this shift is simply due to better quality—one could guess that there aren’t any Spotify listeners who miss the sound of static. But beyond simple sound quality, the medium of smartphones provides convenience, choice, and access that traditional radio can’t.

For marketers, the shift to digital streaming presents a chance to get ads more reliably into the ears of their audiences, plus the benefits afforded from better targeting and tracking. But where so many marketers fall off is in the creation of their ads. Dropping from a stream of music into abruptly loud dialogue or a kitsch jingle is only going to startle or frustrate your audience, not engage them. If you’re a non-premium Spotify listener, you’re probably used to muting the interrupt audio ads every few songs.

Instead of these awkward transitions, think specifically about crafting material based on more intangible elements:

• What mood does a certain style of music evoke, and how can you relate your brand to it?
• What sort of transition is your listener expecting when your content enters? (A radio listener expects different things than an audiobook listener for instance.)
• Do you offer something in your ad that builds off of the experience your listener is already having?

Become an MC

While ads present one of the most direct ways that brands can take advantage of audio formats, it leaves large potential for brands to accidentally distract or deter listeners rather than engage them. This is largely due to the inherently interruptive nature of these platforms—where visual ads don’t necessarily have to block content that users care about (indeed, they can actually expand good content if done right), audio ads have to stop the flow of the listeners music/podcast/audiobook to be heard at all. So how do marketers avoid being an unwelcome interruption?

Creating specialized content that’s crafted to blend in with your audience’s listening preferences requires a lot of creativity and likely some time-consuming (if not also costly) production. An easier alternative, and one that lays a foundation for creating original content in the future, is building out branded playlists or profiles on listening sites.

Spotify is the clear popular choice for this sort of social promotion. Coca-Cola, for instance, has been sharing sponsored playlists for some time now as a way to connect with its audience’s aesthetic and mood. From adding flavor to a broader social media campaign to providing supplementary content that combines with an event, playlisting is a relatively easy way to use audio content to engage your audience and say something about your brand’s tastes and lifestyle.

Think Like a Musician

As with anything in marketing, for every ordinary channel there is some extraordinary niche waiting to be exploited. When it comes to audio content, brands have not been shy about creating collateral like podcasts to offer their followers, but these are all speaking-oriented materials. Musically, the furthest brands are often willing to go is a “jingle,” but even this has begun to go the way of the dinosaur, largely because its purpose has become too transparent. People know that jingles exist to stick with you after they are heard, and so even the catchiest tunes are met with a sort of knowing condescension; I know what you’re trying to do, it won’t work.

Betty Crocker realized this, but instead of shying away from musical marketing like most brands, it decided to commit entirely. And in doing so, the Hamburger Helper mascot was turned into a rap legend this April Fools’ Day. It might sound like a ludicrous idea, but people ate it up on Twitter.

Should every brand drop an LP? Definitely not. But every marketer should consider whether there is a natural place in their content marketing strategy for audio content that doesn’t seek to interrupt your audience. Stories are told with more than words and images (every great movie has a soundtrack after all), and right now most brands treat their marketing with a measure of deafness that could be leaving out opportunities to connect with audiences in a space that is considerably less glutted with competition, ads, and poorly made content.

Radios may have changed, but people’s desire to hear something interesting, exciting, engaging—this never will.

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