Podcasts – how to really connect with your customers
As business owners and managers in an ever evolving world, our jobs become more challenging every day – every hour – to cut through clutter and make consumers notice our message.
How many times do we find ourselves repeating what we say to co-workers to get a message across? For most of us, this isn’t a reflection of how we’re gauged as professionals or individuals but 95% attributable to the ‘151 rule’.
They say a person needs to hear new information at least three times before it registers into his/her mind for immediate recollection. This has been taught over and over again to us and you can test it by saying aloud a new name you come across three times consciously.
When you target a market with a specific message the same rule applies, all except your target isn’t one person and those three times won’t cut it. It’s all about repetition. You have no control over which people are listening at what time of the day - so the logical bet is to be accessible and available 24/7/365.
We live in an exciting time with smart phones and smart cars and paywave. Life is grand, more instantaneous and absolutely saturated by everyone ramming their ‘unique’ selling propositions down our throats. We can profile Australians as time poor and tech-savvy, looking for a reliable, quick sell…
So how do we achieve something with 1% of the space we once had and a trillion times more competitors?
Enter: the podcast.
US Comedian, Marc Maron, had been a respected stand-up comic for 20 years in 2009 but had never quite cleanly sliced through the masses to establish his secure, lucrative career. Ironically, Maron was divorced, recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and lived with his cats. In an attempt to generate interest in his stand-up tours and partly for self-amusement, he started interviewing his comedian friends in his garage, posting the resulting sound clips on iTunes. His following consisted of a handful of dedicated fans until his 20th interview when he interviewed Zach Galifianakis and numbers jumped. Soon after, he had dealings with Robin Williams, Conan O’Brien, Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller.
So if you’re not a comedian and you don’t have Robin Williams in your social circle, how is this relevant?
Podcasts on the whole are a great tool to communicate your message in the world we live in. Repeating yourself verbally is far more accepted and effective than reading the same thing in writing over and over again. Your forum is more relaxed and conversation achieves a deeper engagement. Moreover, when we’re always on the go - driving, meetings, working, emails, music, food, walking, family - popping on a podcast is convenient. It just works.
If we revisit that ‘151 rule, we can deduce that generally when we communicate to our target audience, the first 50 times people won’t hear. The second 50 times they won’t understand. The third 50 times they won’t believe you. Go back to “You’re On Top Of It, Or Are You?” which focuses on the ‘know > like > trust’ rule. It isn’t until your audience has heard it for that 151st time that they finally hear, understand, and think, “There must be something to this.”
Recording and posting a podcast on your website is cheap and uncomplicated. It adds a new dynamic for your target audience, changes the rules of engagement and will guaranteed reach new markets pending where you post your podcast. It may be a message from the Director, it may be to generate awareness about a particular product or service, it may be support to a campaign – it could be the campaign itself.
So where does one start when putting a podcast together? Points for you to consider are:
CONTEXTUAL DEFINING
How are you defining your product? What's the context? What's the frame of reference?
DESCRIBING QUALITIES
How are you describing your product? Which adjectives are best?
COMPARING AND CONTRASTING
What are the similar and varying qualities of your product? What are the most valuable qualities? Why?
CLASSIFYING
What are the main ideas and details in your information?
PART-WHOLE
Which parts and subparts make up the entire product/process?
SEQUENCING
In what order do these events occur?
CAUSE AND EFFECT
What are the causes and effects of these components in this order?
ANALOGIES
What is the guiding metaphor through this?
So tell them.
Then tell them again.
And then tell them again.
If your message is a good one, it will only get stronger with time.
- Sofia Margelis
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