The different forms of audio marketing
It is fair to say that when most businesses think of audio marketing they jump straight to radio advertising, and why not? Radio stations in your local area have good listener figures and boast a success rate when the advert is right!
However there are many other forms of marketing with audio and I will run through the different options that can help take your business to the next level. Whatever your budget is, even if you don’t have one, there are some great options available to you.
Let’s start with the one we have already mentioned and work through the different options, features and there benefits.
Radio Advertising: Whether it is national, local or community radio; advertising on radio is very effective when you get the creative in the advert correct. It can be drastically ineffective at times too but when done correctly radio boasts an 8 times ROI (Local radio says for every £1 spent you make £8 back).
Internet radio and DAB are becoming increasingly popular and overall radio advertising is going to be a strong match for you if you are looking to hit large numbers who listen daily. However, do be aware of wastage in those numbers. Especially when you look at national or large TSA local stations, ensure that the audience you are going for whether it is geographic or demographic is the best fit to that radio station. (For example: If you are looking to sell more banana’s at your fruit and veg store in a local village, there is a very high wastage when broadcasting on a local radio station that might cover the entire county).
Podcasts: Whilst podcasts are not a new phenomenon, advertising on them is growing and there are plenty of reasons why. You can become a sponsor on a show often with adverts inserted into the program at the beginning and in the middle (called pre-roll and mid-roll).
There are also companies seeing the benefit in creating entire podcast series of their own, as content marketing. We all know the strength of content marketing, and these principles transfer to podcasts as marketing perfectly. The listener builds trust with the podcast host or show, and whilst a podcast might not have the listener numbers a local radio station or national radio station does; it has an incredibly active and attentive listener base.
Figures from recent surveys show that as high as 60% of podcast listeners would buy a product they heard on a podcast they love, and a further 80% of them went on to search a product online that they had heard on a podcast.
Another huge benefit of sponsoring or even creating a podcast for your business is that they can cover a very niche subject area that may be relevant to your business. A martial arts series for example has extremely loyal fans who mostly take part in some form of martial art; what better place to advertise your martial arts equipment store.
Music Players (Spotify / Deezer): If you want to hear a particular song, or listen to a playlist of your own music; Spotify or its similar competitors is the place to go! That means there are huge listener bases that you could advertise to here. There are often different levels of membership to these subscription sites and the free options often insert adverts in between tracks. Spotify have recently reported 100 million active users worldwide, so advertising on these platforms is sure to give you a good slice of that pie.
Those that do pay however have adverts removed from the service for their donations. How do you reach them? Here is a top FREE tip for your company to advertise to those users for nothing, and it is simple. Within these music players, users share their playlists and you can do exactly the same.
Tip: Create a Spotify playlist relevant to your business. i.e. For a gym – running songs or for a bed sales company – help you sleep songs. Be creative with it and share it with all of your employees to start it off. You can even upload your own artwork and name it with your business name included and the best bit: it is completely free to do!
Audiobooks: Now those of you that listen to audiobooks will know that they don’t have adverts plastered before or in them, especially if you get them from a big store like audible. However, I am sure whilst you have looked across the web at different ways to market your company; many people have said to create an e-book.
Well an audiobook is even better, give them not only the great content but in a nice downloadable parcel that they can listen to on the way to work or whilst washing the car. It is a fantastic content marketing tool and who is not to say you cannot put your own adverts for your business in your audiobook. There are even avenues for you to create revenue with this after building an active audience. A great audiobook I have been listening to lately and a good example of this is: Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestly (http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Business/Oversubscribed-Audiobook/B013KCG5DA)
Free audio learning resources: Do you have something to teach or expertise in an area that could help people? Then create a free audio learning resource, granted these are very similar to an audiobook or podcast but can be distributed differently and are a great marketing tool. Embed snippets of audio into your website teaching them how to re-upholster a chair (for fabric companies), or how to make a basic soap (for luxury soap companies).
There are companies that will create this content for you, or do it yourself simply with a microphone or even good smart phone.
Interviews: Most of the options above require time or money, however this one doesn’t take much of either of those. One of the best ways to market your product is to talk about it, so why not appear on other peoples audio platforms to talk about your product. You can appear on others podcasts as a guest, be interviewed by local and national radio stations, or even release audio of yourself being interviewed on your website.
Conclusion:
I think it is fair to say there are many different ways you can use audio to market, the more types of content you use the more powerful your efforts will be. Regardless of its location; audio content speaks to an audience. That audience, in turn, listens, shares, learns and converts.
If you would like to discuss any of these options and how we can help you deliver them, please do get in touch chris@abruptaudio.com