As more people become stuck indoors and face looming job layoffs or financial stresses, you might be wondering how you’ll manage to engage with your customers and draw in new ones.
Although the situation is indeed grim, podcasting might be the best tool in your toolkit for maintaining – and even boosting! – your business during COVID-19.
The reasons for this are varied, so let’s go over them now.
Brand Connection is Critical
Right now, it’s much more difficult for brands, and especially online or small businesses, to get the same visibility and customer connection that they use to.
People are leaving their homes less, spending more time in quarantine, and overall are spending less money.
Because of this, many smaller online businesses are struggling to remain in the minds of their primary customers or users. Keeping relevant in the daily lives of one’s main consumers is critical if you want to stay afloat. For businesses that primarily reach their audience through exposure beyond the home, this point is even more true.
To that end, using a podcast to reach out to your primary audience might be a wise idea.
It’s a way to remind your core followers that you still exist and are dedicated to providing the same level of quality and service you did before COVID-19 struck. Think of podcasting as another avenue for brand recognition and awareness.
Effort is Recognized
Another benefit of podcasting during this current crisis is that those dedicated followers for consumers for your business or brand will notice that you are still putting in lots of effort through your podcast.
We’re talking about your dedicated fans or consumer base, those who follow all your product or company pages, and who love to try out whatever new product you produce.
For these diehards, nothing is more inspiring and faith-affirming than seeing you continue to turn out excellent content and engage with your consumers or fans.
Podcasting is one way to show that you’re still just as focused on providing for your audience as before.
This core audience will also appreciate being able to connect with you more frequently over the podcast format then they might have been able to before.
Bringing a brand or company into their home during quarantine is a great way to connect on a deeper level.
It also helps people feel like they’re back in their routine. For instance, if someone typically engaged with your brand while at work, but they now listen to your podcast at home. Chances are even better they’ll become a diehard follower now that they’ve encountered your stuff in two separate locations.
You Can Continue Marketing
Podcasting during COVID-19’s sweep through society offers you a unique opportunity to continue marketing and even expand your marketing platform.
Many people already recognize the benefits that podcasting provides to a dedicated marketing team. It produces content relatively cheaply and reaches a much wider audience than you can with many other content creation methods.
Making and maintaining a podcast during this time will ensure that your marketing efforts don’t need to stall or shut down. You can continue reaching out and collecting new customers or followers through smart podcast topics and great production value.
You can also keep the current customers or followers you already have engaged with your brand or product by producing meaningful and relevant content in podcast format.
This prevents customer or follower “bleeding” as people stay inside and start to engage less with some companies or brands.
Podcasting is also a great way to announce new services or products in your company or brand in a more organic way than flat advertising or newsletter.
Many people are looking for something to take up the time of the day if they are forced to stay at home and don’t have anything major going on.
Listening to a podcast for a few hours is a more engaging way to think about your company.
Podcasts Provide a Real Social Benefit
There are capitalistic benefits and major advantages that podcasts can possibly provide your business during COVID-19. However, making a podcast during this stressful period has a more abstract benefit that shouldn’t be understated.
Making a podcast gives people something to do and helps alleviate the boredom and day-to-day worries.
Podcasts are already one of the most popular forms of entertainment to proliferate throughout the last decade. They’re probably only going to become more important as the years go on. Making one now not only serves your business but also serves the community at large.
This is especially true if you make a podcast that isn’t directly relevant to your business or a new product push.
Instead, making a podcast purely to entertain your diehard customers or followers can give them a little levity where they might otherwise be struggling. Of course, this also benefits your business and lets your followers know that you’re a human just like them, too.
Conclusion
All in all, podcasting might be the best tool to employ during the COVID-19 period of social distancing.
You can make podcast content much more cheaply than other marketing or brand awareness campaigns. This way you can reach a very wide audience with your episodes.
Marketing and brand engagement are great. Still, there are few ways for you to personally connect with your audience as organically as through a podcast.
