Icey Dan
Power Member
- Nov 24, 2014
- 559
- 628
What's up BHW! Today I want to talk about Podcasts and how they can be used as a highly effective advertising channel. I will also talk about why Podcast marketing works so well plus provide some tips & advice for those who may be interested in trying this out.
I have been listening to a wide range of Podcasts for a couple of years. There are just so many interesting ones out there to explore these days and with Spotify, Apple Music etc... Podcast culture is only growing more every day and it has never been easier to discover new ones to listen to. But as a marketing geek I have always taken an interest in the ad reads that I often hear on a regular basis by the most popular Podcast shows. How much money are the advertisers paying for podcasts to promote their products/services? What kind of ROI's are typical? I have always been curious about this. So I decided to conduct my own case study to find out just how effective Podcast marketing really is. I will share my findings below.
What I did
Going into the case study, I already had a store to promote which saved me a lot of time. My friend and I run a hockey themed POD Shopify store where we sell custom hockey themed hooded blankets (website is hockeyaf.com for those who are curious). I planned to find some hockey related podcasts somehow and get an idea of what a paid ad read would cost.
Using listennotes.com, I was able to quickly search for hockey related podcasts that are out there. I made a list of the top 10 established ones I could find. Most of them have their contact information available to the public, so I emailed them one by one asking if they did paid ad reads and how much they charged. One of the Podcasts with 40K monthly listeners that I emailed replied back and offered me a 30 second ad read for $50 US. I jumped on it curious to see what kind of results I would get.
The results
I have to say I was pretty surprised with the results. On an initial $50 ad spend we got about 350 hits to the store - resulting in 4 sales ($85 profit ~ 42% ROI). Happy with my results out of the gate, I decided to scale it up a notch. The podcast I bought my first ad read releases episodes once a week - so bought ad reads for the following two weeks costing me $100 US. This time the results were still pretty good... After the two-week campaign had wrapped up we had received 742 total unique visitors to the site resulting in 7 sales ($157 profit ~ 37% ROI). Because of these results I have been running continuous advertisements on this Podcast for weeks now and have still been running a profit each time. I have now started exploring other podcasts and other niches to do this with since I now know this works.
Conclusion & Advice
The reason Podcast ad reads work so well is because of the trust factor at play. Think about it - If you were to stick to more traditional marketing methods like targeting users with Adsense or Facebook ads, they are likely going to keep scrolling because they don't know who you are and frankly they probably don't care. But if a Podcast they are already familiar with and enjoy listening to on a regular basis tells them about the same product, they are much more likely to show interest or purchase.
Lastly - the most important factor that I have discovered when it comes to having success with Podcast ad read promotions is the ad read copy that is read. Take the time to think about the audience that listens that the particular podcast and try and speak to them personally. Some humour mixed in can go a long way. Make sure to contact different podcasts and do your research on pricing. You can really luck out sometimes and find excellent deals. And don't be too fast to rule out a smaller sized Podcast. Sometimes the smaller ones have the most devoted and passionate audiences. As with anything in the online marketing world, testing is everything. But this works really well when you find the winning formula.
Hope this was helpful! Reply below if you have any feedback or questions.
I have been listening to a wide range of Podcasts for a couple of years. There are just so many interesting ones out there to explore these days and with Spotify, Apple Music etc... Podcast culture is only growing more every day and it has never been easier to discover new ones to listen to. But as a marketing geek I have always taken an interest in the ad reads that I often hear on a regular basis by the most popular Podcast shows. How much money are the advertisers paying for podcasts to promote their products/services? What kind of ROI's are typical? I have always been curious about this. So I decided to conduct my own case study to find out just how effective Podcast marketing really is. I will share my findings below.
What I did
Going into the case study, I already had a store to promote which saved me a lot of time. My friend and I run a hockey themed POD Shopify store where we sell custom hockey themed hooded blankets (website is hockeyaf.com for those who are curious). I planned to find some hockey related podcasts somehow and get an idea of what a paid ad read would cost.
Using listennotes.com, I was able to quickly search for hockey related podcasts that are out there. I made a list of the top 10 established ones I could find. Most of them have their contact information available to the public, so I emailed them one by one asking if they did paid ad reads and how much they charged. One of the Podcasts with 40K monthly listeners that I emailed replied back and offered me a 30 second ad read for $50 US. I jumped on it curious to see what kind of results I would get.
The results
I have to say I was pretty surprised with the results. On an initial $50 ad spend we got about 350 hits to the store - resulting in 4 sales ($85 profit ~ 42% ROI). Happy with my results out of the gate, I decided to scale it up a notch. The podcast I bought my first ad read releases episodes once a week - so bought ad reads for the following two weeks costing me $100 US. This time the results were still pretty good... After the two-week campaign had wrapped up we had received 742 total unique visitors to the site resulting in 7 sales ($157 profit ~ 37% ROI). Because of these results I have been running continuous advertisements on this Podcast for weeks now and have still been running a profit each time. I have now started exploring other podcasts and other niches to do this with since I now know this works.
Conclusion & Advice
The reason Podcast ad reads work so well is because of the trust factor at play. Think about it - If you were to stick to more traditional marketing methods like targeting users with Adsense or Facebook ads, they are likely going to keep scrolling because they don't know who you are and frankly they probably don't care. But if a Podcast they are already familiar with and enjoy listening to on a regular basis tells them about the same product, they are much more likely to show interest or purchase.
Lastly - the most important factor that I have discovered when it comes to having success with Podcast ad read promotions is the ad read copy that is read. Take the time to think about the audience that listens that the particular podcast and try and speak to them personally. Some humour mixed in can go a long way. Make sure to contact different podcasts and do your research on pricing. You can really luck out sometimes and find excellent deals. And don't be too fast to rule out a smaller sized Podcast. Sometimes the smaller ones have the most devoted and passionate audiences. As with anything in the online marketing world, testing is everything. But this works really well when you find the winning formula.
Hope this was helpful! Reply below if you have any feedback or questions.
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