Are you looking for the ultimate way to build rapport with your prospects? The reason you should look into audio or video podcasts is simple: they build rapport. Tone of voice, body language, a lot has been said about it and it boils down to showing your true self, rather than words written by your copywriter. Whatever industry you’re in, would you agree that having a way to simply talk to your prospects, is worth inspecting? That’s exactly why podcasts work. You talk to them instead of expecting them to analyse your website. Yes, more than a thousand words, the cliche. When the economy is slow, Business Podcasts are a great tool to cut through the noise and to create real relationships with your network.
Business podcasts? What do we mean by that?
Let’s get our definitions straight. A podcast, traditionally, is anything we used to take with us on our “iPods”. Remember, before we had smartphones, we had smartphones you couldn’t use online and you couldn’t make calls with them. Yep. Those things. Obviously the smartphone revolution has made online content available 24/7, and we can access videos and audio clips whenever we want. So what’s a podcast? It’s a series of audiovisual elements (videos or audio files) that you would subscribe to, or follow on a regular basis. And a business podcast links to a specific niche, which makes it educational and informative, rather than entertaining.
Business podcasts for Affluence Private Wealth
One of our flagship podcast clients is Affluence Private Wealth in Perth. They are a boutique financial planning agency serving Doctors and Surgeons and offering specialised financial advice to professionals in the medical industry. A lot of this high level information requires constant education and that’s where business podcasts become a really powerful tool. The video podcasts allow prospects to get to know the Principal. The audio podcasts, in addition, are perfect for a mobile audience.
The result of this strategy, built on business podcasts and traditional blog articles, is a top-of-mind awareness for the Affluence Private brand, and a constant conversation with prospects and the target audience on social media.
This is an example of how we use the model of a radio interview, to create compelling and dynamic audio podcasts:
Audio or video?
Both audio and video podcasts have their own benefits and advantages. Video podcasts can be re-used as content for YouTube, and can be a powerful SEO object on a web page. Audio podcasts are good for “brand awareness”, simply because your listeners spend more time with your experts, and this builds a relationship. If I get interesting and relevant content by listening to your podcast, then I’ll start develop trust towards you as a person and towards your brand. It’s as simple as that, just like we trust certain TV and Radio presenters simply because they have been in that role for quite a while.
So what format do you choose? Choose video if building personal rapport is important for you. Video shows your authenticity, shows your body language. And if you do video with a big focus on authenticity, you’re actually putting yourself out there, as opposed to hiding behind a super corporate website and a logo. It’s you we see. And we know that the person we see on that screen, is going to be the person we will work with when we become a client.
Audio, as an additional format, works really well when we have already seen you in a video. We can now simply listen, and still pick up on personality because 70% of the communication happens through tone, the “body language of the human voice”. So again, compared to static copy, your audio podcast does a better job at engaging with people.
Here’s what similar content looks like when we turn it into a video podcast, published to YouTube and on the Affluence Private Wealth website:
Don’t stay behind
It’s easy to dismiss business podcasts as a tech style gadget. It’s easy to think you don’t need them because your clients don’t have time to watch videos. Or even, to think you don’t need them because you’re better than that. But how do you measure the amount of business you’re missing out on, by not having your podcasts show up in iTunes, on YouTube, and on your website? How many clients choose the other brand because they relate to the podcast content?
It’s time to at least have a serious conversation about your “podcast presence”, and to make sure that your brand is doing everything it can, to engage with potential prospects and current customers. So please get in touch with us to discuss your own approach to Business Podcasts.
Kris Borgraeve
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