Look out TV, move over radio, there is new a guy in town. Podcasting is the name, and reaching hundreds of thousands of consumers is the game. Internet audio is no longer just for computer geeks. Itīs for every talk show junkie who missed his favorite program; itīs for the disabled or lazy person who listens to books on tape; itīs for the student thatīs taking their professorīs lecture to the beach, and itīs for the consumer that wants to hear or learn just about anything that fits his fancy - from hobbies, to business, to Internet marketing.
How do you reach these consumers? There are two ways: One is to sponsor or advertise on fairly broad, or niche Podcasts, and two, to create a Podcast for likely customers that will benefit from hearing about your company and/or your product.
Letīs look at advertising first. There are four basic types of advertisements: 30, 60, 90-second, and two-minute commercials. And for sponsorships, a five to ten-second announcement either before or after the program airs, or both. Direct marketers know one thing that most college grads with marketing degrees donīt know: and that is, that long copy always outperforms short copy. If you have a compelling two-minute commercial, you have an excellent chance of not only reaching new customers, but making sales at the same time. Why? Because by the time they come to your website site, they are already hungry for more information or your product.
There are three main spaces to have your advertisement placed in a Podcast: at the beginning before the content begins to air, somewhere during the show, and at the end after the show is completed. If you choose at the end of the show, then you would want to be announced as a sponsor, not necessarily air a commercial. Chances are, you wonīt get heard if you do.
Also one thing you may want to insist on, and that is to ask the Podcaster to have a "sponsorīs page." Why? Because your commercial may not be aired in every Podcast, and if the Podcaster is directing the listener to the sponsorīs page during his or her program, chances are youīll be found.
Finding Podcasts to advertise in is not all that difficult. The best place to start is at a Podcasting directory such as podseek.net. Podseek is a directory of Podcasts broken down by categories. So letīs say you sell PC accessories, look in the "Computers and Internet" section for Podcasts related to computers. Find one or several podcasts, and contact the producer of the show and find out what they want to advertise. Chances are good the cost will be about 1/10th of the cost of airing on the radio.
The second way to find new customers is to produce your own Podcast. Producing your own takes a lot of planning and pre-production, and may require you to hire a Podcasting producer. If you go this route you will have to do some kind of advertising to let the consumers know that it exists. Should you choose this option, the best tools you can have would be the following: Wordpress blogging software, the podpress plug-in for Wordpress, Audacity (which is free), or Adobe audition, which is a Podcasting authoring environment, a good quality microphone, and a good web host that gives you plenty of disk space for your recordings. You wil also need lots of bandwidth so that many people can listen to your production without your website being shut down for exceeding the maximum amount of downloads.
Even though Podcasting is still in its infancy, itīs here to stay. Podcasting allows you to be mobile. Itīs portable, meaning it can be played on any MP3 player or iPod. You can find just about any topic you want to listen to, and youīre not restrained to having to wait until a certain time of the day.
How do you reach these consumers? There are two ways: One is to sponsor or advertise on fairly broad, or niche Podcasts, and two, to create a Podcast for likely customers that will benefit from hearing about your company and/or your product.
Letīs look at advertising first. There are four basic types of advertisements: 30, 60, 90-second, and two-minute commercials. And for sponsorships, a five to ten-second announcement either before or after the program airs, or both. Direct marketers know one thing that most college grads with marketing degrees donīt know: and that is, that long copy always outperforms short copy. If you have a compelling two-minute commercial, you have an excellent chance of not only reaching new customers, but making sales at the same time. Why? Because by the time they come to your website site, they are already hungry for more information or your product.
There are three main spaces to have your advertisement placed in a Podcast: at the beginning before the content begins to air, somewhere during the show, and at the end after the show is completed. If you choose at the end of the show, then you would want to be announced as a sponsor, not necessarily air a commercial. Chances are, you wonīt get heard if you do.
Also one thing you may want to insist on, and that is to ask the Podcaster to have a "sponsorīs page." Why? Because your commercial may not be aired in every Podcast, and if the Podcaster is directing the listener to the sponsorīs page during his or her program, chances are youīll be found.
Finding Podcasts to advertise in is not all that difficult. The best place to start is at a Podcasting directory such as podseek.net. Podseek is a directory of Podcasts broken down by categories. So letīs say you sell PC accessories, look in the "Computers and Internet" section for Podcasts related to computers. Find one or several podcasts, and contact the producer of the show and find out what they want to advertise. Chances are good the cost will be about 1/10th of the cost of airing on the radio.
The second way to find new customers is to produce your own Podcast. Producing your own takes a lot of planning and pre-production, and may require you to hire a Podcasting producer. If you go this route you will have to do some kind of advertising to let the consumers know that it exists. Should you choose this option, the best tools you can have would be the following: Wordpress blogging software, the podpress plug-in for Wordpress, Audacity (which is free), or Adobe audition, which is a Podcasting authoring environment, a good quality microphone, and a good web host that gives you plenty of disk space for your recordings. You wil also need lots of bandwidth so that many people can listen to your production without your website being shut down for exceeding the maximum amount of downloads.
Even though Podcasting is still in its infancy, itīs here to stay. Podcasting allows you to be mobile. Itīs portable, meaning it can be played on any MP3 player or iPod. You can find just about any topic you want to listen to, and youīre not restrained to having to wait until a certain time of the day.
