So you’ve decided to advertise on a podcast. This is exciting! You’re opening up your brand to the exposure you’ve been dreaming about and are looking forward to the uptick in business. As you scroll through different podcasts on one of the apps, you find one that you like, maybe one you listen to often. You contact the podcast directly or the agency they work with to start the process and… BAM, you’re in! You pay them with an eager glint in your eyes and you settle in for all the cash flow that’s about to start pouring in.
Until it doesn’t. You’re waiting and waiting and you realize it’s been thirty days since your ad aired and the only thing you’ve gotten is the sound of crickets… and maybe a lot of crumbs from the eating and waiting.
What happened?
You didn’t look at the audience.
Sure you found a popular podcast! Maybe you did the research on their average downloads and impressions. The problem is, if you sell a product geared toward working professionals but chose a podcast about gaming, you missed the mark by a mile.
While your ad read sounded amazing on that podcast, it fell on a 15-year-old’s Call of Duty obsessed ears. You yourself as a working professional may often listen to that podcast, but its listener base isn’t always going to be geared toward your product.
When picking a podcast for advertising, truly do the research on who is listening. Some podcasts and their agencies will provide you with the statistics of who is tuning in every week. So the next time you go through that list of podcasts on iTunes, consider not just how popular a podcast might be, but who is listening.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
