Podcast Promotion (Another Advantage for Radio)

For the rest of 2022 and into the new year, NuVoodoo is releasing videos counting down the most important things we learned about podcasting in 2022. The countdown pairs up qualitative video interviews with podcast listeners and deep quantitative data from our podcast study this summer with nearly 1,700 regular podcast listeners nationwide. The combination of comments from users and projectable findings in charts and tables illuminate the findings. You can see the latest video – along with others – at nuvoodoo.com/podcasting.

This second video in the series sets up the mammoth challenge of podcast discovery. With millions of podcasts already released and tens of thousands of episodes released every month, podcast listeners rely on a multitude of sources to keep up with offerings they might enjoy. Part of that recommendation engine is served by the fact that podcast listeners love talking about podcasts to friends. However, 2022 finds many podcast listeners feeling that they don’t talk about podcasts as much as they used to – which is a major challenge for a new medium in search of its next mass-appeal hit.

While our data show that word-of-mouth is relied upon for recommendations by most podcast listeners, as many (or even more) now rely on social and digital media for ideas about what to listen to next. Of course, this is where broadcasters have a unique advantage as they build podcast audiences: their own mammoth on-air megaphones (and their listener databases, social media followers, and on and on). And once they’ve built a reliable audience using repurposed on-air content, broadcasters can broaden their offerings to satiate niche interests in the community (and new opportunities for marketing local businesses and other station clients).

The podcast opportunity can also revitalize public affairs programming. Content that used to be condemned to a single airing in the wee hours of Sunday morning can be retooled and offered as station podcasts. Community leaders being interviewed can share a link to the podcast with their constituents via their own email channels and their own websites. Not only can the wider distribution tie back to the station brand, but it can also reenergize the hosts and producers of public affairs programming.

When the targeted podcast audience diverges from the station’s audience (wrong demo, wrong lifestyle, etc.) or needs to expand beyond the station’s geographic footprint, carefully targeted digital media can get the word out on a budget. It’s a matter of using the right digital tools and the latest ad tech to get messages about podcast content to the right individuals. NuVoodoo Contextual AI is one such tool that can identify YouTube videos relevant to a targeted audience before running paid pre-roll.