How You Can Make Money From Podcasting For Local Business

Let’s face it, most of the people go into podcast as a hobby. They contribute many funny and somewhat valuable contents for free. Maybe they got hundreds of subscribers who share the common interests. But they rarely make good amount of money. Did you know that you can turn it to a revenue generating marketing channel?

First of all, what is podcasting?

In a nutshell, podcasting is a form of blogging that utilizes the spoken word and/or video as the method of delivery as compared to traditional blogging which utilizes the written text.  However, it should be noted that podcasting is not used for just “blogging” . Some companies/businesses have used podcasting as a means of communication, as well as a vehicle for their marketing activities. With its rapidly growing popularity, podcasting is seen by some as the future of radio and radio broadcasts.

Technically speaking, podcasting is a method of delivering series of digital content (primarily audio and video) through the net for listening and viewing on digital media players/devices and computers (desktops and laptops).

Podcast differ from the traditional downloading of media files (though websites and web browsers) such that they rely on RSS feeds (just like blogs and news feeds) which automatically notifies the end-users, particularly subscribers, of new releases/episodes and automatically downloads the material to the user’s preferred device without the user having to revisit the site on which the files are hosted.

How do you make money by podcast marketing?

For local businesses, no matter what you provide (product or service), it’s the best way to use podcast to brand you and your business. You can do this by providing podcast subscribers with valuable content/information, for free.

Just go all out and do your best to earn the trust of your subscribers. And while you’re at it, briefly talk about your brand, talk about your products or services once in a while. Just don’t rub it in, don’t smother your audience with it.

Don’t worry you won’t see any new leads for your local business for the first few weeks or even months. Once you’ve earned your subscribers’ trust, it’s highly probable that when your subscribers would need the products or services you are offering, they will go to you rather than go look for them some place else. And that’s where you’ll get your revenue.

What’s great about podcasting is that you can use this brand building techniques in combination with other techniques such as paid (extra) contents and advertising, thus maximizing your podcasting earning potential.

Dentist, Are You Ready For The Relationship Marketing?

The other day I received a mail newsletter from one of the local dental practices. It is the only newsletter I’ve ever received for the past couple of years. I was curious enough to go through every articles and news there. I would agree that they have done a great job, not only by delivering valuable information but by building its brands. Although it is costly to do that mail-out campaign, it is effective in building relationship between patience and its practice- just by that 2-page color printed newsletter.

As a matter of fact, dental patience tends to easily switch to new practice every time they see a coupon somewhere. While most of the dental practices have been aware of that, they fail to use various marketing ways to build the brand loyalty with their existing customers.

We are talking about relationship marketing more and more. Because to acquire new customers takes about 80% of the time, effort and money, but the revenue which generated is only 20% or less at the beginning. With the royalty relationship building up, we are going to generate more and more revenue.

There are some online relationship marketing tools other than those traditional ones. For example, email newsletters, coupon offers, rewards program, sweepstakes, etc. Stats show that over 90% of the people download or print coupon in the email; over 75% of people will purchase product offline because of the information he gathered from emails; over 70% of people will click the link to read company or brand content; and over 65% of people will share and forward the coupon in an email to their networking.

We also need to change the way of just thinking about coupon-based incentives to building brand loyalty based on more intangible, emotional values. Cone found that users developed positive feelings toward brands they felt they could interact with on new media channels. New media channels include videos, audios, photos, blogs, online social networks (i.e. twitter, facebook) and so on.

According to a survey conducted in September 2009, 74% of the respondents agreed that after interacting with companies or brands with new media, they generally have a more positive impression of the company or brand; and 70% of the respondents said that they are willing to engage with company or brand who has a presence in new media.

It is our goal as an online marketer to create on-going conversations with your new and existing customers to build brand royalty by various online relationship marketing tools.