Actually, there are a couple of recent posts by Mike that are insightful
reads and have spurred me to do some more thinking in this area. Partially
because I’m speaking to the IAB in New York on May 16 about The Future of
Podcasting, my mind is wondering what are the real nuggets I can pass
along to a largely corporate audience.
Mike’s two articles are:
Podcasting &
Marketing Communications
Marketing executives, wake up….and
tune in to podcasting….the ROI may be bigger than anything you have ever
seen for your media placement investments. ...
CMOs,
Ad Agencies, and Web Geeks
CMOs need to pay attention to the
changing landscape of internet media. But many say they don’t have
time.
I’ve worked with Mike so I have some insight on where
he’s coming from. He’s right in bringing up this issue with some fervor.
This Podcasting craze (wave, phase … whatever you want to call it) is
NOT going away. In fact, I predict it’s only going to get a lot larger.
Just start checking in at www.PodcastingNews.com EVERY DAY
and see what’s going on. One radio station after another and many
corporations are starting to test the waters with Podcasting. My guess is
that if you called up someone from one of those companies, they would say,
“Honestly, we just don’t know for sure yet, but we feel certain that if we
don’t start learning and testing, we’re going to be left way behind.”
There are many new topics to embrace – how to find
talent, how to produce the material in a Podcasting style, how to get it on
the web with RSS and downloading versus being totally dependent on
streaming, how to license the material, how to track results. Lots to learn
here, guys.
The trick is to not get fixated on the problems. Embrace
Podcasting AND incorporate it into your mix of tools and channels for
marketing your message a little at a time. Yeah, it’s different.
Podcasting isn’t like buying banner ads where you hand it off to
someone else and hope for results - load and go – and wait until the
money is burned up in the budget. Ok, I know I’m being a little hard here
’cause there are people who pay close attention to results from banner
ads. But really, deep in your heart, do you think the end results you get
from spending all that money are paying off? Chances are you know you’re not
doing all you can with the web. Well, here is a chance to do more.
Get familiar with RSS, learn about Podcasting. Go out
and buy an MP3 player or splurge on an iPod. Get into the spirit of what’s
going on with people in their 20s and 30s who don’t think twice about
listening to their MP3 players instead of watching TV, listening to the
radio or even buying CDs.
Don’t let your mind get in there and say, “Well, my
products and services are high-end or only business-to-business, so I don’t
have a need for audio or Podcasting.” How sure are you of that – really?
Do some testing. Take it slow. Be leery of
agencies that want to steer you away from Podcasting – what may be
under that push-away is a complete lack of knowledge and experience on their
part. Take a look at the agency and find out if anyone there is blogging. In
my book, if the agency isn’t blogging and can’t even point you to a client
of theirs whom they set up to blog – then it’s highly unlikely they will
have a clue what to do with Podcasting.
What Mike is saying with such wisdom in that second
article is: ‘Don’t panic.’ Find a way to work together. Get with your
agency, pull in a geek from your business – you know, the person who REALLY
knows how things work – get the three of you together and start talking.
Start experimenting.
This new era of one-to-one marketing or ‘peercasting’ is
so drastically different from ‘broadcasting’ that it’s going to take time to
learn. The best way to learn is to test. Remember all those marketing tests
for a website’s look and feel, the landing pages to bring in leads? You did
the same thing in the past when you learned about the web. Be creative, have
fun and test.
Tom
