80%: The Power of Podcasts

Everyone knows consumers have short attention spans.

Their focus wanes faster than a goldfish. 

You have three to eight seconds to engage them in video.

It’s even shorter on social: The longstanding rule of thumb is that if you don’t grab them in 1.7 seconds, they’ll keep scrolling (thus was born the concept of ‘thumb-stopping creative’).

So obviously consumers are super fickle… right?

Maybe not.

You’ve probably heard this by now: Podcasts helped to turn the election. Both presidential candidates prioritized alternative media, and podcasts in particular, over sitdown interviews with legacy media outlets in the campaign’s final weeks. And none other than Joe Rogan may have helped to sway the final outcome.

In short, podcasts have never been more powerful.

Why? Because despite all the data (and hand-wringing) about the fleeting attention spans of consumers, they actually do care deeply about details. About long-lasting engagements. About relationships.

That’s why this stat is so important: 80%.

That’s the estimated number of consumers who listen to all or most of every podcast they start, according to Buzzsprout, which tracks consumer podcast behavior. There are an estimated 546 million podcast listeners worldwide, and 135 million in the U.S., according to Backlinko, so if the average length of the 6 million-plus podcasts out there these days is 38 minutes, and 4 out of 5 podcast listeners listen to most or all of each episode, well, we might have to rethink just how fickle consumers are.

Which probably explains why U.S. ad spend on podcasts is expected to top $2 billion this year.

Naturally, many brands want to start their own podcasts. But should you? And how do you launch a podcast that can grow and sustain an audience — and that will find itself on the right side of that 80% deep-engagement metric?

Interested in podcasting but don’t know where to start?

How to Start a Successful Podcast

Here are lessons we’ve learned from publishing Higher Voltage and Trusted Voices, both podcasts on the Volt podcast network (and, incidentally, lessons that have informed EK’s own forthcoming video podcast series):

1. Define your success metrics: Why, exactly, do you want a podcast? What will it do for your brand? Is it about driving engagement and increasing brand awareness? Connecting with current or prospective customers? Becoming commercially viable by generating ad sales? Know what you want to get out of it before you decide to explore the feasibility of actually doing it.
2. Assess the demand: Before you buy your microphones and fun chotchkes for your at-home-office-background, make sure there’s an audience who actually wants your content. Do your competitors have podcasts? What type of engagement do those podcasts get? If your direct competitors don’t, are there podcasts in similar/adjacent spheres to what you do? How do they perform on social (since podcast metrics are usually proprietary and not available to the public)? Do you have an active social media presence and following to broadcast your podcast to? If you do your homework and find both demand and an audience to reach, you can continue the exploratory process. 
3. Define your topics: First off, in most cases an audience does not care about your brand, and they probably aren’t going to tune in to find out about your product offerings. So what will your podcast be about? What editorial pillars — clusters of topics — will you build your content around? What are those topics that are going to be relevant to your audience in their professional or personal lives? Once you’ve answered those questions, put that framework to the test by mapping out your first 10 episodes. If you’re struggling to do that, you might want to rethink your concept. If you sail past it, and you’re excited about where each of those conversations will go, press on.
4. Create your content governance structure: Who on your team will have which responsibilities when it comes to brainstorming new episode topics, identifying potential guests, contacting and scheduling those guests, producing the recording of the podcast and then editing it, getting any necessary approvals, and then publishing it? Who will be in charge of creating the necessary social media collateral that will support it, and then pushing that content out? If you don’t know the answers to all of these questions, things will go off the rails pretty quickly.
5. Invest in resources: Is your podcast going to be produced in-person? Virtually? Do you have the people and platforms to record and edit a podcast? We use Riverside.fm for our podcasts on Volt as a recording platform, which is great for remote recording and has great editing tools, and we also rely on support from our parent company at Center City Film & Video to edit our episodes. Your host will need a high-quality mic, and you’ll want to make sure your guests have good mics too.
6. Have good hosts: Hosting a public-facing conversation isn’t for everyone. Your host or hosts will need to be amiable, conversational and quick on their feet. If you’re going with multiple hosts, they should have a really good rapport so that their conversations and banter can become their own draw. 
7. Create a safe space: Podcasts thrive because people want to listen to smart people talk about interesting topics, sharing their personal experiences, insights and perspectives. But people open up most easily when they feel comfortable. So it is essential that the host, as well as everyone involved in the production of your podcast, be bought into the idea of open, frank conversations that go beyond polished talking points and allow people the grace to present themselves authentically.
8. Promote the heck out of it: Belying that 80% completion stat is the fact that, in order for them to listen to your podcast in full, they have to first click on it. Which means you do have to create, yes, thumb-stopping creative to promote it. That means cutting up great soundbites to push out on your most relevant social channels, posting those clips and full-length episodes to YouTube to boost discovery, and putting them onto your website and into your newsletter. 
9. Know that it takes time: Building an audience doesn’t happen overnight. It may take weeks or even months to cross whatever your lowest threshold is of engagement, followers, etc. But if you are confident that the conversations you are putting out into the world are useful and rightly targeted for your audience — that they are helpful, inspiring, entertaining, etc. — then be patient, keep putting one foot in front of the other (read: one episode regularly published after the other) and have confidence that you will gain traction.

Podcasts have proven their worth as a powerful way to drive deep, meaningful engagement. And since consumers are 76% more likely to buy the services of companies they feel connected to, a podcast might make sense for your brand. Just make sure you do it right.

Thinking About Starting a Podcast?

Want to talk about whether podcasting is right for you? Let’s chat.