At first glance, combining podcasts with micro marketing seems… well, bizarre. We think of podcasts as longer pieces of content, while micromarketing requires many smaller pieces of content. However, longer content like podcasts can actually be the perfect tools for micromarketing when you take the right approach. So what is micro marketing?
In fact, if you’re interested in micromarketing, we recommend creating larger content like podcasts as a core part of your strategy. If you’ve already got a podcast connected to your business, then you’re losing out on critical value if you’re not using it for micromarketing.
Let’s explain the connection and how you can use your podcast to get better digital marketing results.
Some call it content repurposing, others call it the GaryVee content model, but either way the core idea is taking large pieces of content and breaking them up into smaller pieces you can use for micromarketing. Something like a podcast (or even better, a video podcast) is ideal because it gives you options for creating smaller videos, images, blog posts, etc. to fuel your micromarketing efforts.
In essence, fueling your micromarketing with large juicy content pieces which you then repurpose gives you the best of both worlds. You have those large content pieces which can perform better as podcasts or on platforms like YouTube as well as all of those small pieces which excel on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
Because you’re deriving that smaller content from the large podcast you’ve already created, you’re in effect boosting the ROI from work you’ve already done. You can then develop a virtuous cycle by taking the learnings from your micromarketing and feeding it back into your podcast creation.
With all of those options, you can supercharge your marketing experimentation. The difference this makes is that instead of simply relying on differences in messaging to target specific communities on various platforms, you can mix messages and media types to better hone in on what works with those niche audiences. The more variables you can play with, the more actionable information you’ll be able to derive from your micromarketing.
As an important sidenote, if you’re not using statistical significance tests in your marketing, you need to read this refresher and start using them immediately. Otherwise, you’re at serious risk of taking the wrong conclusions from your data and making bad decisions based on it.
One of the greatest dangers of a micromarketing strategy is valuing quantity over quality. We’ve occasionally seen the “spray and pray” approach where the hope is that if you produce enough microcontent and target enough niche audiences, eventually you’ll get good results from at least a few of them. However, taking the time to gather feedback and build a more engaging relationship with these audiences pays off.
That’s why we believe in the less used form of testing which can also add a lot of value to your micromarketing: simply asking your audiences for their input.
One of the greatest challenges of testing in micromarketing is attribution and simply making sense of all the data you’re gathering. Understanding which metrics correlate with your key metrics is already difficult, but doing so at scale becomes even more challenging. You might be focusing on clicks, conversions, impressions, etc. but while this is valuable data it often leads marketers to ignore the simpler way of obtaining feedback from their audiences: asking them.
Our favorite technique is to start with an initial round of content and ask your audiences what resonates with them about it. If you’re using video or audio from podcasts, it’s a good idea to use slightly longer clips to start so you can then narrow down to find which portion performs best. Then, you can test the ideas you get from that audience feedback by making adjustments to your microcontent and putting out another round. We go into more detail about this process in our content repurposing guide.
Besides simply gathering data, this technique allows you to build stronger connections with those niche audiences by making your content more of a two-way street. So instead of simply throwing out microcontent and hoping that the niches you’re targeting respond well to it, you can be listening and engaging with those niche audiences.
Bringing everything we’ve discussed here together, here’s a glimpse into what using your podcast for micromarketing can look like.
Begin by creating a podcast episode. You’ll want to consider how you can incorporate themes and topics which you think will resonate with the niche audiences you want to target. Then, you need to break that episode up into smaller clips, images, quotes, etc. for each of the platforms and audiences you want to target.
Now, before you release all that microcontent, consider what you want to learn from it and design experiments. This will take a bit more time than simply throwing the content out there, but considering the time you’re saving by not needing to manually create all that microcontent, you’re likely coming out ahead.
Experiments in hand, put out the content and see how it performs (and asking your audiences for their feedback). Once you’ve got answers to those experiments, set up another round of experiments to further hone in on your initial conclusions. Make the necessary adjustments to your microcontent and then put out another round of content.
Now finish off with your conclusions and use them to both improve your other marketing and to make you next podcast episode better. Just like that, you’ve used podcasting, content repurposing, and micromarketing to build a powerful digital marketing cycle.
Of course not all marketing teams are ready for the complexity of this marketing technique. If you need some help understanding how you can use this strategy for your business, get in touch with us.