Why Podcasts are a Vital Part of Experiential Marketing

Hate it or love it, the attention economy has grown, and so has the need for brands to communicate their purpose and offer “value-based” marketing. It’s no longer enough to make ads for your products – brands must now tell stories that best embody who and what they want their customers to feel.

What is Experiential Marketing?

In Experiential Marketing (XM), these stories take on the form of brand awareness, which manifest in various shapes:

  • Big sponsorships

  • Brand events

  • Video displays

  • Regular displays

Even Virtual Reality activations can fall under XM. More than ever, we are seeing brands compete for authentic interactions – and spending more money doing it.

As per Forbes, “According to the Freeman Global Brand Experience study, more than a third of CMOs said they plan to spend 21% to 50% of their budgets on brand experiences over the next several years.” Coupled with Deloitte’s prediction that the global podcasting market will increase by 30 percent to reach US$1.1 billion in 2020, a branded podcast is only a natural fit into the brand experiential marketing mix.

There are big business and big opportunity for branded podcasts. So let’s look at five reasons why they deserve a seat at the XM table.

1. Podcasts are quantitative

The lifeblood of XM activation is the total impressions, customer interactions, and touch-points of the brand to the consumer. This is often the only measurable ROI in XM and goes back to a simple concept: build it and they will come, and you will define success by how many came.

Rarely in experiential marketing is there an opportunity to sell or for the consumer to actually purchase anything; rather, it’s an experience for them powered by the brand.

Enter podcasts.

Audio success is measured in many ways, and in no greater sense than its total impressions. A truly impactful brand podcast will not only draw in listeners, subscribers, and downloads, but it will also leave a massive crater of brand recall as it climbs the charts – even amongst those who didn’t even listen!

2. Podcasts are also qualitative

Another crucial element of experiential marketing is the true feeling and emotion created by the activation. To measure this, marketers must rely on surveys meant to measure the impact of the event, or some other form of in-field analysis to tell them if they moved the needle. Often, the result is ambiguous – and yet, this does not deter big brands from renewing sponsorships and allocating big budgets to experiential marketing again in the following years.

In podcasts, we’re faced with the same question – “does this particular experience with the brand actually change perceptions and move the needle?” – which we can answer by looking at the show’s digital data and metrics such as reviews and total organic reach and listens. If the feeling was positive, we’ll know right away.

3. Podcasts create emotional connections

The magic term in today’s marketing circles: emotional connection. Marketers want people to feel something when they interact with a brand, as it will lead to greater returns down the road. And not just in traditional mediums (TV, Print) – but also with blogs and social media. With many marketers relying on smartphones as the doorway to the eyeballs, their efforts have been forced to escalate on the emotional scale to hit the “shareworthy” notes.

But with podcasts, we don’t need to rely on eyeballs. We don’t need to hit the same emotional notes as Instagram influencers, targeted search ads, or even viral videos.

Because podcasts are audio-based. And audio is personal and intimate. A podcast is a marketing medium where the audience has chosen to put all other smart apps aside and dedicate their attention to a completely different sense. We think Michael Barbaro, host of The Daily podcast says it best:

“When you strip away everything else but the voice and you have the intimacy of these earbuds, or you’re in your car at five a.m. on a dark road listening. There’s just something pure about it.”

— Michael Barbaro, Host of The Daily

4. Podcasts are immersive

Podcasts can capture attention for at least 5-10 minutes, if not up to an hour or more, so by nature, they are quite immersive. But they also speak to a much greater immersion for listeners: that of community and belonging.

“Community. It’s a word – if not the word – that the podcasting industry was built on. Creators and listeners found a place to connect with people, no matter how far away, who are interested and passionate about the same thing as them. And not in a quick high-five kind of way, but in a way that connects people with long, deep, meaningful conversations.”

— Voxnest, 2019 Report The State of the Podcast Universe

We’ve seen this alluring connection happen first hand – when we launched the podcast for Saje Natural Wellness and paired it with an in-store activation. And Saje wasn’t the only one.

Sephora, one of the world’s largest personal care and beauty stores in the world, took their XM to the next level by launching a podcast with Girlboss Radio to celebrate a special production collection. The #LIPSTORIES podcast was launched to celebrate Sephora’s collection (also called #LIPSTORIES) of 40 lipsticks that were inspired by real-life stories. This podcast flew to the top of the fashion and beauty Apple podcast charts.

Trader Joes launched lnside Trader Joes to give a rare behind-the-scenes look at the history of the company, its products, and inner workings. It launched in the top 5 on the Apple charts and has not slowed down since. For a company known to be uber secretive, a podcast was the only way to give their cult followers what they really wanted – and make them even more cult crazy

5. Podcasts are a bold (and worthy) way to spend a marketing budget

Have you personally ever experienced Virtual Reality (VR)? On a consumer level, it actually dates all the way back to 1995 with Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, meaning it’s been waiting for mass-market adoption for over 25 years. And despite major advances in hardware, software, and overall creativity, it has yet to really catch on.

To date, we’ve seen brands like Ikea, Nat Geo, ANA, Oreo, Volvo, and even Boursin (the cheese brand) develop VR activations for consumers. Worthy efforts no doubt, but it’s not cheap to develop and map 3D environments. But these brands persist, as VR is seen as a bold and innovative medium.

Podcasting is bold too – it’s not traditional like other XM tactics – but unlike VR, it is already a mass-adopted medium, with measurable results, success stories, and a much lower price of entry.

Getting started in XM podcasting

Ready to get started? There are many ways to integrate a podcast into your current XM efforts – they can either complement each other, or the activations can serve as the actual content of the podcast.

Here are some thought starters for a few industries:

Food Retail Brands

Taking a page from Costco’s book, podcast XM is a great opportunity to deliver an in-store experience for food brand consumers. This could take the shape of a podcast about different taste testing/activation stations (think Pepsi vs Coke in the mid-1990s), interviews with customers, or even live podcast events in the store.

Lifestyle Retail Brands

Companies with their own brick and mortars have an opportunity to make every store visit one to remember – and a podcast can play a huge part in that experience. Take it from one of our clients, Saje Natural Wellness, who used in-store podcast plays as part of a strategy that helped them top the charts!


Travel & Tourism Brands

Destination marketing already has XM in its roots (every vacation is an experience onto itself) and podcasting only enhances that. Pre-trip podcasts at home, in the car, in-hotel/airport listening ports, or even podcasts hosted live at large events (like Condé Nast Traveler’s Women Who Travel podcast) or in amazing destinations could fall under a strong XM strategy.

How Brands Are Elevating Experiential Marketing With Podcasts

Podcasts aren’t new, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t full of opportunities. It may not even be fair to categorize them as XM, since they offer so much more when it comes to brand lift and emotional connection with audiences.

In fact, we believe podcasts are a superior form of XM. Podcasts are not only a measurable form of an immersive and emotionally captivating marketing medium, but they can also offer a greater return on investment compared to other XM campaigns such as displays and sponsorships.

A branded podcast can become a consumer’s favorite new podcast among thousands of competitors – can we say the same about street teams and VR? Unlikely.

Roger Nairn is Co-Founder and CEO of JAR Audio

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