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Branded Podcast Production Best Practices
The best practices to produce a branded podcast are to own a topic and tell a story, use the correct tone of voice, and invest in audio quality. The three are focused on successfully delivering to the customer an experience that educates, entertains, and connects with the audience. The ultimate objective is to deliver the "call to action" imperceptibly to the costumer.
Own a Topic and Tell a Story
- Educate customers, entertain them, and pique their curiosity that must be the main objective of a branded podcast, promotion of the brand must be minimal. The customer will be "hooked" by hearing and watching authentic stories, likable hosts, and fresh insights.
- Taking care of these factors helps when building a dedicated audience that, throughout the show, eventually becomes genuinely interested in what your company has to offer. The art is in delivering the "call to action" imperceptibly to the costumer.
Application in Branded Podcast Production
- Typically, the brands like Blue Apron apply this best practice mixing investigative reporting with storytelling to provide fresh insights, besides in their podcast "Why We Eat What We Eat" they benefit from a host with a bit of influencer power: Cathy Erway, renowned food writer, and blogger.
- Inviting trusted and renowned guests, including CEOs from some of the largest companies in the world and experts in the niche topic of the podcast, will create trust in the customer.
- Select a niche topic and build a complete overview of it. For example, if the brand sells antivirus software, the podcast can include subjects like how easy it is getting hacked today. It can even include a reference to pop culture where this situation is shown. That would be excellent.
- The ultimate objective is to present the brand as a provider for solutions. Inviting experts into the discussion helps to present the brand as helpful, honest, and dedicated. A brand that costumers can trust.
Use the Correct Tone of Voice
- Determine the kind of audience to whom the podcast is aimed to like children, parents, millennials, professionals in a specific area, the general public, etc. Based on this preliminary study, the narrator/host voice must be selected; consider whose tone of voice matches the brand’s emotional context.
Application in Branded Podcast Production
- Brands like Tinder, typically apply this practice focusing on having an excellent relatability, this is a strength to their podcast called: DTR. Also, the host's female tone of voice used on their podcast is pleasant, sensual to the ears, and invites the audience to engage until the end.
- Take into consideration that low-pitched voices promote trust, whereas voices in a higher register formulate a more lighthearted appeal. Children or young voices spark sympathy and enthusiasm, while older voices promote family-oriented attributes such as advice, wisdom, and authority.
- In the podcast production, both the guest and the host must prepare the speech and create guidelines about this topic before jumping cold into production. This is done to ensure that the correct tone of voice will transmit the ideal message on each part of the podcast.
- After pilot podcast production, but before releasing it to the audience, it is important to run a testing phase letting a small sample (100-300 costumers) of your audience listen to the podcast to know their reactions and thoughts about it. Based on the feedback, you can make adjustments to the podcast.
Invest in Audio Quality
- High quality, which in audio’s context equals perfect ease of listening and a sense of naturalness, promotes positive judgment and response to the content presented. Conversely, lousy quality has the exact opposite outcome and diminishes credibility to the podcast.
- The ultimate objective of having high quality in a branded podcast is to provide to the customer an intimate venue for listening and a smooth passage of branded information, where the listeners perceive themselves almost as a part of the conversation.
Application in Branded Podcast Production
- This practice is typically applied using the best audio equipment possible to achieve the high-quality sound requirement, as an example for this the McAfee brand in their podcast titled "Hackable." High-quality audio equipment was used to get this recording. It can be heard in episode 1 of their podcast.
- In short, use external microphones, edit the conversation audio professionally, ensure the audio levels are consistent and that the music and sound effects used are high-quality. This will assure the branded podcast an open pathway to remain in the costumer´s interest until the end.
Research Strategy
Your research team began the process at trusted and specialized websites like Target Marketing, Adweek, and Skyword, they are experts in the brand marketing ecosystem. It is important to note that the best practices listed in this report were based on the article written by Mikko Matikka, marketing and content manager at Audiodraft, a global audio branding service. It was necessary to verify the provided data with trusted information found at the websites mentioned above. The article found in the Ibbonline website was backed up directly by the "branded podcast genius" Carolyn Walker, CEO and managing partner at Response Marketing. Lastly, on the websites of Creative Gimlet Media and YouTube, some brand podcast episodes are provided where the podcast production practices are applied.