How Can Podcast Advertising Help Small, Local Businesses?

Local media can play an important role in promoting small, local businesses. It can be a great way to target a narrow market with relevant messages. Many small businesses put advertising dollars toward local radio and newspapers. They may try billboards, flyers, local community boards or websites.

Small business owners need to be smart about their marketing and advertising efforts. Typically, they’ll be looking for effective, low-cost solutions but it can be hard to find that perfect combination. Sometimes local media exceeds the budget of a new or growing business. And, many businesses are finding that what’s worked in the past is no longer so effective. In recent years, many have turned to online advertising that allows targeting and provides delivery analytics. Another benefit is the simplicity and ease of getting campaigns running quickly.

Few local business owners will have considered podcast advertising. But now, some platforms are offering programmatic podcast advertising that targets only listeners in certain areas. So, podcasts can be a new form of local media for your small business to tap into. Fortunately, podcast advertising also has the potential to deliver more for less cost too. A small company can “sound big” without spending a lot. It’s a lot like what websites have done for small businesses in leveling the playing field.

Your Potential Customers Are Listening to Podcasts

According to a report from Edison Research, 21 percent of Americans (age 12+) will have listened to a podcast in the last month. To put that into perspective, that’s the same number of Americans who use Twitter and 8% more than use Spotify.

Podcasts tend to have affluent, educated audiences. 85% of podcast listeners have a college education and 36% make more than $75K/year.

Podcast Advertising Effectiveness

Research shows 62% of podcast listeners report making a purchase as a result of an ad they heard on a podcast. A study on NPR podcasts showed even higher results, with 75% of listeners taking action on a sponsored message. Podcast listeners are highly engaged, with 88% of them subscribing and listening to most or all episodes. Because podcasts are not heavily saturated with ads, listeners have high brand recall (over 70%).

New Technologies Increase Targeting and Ease

Programmatic ad buying now makes the process of purchasing podcast advertising much easier. A small business can buy ads directly, without a lengthy process or large ad budget necessary to work with an agency. The process is similar to setting up Google or Facebook ads (maybe even easier).

And, the technology now supports more targeting. So, for example, you can run ads to be served up only to listeners in your state or metro area. This effectively makes podcast advertising a new form of local media, but available on a smaller budget. For example, one recent campaign run via Podbean’s Ads system resulted in 100,000 targeted impressions for the business for $300.

To learn more about podcast advertising for your local business, read more. You can set up a campaign in minutes and give it a try! You set budget caps, and can modify or stop a campaign any time so it’s low risk with potential for high reward.

Get a high return on investment for your small business: get started with Ads today.