Even the famous blogger, Robert Scoble, left Microsoft to join startup, PodTech, a podcasting startup, based on his belief that podcasting was going to rocket. So there’s no lack of optimism in this technology that facilitates time-shifting of traditional media content. But our own client experiences in 2007 do not support such exuberance.

Don’t get me wrong. I love podcasts as a consumer. I personally subscribe to over 20 publications and spend probably thirty minutes a day listening. Yet I do not strongly advocate podcasting as a top priority for marketers. Why? I’ll share with you below my honest assessment of podcasts from both the consumer and the marketer perspectives. I’ll close with a recommendation that podcasting does have a place in the marketer’s budget especially for lead nurturing and installed base customer communications if you’re already funding these.

The Consumer View

Pros:

• Easy to consume content anytime, anywhere -- I listen while exercising, driving, running errands, waiting in lines, and even while washing dishes.

• Timely information – I get daily and weekly feeds from sources that I find credible and consistent.

• Short pieces – segments of 4-10 minutes keep my attention the most.

• Easy to share photos – over the holidays, I found my iPod Nano very popular as it was passed around to family members who wanted to see dozens of my favorite photos of our kids.

Cons:

• Long pieces -- I tried listening to an audio book on black holes but found it somewhat frustrating because it’s 11 hours of recorded content. I can read the exact same content in probably half the time. Commuters and air travelers will perhaps not mind this productivity issue.

• Business video -- Business video podcasts like BusinessWeek Market Reports are far less captivating than stunning consumer video like NASA’s space telescope. In fact, many business podcasters are dropping their video and sticking to producing compelling audio.

The Marketer View

Pros:

• Cheap -- costs only about $500- $2,000 to produce one podcast piece. That’s a fraction of the cost of a whitepaper, video, or other lead generation offers.

• Quick – podcasts can be as simple as an audio recording of an interview with your customer or an industry analyst.

• Builds relationship – once you have a subscriber base, podcasts can be a very easy way to deliver ongoing value to your constituents. Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, rightly recommends podcasts for “lead nurturing” rather than lead generation.

Cons:

• Poor metrics – for the most part, you can’t tell which subscribers actually listened to the podcast segments and for how long. VoloMedia claims they have a way to detect actual listens/views versus just downloads. Our clients who have done podcasting for a year have seen very little in the way of net new leads. They report that it’s more like advertising in that it’s hard to quantify the ROI but they know that podcasting helps with brand building and customer satisfaction in general.

• Limited reach – podcasts are still very low in the information source hierarchy. Most executives still rely on word-of-mouth, business and trade publications, the internet, and traditional TV/radio/print for their information sources.

Our Recommendation

We endorse podcasting as a very low cost way for you to augment your installed base customer communications and lead nurturing campaigns with another mode of delivering thought leadership pieces. Keep the pieces to five to ten minutes max and use formats such as interviews with experts, short speeches by company executives, and practical tips for the week. Forget video. The key is to deliver bite-sized content consistently, at least monthly if not more often, to your subscriber base. Again, we would not advise prioritizing podcasting above high ROI spend like pay-per-click campaigns or other online marketing campaigns if your primary goal is customer acquisition.

Resources:

• eMarketer “Who’s Listening to Podcasts?”
• Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers
• PodTech
• Brian Carroll’s blog entry “Lessons Learned from Podcasting”
• VoloMedia on podcast metrics

Sridhar’s Podcast Roll

• BBC: Best of Today (BBC Radio 4)
• BusinessWeek Market Report
• CNET News.com daily tech news podcast
• Bill Moyers Journal, PBS
• The History Channel: Just Another Day
• KCRW’s Left, Right & Center
• KQED’s The California Report
• KQED’s THIS WEEK in Northern California
• New Yorker: Out Loud
• NOW, PBS
• NPR: World Story of the Day
• NPR: Story of the Day
• NPR: Books
• Real Time with Bill Maher
• Slate Magazine Daily Podcast
• This American Life
• HBR IdeaCast
• Knowledge@Wharton
• Hidden Universe: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope
• AstronomyCast