While technology has undoubtedly revolutionized the way businesses market their products, the information overload that comes can make it more challenging for brands to effectively capture their target audience’s attention.
By diversifying your advertising channels, marketers can create winning campaigns to generate more leads and increase conversion rates.
Podcast sponsorships are becoming a way to expand core advertising efforts, and marketers can combine these sponsorships with more traditional platforms like national radio broadcasts to maximize the success of campaigns and provide greater ROI.
What Is a Cross-Platform Marketing Strategy?
In a nutshell, cross-platform marketing involves running advertising campaigns on more than one media channel. Adding emerging platforms like podcasting and other premium audio channels, as well as strategic implementation of social, paid search and TV to your proven media platforms, will help your message reach your target customer on their preferred devices.
Before engaging, brands need to understand:
- Where do my current and future customers frequently spend their time?
- How can I best reach them?
With a seemingly endless supply of options, one size does not fit all. Building a successful cross-platform marketing strategy takes careful planning.
Create a shortlist of channels that will help you appeal to your intended audience. The best practice is to use the same team to develop the various aspects of your strategy. Using different media planning groups can lead to inconsistencies in messaging across platforms.
The Benefits of Cross-Platform Marketing Campaigns
Today's consumers are exposed to dozens of touch-points and forms of media. But knowing where they “live” can guide your cross-platform marketing efforts, resonating with prospects and following them from channel to channel.
Here are three other reasons why cross-platform marketing is a powerful tool:
1. Lowers customer acquisition cost
Advertising selectively across multiple channels will lead to an increase in conversions. A greater conversion rate means lower acquisition and onboarding costs.
2. Improves customer experience
Most customers hate being bombarded with intrusive ads, and being present on your target buyers' favorite platforms in a discreet way to engage with them is the best way to sell your brand. The buying experience for your customers is more seamless when you place your brand message where the consumers spend their time and “speak” to them in a way they will more likely appreciate.
3. Increases customer engagement
Cross-platform marketing gives customers plenty of engagement avenues. They can like social posts, forward content, respond to podcast messaging, and more. With so many platforms to connect with your brand, simultaneously diversifying and streamlining WHERE you connect can help eliminate the barriers for target audiences to forge relationships with you.
What Is Cross-Platform Podcast Advertising?
Traditional advertising channels such as newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and social media have been around for decades. Many businesses spend thousands of dollars in traditional advertising. Still, a lack of planning, tracking, or strategy can lead to lost money.
Newer platforms such as podcast advertising pay dividends when used correctly. Sponsoring a podcast can increase your reach since they are highly targeted. A podcast's niche audience will subscribe to the show, and the core audience will make sure to never miss an episode.
Trade magazines may be a super niche, but many readers still skim through certain advertising sections. This is much less true in audio, as the audience hears every word the presenter speaks.
The core podcast audience is familiar with moderators. They trust the host, and they listen to the entire episodes. But that's not enough for a successful ad.
Besides sponsoring a podcast, you should also create video content for the same campaign on social media, run an email campaign, and more, to increase ad recall and performance. This ensures you reap the full benefits of cross-platform podcast advertising.
Creating a Cross-platform Marketing Strategy to Boost Your Podcast Ad Performance
Create metrics
You can track podcast ad performance through impressions in the form of podcast downloads. For example, if your ad ran in an episode with 200,000 downloads, it's considered that your ad received 200,000 impressions.
Other metrics that you should track are:
- Bounce rate
- Cost per lead
- Click-through rate
- Goal completions
- Customer lifetime value
- Cost per acquisition
- Lead-to-customer conversion rate
Test and adjust as needed
The above metrics will help you determine if your ad campaign is effective and gain insight into how you can improve ad performance. You can lower your budget on underperforming campaigns and increase budget in performing campaigns.
Ensure that you get your timing and targeting right for the best results. It's essential to be intentional about where you spend marketing dollars. This way, you can avoid wasting resources by offering the wrong message, even if it is to the right audience.
