Audio marketing — the biggest blue ocean marketers don’t see (or hear)
The state of Audio Marketing
Yesterday I checked out Google trends and compared 3 topics: “Content marketing”, “Podcasts” and “Audio marketing”.
The first two seem to have an ever growing trend as I would expect, but the term “Audio marketing” is just flat not showing any sign of waking up.
Marketing and the 4 previous digital disruptions
The digital history is sometimes defined by the following 5 disruptions:
The appearance of the internet, the appearance and domination of effective web search, the appearance and penetration of mobile devices, the appearance of social media, together with video and user generated content and the appearance of audio.
When internet started — with text and photos, it took 4 minutes for marketing to arrive with banners and ads. As Google became the main search engine, paid SEM and organic SEO started to build together with content marketing. Video brought marketing video content and video ads, social media brought paid and organic content, influencers and followers.
Then came audio.
Audio started to appear with smart assistants such as Alexa, Siri, Hey-Google and Cortana, but audio is a much bigger playground. Another obvious aspect of audio is Podcasts. I guess I don’t need to explain how big and important they are.
The next step after podcasts is live social audio, represented by Clubhouse. While Clubhouse gets a lot of traction, there’s a growing notion that says that live audio is just a feature and that once all of the other social platforms will add it, there will be no reason to move to a different platform for that.
While podcasts and clubhouse are both interesting, both of them represent a bigger category I’ve been calling “Audioland” and Audioland is a totally uncharted territory.
I don’t get it.
I honestly don’t get it.
I don’t understand how come “Audio Marketing” isn’t becoming the hottest trend and the most sought-after subject among digital marketing professionals.
I just don’t understand how come marketers, digital managers and growth professionals, who always try to find the next arena to move into and get an early advantage — still don’t take active steps to move into this blue ocean of opportunities.
Audio has been embraced by all of us since it respects time and allows busy people to stay up-to-date and go on with ongoing learning as a secondary activity. Following that — if your target audience is based on busy professionals and your content includes educational and professional content for them, wouldn’t it be natural to turn it into audio and give it to find a way to their secondary time?
The 4 maturity levels of Audio Marketers
I talk to many marketers and digital professionals on a daily basis and present this concept and I see 3 types of awareness when talking about audio:
- Awareness level 0: “Isn’t video the main thing today?”
Some professionals don’t really understand how come audio is the big thing. For them, it feels like video is the main thing and audio feels like stepping backwards. It took me a while to understand what makes them think about it (I wrote about it). - Awareness level 1: “Of course I get it! But we don’t need a podcast”
The next level of professionals are the ones who hear “Audio” and automatically translate it to “Podcast”. They assume that Audio=Podcasts and then share their thoughts about this idea. Podcasts are just one way to implement the idea of audio content marketing and it’s a very specific one. Podcasts are usually long-form, they require a professional editing, they require a talent to lead them, but moreover, they require persistence and the ROI of creating them is still not 100% obvious. But are they the only way to implement audio in our marketing activity? Definitely not. - Awareness level 2: “The Clubhouse marketing 101”
If you’ll look around, you’ll find marketers working on Clubhouse marketing strategies and how to take advantage of the evolving scene of live audio stages. The main problem with live audio marketing is the fact that it is live. This requires to be present in live conversations, spend lots of time there and make sure you are in the right place at the right moment to make a real impact. - Awareness level 3: The missing audio marketer
The category of “Audio Marketing” is empty. How empty? I created the “Audio Marketing” group in LinkedIn 2 days ago. This name was just waiting there in the dark…
What is Audio Marketers all about?
From one point of view, Audio Marketing could be a part of Content Marketing, but when you think about it, Audio Marketing is a much bigger state of mind. The discipline of Audio Marketing explores how audio could be used to promote the brand’s message.
Here are some of the elements of Audio Marketing:
- Creating a sonic branding
- Choosing the brand’s tone of voice
- Adding audio to the customer journey
- Repurposing text and video content into audio
- Embedding audio players to blogs and websites
- Transforming classic text-based content such as case studies and white papers into branded audio playlists
It’s time for Audio Marketing to become a thing
Not trying to brag, but I do have a history of identifying trends when they are young. However, this time it feels different. Either I’m missing something or Audio Marketing is the biggest blue ocean the marketing industry ignores.
Audio Marketing is calling for innovators and early adopters. It is calling for the small group of marketing leaders who don’t wait for others to take the first step and understand that taking the first step into a new category holds the biggest prize.
Why is audio so interesting? What’s the unique difference between the classic media formate of video and text and audio? How to find the right tone of voice? What are 22 things you could do with audio and you probable didn’t think about? I wrote an ebook about all of these. No. you won’t have to read it. An audio version of it will be waiting for you.
I don’t get it.
I honestly don’t get it.
If you think I got it all wrong — please share your thoughts.
But if you agree that Audio Marketing is the biggest missed opportunity — raise your hand. It feels lonely here…
