Podcasts are the ultimate trust building tool.

One thing you have to do when marketing to your customer base is to get them to trust you and believe that you are an expert they can rely on. Many forms of media-based marketing are built around exactly that – establishing a baseline of trust between yourself and consumers to make them feel better about buying from you (and more likely to do so.)

This trust notoriously takes quite a while to build up and can be broken in a snap. But what if there was a form of media marketing that did this trust-building in a fraction of the time, more consistently, and with less effort? Well, good news, because podcasting is this new frontier.

Podcasting builds trust and credibility between you and your customers/clients in 3 ways:

#1 Podcasting establishes you as an expert in your field.

Consumers already view podcasts as a valuable form of media, as they are chock-full of information, can last between 15 and 90 minutes long (or longer!), and can be listened to for free in most cases. Because of the educational or entertainment value present in a podcast, listeners are more likely to view you as an expert in your field over time.

This is especially true if you are knowledgeable about whatever subject your podcast focuses on. Passing along your lived experiences and advice to your listeners will build that trust necessary to take your relationship from a casual listenership to a business transaction.

Bonus Tip: Interviewing other experts in your field only adds to your and your podcast’s reputation as a trustworthy and respectable source of information.

#2 Podcasting is informal and personal.

Because podcasts don’t require nearly as much editing or flashiness to be considered professional, this leaves room for them to be much more conversational and informal. The more casual and relaxed you seem in your podcast episodes, the more likely listeners are to connect with you and your message and to believe it and trust you.

Podcast listeners will become invested in you, the voice of the podcast, and through that will become invested in your business. Hearing you talk about not just your business, but your family, your hopes and dreams, your faults and regrets, will make listeners feel as though they are genuinely getting to know you. This is much more difficult to do through social media, blogs, and even video, no matter how casual you try to make them seem.

Listeners will feel like they are getting the inside scoop, the ‘behind the scenes,’ of your business. They’ll connect you and your personal story with the company.

#3 Podcast listeners are rabid consumers of media.

Once you have your listeners hooked, good luck getting rid of them. Podcast listeners consume seven podcasts per week, on average. Of these podcasts, listeners will typically listen to between 80 and 100% of your existing episodes, often going back after discovering your show to listen from the beginning.

People don’t always have the time or patience to read an entire blog post, let alone to go back through your catalog of blogs and read them all. But a podcast can be listened to while completing other tasks, such as driving, cooking, or doing housework. Your customers will appreciate that you’ve provided them with an alternate form of consuming your content, one that they can finish on their way to work.

If you’re ready to take your first step into your podcasting journey, look no further than Speakeasy. Our cutting-edge studios are set up to be user-friendly and consultative. You’re not planning or developing alone. We want our podcasters to feel confident in their long-term plan for podcasting while simultaneously building trust between them and their customers.