Ask a few people ‘what is a podcast?’ and I reckon you’ll get almost as many answers. They might tell you it’s an audio show you can download. Someone might say it’s a series of audio episodes distributed by RSS. A marketer might say it’s a content marketing channel. Business owners might think of interviews and insights, grouping them with the audiobooks they consume. Someone (younger?) might suggest it’s something you play on YouTube in another tab while you’re working.
But here’s what I think podcasting actually is: it’s an approach that forces us to remember something fundamental about (effective) marketing. It works best when people choose to engage with our content.
People are exposed to thousands of marketing messages every day. But nobody listens to a thirty-minute podcast by accident – even Diary of a CEO. Unlike an advert that interrupts your YouTube experience or a billboard you drive past, a podcast requires an active decision. Someone has to find your show, press play, and then – here’s the crucial bit – choose to keep listening.
This matters far more than the format itself.
The permission problem
Most marketing operates on the basis of interruption. We buy our way into people’s attention through ads, sponsored posts and paid placements. We optimise for impressions and reach, hoping that if we appear enough times, eventually someone will remember us when they need what we sell.
Podcasting – done properly – doesn’t work this way. You can’t force someone to listen. You can’t auto-play your way into their ears. Every episode, every minute, every second requires active consent from your audience.
And this should shape how you create content.
If you want to explore how to use podcasts to build authority, engagement and pipeline, book a discovery call.
What podcasting teaches marketers
When your goal is to get people choose to spend 20, 40, or 60 minutes with your content, you learn quickly what matters:
- You must entertain. Not necessarily in a jazz-hands, theatrical way, but you need to gain and hold attention. Boring or irrelevant content gets skipped. Meandering content gets abandoned. But even B2B audiences – especially B2B audiences, actually – want to be engaged.
- You need a point of view or expertise. Generic advice doesn’t warrant 30 minutes of someone’s commute. You need a frame of reference, a perspective, something that makes your take worth their time over the thousands of other options available. You need to draw from your experience and share.
- Authenticity isn’t optional. You can’t fake your way through long-form content. If you don’t care about the topic, if you’re just going through the motions because you think you should cover a particular topic or interview a specific guest – your audience will feel it and they’ll stop listening.
- You simply have to understand your audience. Their interests, aspirations, and challenges. Who are they? What do they care about? What do they want to know? What do you offer them?
Audio or video? Yes.
One of the current hot topics is whether podcasts should be audio or video. The real answer is: it depends on what works for you and your audience, your budget and the stage you’re at. There’s no pre-defined format that podcasting must follow. What matters is matching the medium to how your content will be consumed and what you’re trying to achieve.
Video clips often perform exceptionally well as social content. A 15-30-second video snippet from a conversation can reach audiences who would never commit to a full episode. These clips increase the return on your podcasting investment by giving you multiple ways to distribute the content.
However, you can’t simply repurpose video into audio or vice versa without considering the experience. Audio-first and video-first storytelling require different editing approaches. Audio needs tighter pacing and good context-setting because listeners can’t see facial expressions or visual cues, and they’re settling in for a 30-minute listen. Long pauses that can be acceptable on video can feel awkward, even confusing, in audio. Conversely, video content benefits from visual variety and energy that pure audio doesn’t (necessarily) require. Similarly, most video platforms significantly reward getting straight to the action, so they reward a different approach to editing.
Edit for the format, not just to save production costs. A podcast that works beautifully as audio can fall flat when presented as unedited video, and audio-only video often loses the context that made it engaging. Record with both in mind, then edit each version for its intended experience.
The podcast mindset
Here’s where it gets interesting: these principles apply far beyond audio shows. Whether you’re writing LinkedIn posts, creating video content, sending email newsletters or, of course, producing a podcast, the primary question remains the same: Why would someone choose to engage with this?
Not just “How can we get more reach?” or “What keywords should we target?”
But: “What value are we creating that’s worth someone’s active attention?”
Interruption is the default because it’s easier to measure and scale. Views and clicks matter, of course. However, businesses that build genuine audiences – the ones that create content people actively seek out rather than passively tolerate – are influencing, educating and nurturing their next customers.
Getting beyond the basics
The interesting challenges come when you move past “should we start a podcast?” to “how do we build something people actually want?”
This is where most advice gets it wrong. It’s easy to focus on equipment, episode length, and publishing schedules. The real questions are more strategic:
- How does this fit into a broader content ecosystem rather than existing as an isolated channel? That is, how do make sure the rest of your marketing brings people to the podcast, but also that the podcast provides fuel for the rest of your marketing.
- What makes this worth listening to instead of the hundred other options in someone’s podcast app? Steering the themes, guests and topics of your podcast is essential and you need to be constantly listening, sensing and learning.
- How do we make it easy for people to discover, sample, and commit to our content? Distribution and consistency matters.
- What’s the actual business model – and is it aligned with how we want to grow? Podcasts present opportunities to monetise whether it’s through selling your products or services, advertising or sponsorship.
These aren’t technical questions. They’re the same strategic questions you should ask about any content initiative – it’s just that podcasting forces you to confront them.
The real definition: So what is a podcast?
It’s a reminder that marketing works best when people choose to engage. It’s a format that punishes lazy thinking and rewards genuine value creation. It’s a distribution vehicle that can be audio, video, text, or all three – but only if you design for each medium rather than just repurposing content across them.
Most importantly, it’s an approach that puts the audience’s choice at the centre of everything you create.
And, whether you’re making a podcast or not, that’s a mindset worth adopting.
If you want to explore how to use podcasts to build authority, engagement and pipeline, let’s talk.