Are Podcasts the New Blogs?

“With more content to consume via blogs, editorial websites, social platforms, YouTube, etc., Internet audiences have less patience for material that is not engaging or immersive. Many consumers don’t have the time (or will or energy) to read long-form articles and essays. Instead, they’d rather see, or hear, the subject matter being presented for them. As a result, podcast consumption is on the rise.”

— Entrepreneur, July 28, 2017

Are podcasts the new blogs?

The current podcast activity resembles blog activity from 10 years ago: First individuals and consumers took part; then various blogging software was created to extend the reach; then big businesses started blogging; finally small and mid-sized businesses realized they needed to “play big” and create blogs, as well.

Podcasts are following the same trajectory.

However, several obstacles exist that prevent or slow this target market group from launching podcasts:

• Hard to do. Podcasts are perceived as complicated – from editorial concept to guest procurement to production to technology to back-end hosting and distribution to audience build and more. One prominent Washington, D.C.-based trade lobby group recently told GGMV: “We desperately have been wanting to do a podcast, but we don’t know how to get started and don’t have the staffing to launch it or keep it going.”
• Many big branded podcasts employ approaches that cost-prohibitive for the vast majority of our target market — $20-25K/episode according to Adweek. As another Adweek piece noted: “Custom content on this scale can be costly (occasionally six figures), meaning that for smaller brands, it may not be sustainable beyond one-off or limited projects.”
• Lack of monetization opportunities. To date, branded podcasts have resembled brand advertising campaigns – no direct ROI measurement, save for occasional direct response efforts. Further, many businesses lack effective distribution strategies or, as noted above, measurement tactics to derive useful data.

These obstacles, though, help drive the business opportunity. GGMV addresses these challenges and more:

• Easy to do. GGMV offers end-to-end capability – from editorial concept to guest procurement to production to technology to back-end hosting and distribution to audience build and more. The business’ engagement can be as little as one hour a month.
• Our cost structure is built to meet our target market’s requirements. Because of our approach, we’re able to provide a cost-effective solution while still driving highly-attractive margins.
• Monetization opportunities. We create and execute distribution strategies for clients, helping businesses create channels they own – and that they can directly monetize. In addition, we will provide actionable data for businesses to understand their impact and identify qualified leads for off-line follow-up.