The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential

Branded Podcasts 101: Getting your Business Branded Podcast Foundation Right

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Branded podcasts can be an incredible marketing tool—when done right. We see it too often where they fall into the trap of being a boring sales pitch. It's even worse when you add that with delivering unhelpful content. In this episode, we break down the fundamentals of creating a branded podcast that engages, educates, and actually builds trust with your audience.

We’ll cover:
 ✅ Defining your brand’s niche and audience—why trying to be everything to everyone will make you disappear into the noise. Learn how to identify your unique expertise and let the algorithm find your perfect listeners.
 ✅ Content pillars that keep your episodes valuable—develop 3-5 key themes that give your podcast structure and ensure long-term listener engagement.
 ✅ The power of storytelling in podcasting—how to weave your brand’s message into case studies, real-world examples, and compelling narratives to create an engaging, memorable show.
 ✅ Offering real value—why actionable insights and practical advice keep your audience coming back for more.
 ✅ The role of guest experts and industry insights—how to bring in credibility and fresh perspectives that enrich your podcast and expand your reach.
 ✅ Repurposing content for social media dominance—how to design your episodes for easy sharing through short clips, infographics, and engaging posts.
 ✅ Maintaining a consistent schedule and high-quality production—why professionalism, reliability, and great sound matter more than you think.
 ✅ Engaging with your audience—how Q&A sessions, polls, and contests create community and boost listener loyalty.
 ✅ Strategic calls to action—how to use subtle yet effective CTAs to grow your email list, book consultations, or bring people into your online community without sounding pushy.

Plus, we dive into a recent study from Podscribe on podcast advertising and why smaller shows often see better results than massive ones. Discover:
 🎯 Why niche podcasts attract highly targeted ads that convert better.
 🤝 How smaller shows can build direct relationships with advertisers for more flexible, personalized campaigns.
 🔊 The power of authentic ad integration—how smaller shows make advertising feel natural and engaging.
 💰 Cost-effective reach—how focusing on quality over quantity maximizes your podcast’s impact on a budget.
 📊 Using data-driven optimization to improve ad performance and attract sponsors.
 🎙️ The creative flexibility of smaller shows—why host-read ads and dynamic insertion make a bigger impact.

If you’re a small business owner or marketing pro looking to start or improve a branded podcast, this episode is packed with must-know insights.


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We've all seen really bad branded podcast where they come out and they're just not good. It's either one giant sales pitch or it's just bad information. How can you avoid that? That that's what we're going to talk about this week as well as we have some podcast news in terms of how advertising works with smaller podcasts. Stay tuned. Oh. Thanks for tuning in. I'm really excited about this week because we get to dive into the branded podcast piece of this, which is what we help so many people do. It's it's all about elevating the voices, things of that nature. So I'm really excited to get into some of this because this is going to this is going to step back to some of the things that everyone really needs to look at before we get into it. I got a few housekeeping items. The one biggest thing is, is obviously make sure you're subscribed. Helps us out a ton. If you have a question, put it in the comments. We want to hear from you. Also, we're thinking about getting a couple of communities going. We're finally at that point where we feel like this would be beneficial to everyone, and we're going to talk about that in branded podcast later. But with that, where would you like to see us? Would you want to see something? Facebook. Do you want to see it just through like an email group, or do you want to see it through like a discord group? Where would you like to have a group? Where where you could talk with others? With that being said, let's dive right in to making sure that your branded podcast isn't going to fall flat, that it's going to deliver the right message, and that you're really going to make sure that this is going to be effective marketing for you, but not come across to marketing. Is that is that a word? I don't know either way. The first thing that we have to talk about here is this is back to the basics. Define your brand's educational niche. We talked about like the the reach riches are in the niches last week and stuff like that. And they are. We need to define where you excel in educating people because as a branded podcast is truly is all about educating people. We want to make sure that you are trying to to talk to the right people now, in that it's making sure that you're talking to the right people in the right way. You don't try and teach eighth grade science to fourth graders in the same sense. You don't talk about motorcycles to people that like knitting different things here. So we want to make sure don't try and be everything to everyone because you won't be. You will get lost in the shuffle. What we want to do is we want to make sure that you have picked not only your specific person that you're talking to, but we want to make sure that you have picked the educational pieces that you're going to talk about. One of the podcasts I'm going to refer to the Late to Grid podcast here. They've done a great job of saying, look, we are here to help people get into motorsports to to help them accelerate that journey. We've all started something and we've started from ground zero. They do a great job of introducing people and topics that are questions for people that are just starting out. What that does is that allows you to to really pick your exact audience. And what they do is that supports their shop. Atomic Auto Sports. So once again, are they looking for a NASCAR race team to come in? No, that's not their client. Are they looking for someone that's just getting into motorsports and maybe starting with some basic like track days that's just going to do it with their street car. They don't even have a race car. That is the people that they're looking to help. So that is exactly who they talk to in their podcast. They they give that specific knowledge, that specific expertise. And they call on specific people that that have that knowledge and expertise as guests. They also do a good job of making sure that their unique value proposition is put forward. That they are kind of that one stop shop. If you're looking to get into this, and it could be I mean, they aren't just the basics. They go well past that. But by covering the basics, they've now brought someone into their ecosystem and they can start to grow that. Now, one of the things that I want to say when you when I tell you to to pick your specific people, if you try to talk to everyone, they do. Everyone talks about gaming the algorithm. There's no gaming the algorithm. The algorithm is going to do what it's going to do. What happens is, is when you pick your specific people that you want to talk to, the algorithm will find the people that want to hear that message. It takes a little while because it's matching your preferences with someone else's preferences, with someone else's preferences. But once it starts to get that map laid out, it really does a good job of presenting the information to the people that actually want to hear it. So, like I said, define your brands as your educational space. That is exactly where you need to be. Now the other thing that you can do in that is you want to develop some content pillars that are consistent. So those are offering that consistent value to everyone. And there's a couple of things that you guys hear me talk about all the time. Making sure you're in the right niche. You've narrowed it down. So you're talking to the right person making sure you're educational. Those are some of our content pillars. That is what we stick with. That is that that is where we we excel at. It's those core themes that you want to talk about. I don't want to say always come back to those specific things because you don't want to be a broken record. You want to be presenting new information, but you can talk about the nuance of that information. You can talk about something adjacent to that and how it supports it. It's that it's that structure that's going to provide that consistent content that people are going to come back for. As I mentioned, we've redone our podcast just because of the fact I noticed pod creep, we started getting out of the area where we normally where where we excelled at it, and that was talking about these branded podcasts and talking about, the educational piece in that we kind of lost track of those pillars. And that's why I really want to hammer on this. Always kind of have those. I mean, I've actually got them written down in a sheet that we use when we start working on constructing these topics. Does it cover this? Does it cover this, and does it cover this. Because those are the things that we want to make sure that we're covering week after week after week after week for you. Once again, there's nuance for it. And we want to make sure that we're giving you good new material, but make sure that we are sticking in that in those in those exact lanes. The other thing that I want to talk about with educational storytelling is another huge thing. So weave your brand's message into like, stories, case studies, client testimonials, things of that nature. That's what's going to make this engaging and memorable. Rather than just me up here prophesying or whatever you want to call it. It's those types of stories that allow you to connect. And that's why we talk about like, Atomic Auto Sports. That's why we talk about like, Coach Woody, from Next Batter with some of the things. That's why we talk about, like, the Better Business podcast. It's those types of things where we're bringing you into those stories and where we're engaging with those stories. So first off, you can see him in action. You know that this is it's something that's tried and true. It's not just me tossing information out there. The other thing is, is it's. I mean, as kids, I get it. Everyone hated the story problems in math, but in the same sense, when you can see that something is applied and you can see where and how is it is applied, that can make a world of difference in how you apply that to your own podcast and your own information. I've always said there's there's new ideas out there, but those new ideas are typically related to something that's already going on. And that's very much of the case here. And that's why we talk about these things. We want you to be able to pull something that's related and kind of bring that over into your worlds. How does that adapt for your specific podcast? Because it's not going to look the same. But, another podcast we work with is the, I call it like I See It podcast. And I love this James Keyes on there. Told me the one time he goes, history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And that, to me is a quote that I've used constantly. I love it. I believe it was Mark Twain that said that, but, James is the one that told me that one. And to me, it totally makes sense. Your podcast is going to be your individual podcast, so it shouldn't be someone else's podcast, but it may kind of rhyme with someone else's podcast is what we're going with as an educational piece. One of the things that I always talk about, and this is the one that you guys know, offer value to someone, is taking the time to sit down and watch your video or listen to your podcast that this I cannot stress this enough. Make sure that you are delivering something to make their time worth it. Think about high value people, what their hourly rate is for something. It's a let's say it's someone that's in charge of a company. They I mean, millions of dollars hinge on their decisions and their time. If someone like that is giving you ten minutes of their time, make it worth it. Make it those experiences. Make it those the make it that education. This is also the other piece to this is the fact that that is how you create that you. And that's why we, go with the educational piece on this. If you are teaching people about your industry, if you are teaching people about things that are going on, if you are instructing people on how your product or how your service, does things and, and what the benefits are to them and, and all of that, that's that value piece. It's why we do this podcast. I'm making sure that I'm offering value or talking to you about how you can increase the visibility and, and the viability of your branded podcast. That's what we're making sure we're doing is we're adding that value for it. Another way you can do that is you can get those guest experts and industry insights. I've got a few guests that we're still talking to. We are going to have some guests coming on here in the next few weeks. But really, I mean, these relevant experts, they can they can share their knowledge and perspectives with you. There's so many benefits and we've talked about this kind of ad nauseum, but really, if you effectively work with them, their social media will help you because they can put some of the clips in that out on social media, on their social media. They'll share stuff. You can tag them, you can collaborate with them. All those things will make sure that you can work with them on that. Not only that, but once again, they're going to have their specific niche. You should have yours. But if they can talk about something that is in your corner, but they can talk very, very specifically about it, it's a huge win because once again, you're offering value. You're educating people. The example that I would give to this is when you say doctor and you think medical profession, okay, everyone has their general practitioner, but if something's really going sideways, they're going to refer you to a specialist. And that's how you should think about any experts that you have on your podcast. You should. I don't want to say I don't want to tell anyone to be a generalist, but to talk about a specific thing. But if you know of someone that has studied and done a very specific thing, bring them on. That's once again, that's your heart surgeon. That's your brain surgeon, that's your gastroenterologist. Very, very specialized people. I probably don't want my general practitioner operating on my brain. I do want him to recommend a brain surgeon to me, though. Think about it that way with it. Something else that it does, too, is you're often going to get different insights from them. You're going to get different viewpoints from them. You're going to get items that you just didn't think of, branded podcasts, repurposing for social media. That's the that's how you're going to dominate the space that really, truly is, design your episodes with social media in mind. It's what we're doing. We're making sure that we are setting up questions and we're setting up items. So that way we're going to get a 32nd to 92nd clip out of this. That's going to go out that you're going to see in shorts, you're going to see an Instagram Reels, you're going to see in those places. These clips are designed to do that. That's the way that's how we speak like this. In that that's what's going to get you a lot of visibility. Now you have to make sure that it works in this circular fashion. So someone's going to see you on Instagram. They're going to be like oh that they're interesting. They're going to find your podcast. So they're either going to find that on YouTube or through your RSS feed. Once you have them there now you're going to you've got to make sure that you get them subscribed. Maybe you get them into your newsletter. These are the this is this circular flow of things where, like I said, the podcast is a great way to use social media to bring people into your ecosystem as long as you've engineered your podcast to do that. So make sure you're asking questions that are probably going to have that 30 to 90 second sharp, sharp, sharp answer. Those are the things that we really want to look forward to in that something else. We've talked about this all the time. You need a consistent schedule. Make sure that people know that, hey, I'm going to show up every week or every two weeks. That that every two weeks is still a great schedule every week. If you can do it. Holy cow, that's absolutely amazing. But make sure you are showing up consistently for people. There are podcasts that I literally like Monday and Wednesday morning I wake up and I look over at my phone and I'm like, yep, they're they're awesome. I can listen to it while I workout or while I walk or whatever I'm doing. I can listen to those podcasts. I know they're going to be there. I know they're showing up every single week. For me, that's huge. What I would equate it to is, let's say you're expecting a delivery of something. You get a delivery of widgets every single week on Tuesday, and you sell widgets. What happens if they don't show up to Wednesday? Or what happens if they just don't show up? You're kind of bummed. You feel kind of betrayed. It's the same thing with a podcast. It's it. That's how you're going to make that connection the same side of it. We always talk, make sure it's a high quality production. Does it need to be in the studio here? No. Do you need to make sure that you've got decent lighting, that you've got a decent sound? We've talked about that people will tune out bad audio like that. Make sure that you sound good. Make sure that you look decent. Make sure that you're active in this. If I sat here and talked like I was a robot, you guys probably tuned in to something else. So make sure that you've got that high quality production not only from a camera standpoint, but from the way you look and the way you interact with people. Speaking of interacting, interactive engagement is huge. We want to encourage people to participate through question and answer segments. We're working on a live program, so that way you can go live and you can talk directly with your people. Awesome, awesome, awesome way to do things. Polls, contests. We've had great luck working with a few people. With contests, you give away a t shirt, people will tag you and stuff for a t shirt. T shirts aren't all that expensive. Send it out to someone. It works really, really well. The other thing I would say is create that sense of community. We talked in the beginning. I'm looking to see if we want to do a discord or a Facebook community or anything like that. We want to be able to bring some people together. So that way, as you guys are working through your branded podcast, you can talk about this stuff if you've got a question. I mean, there's so many podcast communities that we're involved in where we see people ask questions, and other members of the community are helping them out and engaging with them. This is what we're seeing. That's what we're seeing. It works really, really well. It's also it's that commonality. Everyone's listening to the same thing, at least probably once a week. If you all got that same base to build off of, there's already that connection there. Now this is where it gets tricky in your branded podcast is you want to have strategic calls to action. I want to call this a bit of a soft sell. You don't want to say, hey, look, we've talked about this for 20 minutes. This is the best stuff ever. So you need to order it now. That's not how you want to approach this is you want to integrate those subtle calls to action, whether it's you can have them download a free resource. But from that you're going to get their email address. You can have them join your online community. Once again I talked about that with our discord and, Facebook questions. Make sure you yeah, make sure you let me know in the comments on that. The other thing is like we do our 30 minute no pitch podcast consultation. It's a way to engage with people. It's it's that call to action. It's that soft sell when we get people on our no Pitch podcast consultation, which I still always have a tough time saying, but nonetheless, when we get people on that, I, I show up. I am truly there to help the number of people that say, hey, you know what? We we want your help. And over the extended period of time is huge. If you show up genuinely, genuinely interested in helping people, it shows. And that's a huge part of why I do the podcast here. I want to make sure that your branded podcast goes well. Keeping with these items, these rules. Like I said, if you if you keep track of these types of pieces and look at them as you're writing out your questions or as you're writing out your script, or as you're approaching your guests, this will play out huge for you in the long run. Now with that, that's all branded podcast stuff. We've got a news piece this week that I think you're going to find very interesting, because it's going to talk about the advertising. There's a study that was just done that talks about the advertising and how it changes depending on the size of the podcast. With that, I will be back in just a moment. We'll get into the news. Oh. In the news this week, Pod Scribes quarterly dive into podcast ads revealed that smaller podcasts achieve greater efficiency in ad performance. This is really cool to me because there's a couple of reasons with this. If you're monetizing your podcast with ads, that's kind of a boost. If your podcast is a branded podcast, does that sound from it? Did we have we've recently been talking about branding, I believe. We've been talking about branded podcasts. If you're a branded podcast, boy, does that resonate. So the big thing is, is smaller podcasts typically have a more targeted niche. They are stuck in this corner. They handle these people. It's very direct. It's very tight. If you go to, let's say advertise on, let's say Mel Robbins or let's say diary of a CEO, or let's free any one of those big podcasts, huge, huge, huge audience. Now you may engage with your you may be in front of 3 million people. How many of those people actually care about your product? That is always the big question. So once again, this kind of turns into that social media thing where the like, hey, we got a bunch of likes on this or we got I mean, I always drives me nuts and the like, our reach was like 11,000 views on this. Great. How many people engage with it? How many people actually cared about it? To me that is the biggest question. So with this, a smaller show, you're going to get a higher engagement with that ad because there's that direct relationship between the topic and the people. Let's talk about a specific style of knitting. I referred to knitting earlier. I know absolutely nothing about knitting. I know there's a number of different stitches, and I know there's a number of different things that people can do. Let's say it's people that like to knit in a tight stitch and make red sweaters. No problem if you talk to people like if you're selling red yarn, Holy cow, is that the right audience for you? If it's just a general show about knitting, if you sell red yarn, are you going to hit some people in there? Sure. As as an advert, as an if you're advertising in that show, I guess it would say, are you going to hit some people in there? Sure. Is that a majority of your audience? Probably not. And that's the big thing about it. So you may be paying for 3 million views, but how many of those 3 million people actually really cared where if it's a show about knitting red sweaters, if they get a thousand people that watch and or listen to that show, guess what? All 1000 of them are going to care. You're probably going to have a lower cost per person because it's much more effective. So therefore your cost per customer or customer acquisition cost in that as an advertiser is less expensive. This holds true for that branded podcast also because once again, I always tell people when we're setting stuff up with them, do not expect to get 3 million listeners. That's not why you're doing this as a branded podcast. You're doing this as supportive material to make sure that you are getting your message out directly to the people, that it actually matters. We would all love to have 3 million customers, but you have to realize that's just not the case with this. You have a direct audience that you're talking to. Make sure that you're talking to them. One of the other things that I love about this, too, is it's authentic. If a red yarn company advertises on a red sweater knitting, podcast, guess what? They're truly, I mean, kind of support that as the host, if you talk about that, that that's really going to carry. Hey, I only use red sheep yarn once again, this is I mean, there's that connection there. There's that know like and trust that's really going to grab people. It's authentic I guess that's what I'm trying to say because there's that much better of a connection. The other thing that I want to talk about is the data behind that. When you go to a big podcast, like I said, if you're going to toss your ad out for 3 million people, are all 3 million people engaged with that? Probably not. Is the percentage of people engaged with that lower than with the Red Sweater Knitting podcast? Yes. You get a much better idea of what you're paying for as an advertiser. Now, in a branded podcast, you have a much better idea of who's actually engaging with it. If you've got this, I don't want to say we never want to say you want the smallest audience possible. That's not the case. You do want the most engaged audience possible. So when it comes to that branding piece of that, make sure that you've got that engagement there and realize that a thousand people that are just totally engaged in just watching front to back are much better than a million people that are kind of me. Maybe they're going to hang around for it. The other thing I want to talk about, too, is with the smaller podcasts they often will have, if you're going to advertise on any one of them, they're going to have that creative flexibility. They're going to have that ability to do the host read by the host, read, add, dynamic insertion. They're they're going to be more flexible with how that's done. Instead of having to have this specific byline or guideline or branding guide that you have to fit in as an advertiser. Now, how do we adapt that information over to your branded podcast? Well, really, it's making sure that you find creative ways to put your message in there because once again, with that smaller, tighter audience, they're going to be paying attention. So you're going to want to make sure that you've got that messaging that's going to get directly to those people. The advantage you have in that is you know who those people are when you're talking to that 3 million people, you know who the 3 million people are. But it's a broad audience. You have to talk to just your people in that audience. So therefore you're limiting that down. Therefore, you can see this tumbling effect of diminishing returns to me, the most. The biggest piece that came out of this study that I saw that I absolutely loved is that with branded podcasts and these tighter, these tighter niche podcasts, you're going to get that much better engagement and you're going to get those much better results because of that. And really this is all results driven, right? That's why you're starting a branded podcast next week. Once again, great topics. I haven't worked that out yet, so I really would love to hear what you would like to hear us cover. That being said, do me a favor, take care of yourself and if you can, take care of someone else too, I will see you very, very soon. It. Oh. Oh. Oh! Everybody go!

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Josh Troche

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