Summary
In this episode, Ben Amos explains why he has launched a brand new video podcast for his video production business. He discusses the changing landscape of podcast and video marketing, emphasising the importance of quality content over quantity. Ben also highlights the rise of both long-form and short-form content and the growing popularity of podcasting as a format. He shares his goals for the video podcast, which include building relationships with high-value business guests and establishing expertise and trust. Ben discusses the workflow and tools used for podcast production and the benefits of a seasonal approach to podcasting.
Takeaways
- Quality content is key in the changing landscape of podcast and video marketing.
- Both long-form and short-form content are on the rise, and platforms are favoring high-value content.
- Podcasting is a growing format, offering opportunities to cut through the competition.
- Building relationships, adding value, and establishing expertise are important goals for a video podcast.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast
01:26 – The Changing Landscape of Podcast and Video Marketing
04:16 – The Rise of Long-Form and Short-Form Content
06:08 – Podcasting as a Growing Format
08:01 – Goals for the Video Podcast
10:17 – Inviting High-Value Business Guests
12:13 – Focus on Building Relationships and Adding Value
14:07 – Repurposing Content and Distribution
16:17 – Workflow and Tools for Podcast Production
18:40 – Seasonal Approach to Podcasting
20:04 – Call for Feedback and Conclusion
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Transcript of the Interview: ** Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.
Ben (00:08.306)
Guess what? We’ve started a brand new video podcast, but not for engaged video marketing. In fact, the podcast that I’ve just launched is for my video production business, and in this episode, I’m going to explain why.
Ben (00:27.478)
G’day my friends and welcome back to the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. This is episode 291 and we’re rounding out 2024, sorry, 2023. We’re leading up to 2024. I’m getting ahead of myself, but as we kind of close out the year here, I’m really focused on getting plans in place for what will hopefully be again, the best year yet for my video production business. And for you listening to this podcast or watching on YouTube,
If you’re in either a video production business or whatever aspect of video that you’re in, then you would know the importance of planning and getting the right things in place for a successful year ahead. So in this episode, I want to share with you a little bit about one of the major things that we’re implementing as a marketing strategy for my video production business. And maybe it’s something that you’ve considered or you could consider for your business as well. And that is launching a brand new video podcast.
Now, for those of you that have been following my story for a while, you know that I’ve been podcasting here for the Engage Video Marketing brand, my personal brand, for six and a half years. And there’s been elements of video podcasts in more recent times where episodes are going up on YouTube, but primarily it’s been an audio podcast. The reason why we’re launching a video first podcast for my brand, my video production brand, which is called Innovate Media here in Australia, is…
a little bit of a different strategy. And I’m going to unpack that strategy for you in today’s episode. So if you’re new to this podcast, I’m Ben Amos from Engage Video Marketing. It’s my mission to grow confident video strategists. So if that sounds like something that’s valuable to you, then hit that subscribe button on YouTube or follow the podcast so that you don’t miss another episode. And this episode is going to take the format, one of these new episode formats that I’m doing, which is more off the cuff.
and sharing with you guys in the podcast a little bit about what we’re doing in my video production business, hopefully to provide you some inspiration for your own business as well. So, let me tell you about this plan. So, and it’s certainly not a new plan. The idea of launching a video podcast or a podcast for a business is certainly not a new plan. But the reason why I’ve decided and started to do this for my video production business
Ben (02:47.07)
is because really I’ve noticed the changing landscape in the world of podcast content marketing and video marketing. And it’s something that I feel that now is the right time for us to tap into. So the fact is that there’s increasing attention on video content and on good quality, high quality content marketing just generally across the globe and across various platforms. And that content marketing, I believe, is at a point now where it’s less about, sorry,
quantity of content and more about the quality. So if you’re a brand or a business that’s adding value and putting quality content out into the market, I believe that that’s how you can really cut through in 2024 and beyond. So combined with that, the fact that across platforms, generally watch time and consumption of media is up and has been significantly since the pandemic of 2020 and beyond. So all of the statistics are proving that more and more people are spending time consuming content online.
So the question is how are they going to consume content that’s relevant and related to your business to drive the ideal customers closer towards making a purchase decision with your business, whatever it is that you sell. So watch time and consumption is up. And the way that platforms have been shifting into both favoring long form content. So many of the platforms are leaning quite heavily into longer form, high value content.
Um, you know, the average duration of a YouTube video, for example, is going up and up rather than it being like the three to five minutes that it was a number of years ago, it’s now closer to eight to 10 to 15 minutes for your average YouTube video. However, those short form platforms are also increasing in attention and, um, and algorithmic relevance as well today. So you’ve kind of got this, this dual focus of, of
The rise of short form content where, you know, less than 60 seconds or 90 seconds on, you know, reels and, and Tik Tok and, and YouTube shorts and so on. So short form content is definitely going up, but combined with that, that long form content is also going up on the right platforms as well. So when you think about those two aspects, we’re kind of leaning into both of those things by launching a video podcast. And I’ll explain how that breaks down in a moment.
Ben (05:09.986)
Combined with this, there is more and more noise online than ever before. Right. I think we, I think we know that. So as a business, how are you going to be creating video content that cuts through that noise? How are you going to be releasing content marketing that people actually pay attention to the idea of releasing just a PDF or a lead magnet is, is still relevant for many businesses, but also it’s, it’s kind of being ignored by many audiences as well. So how can you create content that shows up?
regularly for your audience or for your intended audience and adds value to them on a consistent basis. Not just putting all of your eggs in one campaign or one content basket, but instead trying to be somewhat omnipresent with your brand or your business so that people are seeing you pop up time and time again with high value content. I believe that’s one of the really powerful ways of cutting through the noise is purely by frequency of showing up.
video podcasting is a great way to do that as well. And I’ll explain more when I break that down. Combined with that is podcasting is a growing format. So the statistics don’t lie. And these are just American based statistics here, but 40% of Americans under 55 listen to podcasts monthly. This was a 2023 report. And in 2023, there were 2.5 million or over 2.5 million podcasts within the Apple directory. So that’s a lot of podcasts, but the fact is,
that only 450,000 of those podcasts were classed as active or have released an episode in the last couple of months. So with only 450,000 active podcasts on the Apple podcasts directory, we combine that, no, sorry, compare that with over 114 million active YouTube channels, then I believe that shows that the podcast platform is an opportunity still to really cut through.
So only 450,000 active podcasts on Apple podcasts, but 114 million active YouTube channels. So if you’re thinking as a video production company or in your business, should we be focused on, you know, growing a YouTube channel or should we be growing a podcast? Well, you can make that decision, but I think that statistic really weighs into that. So probably less competition there on podcasts.
Ben (07:33.566)
And we talked about short form video as well. So, you know, as a content marketing tool, you know, really tapping into and, and growing that short form audience is, is a powerful strategy as well. And podcasting leads into that. So with that framing in mind, I wanted to just share a little bit of insight into our business strategy behind launching a brand new video podcast for innovate media, which is my video production company. So what we’re
What our goals are, I guess, for 2024 is we’ve recognised over the last number of years that one of our best ways of securing the right sort of clients to grow our video production business is in building relationships with the right high-value prospects. So we get a significant amount of our work from referrals, from word of mouth, from repeat work and from building strong relationships with those ideal clients in the industries that we serve.
Ben (08:30.342)
stronger relationships with the people that we believe are ideal clients, then that’s going to lead into our business growth goals pretty clearly. We also believe in the power of establishing our own expertise, authority and trust as a provider of video strategy and video services. So we know from the number of years that we’ve been in business here that if we can be perceived as the experts in video strategy and being able to be trusted to provide great services,
quality results for our clients and having authority in our area, in our geographical area that we’re serving here, then we know that that’s going to lead to more business for us. More business, easier sales and longer lasting relationships and obviously higher value projects as well. So, with that expertise, authority and trust, that’s a critical goal for us in my business.
And I also have a motto around the idea of lead with value. You’ve heard me talk about that before. So everything that we do in business, we wanna be leading with some sort of value. How can we put more value out into the world and know that value comes back to us in the forms of clients, business, projects, revenue, profit, and all of that good stuff that drives business growth? So leading with value is a critical part of our strategy as well.
And finally, obviously, like any business, our goal in 2024 is to increase our average dollar sale and our total revenue for the business. And just in full openness here, our goal is to tip over the $1 million Australian dollar revenue mark in 2024. So we got close to that in 2023 calendar year. Our goal is to tip over that $1 million. So that’s where we’re at in my business and that’s our goal for 2024. So how does our…
launching of our brand new podcast feed into that? Well, let me explain it, you know, what we’re doing in the first place. So our podcast is called the Coast and Commerce podcast, the name we’ve come up for that. And it’ll be highlighting business leaders, business owners, and high value business people from the Sunshine Coast region that we operate in. And obviously the title there, Coast and Commerce, nice little play on words there. So our goal is to be inviting those
Ben (10:46.466)
high value businesses, whether they be existing clients of ours or people who we would like to be clients or people who are connected to those people who we would like to have as clients. Those high value businesses in our geographical area. Our goal is to bring them into our studio, our professional studio space to film this podcast, you know, in a high value way with lights and multiple cameras and good quality audio to give them a real experience.
of being on camera in our studio in hopefully a fairly easy way. It lifts them up when we invite people into the podcast, you know, and we’ve recorded most of the first season already. It’s not quite, it’s not all released yet, but we’ve, we’ve recorded seven episodes of the first season already. So we get these people into our studio and they feel like they’re, they’re on, you know, on a TV show, you know, they love it. And, um, you know, it really lifts them up and, and gives them some, it makes them feel like they’re.
They’re people of importance, which they are, right? And we make them feel that. So it’s a great experience for our clients to come in or our guests to come into our studio and record these episodes. We wanna make it a really great experience because part of our goal in producing this podcast is number one, getting these people into our studio and in front of our cameras to collaboratively co-create content with them. It doesn’t really matter to us. One of our success metrics is not
the number of views or the downloads for the podcast. We’re kind of not really caring too much about how many people listen to our podcast. Instead, we’re focused mostly on how we build relationships with those guests and give them a great experience, provide them with some collaborative content that they can share out to their networks through their social media and their email databases so that it kind of…
exposes our brand to their network as well. So that’s our mindset behind that. We’ve also, you know, considering a very selective guest process. So we’ll be targeting very specific guests to get on the show. Guests that we know are either, like I said before, ideal clients for us or potential ideal clients for us or connected to ideal clients for us. So if we can make sure that the people we get in the guest seat for this podcast,
Ben (13:10.082)
are there for the right reasons, then we know that it’s not about the downloads. It’s not about the success of the podcast from a metrics perspective, that instead it’s about building those relationships, giving those people a great experience in our studio and on camera. And also it’s about the conversations that I have as a business owner when I’m hosting them for the podcast recording about video strategy, about video marketing and opening up the idea of maybe they could do this for themselves or maybe, you know, we could produce this.
video for them or something. So I go into that recording experience with that guest and really looking for opportunities to add more value and suggest ideas, ways that they could better utilize video for their own business. So combined with all of that is the idea that we are creating this long form video first podcast episode and we’re releasing it as an audio podcast as well. So utilizing all the podcast distribution platforms, including YouTube.
the YouTube version as well as YouTube music. I was trying to get that right. So if you’re not aware, Google podcasts will be going away sometime in 2024. So Google is now leaning into YouTube as a podcasting platform through the YouTube music app or through YouTube, the YouTube podcasting platform as well. So we’re really tapping into that and hopefully getting an early advantage in that YouTube.
podcasting space as well. And we’ll be creating that long form, releasing that long form, and then using some AI tools, which I’ll share shortly, to repurpose into short form video content. That short form video content released on YouTube Shorts, on Reels, maybe on TikTok, we haven’t really decided on that yet. And Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and LinkedIn will be pushing that out both throughout platforms and also sharing these short form video content.
files with our clients so that they can publish them on their own platform. So we’re kind of getting double exposure there as well.
Ben (15:13.302)
Excuse me, combined with that, excuse me. Well, also this is raw. We don’t need to cut this out. This is a raw podcast episode. I’m gonna drink some water here, excuse me.
Thanks for sticking with me. I hope this is of value to you. We’ll also obviously be getting some high value email database content. So being able to send out our EDMs or our email database marketing content to our email list of past clients and future clients. So having that consistent content to include in our EDMs is important.
We’ll be adding these as blog pages or podcast pages to our blog as well on our online website domain. So that’s got huge benefits from an SEO perspective and a blog perspective. So we’re creating some high value show notes, including full transcripts of the episodes, good quality Google juice there. And we’ll be, like I said, we’ll be using some AI tools to take the time off my team in order to produce this. So to be honest,
What’s held me back from producing a podcast like this in my business in the past is the time it would take my team to put this out when we’re not effectively getting paid for this content, right? So it is a marketing content, but we don’t want to be spending hours and hours each week producing this content. So our workflow is this. We record the content in our studio, we have them edited by one of our editing team, and then that complete edited episode, we’re actually uploading to Riverside. So we use Riverside for other…
benefits within the business, but Riverside will enable us to create a transcript and then to edit out using Riverside’s AI tools, it’ll create some shorts or some suggested extracts of 60 to 90 seconds. So those shorts created by AI in Riverside are then downloaded and used within a tool called Opus Clip. Now Opus Clip will enable us to add very quickly, often at the click of a button.
Ben (17:13.59)
We can add those burnt-in captions with those emojis and those colors and those dynamic captions and a logo and things like that to format them for social media reels. So Opus Clip, very powerful for that AI-driven tool that we are getting a lot of value out of as well. And finally, we use Swell.ai or Swell.ai is the tool. So Swell.ai is a tool that you can put your podcast content into.
And it’ll use AI to actually generate things like a description, a chapter breakdown. It’ll generate social media posts for you. So content for that. It’ll generate an article for your website. It’ll generate all of that using AI. And I find it does an amazing job. So you can just put the content in there and then my team just takes that content out, pushes it out onto the various platforms and they don’t have to spend a lot of time writing the content that goes alongside the podcast.
So all in all that takes a couple of hours a week for a couple of different people in our team, and that is it. Now, I will add a caveat here that with our podcast for the business here, we are only planning to release this in season. So we’ve deliberately set out saying that we’ve got season one, we’ll have eight episodes, and then we’ll have a bit of a break. We’ll reevaluate where we’re at the end of releasing eight episodes. The benefit of a seasonal-based podcast like this is
You don’t have to commit to a weekly podcast release. You can plan in advance. You can batch record in advance. So we’ve had people in our studio over the course of two days to record this seven episodes we’ve done so far. We’ve still got to catch up with one more episode. So two days in the studio, we had this content recorded and then we batch edit the content and you know, we’ve got it all ready to go released. Um, we’ve got a couple of episodes that are releasing this side of Christmas. And then the final episodes will be.
of the season will be releasing in the new year. And then we’ll reevaluate. We’ll have a bit of a pause and then season two will probably, if it works out well, will be coming out towards March next year. So the benefit of approaching it from a seasonal perspective from the start is you’re not over committing to something that’s saying it’s going to be a weekly podcast and you’re going to keep going until you get to, like this podcast, 291 episodes. So that’s what we’re doing.
Ben (19:38.29)
I promise you guys because my goal is to bring this sort of information to you, but also to share how it’s going. So I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve listened to this podcast and you’re thinking about either starting your own podcast for your business in 2024, or you’ve already had some experience with your own podcast, I’d love to hear from you. How’s it gone for you? What’s been the pros and cons? What have been your learnings? Maybe you can share with me.
Reach out to me on any of the social platforms at engage underscore Ben or email podcast at engage video marketing.com. I’d love to hear from you guys. And I will be back with you in a future episode, probably, you know, after the first quarter next year, and I’ll let you know how we’re going with the coast and commerce podcast, how that’s working as a marketing and business growth strategy for my video production business. All right, my friends have an awesome week and I’ll be back with you next week with another episode of the engaged video marketing podcast until then.
I’m Ben Amos from Engage Video Marketing and it’s my mission to help you grow as a confident video strategist. All right. Take care.
