With the arrival at saturation of video content, the podcast is making an important breakthrough in the hearts of users. A statistical study carried out in 2018 by Médiamétrie already reported 4 million podcasters monthly. Imagine in 2020! A large majority of podcasts broadcast today are mostly derived from replays of radio broadcasts. But what about businesses? In addition to hyper-mobility, which is often cited as the primary reason for creating business podcasts, the stakes are actually quite varied. Let's take a look at it.
A recent history that is accelerating
Appeared for the first time in 2004, the word “podcast” was born from the fusion of “broadcast” (“to emit”, “to diffuse” in French) and of the famous revolutionary music player of Apple “iPod”. Two types of podcast can be distinguished:
- > Replay podcasts, especially used by radios, which allow you to listen to a live program on demand
- > Native podcasts which are exclusively created to make it a full-fledged content, without radio passing
As often, this medium first developed in the United States before spreading more widely in the world, including in France. Fact, uses are better established across the Atlantic with 37.3% of Internet users in regular podcast listeners in 2020, compared to 8.5% in France in 2018. . France is taking the measure of this potential, which is still under-exploited and for which there is hardly any national statistical data. It is also for this reason that Médiamétrie announced last fall the measurement of audiences on this type of medium.
For the company, the podcast is a new tool and still little known to communicators. But more and more of us are feeling a wind of opportunity blowing on this new channel, for several reasons.
More and more powerful audio streaming platforms
If video streaming is reaching maturity, or even saturation with the recent arrival of the giant Disney +, this is far from the case for audio. Music streaming platforms keep recruiting new users and subscribers. The undisputed major, Spotify, counts the trifle of 271 million active users and 124 million subscribers paying. Far ahead of its competitors Apple Music, Amazon Music or even the French Deezer, the Swedish leader is making podcasts his new battleground.
Vous trouverez plus d'infographie sur The report of Statista
With a repertoire of 700 podcasts and listened to by 16% of its users, Spotify recorded an audience growth of + 200% compared to last year. The company sees this as an opportunity to stabilize its economic model, which is still fragile, through greater monetization of this content. By reciprocity, the windfall is also great for brands since the platform wants to give the same exposure to podcasts as to music to make it the equivalent of an audio Youtube.
Gain in natural referencing
You can imagine that Google does not intend to stand still. The all-powerful search engine, which makes rain and shine, of ALL content passing through the web has also taken hold of the subject. By launching in 2018 its own listening service, the aptly named Google Podcasts, the search engine announces that it wants to double the worldwide audience of the podcast. Just that.
To achieve this, the American firm knows how to find the right arguments. To enhance the audio content of a podcast, it has developed a tool allowing the transcription of voice into text, the latter serving as a basis for indexing in the search results of a query. Fact, all the words potentially spoken in the podcast, even if they do not appear in the title or description, can enter the indexing of Google results and therefore promote your natural referencing (SEO).
The advent of vocal
Audio and voice are gradually and inexorably creeping into our lives, both professional and personal. Voice assistants are a glaring example. And to function, the results provided by the smart speakers draw their results from the audio format. Podcasts, in fact, will have a major role to play in the richness of the intelligence of voice assistants.
The audio medium also enjoys an image of trust with the public. Let us take the example of the media, radio is asserting itself as the channel in which confidence is the strongest compared to the internet or television. Indeed, the audio content is freed from the power of the image in which distrust continues to grow. It also stimulates a dose of imagination which creates proximity with its listener, generating confidence more easily..
The corporate podcast, still virgin territory
Today, the use of the corporate podcast is still the prerogative of large groups or large companies. The ground therefore remains still virgin on all the niche markets. There are communication territories to preempt.
From a production point of view, the podcast offers a multitude of creative axes on which a subject can be valued: interview, micro-sidewalk, expert debates, sound immersion, etc. Everyone can find an innovative format that will reach their core target. And to close this post, I suggest you below my top 5 podcasts that I find particularly well designed in relation to the words and the communication objective.
# 1 Advice to consumers : "Sports advice" by Decathlon
# 2 brand identity : "The Musketeers, 50 years of history" by Intermarché
# 3 Employer brand : "The meaning of ideas" by Syntec-Ingénierie
# 4 Expert opinion: “Green the future” by GRDF
# 5 societal utility : "Question of confidence" by AXA France
Maxime Poux, communications director of the Ginger group… guest of the We Are COM team!
