069 - Steve Pratt: Podcasts - Your Brand's Unfair Advantage (VIDEO)
What makes a good podcast? How about a great podcast? In this episode, Emily and Steve discuss the best ways to create a valuable message to grow your podcast audience as well as how companies should be approaching podcasting as a new form of content marketing. They also discuss emerging opportunities with audio content and voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
Why do Facebook, Dell Technologies, Mozilla, Slack, Red Hat, NYT T Brand Studio, BMW, CBS, Charles Schwab, and more top brands come to Pacific Content when they want to create a branded podcast?
Steve Pratt is the Vice President and co-founder of Pacific Content, a company of 30 passionate podcast nerds that focuses exclusively on creating original podcasts with brands.
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Pacific Content joined Rogers Media in May 2019 and is one of Entrepreneur's 100 Brilliant Companies. Their shows have won Webby Awards, Digiday Branded Content Awards, MarCom Awards, and Shorty Awards.
What makes a good podcast? How about a great podcast? In this episode, Emily and Steve discuss the best ways to create a valuable message to grow your podcast audience as well as how companies should be approaching podcasting as a new form of content marketing. They also discuss emerging opportunities with audio content and voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
2:20: How Steve started working on branded content and more details on his background.
3:00: Sirius XM and the first podcast ever.
4:19: Getting bitten by the "podcast bug." Opportunities to generate exposure for new bands in Canada emerged through licensing agreements for podcasts.
4:35: The new wave of podcasting hits and with it the need for podcasters to think and act like media companies
5:37: Companies begin realizing a new medium to generate content to increase exposure, without overtly tying it to their brand. It doesn't sound like an ad.
Choiceology with Katy Milkman is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It explores irrational decision making. The show was created by Pacific Content.
"They all understand that you have to put the audience first, and you have to have a lot of empathy for the people that you're creating this for. Anytime anybody makes a piece of content that is about themselves, it's an infomercial." - Steve Pratt
"If we make something that's about us, maybe people will listen once, and then they'll never come back." - Steve Pratt
7:22: Traditional advertising is becoming less and less effective due to the economic and global impacts of coronavirus. Advertising isn't always about showing off your brand and product; sometimes it's about just about creating something that adds value to the user's experience.
"This is a time for brands to serve instead of sell" - Steve Pratt
Loyalty and ROI
9:00: How do you play to the unique strengths of audio, and how do you measure your success in harnessing it?
11:10: Podcasting can reach people when screens aren't available
Podcasting hit a watershed moment in 2019 when, for the first time ever, over 50% of the U.S. adult population had listened to a podcast.
13:39: Everyone has a podcast, and the market is increasingly growing. Discovery and promotion can be a podcaster's biggest hurdle.
14:48: The same tips for growing your podcast can be applied as you're building a voice experience on Alexa or Google Assistant.
"This is all part of the concert of the marketing instruments; they play together." - Emily Binder
17:58: Word of mouth can grow ambassadors for your podcast or voice experience.
"You can't buy listens in podcasts, you have to earn them." - Steve Pratt
18:30: Goodpods is a platform for users to discover new podcasts and can help podcasters capitalize on the "word of mouth" marketing in a digital form. Goodpods is founded by JJ Ramberg, see our conversation with her here.
19:56: Establish patterns and comfort with users, and it will make them more drawn to new mediums. This will reduce friction to new technology and drive adoption.
"When we first had smartphones, you had to teach someone how to download an app and close an app...now, it has become second nature, and we can't live without it." - Emily Binder
23:05: This is the time to experiment with technology
24:53: Smart speakers are the training wheels of voice, but voice assistant is on so many more devices than just a smart speaker
"We had a 70% YOY increase in global shipments of smart speakers in 2019 over 2018. And voice in the car is actually the fastest growing and number 1 use case of voice." - Emily Binder
27:17: What has Google been doing in the podcast space?
Books and Podcasts Steve recommends:
Connect with Steve and Pacific Content:
Steve Pratt is Vice President and Co-Founder of Pacific Content, an award winning podcast studio
Follow @beetlemoment on Instagram:
058 - Amy Summers. Voice: A Faster Way to Publish
Writing a book has long been considered a rite of passage in establishing industry authority and a personal brand. Books are powerful. But the traditional publishing industry moves slowly and leaves much to be desired for writers without time to spare or whose content is time sensitive. How can voice technology establish a platform and thought leadership faster - and maybe even better?
Amy Summers shares her experiment of creating an Alexa Flash Briefing instead of writing a book. The results may surprise you.
Flash Briefing Beat Writing a Book
“If it’s really just about getting information out there, why does it have to be this slow?”
Amy Summers is President of Pitch Publicity in New York. Amy launched her company in 2003 and over 20 years her campaigns have resulted in billions of media impressions worldwide. She produces one of the highest ranked Alexa Flash Briefings about PR, management, and communications, The Pitch with Amy Summers.
The Pitch is a Flash Briefing about PR and communications
Amy Summers launched Pitch Publicity in 2003, in the face of a rapidly changing climate for communication and media relations. She has 20 years of experience in securing publicity and developing communication strategies for influential experts in medicine, science, tech, finance and international corporations and nonprofit organizations.
Summers’ campaigns have resulted in billions of media impressions worldwide and she’s credited as the first to strategize live media interviews at both the deepest and highest points of the planet (scientific laboratory, 63 feet beneath the sea and Mount Everest summit, 21,000 feet above sea level).
Topics:
How is the book publishing industry behind the times?
What can go wrong with a book deal?
Why didn’t Amy write a book?
How Amy established a platform for herself as a PR and communications expert on a new medium (voice) using Alexa Flash Briefing
People assume that Amy has written a book - hear why!
What advice Amy gives clients who want to write a book
Get in Touch with Amy:
Instagram: @amysummersnyc
Alexa skill: The Pitch with Amy Summers
051 - Alexa, How Can Brands Can Sell and Engage More? Bob Stolzberg, Voice XP
Plot twist: how could Alexa hurt Amazon sales?
Guest Bob Stolzberg, Founder of Voice XP, and Emily dug into a key question about where e-commerce is headed: can brands stand as independent ecommerce channels while reaching customers through Amazon Alexa?
Furthermore, will branding really matter in an increasingly AI assisted future? (Bob and Emily disagree here. And we’d love to hear Brian Roemmele’s take!)
Bob Stolzberg, Founder Voice XP, Alexa Champion
The convenience factor of a single voice command could reinforce brand loyalty. If you can have a company call you back or send you a car or a pizza hands-free, you might just go direct to them and never shop around (and that could be through their Alexa skill). Or maybe the voice assistant of the future does the research for us and we don’t bother remembering brands anymore.
Personal assistants will help us buy things and it doesn’t have to be direct from Amazon. Ecommerce businesses can build voice experiences directing users to buy direct from them (e.g., via text message or multimodal touch screen that opens a separate page). Think about this for DTC (direct to consumer) like a Casper or M Gemi.
Topics in this episode:
What you can do today to improve customer experiences for shopping and getting information
How voice will impact the future of advertising
How you can create a custom skill which lets your customers request a call-back from you through Alexa
How to engage people with your voice experiences - omnichannel marketing and voice as part of the funnel
Get in touch with Bob Stolzberg:
Twitter: @BobStolzberg
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With Trinity Audio, publishers and bloggers can turn their readers into listeners by turning their written content into lifelike speech. All it takes is a short snippet of code to audio-fy your website. Get started for free at trinityaudio.ai
049 - The Killer Voice App - Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist Alexa - Pt. 2 of 2
Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Alexa at Amazon
Guest: Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Amazon Alexa. We discussed Alexa Flash Briefing and the future of AI and how it will teach us about ourselves. The killer app is the connection. Part 2 of 2. (Listen to Part 1.)
We also answered a top question among marketers: how do you overcome discoverability challenges with early voice to get your Alexa skill found?
Friendly reminder: please mute your Alexa device before listening.
SHOW NOTES:
1:05 Flash Briefing - a consistent way to engage your customers. Beats a silly CEO email no one opens. This is a better company update.
2:00 "I want to engage and connect on a human level”
Cross modalities to drive engagements
2:45 Teri Fisher - Voice First Health Podcast: using SEO to share and promote all his Flash Briefings (Alexa in Canada, the top briefing in Canada). Put all the briefings onto a blog. This is how to harness Flash Briefing across modalities and web as well as helping your SEO.
3:20 You offer customers value. You must give. Pippa.io is a good tool to get your briefings embedded into your site with a simple widget which is also search-friendly (thanks for sponsoring our show, Pippa!) Here’s how it looks for the Voice Marketing Flash Briefing:
Get a $25 Amazon Gift Card when you sign up for Pippa to host your podcast or Flash Briefing!
4:00 What do you see coming down the pike as far as interaction within Flash Briefing? How do we move from passive to interactive, if we do at all - in voice experiences?
4:30 Dave: I’m a product person. I love consumer devices. I feel strongly that you want someone to get a new idea or understand how something will work, it must be a physical product. That was Echo. People want devices that work with Alexa. That customer sentiment has evolved - the future will be similar.
7:50 Alexa Conversations
8:00 The future of voice
8:20 We as humans don't think in terms of TASKS but in terms of scenarios, ideas, and things we want to get done (re:MARS example)
9:35 Burn your current ideas down. AI will help. Existentialism.
11:00 There is no killer voice app. The killer thing is the relationship and context with AI. Like a long friendship - it’s not any one aspect that makes it meaningful, it’s the entire relationship.
044 - Paying Voice Talent, Junk Alexa Skills, and Business Integrity - Melanie Scroggins
I spoke with Austin-based professional voice actor Melanie Scroggins, Owner of Melanie Scroggins Voiceover. Melanie found me based on my tweets about junk skills (Alexa skills with no content that are squatting on search terms).
Her story resonated with me because it opens the door to a larger conversation about how we value and pay talent.
For voice actors who are providing the important sonic branding that we in the voice community are effusive about, communities like SpokenLayer are underpaying freelancers to a surprising degree.
And somehow, no one is talking about it.
This hopefully serves as a conversation starter. Let’s openly discuss these things so we can create a better place for everyone, from users and customers to developers, brands, voice actors, and content creators.
We mentioned:
Here is the rate guide for GVAA (Global Voice Academy)
While this is a standard rate sheet a lot of voice actors use to rate out projects, there
actually is no end all be all. It's really up to the individual actor, but
this provides a solid foundation on which to start charging.
029 - Amazon Alexa In-Skill Purchasing Gets Upsell - Voice Marketing for Brands
Announcements - what's happening in February 2019 (first two minutes of show):
This week I’ll be on Bradley Metrock’s show, This Week in Voice, which should air February 1, 2019
If you’re in Atlanta, come to the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) event on February 6, where I’m moderating a panel about voice technology with Kesha Williams from Chik Fil A (she was the main keynote at The Alexa Conference), plus speakers from Home Depot and 360i: How Voice Will Disrupt the Buyer Journey - Innovation Series presented by Nebo Agency
Next podcast appearance: Alexa in Canada, the Voice Experience with Dr. Teri Fisher. This will air the week of February 11.
Social Media Week Austin: #SMWATX Feb 19-22, I’m speaking about voice marketing. Date and time announced February 11.
Show notes:
CPG and FMCG especially need to pay attention to the updates in Alexa: ISP (in-skill purchasing) just got a facelift in the Developer Console, making it easier to upsell. This is just getting started.
Skills with very high conversion rates for upsell to premium version (34-50%!): Big Sky (weather) and Escape the Airplane (game)
Voice in the car - HUGE opportunity (car is faster growing and has 60% higher MAUs than smart speakers)
Today is like first gen iPhone: you can't multitask - only one app at a time
Where we are with skills now: you can only do one thing at a time
This will improve
Voice is for EVERY brand
Typing is unnatural, awkward, and slow. We are computing in computer-ese. Let's talk. We can speak and process so much faster than we can talk or read.
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