According to Statistika, there were over 19.1 million podcast listeners in the UK alone in 2021. Not all of them listened to business podcasts, but there are many listeners who run businesses to tap into. How do you get just a fraction of them to lend you their ears?
SWOT, SWOT and SWOT again
Finding your unique voice in this sea of voices can be really, really hard. Luckily, many others asked the same questions before you did. One of them is April Dunford. She specialises in positioning and strategy, and she’s done some insightful work for both individuals and companies to help them find their own voices and let them be heard. Her method boils down to putting your strengths at the front and centre of everything you do. Defining them is a whole other kettle of fish. There’s an old technique called a SWOT analysis. It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and it’s used to position yourself, your business or whatever it is you plan to send out into the world of commerce. You should do it regularly and go back to it often because markets shift, and so should you.
Components of a good positioning statement
Before we get into more details, note that each component of the positioning statement depends on the other. Here’s a brief overview and how they work.
- Competitive alternatives: Ask yourself, “What would customers use if we didn’t exist?”
- Key unique attributes: Which features do you have that your opposition doesn’t?
- Value: What value do the attributes unlock for your customers?
- Customers that Care: Who cares about these values?
- Context: What context makes the value obvious to your customers?
Once you’ve answered these questions honestly, you’ll have a positioning statement that means something. That doesn’t amount to anything until you implement it. Write your positioning statement in the description of your podcast on the platform of your choice. Keep it at hand and test all the topics you come up with against it. Ask yourself, “Does it fit into my positioning?” If it doesn’t, drop it and find other topics.
Topics
You’ve figured out why you need a podcast and created your podcast’s positioning statement. Now it’s time to come up with engaging topics. Everything you do should track back to your audience. If you’ve done your research, you’ll have a clear picture of who you want to talk to and you’ll know what your competitors are talking about. That will give you an idea of where the gaps are that will engage your listeners and differentiate you from the crowd.
Blah blah fishpaste
All of the advice in the world is useless unless you implement it. Let’s look at the TruevoTalks podcast we’ve recently launched and how we decide which topics to cover. To summarise, Truevo works in the payments space, and our target market is merchants. Basically, all things payments. There’s a whole bucket of topics around payments; how they work, choosing a provider, fraud, payment cycles etc. But payments are not the only topics relevant to merchants. We know they also care about building their ecommerce stores, which platforms to use, how to market their stores and individual products, and how to build brands. Oh yes, and podcasts of course, to name but a few.
We also know that there are many other sources covering these topics. So how are we going to stand out from them? We’ve done a couple of things. We’ve kept an eye out for in-person events that attract business owners. The upcoming RTS (Retail Technology Show) in London caught our attention. It ticks our retail and technology boxes. The show is hosted both in person and virtually, and it features exhibits and an extremely relevant conference (talk about engaging topics.) Some of the biggest brands in the world will be represented to boot. We liked it so much that we did a podcast on it, and built a massive stand you can check out on our Facebook page.
Follow #TruevoTalks on your preferred platform to see how we roll out some of these topics in the upcoming weeks and months. And if you want to talk about payments, you know who to talk to. Visit the Truevo website to get in touch. We can’t wait to make waves with you.
