Podcast Maps EP 32 - The Importance of Audience Avatar in Your Podcast

Podcast Maps by Graham Brown

The Audience Avatar is one of the most important assets that you'll create for your podcast. It's a single sheet that contains everything we need to know about the listener and when I say everything, I mean, everything. For me, this audio book, the Audience Avatar is Nicole. I gave her a name. She's 42 years old. She's a corporate leader. She's a communications leader for her brand. Give your Audience Avatar a name, humanize them. How old are they? What positions do they have in their organization? What are their frustrations? What are their paying points? What are their fears? What has changed for them in the last 18 to 24 months? Why are they going to listen to you? What kind of language did they use? Now what qualifies you to be in a position of leadership to influence Nicole? I'm regularly reminded that most people start podcasts without even firstly, an idea of who the listener is and therefore, why their content is important to them. Which means no matter how hard you hustle with the guests and getting great guests for your podcast, if you haven't designed the Audience Avatar then it's all academic. When you record the podcast, when you do the intros, the outros, the calls to action, this thing is the callbacks and the bumpers. You should be speaking directly to Nicole. You're not speaking to you guys or the listeners or anybody out there. You see, Nicole doesn't want to be anybody or everybody. She wants to be somebody and down right a good Audience Avatar should not only be that one pager for your podcast in the production. But it should also be the go-to sheet for your social and communications teams for understanding how to communicate to your audience when that episode goes live. The more you can involve all different aspects of communications and marketing across the organization, the more you can make your efforts omni-channel, the more likely you are to turn a listener into a fan. As a podcast owner, your goal should be to turn listeners into subscribers and subscribers into fans. Fans comment, fans share, fans promote your podcast. Your fans are your best marketing department when it comes to podcasts and the best podcast are partnerships between hosts and fans. One of the most important aspects of any corporate podcast is how you speak to the audience and how you involve the audience in your community. A podcast should never be, this is what we want to talk about. It should always be, what does the listener want to hear about? What is the listeners frustration of? Why are they listening to me? And you'll only ever really know that by speaking to Nicole. That's why when we take on a new podcast project, the two upfront development assets that we want to work with any client on are firstly, the Audience Avatar i.e. understanding who the audience is, understanding their personality, understanding their language and understanding what their problem is and secondly, the podcast design itself. Meaning, how will that podcast speak to the audience and how will it involve them in the process. Involving the audience in the process doesn't necessarily mean phone ins in the old school radio vernacular, but it does mean speaking to them directly. And many corporate podcasts today ignore the audience or say the audience or you guys or the listeners as opposed to simply saying 'you'. There are many ways you can involve the audience in your podcast and turn them from listeners into fans and this is where any good podcast agency should be able to help you. Whether it's helping you with callbacks that reference both back catalog audio and what's coming up next or designing with a clear call to action. That encourages the listener to get involved in the podcast itself. That could mean, for example, email feedback, filling out a form, downloading a lead magnet or simply subscribing to the podcast on their favorite podcast platform. Your biggest asset in your podcast is the audience. And that means having a really good understanding of who Nicole is and why you're doing this podcast for her. Because, you know, what's going to happen. You'll get to six podcasts and the novelty of doing the podcast itself will wear off and internally people will start asking questions as why are we doing this? However, if you get feedback, if you involve your audience in the process then you have the foundations for long-term communications success.