Word of Mouth With a Modern Twist

By Kraig Kitchin

It’s been said that the oldest form of marketing is “word of mouth” advertising. Loosely interpreted, that means one neighbor telling another about discovering an item or a service that has made their lives better. However, with the discovery and popularity of influencer marketing, “word of mouth” has witnessed several successive years of explosive growth. With the presence of 1.8 million podcasts in the United States, podcast influencers are now enjoying a spotlight of discovery and success in the way they’re able to sell products and services on behalf of companies hiring them to do so, and thousands have achieved a critical audience mass size. These podcast influencers are compelling individuals, many of whom have learned, developed, or brought forth a natural ability to sell a product or service during their live conversations, just as humanity has been doing for millennia. Still, through the benefit of technology, their recommendations are amplified thousands of times more than their ancestors could ever dream of.

The 2021 version of “word-of-mouth advertising” are these podcasts hosts, who speak plainly with enthusiasm for their product and service discoveries within their daily or weekly conversations with their audiences. Not-so-secretly, many of these “discoveries” are assisted by influencer marketing media agencies, savvy enough to identify the podcast and host whose words matter to specific audiences and accurately pair them with a product or service that will be welcomed into the conversation. In addition, the success of their efforts is now measured by attribution models; not one storekeeper would tell another of a community member who happens to be good at spreading the good news about their storefront. Like so many other advancements, this is “word of mouth“ advertising at scale, using digital technology in the form of podcast downloads to make all the difference for national brands selling one product or service or another.

Finding success in this new “word of mouth” paradigm can be very complicated, and there are portions that we should, given the hundreds of millions of dollars a year now expressed in this form of advertising. But we can also keep it very simple, remembering that hearing words from somebody you trust to speak about a product or service and how good it is is enough to compel somebody else to make the next purchase. It is that simple.

Radio personalities have been doing this for more than 100 years now. The best ones, like Paul Harvey, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Joyner, or Howard Stern, will go down in history with that distinction. On television, there are entire businesses built upon this premise. QVC and Home Shopping Network and their on-air hosts are two shining examples. But, ultimately, it comes down to connecting with the audience at their level.

And while radio personalities in 2021 continue to shine with this skill set, it’s the podcasting industry that has come through for the first time with a specific topic focus attracting specific like-minded audiences with similar psychographics and qualitative qualities that allow marketers to know they are reaching their detailed customer target profile. The results speak for themselves, with returns on investments that are sometimes as high if not higher than 5:1, this new-aged “word of mouth” advertising is working.

It’s enough of a solid business model for dozens of companies to invest billions of dollars collectively to attract hosts and libraries of past podcasts to bet on the future of this form of advertising. It’s also lucrative enough to attract the stand-alone entrepreneur, who realizes that the barriers of entry are low enough that they, too, can create a podcast today and publish it tomorrow. The ambitious ones then go to work discovering an audience of like-minded individuals who want to hear what they have to say. It’s the free market economy of thought, in existence and practice, working away. The payoff is the discovery of a large audience and the subsequent monetization while benefiting earnest marketers who want access to that audience and have come to trust the host to evangelize and influence for their brands.

An entire industry of audio specialist agencies, like Oxford Road, leads marketers into this expanding foray. These agencies help marketers determine which podcast environments will be the most productive for them and help them with strategy and script creation and the formation of relationships between their brand and this new wave of successful podcasters.

It’s not unusual to see brands scale the number of voices they use in this advertising space. A men’s specialty product line might use more than 1500 influencers in a year. A health-related product for women can harness the relationship of more than 900 different female podcasters in a year. Easy-to-assemble databases, attribution codes, and real-time product sales tracking keeps all this business in order, and displays which shows perform best in a live dashboard. It’s all granular, all data-driven, and the results speak for themselves.

Who could have imagined a world where the former speechwriters of the Obama administration are in the same conversation as Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, or Sean Hayes, Will Arnett, and Jason Bateman? Who would’ve thought that the New York Times would staff a podcast studio with more than 70 full-time employees to create a daily version of their newspaper with such success?

There are many accomplishments to recognize in 2021. One of them is witnessing the audio podcast industry passing $1 billion and recorded advertising revenues for the first time from tens of thousands of advertisers. That is “word of mouth “advertising, 2021, and it’s only getting warmed up.

Despite the strides in the space, more than 50% of Americans have yet to download their first podcast and discover what their “neighbor” has to say about the topics they love most. Discovery will continue, and more Americans will start listening to podcasts, as they hear about them from their family and friends, and neighbors (word of mouth). More Americans will decide they want to listen to their favorite radio personality or their favorite podcast host “on-demand” on their timelines and not when it is necessarily scheduled.

The future of the influencer audio advertising experience is bright, and we see interest in the podcast space at the highest levels since our agency was founded. So if you haven’t yet tested this exciting space, or worse, tested and felt it wasn’t right, it’s time to give it another shot.