The Marketing Meetup Newcastle - July 2025
Welcome
There are three key values for The Marketing Meetup which is to listen, say hello and be positively lovely. The Marketing Meetup in Newcastle is sponsored by Mabo, Grainger Hub and Nesma along with The Keynote Club. Nesma offers training and proud to be in the North East and be behind North East marketers.
The Power of Podcasting & It's Place in the Marketing Mix - Ashleigh King
Ashleigh is the host of the Nurture your Zest Podcast and the talk is why you should podcast and that it is useful to be a marketing strategy and top trends. There is Samanth, Joes and Chloe who were also here to film the talk. Some awesome things that have happened has been skill development since they started podcasting including how to hold your voice in a room. They have done paid speaking opportunities and even a cameo on Dragon's Den and have guested and had guests on podcasts along with expert opinion in the press including their thoughts about Megan Markle's podcast and reached out when Kim Kardashian released her new podcast. They have been able to create their own studio and create podcasts for other people and be able to talk to businesses and help people to start their own podcast including being an expert in residence at the BIPC plus they have had support from Creative UK to start a podcasting course.
Ashleigh talked about the macro factors around podcasting which can be from a political point of view is more freedom of speech than censorship with US having the top podcast listeners by country and China is second and these are different about content and approach along with considering which podcasters are on the far right or far left from Andrew Tate to people calling for action from society. When starting a podcast where do your views sit and can think about the use of podcasts as a political tool where Donald Trump has been mentioned or been on 70,000 podcasts and Kamala Harris was just mentioned on 14,000 podcasts. People have an opportunity to connect, and they can be used more to be a political tool and then how do you know what is right and wrong and what is ethics around this. Economic part of podcasting is a low barrier of entry with high competition but can stand out based on your own unique selling point or unique value proposition including North Girls Love Gravy who did a pilot of four episodes and now do brand partnerships with Fenwick and Greggs and there is My Ordinary Life where are passionate about teaching and educating about learning disabilities which is about ordinary lives of people who struggle with disability. You can stand out if you know what to talk about.
Podcasts don't make money because you have a podcast as only a small minority of content creators make money but by having a podcast often leads to other opportunities and there are other ways to monetise a show including affiliate links or partnerships with brands. There is also a case for diversity in podcasting and can reach people on audio or audio and video and you can have transcripts and have ways to support people in their preferred route to consume your content. For example, they had someone who came on as a guest on a podcast, Lucy Reynolds who has a unique speech pattern as they have Cerebral Palsy, but their episode had one of the most downloads. You can talk about things that are important to you and open your world so everyone can learn more.
Reaching diverse audiences as can engage hard to reach communities who listen to podcasts on a regular basis including the purple pound who have money to spend who have accessibility issues. AI advancements mean people can adopt podcasting faster and can quickly repurpose content with as with Choppity or with tools as part of podcast workflow and marketing tasks including transcripts and show notes.
Advantage of audio podcasts is it is an intimate experience that can listen while doing something else from driving to dishes and barrier is low where could record a voice memo and upload this but need to think about the quality and for audio there is lack of visual appeal and discoverability so can put it on YouTube as people search there. People are more likely to listen to an audio podcast all the way through up to 80% compared to 20-40% for video. Advantage of video is it is more accessible for different speech patterns and can reach different audiences with visual engagement, but the disadvantage is that the cost and effort is higher as doing more work to check over audio and video and people aren't always comfortable being videoed or on camera but could do things with Zoom or Riverside where quality is better.
Other things to think about is legal, including defamation so need to think about what you say about other people, if thinking about using the word allegedly then need to be careful so everything you say is correct and can fact check and are comfortable about saying or not share anything that isn't factual or avoid trauma mining. Copyright and intellectual property can be where using music can be an issue so can buy or license music but if want to talk about favourite songs can link to a Spotify playlist. Podcasts are more environmentally friendly and can go anywhere in the world so quickly, but the huge data requirements may include huge video files so be mindful for what you are keeping and if you have what you need move on and delete old footage.
Jason M. Lemkin is the godfather of SAAS who mentioned about giving value from just a few people to get results, sometimes just one person is enough. Their show isn't huge, but they are happy with the results, so if the podcast is working and meets your needs this is great. Podcast listeners are 80% more likely to listen to most or all of an episode and podcast listeners spend an average of 6 hours and 39 minutes per week listening to podcasts and 74% of listeners feel a deeper connection to the brands they hear.
Hasn't everyone got a podcast? According to Spotify there are 6 million podcasts, but less than 400,000 podcasts produced new content in the last 30 days, and a lot of podcasters quit or lose momentum which means with consistent effort you can get results. Why do podcasts fail? Podfade which is running out of steam, people worry if it Is interesting enough, might not know what to do, unrealistic expectations of those who can start but not keep to level they are expecting, ego driven podcasts are not sustainable and clarity around goals is key.
Now is the perfect opportunity to start a podcast with over 500 million podcast listeners worldwide with people hungry and thirsty for content. A single podcast episode can create content from social clips, audio grams, blog posts and so many other different things where can do one thing that you can then chop into smaller pieces to expand reach and allow you to share more stories. Short form content is the best way to grow your audience and can experiment with titles and thumbnails. They have been able to grow the views on the Nurture your Zest podcast with short form content.
Podcasting and the marketing funnel of turning listeners into loyal customers where with a podcast you can be the top of a funnel where podcasts can increase website traffic by 30% for businesses that incorporate them into their marketing strategy and podcast listeners are 54% more likely to consider brands they hear on podcasts. You might then take an action from a podcast such as subscribing to a newsletter and once through the funnel you may do something more direct or share with others and become loyal and advocate so podcasting can create so many opportunities and save you lots of time.
You don't need your own podcast to grow your brand and profile and guesting on a podcast can help shine a spotlight on you, they are best if they are in your niche and can be a successful strategy, you can write a blog about your experience on a podcast and can engage with comments of your host on social media and have a special offer that you can link to in the show notes. People communicate with people globally so share your message with the world so you need to have a way where people can get back to you.
Guesting on podcasts make you more discoverable where online search is changing with tools like ChatGPT and large language models aren't just scanning headlines they are evaluating more than this. Daniel Prestly suggests guesting on ten podcasts this year and he was on Diary of a CEO podcast and sold 30,000 books and made millions from his appearance. You can reach hundreds of people quickly by being on a podcast and can join communities of people around the world, remember hosting a podcast takes time and money and focus and how you can add value as a guest to the show, let people see who you are and how you can give value and show how you are professional and a press pack can help.
Podcasting for small businesses where podcasts can see 89% higher brand awareness and 14% more purchase intent and podcasts are 4.4x more effective at driving brand recall compared to display ads and 60% of podcast listeners prefer niche topic specific shows over general content. Top tips for starting a podcast is to have a budget not just financially but also around your time and energy as things can sneak up so find out what is right for you to do best you can with resources you have and start as you mean to go on as it is easy to burn yourself out and go on shows that meet your business goals and find your unique voice where have all have a specific message and people worry about sharing their message and what if people don't like your voice or how you communicate so be you but be you in a way that meets your goals.
You can work with Flamingo Heights from corporates to community interest groups with a fantastic technical team and can offer more help from curation to set design.
Questions
Sustainability with growth of vodcasts what carbon intensity is, is it in the streaming vs the creation of the content and given there is a larger engagement with audio will this grow for video? Sustainability of video podcast depends on how you do it, so if are at home isn't as much as in a studio with more cameras and a larger resolution of footage so being intentional about what you record is important for sustainability and record for the edit to save carbon emissions. The rise of video, it is only going to grow as people are creating so much content so need to think about your goal and there is a case for creating more long-form media that is less frequent with more thought of energy put into this also if your budget changes you can go from video to audio but can use a camera to upload short clips for social media which. People have their own unique circumstances or goals so for audio could have more episodes, but consistency is important.
With a view to starting a video podcast with links to what they do they want to be able to sustain the energy so would it be better to release one episode a month rather than two weeks, so is it better to do it less often but better? You can see what people are searching about what you are interested in and see what search terms are being looked for and batch record episodes as there is a value to doing it all in one go so you can then have a bank of content to share and have specific search terms to look for this but content can become old very quickly so could have episodes for a month rather than a year and if releasing once a month then aren't releasing content as much as people would like or could have a series that is released once per week or every two weeks so would recommend lowest amount is not one per month but one every two weeks.
How important is episode structure? Podcasts may have a key thing or certain segment of a show works well in a co-hosted format and segments can be useful but they aren't the most important but having a format can help with a set rhythm about length from 20 minutes to half an hour so may end with a specific question such as one word that nurture's your zest. People want to know how to do a certain thing so it could be a persona and people like this and feel listened to when their question is answered on a show so segments can be important so need to think about how you source those segments.
What is Ashleigh's favourite podcast? The recent Atomicon podcast Don't Work Harder is really motivating to them and podcasts about being on purpose with tips along with conspiracy theories and true crime. You have to protect your energy when listening to content, you have to find what is right for you. There are so many podcasts now such as the TUI one that is going on holiday with celebrities or could be ones about groundwater flooding and soil and so many other different podcasts. The people from "I could murder a podcast" visited her studio which was exciting as they listened to this but one of other people who was there was a famous footballer who they didn't know in comparison.
Listening to long podcasts can be a struggle so how short or long would be recommended for a podcast? When doing a single monologue is 15-20 minutes is the maximum and for interview is 25 - 40 minutes or longer. It also depends on if you are teaching someone or introducing a topic which is important to you then can do segments where people share something and how you would deal or answer this. You want episodes to be short and snappy, so people don't lose interest and people have different needs when they listen to a show. Keeping an episode short allows you to manage your energy better or can do more episodes if in that headspace so doing what is right for you is the most important thing to add value or help people for example.