Using Podcasts to Reach Doctors for Patient Events
When you’re trying to reach new doctors to educate them on patient event seminars, you’re probably running into the same issue as any marketer: how to earn attention.
Cold calls are difficult and feel much less effective. It seems like we all swipe emails before we even open them. Social media is hit or miss. How do we get the attention of our ideal potential partners?
Among the tools at your disposal is a gem you may not have given much thought before now. Podcasts.
Podcasts are about as old as the internet itself. It’s essentially an audio file on a website. However, the popularity of iTunes drove the industry forward by leaps and bounds. Then just in the last few years, the podcast world has enjoyed another resurgence.
Mainstream media giants like NPR have used podcasts to reach a new audience. The podcast Serial brought people to the medium in droves. It’s exploded in the last few years.
Did you know Apple boasts nearly 700,000 podcasts? With Spotify and Pandora adding shows, you have no shortage of content out there.
The best part of it all is that you can find a show in just about any niche you want. Including shows for doctors.
Rather than trying to break through the noise, have you thought about joining the conversation where it’s happening as a subject matter expert?
It’s called podcast interview marketing. And like social media marketing or email marketing, it’s one more tool to test.
How podcast interview marketing works
First, a clarification. Podcasts come in all forms, from fiction/audio drama to single-person to interview style and beyond. For this strategy, we’re talking only about shows where the host interviews a guest.
When you have a podcast you listen to and you’ve developed a trust in the host, you’re more apt to trust the guest they’re interviewing. Think Oprah. She was so trusted, that any book she recommended became a bestseller almost immediately. Her audience trusted her.
While you may not find an Oprah-level podcaster, you can certainly find a host with an audience. Then, as the subject matter expert, you become the go-to person on that show for its entirety. You have a captive audience.
And how valuable is a captive audience? How would you like the attention of a roomful of 100 people? 200? 500?
That’s the beauty of podcast interviews.
Just how powerful and popular are podcasts? The infographic below is from the website podcastinsights.com.
As you can see, it’s the golden age of podcasts. Reaching doctors to expose them to the idea of educational patient seminars through this growing medium could add serious business to your year.
Finding shows doctors listen to
So, how do you find shows doctors listen to? It all starts with the research.
Three websites helping to organize the world of podcasts will help get you started. If you’ve ever searched iMDB during a movie to figure out who that actor was, you’ll be just fine.
Podchaser, Listen Notes and PodDB all allow you search for genres, show names and keywords.
You can look for shows about doctors, healthcare or more. You can search for any competitors to see if they’re on shows. You could search for your business or keyword related to your devices to see if they’re mentioned.
Once you’ve made a list, it’s all about pitching the thought leader to the host. Keep in mind that you’re there to tell a story and show successes, inspiring the listeners, not to sell a pitch. The Slideshare deck below covers pitching and more.
For a more in-depth look at podcast interviews, listen to an interview I did when I was with an agency who worked with thought leaders to secure interviews: Podcast Guest Interviews Ft. Dan Moyle
If you’re helping to plan an event and need to get started, you can download our event planner template below. Here’s to reaching a new audience!
Podcast photo by William Iven on Unsplash
