9 Highly Effective Ways to Use Audio in your Knowledge-Based Business
🎧 Listen on the Go: Audio Version
Learn 9 ways to add audio to your business strategy that will establish trust with your audience, build connections to you and your mission, and reduce friction on your potential customers’ path to making a buying decision with you.
As a full time academic and entrepreneur, audio has been an easy and effective asset in enhancing my business and supporting my business goals.
“Audio is a major part of my marketing strategy.”
**This guide is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Why audio?
Audio is easy to create.
There is a lower barrier to entry when it comes to creating audio content compared to other types of content like video or even text-based content. You don’t need to look nice. You can record audio content in your pjs with no makeup and no aesthetic background.
Also, the tech set up is minimal. You don’t need any fancy equipment to record high quality audio. If you want to move beyond your phone or computer’s internal microphone, here are a couple of highly recommended microphones. Here is a starter option and a pro option.
Audio is accessible for most of your audience.
Audio is extremely easy to listen to on the go, while driving, walking, or cooking. It’s also more convenient to listen to in public than video.
Using audio in your business is a great way to connect with and provide more options for people who have audio or visual impairments and people with differing learning styles.
Your audience may not be able to dedicate 30 minutes to an hour of their time to sitting in front of a computer screen to watch a video, but it’s more likely that they can pop in headphones to listen to audio as they move throughout their day.
Audio allows more people to consume more of your content.
Compared to social media posts, your audience will be less likely to abandon your content when they get distracted or have other priorities. Audio content is very easy to pause and pick up where you left off. If you find a super valuable a social media post and your app refreshes, that amazing content is likely gone forever or takes a lot of effort to find and re-engage.
Also, having audio options inside of your courses or trainings can help with course completion rates which is good for business.
In summary, audio content is easy to create, easy to consume, and easy to complete, which makes it a highly effective addition to support your knowledge-based business.
So, now that I’ve sold you on why audio can be an effective addition to your business strategy, here are 9 ways that you can start using audio in your knowledge-based business today.
9 Highly Effective Ways to Use Audio in your Knowledge-Based Business
#1: Create an audio version of your course (or create an audio only course)
If you have a course idea (or masterclass idea) but feel overwhelmed by creating all of the video modules and lessons, consider an audio course as a first step. (Hello Audio has a course on how to create an audio course from scratch.)
Or, if you have a video-based course or class that you’ve already created, you can strip the audio from the video lessons and create an audio version of the course as a bonus resource to add value to your already existing offer.
I’ve done this with my free mini-course, Plan Your Semester-Proof Business This Weekend. It can be consumed via video or on the go with audio as a private podcast just for students of this course. By the way, Hello Audio, co-created by fellow academic, Lindsay Padilla, makes this process super easy! More on that later!
#2: Coaching/consulting call recordings
Do you find yourself repeating the same thing over and over to all of your coaching or consulting clients? Most business coaches would give you the advice of packaging what you do into a repeatable framework and create an online course.
But you know that a course creation business model requires a lot more work (content, marketing, a new sales strategy, operations, etc) than you want to commit to right now.
One thing that you could try is creating a private podcast for your clients that prepares them for their next session with you.
Or, you could record your coaching calls and turn them into a private podcast for that specific client.
Entrepreneur Dallas Travers has simplified her marketing approach with this tactic. Dallas has a membership called The Hive. And inside of The Hive, the members can sign up for a one-on-one coaching session with Dallas. This coaching session is recorded and the audio is shared to Dallas’ podcast, Coaches on a Mission.
This is genius! Dallas has created a super easy content type and her potential clients learn exactly what it is like to work with Dallas! One of my favorite episodes of her podcast is episode 148, Build Your List to Find More Clients.
#3: Create audio versions of your writing
Perhaps you are an author or a blogger or you’ve written a super juicy essay that you want your audience to consume. You could record yourself reading your book, blog post, or essay to make it more accessible and provide an additional option for consuming it.
I wrote an essay called “The Secret Life of An Academic Entrepreneur and the Fulfilling Power of Operating a $100K/Year Semester-Proof Business” and I also recorded myself reading the essay. Almost 10% of the people who have landed on my essay have downloaded the audio version of it. That is pretty significant considering that most of the people who land on the essay may not ever start reading it. According to podcastle.ai, on average, 60% of listeners complete a podcast episode!
This is BIG for me! That essay is a major part of my marketing strategy. I know that if someone makes it through that whole essay, they are likely a good fit to be a client or to take my digital course.
And if more people are finishing the essay because there is an audio version available, that translates to more qualified leads for my offer.
Also, you get to know me pretty well in that essay. And if someone knows they like me sooner rather than later, they are more likely to book a Next Step Call with me sooner rather than later; shortening the sales cycle in my business.
🎧 Btw, you can choose to listen to the audio version of this guide on audio on the go!
#4: Email marketing
Do you send out email newsletters or the occasional sales email? You could record yourself reading your emails and include the link to the audio inside of the email pretty early in the copy or in the P.S. at the bottom.
This could lead to more of your subscribers understanding your message or the value of your offers.
#5: Audio sales page
Speaking of your offer, how well is your sales page converting? How much time are your potential clients spending on your sales page? Are they reading it in full?
Audio is a great way to convey your message and articulate the value of your offer in a medium that is easy to consume. How much more likely is your audience to finish your audio sales page than to read every word on your written sales page? (See stat about podcast completion rates above.)
#6: Audio testimonials
Video testimonials have become pretty popular in the knowledge-based business world. Using video testimonials is a great way to share with potential clients and customers what it’s like working with you. But how easy is it to get your past clients to make a video for you to add to your sales page?
I know that I’ve been “meaning” to record a video testimonial for a Facebook ads coach that I’ve worked with. But it just keeps getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. I’m not “camera-ready” every day.
It would be much easier to just record a quick little audio of my experience working with her. I love using Video Ask for this! With this software, you can create a little video asking for the testimonial and your client can choose to reply with a video, audio, or text response.
You could compile all of your audio testimonials into a private podcast episode and send it to your email list. You could also record yourself reading your written testimonials.
#7: Speaking recording
Are you a speaker? If speaking is a part of your business model, you can use audio too! You could audio record your presentation to share with your live audience so that they can re-listen to your insights after the event is over!
This is a huge value-add and a great way to justify increasing your speaker fee.
#8: Repurpose video content
Do you create long form video content on YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn? For any educational video where the visuals aren’t essential for understanding, you could strip the audio and create podcast episodes.
Then, when you send emails out letting your audience know that you’ve just uploaded a new video, you could also share the link for the audio version.
#9: Create a private or public podcast
Finally, the most obvious way to use audio in your business is to create a podcast. You could create a public podcast that could be found by anyone on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or you could create a private podcast just for your audience. They would still be able to access it and listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or their preferred podcast platform).
Here’s a sneak peak into the private podcast that I created for my free mini-course, Plan Your Semester-Proof Business This Weekend.”
How to Start Using Audio in Your Business
Hello Audio is my go-to tool for creating and sharing audio in my business. The company is co-founded by Lindsay Padilla, a fellow academic, and they make it super simple to start using audio right away in your business.
Hello Audio allows you to quickly turn your content into private (or public) podcasts for your audience to consume on the go.
They make it so easy! You can literally drag your audio or video files into the software and the podcast is automatically created for you. You can also just copy and paste a link to your video from YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Dropbox, or Google Drive and a podcast episode will be created for you.
They even offer a 7-day free trial to test it out and determine if you love Hello Audio as much as me! Please note that I am an affiliate for Hello Audio, so at no additional cost to you, I will receive a small commission for referring anyone to a paid Hello Audio plan.
Are you ready to start using audio in your business?
Has this guide inspired you to start using more audio in your business? There are also pdf and audio versions of this guide. Sign up here to get access to these resources as well as all current and future guides from me.
