Brand love is often defined as that moment when your loyal customers become advocates for your brand – espousing the benefits of your products or services to all who will listen.

But having customers who love your brand doesn’t just feel good – it’s good for your bottom line too.  According to Talkwalker’s Brand Love Story 2020, the tangible business benefits of brand love are:

  • Premium Pricing - Because of the relationship between the brand and consumer, people are willing to pay higher prices for the products they love
  • Long-term Brand Loyalty - Consumers are more likely to remain loyal to the brands they’ve built strong emotional connections with
  • Advocacy - Customers who love your brand are more likely to recommend it to other consumers, helping increase sales. And that is a big deal, because according to a McKinsey report, its estimated that up to half of all sales are driven by word-of-mouth

There are lots of theories on the best way to build brand love – everything from sharing values with your customers, delivering impeccable customer service, inspiring employee advocacy and earning lots of positive PR.

At Ad Results Media, we believe there is another way to help build brand love in concert with some of these more established best practices – podcast advertising.

In this situation context is king.  Podcast listeners love to listen to podcasts. When advertising is incorporated skillfully and authentically into the favorite shows of your target audiences, a little bit of the love for the medium is also shared with the advertisers.

But why specifically does all this positive juju work to build brand love? We have got the data.

Brand Love Begets More Brand Love

Host-read advertisements garner higher trust from the listeners and do not interrupt the flow of the episode with an unfamiliar voice or pre-recorded audio spot.  And podcast hosts often carefully select their sponsors based on their personal use of the brand’s products or services and their listeners appreciate and recognize this.

In fact, 49% of podcast listeners say their opinion of a company is more positive when they hear it mentioned on their favorite podcast and 45% say they believe the hosts actually use the products they mention.

Consumers become more open to love a brand that is also loved by one of their favorite podcast hosts.

Benevolent Brands Worthy of Love

One of the best things about podcasts is that they are free.  The advertisers that sponsor each episode are recognized as the ones responsible for helping to support their favorite shows and this does not go unrequited.

64% of podcast listeners say that they appreciate podcast advertisers for supporting their favorite podcasts. So much so, that 86% of the respondents said that they recall the ads they saw or heard in podcasts, far surpassing every other channel including social media and TV.

Gratitude goes a long way in building brand love and benevolent brands are worthy of love.

Brand Love is Personal

Just like brand love, there are few things more personal and important than “me time”.  The way people choose to spend their free time – where they are not beholden to anyone or anything – is a clear indication of their truest personal priorities.  Podcasts are often the medium of choice for people’s “me time”.  They love to tune out the world and get lost in the storytelling or conversation of an episode.

According to digital agency Brandastic, “Perhaps the most significant benefit for advertisers is that 80% of listeners finish almost the entire podcast episode. Drop-off rates for listeners are considerably less for podcasts than other platforms, such as YouTube”.

By integrating your brand into your target audience’s personal time, you build brand love through the emotional connections you forge.