Small business expert, turnaround consultant and radio personality Mark Hagar is the host of Your Business Matters, a small business themed talk show currently available on select radio stations and as a podcast on Soundcloud.com and iTunes. One of today’s most experienced and knowledgeable consultants, speaker and expert witness, he’s a prolific entrepreneur who’s founded, bought and sold multiple firms. His experience and education in the area of financially distressed small businesses has positioned Hagar as one of the foremost authorities on the issues faced by small business owners and he has been interviewed and quoted by numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, Fiscal Times Magazine, CFO Magazine and many newspapers as well as the Associated Press. Mark is currently a featured presenter on the Results Junkies Tech Tour traveling the US meeting with entrepreneurs and learning about American startup culture.

Target Audience

Target Audience

Entrepreneurship enthusiasts and small business owners from ages 25 to 54+; those who are looking to be educated in many facets of entrepreneurship to learn from other business owners/experts’ experience, and to be updated to worldwide entrepreneurial insights.

Brand Character

“Your Business Matters” provides in-depth interviews, case studies, that give to the audience insightful information about the entrepreneurial world and about its functionality.

Features

• Length: 30-60 minute episodes
• Description: 60 characters average (ITunes)
• Topics: Entrepreneurial advice, encouragement and inspiration through interviews with guests whom are small business owners, startup experts, and key influencers in Fort Wayne, as well as from other locations.
• Segments: Soundcloud, Itunes, Podfanatic, Player FM, and select radio station.

Benefits

The Your Business Matters podcast brings guests and key influencers to talk about challenges with start-ups and small businesses, and to encourage entrepreneurs with advice and inspiration.

Reason to Believe

Launching a new business and/or maintaining a small business requires a lot of awareness and time. Any business, in order to succeed, must solve problems in a quick manner. It makes a huge difference to know in advance the important aspects of the business in order to be more organized, to be protected against possible legal issues, and to have the ability to be adaptable to changes. The Your Business Matters podcast provides entrepreneurial education with the support of knowledgeable consultants, experts, and speakers.

Promotion

Positioning yourself as an expert: Cement your authority by hosting a podcast. If you know enough about a specific topic to fill up a series of 15-or 30-minute podcasts, you’re already an expert. But because you’re giving away your valuable insight for free to others, they’ll come to see you as an authority.

Discussing current trends related to Entrepreneurship: Podcasts are a great way to discuss the most recent news and hot topics with your audience. Likely, if there’s a significant news story related to your niche, your audience wants to learn more about it. Get behind your mic and share your thoughts.

Building trust with your audience. There’s something more human and personable about listening to someone else’s voice. Because you can hear the tone and inflection of someone’s voice, that person often seems more real and honest, that also depends of the quality of sound and the location the episode is being recorded.

Using podcast directories: Speaking personally, I’ve found many brands simply because I was searching the podcast directory for a specific topic. And I’m not alone. Quite a few brands have discovered that podcasts increase brand awareness.

Turn podcasts into blog posts. You can definitely repurpose your podcast into a blog post .You don’t even need to type. You can offer a transcription of the podcast on your blog.

Be active on social media to market to your current audience: There are people in your audience who want to consume your content but they just don’t have the time (or temperament) to sit and read lengthy blog posts or view videos or even keep up with you on social media channels.

Success Measurement Solutions

Facets Model

The Facets model is used to measure how efforts in marketing campaigns impact in terms of various types of listeners/consumers responses.

Perception- How many people are listening and/or are subscribed to the podcast, and interacting through social media?

Cognition- How many potential listeners has the podcast reached? Is the message being communicated effectively?

Association- How many people are talking about the podcast and/or liking or retweeting on social media? What are the most active platforms?

Investment- How many people have you created relationships with? (Referrals) How many new subscribers did the podcast attract?

Persuasion- How many people are subscribers? How many people interact to the podcast’s social platforms?

Recommendations

New ways to reach to the target audience, are the use of a survey to identify needs of the audience, and plan along with results and implement strategy using the survey as support.

The length of the podcast determines if the listener will continue to listen after the first few minutes. Research shows that listeners are more consistent while listening 15-30 minutes podcast episode, however, some listeners may stick with episodes that are more complex such as interviews. The length of Your Business Matters should reflect the content, the audience will understand and most likely stick around because of the content’s complexity.

Be interested in participating as a guest in other podcast channels. In order to maximize the full benefit of these relationships, planning is essential to maintain their listeners’ interests and your podcast’s listeners interests as well.