On Hold Audio Content – How Fresh Is Your Strategy?

Say “audio content strategy” to even the most savvy marketers, and more than likely, they automatically think podcast. Yet audio content marketing extends far beyond the reaches of just podcasting. In fact, in  many ways, messages on hold is the original form of audio content marketing. How? Let’s break this down a bit.

Audio content marketing is defined as – a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, and relevant content consistently to a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

On hold audio content has all these characteristics:

Strategic approach – Creative, highly-targeted on hold audio messaging is used to distribute valuable and relevant content.

Clearly defined audience – Perhaps there can be no more clearly defined audience than callers on hold. After all, they’re already interested in your brand offerings otherwise they wouldn’t have called!

Drive a profitable customer action – A good on hold audio message works to drive profitable actions in a wide variety of ways.  It will start the conversations you want to have with your customers that lead to increased sales. They educate your callers about what you do,  show how you’re different from the competition, build your reputation as a “thought leader” in your industry, suggest new ways to use your products or services, and they can even be used to build your Twitter followers, your Facebook Friends, and your Blog readership.

If social and digital channels have taught us anything at all about content marketing, we know that in order to achieve success – relevant, and fresh go hand in hand. Many businesses who have messages on hold simply play the same  content for years and years before ever changing it. Or even worse, never changing it at all. Your customers and prospects need the latest information in order to stay engaged and interested, otherwise they just may find it elsewhere.

Now that you understand that on hold audio content, like any other content, needs to be relevant and fresh, ask yourself this question. What am I doing to keep my on hold audio content, relevant, fresh and engaging? Well, sadly enough for most businesses the answer is – not much!

If you’re stuck, or just starting out with on hold messaging, here’s a few ideas to help you get started. Develop a monthly calendar, in which your marketing on hold content can be coordinated with your other marketing efforts, and talk about the topics that are on your customers’ minds (their hot buttons).  Other areas of focus can be seasonal changes, industry trends, trade shows/events, an upcoming launch of new products, new services or team members.  As far as creative ideas for message content, the list goes on and on. Do you have a strategic on hold audio content marketing plan in place? If the answer is no, contact us and speak with an Original On Hold specialist for a no-obligation discovery session.

What marketing on-hold audio content strategy is working for you? We’d love to hear about it or share it with us on on Facebook.