In many ways, marketing through the medium of audio is similar to direct mail because the best results come from pieces designed to speak to each listener, a personal message meant for a single ear.

Harry Walsh, a freelance copywriter who once worked for Ogilvy & Mather, put it this way for direct marketing:

The tone of a good direct mail letter is as direct and personal as the writer’s skill can make it. Even though it may go to millions of people, it never orates to a crowd but rather murmurs into a single ear. It’s a message from one letter writer to one letter reader.

For audio, the tone should be as direct and personal as the scriptwriter’s skill can make it. Speak from one person to another, from your mouth to the listener’s ear.

(Hat tip: Denny Hatch at Business Common Sense.)

Are working Moms a prime target for your product or service? Consider reaching this mobile market through online audio marketing.

An article by Howard Goldberg at MediaPost’s Engage:Moms describes characteristics of working Moms that make them a good audience for podcasts:

• well connected, ready & mobile
• not shy with new technology
• open to connection during “Me Time”
• attracted to good deals

Package your service or product in a highly mobile podcast, make the package worth listening to during leisure activities, and include an offer that is too good to pass up — sounds like heaven to a working Mom!

Pat Fallon and Fred Senn are co-founders of Fallon Worldwide, now a subsidiary of the French-based Publicis Groups S.A. Since its founding as Fallon McElligott Rice in 1981, their advertising agency has defined and refined the concept of creative leverage “for companies that would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them.”

Chapter 8 of their book, Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage, tells the story of their marketing campaign for BMW. A collaboration with Hollywood, the campaign turned its back on traditional television and used a series of short well-executed online movies to market the BMW Z3 sports car in late 1995 and early 1996, well before online marketing was accepted as a new and effective marketing medium.

Thirteen years later, marketing online is no longer revolutionary but all too often irritating or boring — and ignored.

If you’re looking for an engaging way to reach your target market online, consider a limited series of podcasts that brings your product or service alive through the most intimate medium, audio.

Promotional gurus gush over integrated marketing solutions at pitch meetings and business conferences.

Depending on the marketing guru, an integrated marketing solution covers the range from traditional marketing channels like direct mail and print right through Google AdWords, a company blog and Twitter.

Podcasts, in one form or another, are usually crammed in somewhere.

Handcrafted ’Casts fully supports the idea that a podcast should be part of an integrated corporate marketing solution.

But we think that more consideration should go into that podcast than “cramming” allows.

Of all the media, audio is the most intimate — because it encourages the listener’s active imagination.

So if you want to personally engage customers, a series of professionally produced audio casts is an excellent marketing medium.

Our most recently produced podcast episode was created for On The Line, news about the communities & neighborhoods anchored by the Orange & Los Angeles county line.

A quick and powerful talk at a recent TED conference by Julian Treasure on four ways that sound affects us:

Watch this video to discover just how important sound can be in support of your product or service — and how destructive it can be if not handled well.

At Handcrafted ’Casts, we design your podcast with sounds to help — not hinder — your message.