Podcasts that Fuel Your Content and Build Your Brand
- April 28, 2021
- Cheshire Impact, Pardot Strategy
Two challenges that B2B marketers have to overcome is having enough content and spreading brand awareness. One of the solutions is right in front of them, it is podcasts. However, when people are asked to speak on podcasts they often ask, “Well how many downloads does the show get?” However, this thinking is a misconception that was dispelled on The Hard Corps Marketing Show, episode #253, with Mark Colgan, Co-Founder & CRO of Speak on Podcasts. What are the right questions to be asking and which are the podcasts that will fuel your content and build your brand?
The Myth About Podcasts in B2B
It is not about the number of downloads. Most B2B marketers would agree that they would rather have their message sent to a niche group of people that would be their ideal buyers, rather than have their message sent to thousands of people where their product or service does not apply to help them. It is the same with podcasts.
If the marketing team was going to have the CEO of their company speak on a podcast, the right question to ask would be, what is your audience base like, tell me about them. If the podcast’s audience does not match your ideal buyer, it does not matter if the show gets thousands of downloads, it is not going to be worth your CEO’s time.
Colgan shared a story where he spoke on a podcast that only had 200-300 downloads a month. Within a week of the episode launching he had eight people connect with him on LinkedIn and then he closed four of them as customers. He knew in advance that he would be speaking on a podcast where he would get to reach his ideal audience.
200-300 downloads a month is not a high number, but there are 2 million podcasts today and 48 million episodes as of April 2021. People have plenty of options to choose from, so in B2B this is a medium size podcast in terms of downloads per month. Therefore, when people are choosing to listen to the podcast that your CEO is on, they are already showing intent to learn and hear about the particular topic of conversation. They are choosing to give you their attention.
Building Your Brand
The marketing team can book their CEO on a podcast, but then there is the question of ROI. Marketers are trained to be driven by numbers, CPA on PPC, what is the traffic to the website, how many people watched our webinar recording, how many deals were sourced from our events last year? Which is why it is so easy to fall into the trap of downloads being the most important thing. There does have to be some measurement of ROI to justify the spend, but Colgan challenged marketers to reconsider the way they think about podcasts from a lead generation channel, to a brand building focus.
Colgan shared, “What’s the ROI of having your CEO speak to hundreds of ideal customers for 30, 45 minutes in their ears? That’s an extremely intimate experience that you’ve just created for your prospects, for your potential customers, who are getting to know, like, and trust your company.”
Now in the earlier example where Colgan had listeners from the podcast episode reach out to him and then become customers, the ROI is simple. Another way to track episode engagement would be to have a landing page specifically for that episode and then see what traffic and conversions happen as a result.
Aside from tracking, the brand awareness piece can be harder to measure, but when speakers are on podcasts sharing their insights with a company’s ideal audience, they have an opportunity to grow the relationship between the audience and the brand.
Fueling Your Content
Not only do the right podcasts build a company’s brand, but they can also fuel its content. 60-70% of B2B marketing content goes unused, but many marketers will express that they do not have enough content. The key to solving both challenges is activation through content repurposing.
If an influencer from the business speaks on a podcast for 30-45 minutes, this content can then be turned into articles, social media posts, and an update to include in a newsletter. If the video was recorded, you can always ask for access to the file to make clips for the website, and all that had to be done to get the content sourced was someone just had to speak. It can take hours to create content from scratch, but when the main ideas are already created, it can save time and allow marketers to focus their efforts on the next important business initiative.
Should members from your team speak on a podcast if they have the opportunity? Yes, but only if the podcast’s audience matches the business’ ideal buyer. Connect with your team to discuss what makes the most sense for your business, develop a strategy to promote the podcast to your audience, repurpose the content, and then measure its success.
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