Podcasting may sound like a promising demand generation tactic. But it’s also drastically misunderstood.
The confusion lies, in part, with the idea that podcasting is easy. Anyone with a passing interest can do a little research and record an episode via their mobile device, right? While technically true, quality production is far from guaranteed, and well-produced yet undifferentiated episodes will turn listeners off just as quickly.
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But even if you create a polished podcast, you still have to navigate the overcrowded audio marketplace. There were nearly 83 million podcast episodes on Apple’s iTunes at the start of July 2023. That, plus the more complex road to producing quality content than your leadership team likely realizes, poses a legitimate question: is a brand podcast worth the effort or expense?
The answer is that podcasts are still a medium where your thought leadership and influencer placements can truly shine, but only with thoughtful planning and execution.
Here’s how marketers should think about supporting their demand generation engine through podcasting.
Be in your targets’ ears – on their terms
Most B2B decision makers are on a self-guided buyer journey. Evergreen podcast episodes can insert your take on industry issues and solutions directly into a buyer’s internal monologue at the time of their choosing. It’s the most intimate engagement you’ll get to have with the buyer during their journey before it’s time to close the deal.
And while it’s nearly impossible to draw a large listenership with all the competitors in the market, it’s completely within your control to make your highly relevant episodes easy to find on your owned channels when B2B decision makers are ready to listen.
Aggressively define your audience, and then build the episodes it needs
There’s no sugar-coating it: Your B2B podcast would have a difficult time demonstrating a return on investment if it were a standalone marketing tactic. But instead of proving value by drawing a large listenership, it can succeed by focusing on a specific buyer persona to find the right listeners.
Take the time to perform a joint sales and marketing analysis that identifies your most influential buyer persona, and then start building podcast episode ideas around differentiated insights that will help industry players who fit that persona become better at their jobs. This is where podcasting can give B2B marketers a huge advantage, as it allows them to have deeper conversations with a specific niche of industry decision maker about applicable real-world scenarios that go beyond widely cited stats used in other content marketing initiatives.
Be their guest
You can have a successful B2B podcasting strategy without hosting your own podcast.
Getting your brand’s thought leaders and B2B influencer partners on industry specific podcasts can be a lower lift than you think, as niche podcasters are always looking for turnkey ideas to lighten their creative load. Also, generating earned media by placing your thought leaders on others’ podcasts means you won’t be shouldering the production lift and associated expenses. Finally, niche B2B podcast productions that are aligned with your goals will usually be brand safe environments with interviewers genuinely looking to address industry problems.
“Podcasts are a valuable medium to demonstrate the deep expertise that exists within your organization, as they typically have more flexibility with time to get into details that resonate within the industry,” said Devonie Nicholas, director of the Expert Network at Industry Dive’s studioID. “But beyond that, podcasts serve as an opportunity for your brand to engage with an audience through an added sensory experience – sound. Via podcasts, the audience can hear first-hand the passion and conviction of the very team members who bring your brand to life every day.”
Understand how your publishing cadence affects your goals
If your goal is to get a large following and attract repeated guests, a weekly show is ideal – even if that weekly show takes the occasional hiatus – as you’ll need a high volume of episodes over time to get noticed.
If your goal is more to address key concepts that are core to your niche buying audience, a targeted, evergreen multipart podcast series that’s promoted as a limited engagement could work well. It won’t commit you to producing content every week – especially if your team’s budget and bandwidth don’t match that aspiration – but it will satisfy your niche target audience when they’re ready to engage.
Record, then atomize
Podcasts are an underappreciated opportunity to expand your content universe. Not only can you record original episodes featuring lively discussions about evergreen industry topics, but the offshoot content you can create can be significant, allowing you to get in front of your target audience through multiple mediums.
For example, one well-conceived podcast episode could be repurposed into multiple blog posts and articles, a video version of the podcast, an infographic featuring significant stats that were mentioned during the recording and several social media quote and stat posts. Video is an especially attractive option for podcast atomization. A recent Morning Consult poll found 46% of active podcast consumers preferred watching podcasts on video over listening to the audio-only version, and that YouTube was the most commonly preferred platform on which to experience podcasts.
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