B2B Marketing Strategies: Everything You Need to Know About Building an Original Podcast Series

Podcasts are more popular than ever. With a growing number of listeners, more and more companies are opting for the medium. B2B marketing teams are looking for ways to communicate with customers and prospects and increase targeted brand awareness. By 2021, more than 40% of Cloud 100 companies had their own branded podcast. But with so much competition, a business podcast can struggle to stand out. Strong stories, useful and reliable information, A-list guests and high production values ​​are necessary for a podcast to gain and retain listeners.

Here’s an overview of what marketers need to know about creating a B2B podcast.

How do people listen? Engagement usually happens in apps and on the go

Apple Podcasts and Spotify together account for 50% to 65% of all podcast listening (reports vary on these numbers). The rest of the listeners use various podcast mobile apps, web players, their desktop browsers, or YouTube.

Podcasts are an ideal way to reach customers and prospects because people tend to listen to podcasts during their downtime, on the commute, at the gym, or while doing chores.

94% of listeners use podcasts while doing other tasks.

Source: BBC

Podcasts serve as a great addition to existing marketing campaigns that often target prospects as they… to be work (cold email, paid search, LinkedIn ads, or webinars).

What is a B2B podcast?

A B2B podcast (or brand podcast) is an original audio series created by a company as part of its content marketing initiative. It is usually published as weekly episodes or seasons.

It is specially designed for a business person at a B2B company, which means that the podcast is much more focused. In a B2B podcast, you want to provide specific information to a niche audience, and your goal is to educate, inspire and entertain your listeners.

A B2B podcast series is often more than just audio. You can record both audio and video and turn each episode into multiple pieces of content for your website and social media channels.

Think of your company’s content marketing as a portfolio – you want to have different types of written, audio and video content so that your audience can choose the type of content they prefer (long form, short form, tutorials, how-tos, by practitioner guided or deep dives). The key here is to create high-quality options that are consumable as we consume media in 2022 (mobile first).

Do B2B podcasts work?

According to an study conducted by the BBC, organizations with branded podcasts see:

• 89% higher consciousness
• 57% higher brand consideration
• 24% higher brand preference
• 14% higher purchase intent
• 16% higher engagement
• 12% higher memory encoding

Original podcasts are rapidly expanding to be part of the B2B marketer’s toolkit. Many business companies create multiple podcast series that target different personas or industries. For example, major B2B companies like VMware and Dell have several shows.

Fast-growing startups are also investing heavily in the trend. For example, Qualified (which recently raised $95 million) has three original podcast and video series and Qualified+ creates to house original content.

What are the types of B2B podcasts?

• Interview style — Interview style podcasts are usually a free flowing conversation between host(s) and guest(s). They have segments or audio cues that keep the listener interested. The content is typically for a target persona, topic, industry, or vertical (i.e., CMOs, retail, cybersecurity, data) and can be anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes in length. Examples: Demand Gen Visionaries, The datacloud podcast, were in! and CIO classified.
• mixed story — Combines guest interviews and scripted narration. The story is usually 50% scripted and driven by personal stories or the news. The story is pre-written by a writer, performed by a producer and editor, and the sound design is done by a sound engineer. Examples: Often imitated, Data Radicals or Masters of Scale
• Written story (non-fiction or fiction) — Complex story that is 100% scripted, without using published interviews. These can be episodic (stand alone episodes) or serialized (linked together like a Netflix series). The story is written by a writing team and the components are put together by a producer and editor. Sound design is made by an audio engineer. Examples: The Hacker Chronicles, The message or Hypnopolis.
• Host only — Host-only podcasts feature a conversation between two (or more) hosts discussing specific topics, delving into research or studies, or sharing thoughts on the latest news. These often have recurring segments or audio cues to keep the listener interested. Example: The Advanced Sales Podcast.

What is the purpose of a B2B podcast?

Every company has different goals for their podcast, but it’s usually a combination of the following ten. The great thing about creating a podcast is that you can use it to increase impact across multiple areas of the business.

• Brand: Increase the brand awareness of your target market. As Chandar, Coupa’s CMO, told me while speaking about consciousness on the Demand Gen Visionaries podcast, “I want to paint the sky Coupa blue.”
• Enable target accounts (ABM): Help your sales team, which is hyper-focused on key accounts. This is the perfect way to ensure you can co-create content with targeted accounts.
• content machine: Create a high-quality content engine. The content of a specific episode can later be reused in shorter audio or video clips, which in turn will generate more revenue.
• Pipeline: Target key prospects and accelerate the pipeline.
• Community: Build and own a community.
• Category: Define a category and confirm market leadership.
• Proportions: Connect with key customers, prospects, and influencers.
• Customer stories: Tell more customer stories in high quality audio/video.
• Intellectual leadership: Turn your CEO/CXO into a thought leader.
• social: Create a video-first approach to engaging social content

Podcasts are longer-form content in which the speakers can discuss complex topics in depth. If you’re selling a business product with a large buying commission, podcasts are a great tool to engage the group.

Focus on the audience

A successful podcast can be a very effective tool to help grow your business, but it’s not easy to create a show that is not just about you. The first step in creating a successful podcast is determining your overall business objective. Choose from one (or more) of the examples above. But after that? Focus on the audience.

Determine you target of the public. What do they want to know? How can you deliver it? Want something very niche for a specific demographic or something broader? When creating your content, the most important consideration should be the needs of the audience. While you want to align your content with your brand goals, ultimately the key to producing a successful podcast is to find out what your customers need to know and put those concerns first.

Focus on the guest experience

As they say, customer experience is the new brand. The way you treat your podcast guests is a very close representation of your brand. Do you set up preparatory conversations? Forward questions in advance? Do you share a draft of an episode with their PR team before the episode goes live? Are the guest’s name, title and company spelled correctly?

These are just some of the many things to consider when inviting a guest to your podcast. You want your podcast guests to feel comfortable during the interview process. They should be excited to share the episode with their team members and on their social media channels. Guests who have a positive experience with your show can be great advocates for your podcast and the overall brand.

Recruiting guests and building a consistent pipeline are two major challenges for many businesses just starting out building their own podcast series. Making sure you have a pipeline of quality guests makes the process a little easier.

Have a clear layout and be consistent

Then you determine the specific format and content of your podcast. In a crowded podcast market, you need all the perks to make your episodes stand out. After all, marketing has to be remarkable.

The main way to showcase your podcast is to create a unique, authoritative voice and compelling format. You want people to tune in to your podcast because it gives them something they can’t get from other podcasts. This “emotional personality” is the combination of the authority of your host, guests, sound design, the quality of the recording and how the stories are told. Striking a balance between informative and entertaining content is tricky – don’t be boring!

Consistency is key. You should have a similar format for most of your episodes and publish episodes with a consistent cadence. Your format, quality and content create a ‘promise’ that you must deliver in every episode. Weekly podcasts generally outperform programs published on a random, inconsistent schedule. Creating a compelling story is hard work, so you want to give yourself the best chance.

Distribution is vital

Just because you built the podcast doesn’t mean the audience will come. You must have a strong distribution and marketing strategy. In addition to getting your podcast on the right platforms, effective strategies to increase awareness of your podcast can include targeted distribution, cross-promotions, and cleverly placed ads. I could write 1000 more words on this, but you have to market your content – in my opinion it is non-negotiable.

A winning strategy

Regardless of the format or approach you take, podcasts have become an essential tool for B2B companies in spreading their messages, creating brand awareness, influencing the pipeline, engaging new customers and telling customer stories. . With the format proving to be more popular than ever, now is the time.

Ian Faison is the CEO and founder of Caspian Studios.