Lessons - Why Everyone Should Have a Podcast | Lindsay Tjepkema - Founder and CEO of Casted

In this episode, we dive into the power of Authenticity and B2B podcasting. We'll explore why genuine brand connections matter, how to effectively measure podcast success beyond just download numbers and practical tips on using podcast content to drive engagement and support your marketing strategy. You'll also learn how to leverage podcasts to build stronger relationships and enhance your brand's impact. Where your head was at when you decided to even attempt to bring a podcast into the B2B space, because now it seems a little bit more commonplace, but you still see people that say, well, how do we measure it? Is it worth the time, the hours invested? Why did you think to do this? Why did you think that Authenticity was important in B2B marketing and podcasting was the way to capture that? Well, Authenticity has always been the way forward. The companies that are more authentic with their brands are the ones that when the loyal audience is, right? It's always been that way. Tim Copp, legendary CMO, is on CEO of Terminus, said, I think he was the first one I would say it anyway. You know, B2B, B2C, it's all HD, just all human to human, right? And so before podcasts and before video content was being used the way that it is now, still, I mean, even in written content and the way that we were doing our onesits, that brands are embracing social media, those that were more authentic and less robotic, wind, right? Those are the ones that we like to consume the content from. And so specifically, how did podcasts come to play for me and into my strategy? I was a consumer of podcast content. I became the proud owner of a commute back in 2014, 2015. A lot of the commute that I had had in a while, where I was driving and I just kind of woke up to the idea of podcasts. Like instead of just a three, I'm milson's and podcasts. And for me, I really enjoyed, you know, and the business as well as about marketing and leadership and got a lot out of those. And I found that I would have this 45 minute commute or Park McCaroid walking the office. And then I would take some notes down and I would start to apply those things that I just learned. I would be like, okay, I'm going to use this with my team today or here's this cool idea that I'm going to talk to my head of demand, Jen, about see if we can work then in the strategy. And so be somebody who had really, really benefited from podcasts for a while. I was like, this is something that we should do. Our audience would really benefit from this. And like I said, we had been having conversations already. We were just recording them on our phones or just taking notes with internal and external thought leaders. It was like, this is a no brainer. Why don't we capture these conversations in a slightly more sophisticated way and share them directly with our audience and then also see how else we can use them. And a follow up to that, because I actually think this is, as I researched past it, I think this is actually the problem you're solving for. But what would you say to marketing leaders who are saying, well, how do we measure it? How do we show the impact on revenue on our funnel and our lead? So what's your point to that? Been there. Yeah. So in doing that, once we get rolling with our podcast, then we were doing some video work too. And I was lucky enough that our CEO. So I rolled up to the CMO, but even our CEO would come and talk to me like, this is so great. I love that you're doing this. He was a big fan and he would listen every week. So I had his buy-in as a fan. But then as the CEO, he was like, what's it doing for the business? Like, I can't, you know, anticipating that I was going to say, well, it drove this lead me, brought in this customer. And I was like, I don't know, brand awareness. And hey, we achieved $10,000 downloads. And he was like, yeah, what does that mean? I was like, I don't know. And so that was really frustrating to me. So as we set out to build casted, that's something that's been really important from day one and that we've been working on all along, saying, okay, really all of the tools, tools and point solutions and little one-off things here and there that exist around podcasting today are made for podcast first. Somebody who is creating a show to build an audience that they can quantify and monetize by selling ads. That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not why a B2B and enterprise marketing team would do a show. They, you know, sales force, I'm assuming, they're a customer of ours, but I'm assuming that they're not doing a podcast to make more money. That's that's not a need that they have. They need to, they want to engage their audience and be seen as the thought leaders in the space and to generate raving fans and build out nice funnels, right? So you can't measure that with number of downloads. They just, the two don't, they don't line up. So really what you need to be looking at is engagement, just like you do with the rest of your content. How are people consuming your podcast and audio content and all related content that comes out of that? How are they consuming it? How are they engaging with it? Is your audience growing over time? Are people coming back? What are people doing after they listen? What parts of the conversations that you're sharing? Are they listening to? Are they going on and engaging with some of your additional content? Are they requesting a demo down the line? Probably not as a direct result of listening to that one, that one episode, but like, are they starting to build a relationship? And so as we were building casted, we said, how can we start to track that? How can we show the market or what breadcrumbs are being dropped by people in their audience as they start to raise their hand? How can we, how can we bridge the gap between sales and marketing? It's something that you know a lot about. How can we not create content? How can we help marketers go beyond creating content for content sake or being viewed as creating content for content sake to say, no, the content that we're creating is not only building our audience and engineering engagement, but it's also impacting revenue, influencing pipeline. Hey, salespeople, when you use this content, when you use this clip, it will help your conversation in this way. And so that's the information that we try to pass back in the platform. And then by integrating with CRM, we also like append the information already there that salespeople are adding to those customer contacts and the timelines and the information you have about your contacts by saying, hey, these people are also engaging with the content in this way. Might be a good opportunity to reach out or might be a good opportunity to see how that's impacting those relationships over time. And that's what casted is doing. And I don't, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that anything like this focused on be-to-be podcasting exists. You forecast it. Yeah, we started before we got started. That's why I'm creative a bit, is I either looked. I tried to find it and then said, okay, yes, we're going to have to go build it. So that's an entrepreneurial lesson, in and of itself, right? Like you're solving that need that you found in your own industry and your own life. Okay, so for businesses who say, okay, it makes sense to have a podcast if I have the bandwidth to do it. What businesses would you say should start down this path? Is there a certain revenue threshold that you should be probably, you know, we're 10 million ARR or annual current revenue? Like are we 15 million? Or is something you just start right away as a founder CEO? Yeah, and I'll zoom out from that a little bit to answer your question. So the short answer is, I think everybody should be doing it. Because if you are doing what'll go doing content, right? Most companies are, there's a very, very small, small number of companies that might not really be focused on content for one reason or another, especially speaking of B2B, right? But if you are, if you are at all concerned about or prioritizing thought leadership and content marketing at all, having a podcast and a show, having audio and video content is a really, really great place to start. And yes, there are some companies that can and do or could or should do really, really high end, high production, high cost, wired bandwidth content. And then there's others that are finding scrapier ways to do it. And what matters most is that you're putting your audience first, right? And that you're saying, how can we really serve them? And again, that starts with the conversation with somebody that they're going to want to hear from that has insights and expertise and perspectives that are going to be interesting to the audience. So when you know your audience, go find people that are going to be great resources to them and great speakers to them and talk to them. I'm good conversation and then share it. And so what I would also say is that if you're thinking about, hey, should we do a podcast? It's its own standalone thing. You're kind of thinking about it the wrong way. And a lot of people are in the events the way that a lot of people are seeing it today. The ones that are really succeeding, though, and what I really advocate for is looking at it, not as just doing a podcast over here on the side, but having conversations, putting those at the very center of your entire marketing strategy and saying, okay, I'm going to go ask some conversations. I'm going to create some audio and or video content around that. And then from there, I'm going to pull all the other stuff that I'm going to do. I'm going to pull blog posts out of that. I'm going to take some of those unique insights from people that I've talked to and turn those insights into a really engaging blog post. And some really cool interesting posts for social media. I'm going to get it to the hands of my sales team so that they can use the clips and clips and insights and fun anecdotes and metrics that are shared on my show so that they can have better conversations and move things on the process faster. So when you look at it, not as one more thing to do, but like pulling something into the center and making everything much more efficient, it really works for even being an team that's already doing content hemp retool their approach. And I'll ask you something else because you probably come up with this or you probably had to deal with this with working with different founders as well as larger organizations. Does it make more sense for the podcast to be positioned as something from an executive or a founder or from the brand? Gosh, I think really it's, you know, and I think then there's also, I don't see, there's, I know it's not, it's not an easy answer, but I just, you know, I see like, I see both, I see both sides and I'm just not sure which one works better for a B to B context. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think something that comes that's very clear that it's from the brand, right? Now you can leverage the personal brand of the host, the individuals that face and the voice of the show, but when it's really clear that this is, it's like your blog, right? I mean, does it make more sense to have a blog that's, you know, Scott's blog or that really represents the brand? I mean, if you want it to come back to the brand, you want people to identify with the company and the product sources that you provide, that just makes sense to make sure that it's closely related. And it's not always necessarily about an executive, like sometimes when we've seen, we've seen this absolutely that it's a marketing manager or it's an engineer or it's salesperson. One of our companies left their podcast started when two salespeople, two kind executives said he, we think this would be really helpful to help with our sales processes because we work with you. Can we, can we work together on this? And it's, they worked out really well. Yeah, yeah, no, I've seen, I've seen both and I didn't know that example, but I've seen some brands do, but then I see, I look at, for example, the opposite side where you, you have all these brands, then you have like a Neil Patel type podcast where it's, he drives leads for his own business, but it's like mostly, mostly him, but I guess you're right, it does, it does depend on, on, you know, a lot of circumstances. Okay, you're starting a B2B podcast. What would be your checklist of, you mentioned this a few times, like you want to interview people that are having relevant discussions that could be tailored towards your target audience, but just like some things to think about when you're launching a podcast, some somebody who has done probably, quite a few with them. And then follow up, I don't like doing two bests at once, but I'll, I'll let you know where I want to go. So I want people to listen to this. I want them to understand how to start a podcast if they haven't started it yet, but then I also want people who have a podcast where it's not successful in a B2B space or even otherwise, how they can grow a podcast after they've made sure that they have like those, those benchmarks or those, you know, those core components. For sure. I think it's really easy. And this is, this isn't any strategy. This isn't any marketing campaign. This isn't any content. It's, it's easy to overlook some of the fundamentals, right? So anywhere you're starting out or you're taking your kind of zooming out from a show you already have or looking at another show. Remember to check every once in a while, who are you doing it for? Who is your audience? Is it all marketers in the whole entire world? That seems like a pretty large audience, but okay, maybe, or is it, is it some subset? Is it, you know, content marketers at high growth B2B SaaS companies? Like that's very different than all marketers in the entire planet. So be really, make sure it's really front of mind, like who you're doing it for because that and then why you're doing it, right? So are you jumping leads? Are you jumping in? Brand awareness? Are you trying to raise the profile of one of your executives in your company for one reason or another? Are you trying to raise funds? Knowing who it's for and why you're doing it. That, that paves the path for everything else. That gets into who are you going to have on the show? Not hard, typically, to find people who want to be on the show, right? Anyone. I mean, anyone could start podcasts today and get 15 guests tomorrow. Now, would they be the right guests for your audience? Probably not. They'd be all over the place. You have an author, you'd have a, you know, small business owner, you'd have, you know, an investor, you know, you'd have all kinds of people. It gets a little bit harder. We're challenging when you know really who it's for and how you're doing it to really narrow in. Okay, then therefore, who we're going to have the show, what are we going to talk about? Then you get into show format. So is the show format designed to appeal to who it's for? You know, executives, just stereotypically speaking, and this is where you want to do some check-ins and see how things are going, but executives probably have less time to listen to a really long show. So I want to keep it shorter and sweeter, whereas somebody who's a developer, perhaps, and being very stereotypical, but like maybe the type of show that you're doing is for someone who's going to be listening while they're working, therefore, wants to go deeper and listen longer, right? So there is no one-size-fits-all format. There is no, you know, one-size-fits-all approach. You really, really need to get in and understand for you're doing the show for why you're doing it and therefore it's healing the rest of it around it. That makes sense. The advice. Now, if you're trying to grow a show, like you said, you want raving fans, but I'm assuming a lot of businesses, when they launch a show, they're just pushing it out against their existing customer, you know, their customer base. How do you purposefully grow a show so that it can add more customers and not just give the existing customers more content? Sure. So, yeah, then all those into why you're doing it, right? So that's something that you want to, you're trying to grow your audience. So this was really important to start with the conversation and ring it out. The whole amplified marketing person I'm talking about. So if you, if you and I just have this conversation, you're turned into a show and just put it on a shelf and that's it, some people would see it, some people would listen to it and tune in, but if you pull clips from that and you use that on social media, then you have your, and there truly are rich. It's not just like, hey, listen to our show, but like you're pulling out clips that are really engaging and you're using audio, you're going to see your healing to like the visual senses of people as they're scrolling through social media, then you're going to attract more from your social network and those people social networks and those people social networks to come in and listen to your content. And then when they're there, give them more to dig into, right? So give them ways to listen and consume it without having to sit to the whole thing, give them clips to listen to, give them ways to share. Also, you know, leverage your blog and as you're publishing your blog, if you have clips embedded in the blog, then people are going to come from that and as you're sharing your blog, then you're also inadvertently sharing your podcast. So you can see how this all connects and it all works together where when you share one thing with one network or one audience, it kind of opens up an entire sphere of more. Also, as you bring people on to your show, if you're bringing people that really are going to be valuable, they can be internal and external, when you have experts, like go talk to an expert that doesn't have to be somebody who wrote the bestselling book, you know, it could be you're an engineer in on your team, it can be an intern, depending on what your, who your audience is and why you're doing the show, somebody who could be interesting to your audience could be, could be anyone. And when you bring them in and you make it really, really easy for them to share the show and to share clips of the show and make it super easy, then you're in it obviously to tap into their network as well. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.