Is it possible to use podcasts for b2b marketing?
Is a question I have heard approximately 23 times since we started Fame.
The growth of our agency has proven the answer to this question to be: a resounding yes.
The next question they ask is... how?
This is the post I then link to these people...
Below I share what we see to be the seven core benefits of starting and growing a B2B podcast for your business.
Before we jump in, if you're not 100% sure what we mean by the team "podcast marketing" then we suggest you quickly check out this post on the what, why and how of podcast marketing.
1. Form Profitable Partnerships
Most of what we do as B2B marketers follows this process:
- Work out who we want to sell to
- Get the attention of these people
- Try to sell to them
If we improve at each of these steps over time, then we should ideally be able to close sales.
Step 2 can often be the most expensive step, as driving targeted traffic from Linkedin gets more expensive by the day.
A little known method for executing Step 2 really well, is to simply make friends with people or business that already have the trust of your perfect audience, and then get them to promote you... they do this for one fo the following reasons:
- Out of the goodness of their heart
- Because you will promote them back
- Because you pay them upfront
- Because you offer them a percentage of any sales made
Now, if you can somehow get these people to like you before pitching them on any of the above reasons for promoting you, you will increase the likelihood of the first reason, and will get a better deal on any of the others.
And the best way to get them to like you is to create content together, and expose them to your audience FIRST... through your podcast.
As an example, multiple partnership agreements have been formed between the host and the guests of the Sales Ops Demystified podcast:
2. Get Feedback From Experts
Would your product or service be better if you were able to receive feedback from one proven expert in your niche per month for twelve months straight?
I think the resounding answer would be: yes.
So the question then becomes... how can we incentivise these experts to add value to your business?
The answer to this question is resoundingly simple: you add value to their business first.
You see, when you invest in building a niche audience, the audience itself is an asset. The audience like and trust you, and will therefore reward you with their attention.
When you bring a guest onto your show, and expose them to your audience, you are adding value to their business.
Numbers 1, 2 and 7 on this list all centre around building strategic relationships with people in your niche.
A podcast is hands down the most effective and time efficient way of doing this.
One example of this is when Sujan Patel joined the Confessions Of A B2B Marketer podcast to be interviewed about his expertise, post interview he said he would love to have another call to give feedback on our growth...
Two weeks later we jumped on another call, recorded it for another podcast episode:
I think Sujan typically would charge $000's per hour for this kind of advice...
3. Generate Linkedin Engagement From Content
The way you get social networks to send you traffic is to first give them what they want.
This is actually a deeper life lesson but I will elaborate on that in another blog post, post retirement.
What do social networks want?
Ultimately, it's our attention that they're after.
They want every human eye glued to the phone or laptop, every second of every day. Because this is how they make money.
So if you want more traffic for your business, you need to first give Linkedin what they want: attention.
You give Linkedin attention by providing people information that either:
- Informs them
- Inspires them
- Educates them
And a podcast is an awesome way to do this.
You simply pull out the big insight from an episode then post it to Linkedin in written, image or video form.
Over time, you will learn the type of content that your target audience enjoys... then you can do more of that.
Here is an example of this:
4. Generate Linkedin Engagement From Shares
There is an unwritten rule in the podcasting world.
If you guest on a show, you share the show.
It proves to be true 75% of the time.
So when you are selecting guests, you need to take this into account...
Who in your niche would be the best person to share your content? E.g. who has the biggest and most engaged audience of your target customers on Linkedin?
Here is an example of the guest of a podcast, sharing the episode and therefore inherently endorsing the host of the podcast with this share:
Any trust that the connections of this guest have in the guest, is transferred to the host, generating social followers, traffic and ideally: leads and then sales.
5. Rank For Long Tail Keywords
The "hub and spoke" model is a tried and tested SEO strategy.
The basic premise is that you choose a main keyword and optimise a page on your website for this keyword. You then select sub-keywords of this main keyword and then write blog posts on the topic. These blog posts then all link back to your main keyword page.
Podcast episode blog posts make GREAT sub-keyword blog posts:
- They contain, original engaging content
- The guest will drive traffic (see above)
- The guest will provide a link back (see below)
To do this, you either retrofit a keyword to the content, or decide upon which keyword you want to tackle before recording.
If your release one episode per week for a year, you will generate 52 high engaging sub-keyword blog posts related to your niche... which should have already started to generate some solid inbound traffic.
Here is an example of an episode of the Confessions Of A B2B Marketer podcast rising to the top of the rankings for a long tail keyword related to their niche:
6. Get Backlinks
Every marketing team is looking for real, genuine backlinks.
Real genuine backlinks lead to real, genuine organic hits on your site.
So how does podcast marketing deliver this?
If you do a great job of creating written, audio and even video content that makes your podcast guest look great, then they are going to want to show it off to their friends, family and future employers.
They are going to want to link.
We see approximately one in five podcasts guests link back to their hosts... how do you get them to do this?
A certain number of guests will do this naturally, for the rest: you just ask. It really is that simple.
Here's an example of a guest that we didn't have to ask to link:
Andrew Etter was a guest on a client podcast, the day after his episode launched... he adds the backlink back to episode page on the host's website.
7. Close Deals With Guests
And this is the big one.
This is the one that... if you're a founder, will grow your business and if you're a marketing manager, will get you promoted.
If you are strategic about the guests you bring onto your podcast and you have a good product, at some point you will make sales.
The podcasting process is an emotional experience for a guest.
- First they are honoured
- Then they get nervous
- Then they are received
If your podcast host and team are reliable, enthusiastic and engaging during this process, they will form a bond with the guest personally, and a sense of goodwill from the guest to the business.
Once this is done, all that is left to do is to then simply move down the guest down and then ideally through... the sales process.
Here is an example where the business didn't even need to ask the guest about discussing their product:
And there we go...
Thanks for enquiring about whether podcasts can work for B2B marketing, and now you have all the information you need to make your own decision.
And if you do start one, please email us at team@fame.so when you launch... we will subscribe, rate and review! And of course, if you would like to learn more about how we run this process for multiple B2B businesses, click here!
