Do you have your own B2B podcast or are considering starting one in 2019? Are you wondering how you’ll generate a return on that investment? One B2B podcast strategy is to invite guests onto to the show that may one day be customers, key industry influencers or other strategic partners.
On the Rethink Marketing podcast, we recently chatted with Amy and Mike Rosenberg from Veracity about their B2B podcast, PR Talk, and how it has become a great way for building relationships with key people in their industry.
What has been the biggest surprise with starting your podcast?
Nathan: What’s been the biggest surprise with starting your own podcast for your business?
Mike: I think how many different things are involved in it. My initial thought was, ‘OK, you get a microphone or you call somebody via Skype, and you interview them, and you upload that, and there’s your podcast, right?’
I figured there’s a few different production pieces in it, but there’s more of that. And I think to do it right there’s more other pieces involved in it. There’s all of the other channels that you are going to share it on. You’re going to publish a blog post. You’re going to need to have descriptions of a certain length for all of the places that you’re sharing it. You’re going to need images of a certain size of the different places that you’re going to share it. You’re going to want an intro and an outro. And if you have sponsors, you do sponsor reads. And so that was the thing that kind of surprised me a little bit was how many extra things there are.
Amy: But the main thing I would say is I don’t want to discourage people from doing it if they want to. I had gone into it knowing all those details and knowing how much time it would take, I wouldn’t have done it. But there are ways to simplify it. Like you don’t need to do an intro. You don’t need to do a blog post.
Finding your podcast’s focus
Nathan: We’ve talked about some of the challenges and some of the biggest learning curves. Each podcast you guys have has its own focus. The PR one’s on interviewing press about how to deal with pitches and things like that. Street Talk is about sort of the growth in urban issues that are happening in communities. Is it important to have that narrow focus with your podcasts? What are your thoughts on that?
Mike: I think it definitely is. The other thing, that Amy touched on a minute ago, is that it might change a little bit as you go forward. And I think in a perfect world you know where you’re going to go, and how to get there, and the steps you’re going to take, but we don’t live in a perfect world. I think having that goal and deciding what you’re going to talk about, who your target market is, all that — especially for a business podcast is important.
Leveraging the podcast throughout your marketing
Nathan: How do you roll your podcast into your other marketing efforts? What are the other benefits to something like that?
Mike: Right now our podcast is really the driver of our internal marketing efforts for Veracity. We are doing other things, but it is the lead of what we’re doing. I mean it drives a lot. It drives our podcast. And then that drives a lot of the blog content that we’re putting out there. It provides content for our email newsletter. It provides content for our social media that we’re putting out. There’s a lot.
Amy: For some reason we came up with the idea that we would do this podcast every other week. That is two podcasts per month, which means that’s two blog posts per month. If you’re already doing a podcast, you might as well get some link juice out of it somehow. But you don’t have to dig in and spend five hours on the blog post. You could just summarize it.
What’s your advice to others considering starting a B2B podcast?
Nathan: Any other advice out there for a business considering starting their own podcast?
Mike: If you can, hire someone to do it, or at least someone to help you with it. You probably want to be the one conducting the interview. But the things that you can do to offload some of that stuff probably helps a lot.
The other thing is really think about why you’re doing it. And one of the things that really surprised me, was how many podcasts fail quick. I don’t remember if it was if you get to five episodes or 10 episodes, but 90 percent of them don’t. So to me, what’s the point in starting it if you’re not going to at least have it live for a while. So really think about whether it’s something you want to commit the time, energy, effort, and money towards doing.
Amy: My tip would be the opposite of that. Because I think if you think about it, you don’t do it. So, I think, who cares if you fail? Just try it. You might find a new career. You might find a new passion. There’s nothing wrong with starting something and dropping it if it’s not working. I think what would be negative is not trying something because you’re overthinking all the steps. Just sometimes that will hold you back. Just launch in and experiment.
Mike: That’s true. Just don’t listen to our first three episodes if you’re an audiophile. If you’re not, listen to ’em.
Amy: I think the audience warms up to you. So you’re going to get better with time. And if the episodes that they’re listening to that are more recent sound good, and then they like you, and then they go back to the early days where you were just learning, they’re going to give you a lot of leeway.
Episode Shownotes
- Can you tell me more about yourselves and Veracity?
- You produce two podcasts (PR Talk and StreetTalk), can you tell me more about them?
- Why did you start them?
- What has been the biggest surprise?
- What has been the biggest learning curve?
- How does it fit with your other marketing efforts?
- One reason businesses start a podcast is to develop relationships with thought leaders. I think that especially important in your business. Is that the case?
- Does it take too much time? How do you manage the production?
- Any advice to businesses considering starting a podcast?
- How can someone learn more about you and Veracity; and how do they subscribe to your podcasts?