Building a B2B Podcast and Making it Work
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
Release Date: 09/09/2020
My B2B Podcasting Strategy
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
Social audio has become very popular recently with the advent of Clubhouse. According to 15% of social media users 18+ say they have used Clubhouse. Podcasting is a form of social audio. And, it continues to grow as a content channel. According to , which began tracking audio consumption in 2014, podcasting’s share of all audio listening is now 6% of consumption. This level marks an all-time high for podcasting, up from 2% in 2014. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have launched or plan to launch social audio...
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B2B Influencer Marketing for the Entire Customer Journey
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
B2B influencer marketing is not the same as it is in B2C, where you have celebrities like top athletes and Hollywood actors endorse a brand and post on Instagram about it. B2B marketing leaders can leverage industry influencers in their marketing efforts with a solid plan. That is the topic of conversation with my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, , SVP of Marketing at Tipalti. Amisha is a groundbreaking B2B innovator with deep marketing and communications expertise across multiple industries and geos. She was recognized in PR Week’s Women to Watch 2020, Top 50 Influence...
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How Internal Communication Drives Marketing ROI
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
Most CMOs favor external communications (, content marketing, etc.) over internal communications. Why? Because these external activities seem to create more measurable ROI. However, with the modern workforce internal communications are now more important than ever to motivate and activate people within the organization to be a channel of communication. My guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, Mark Derks, has great insights about how much effort marketing should put into internal communications. Mark is the CMO at BlueGrace Logistics. Founded in 2009, BlueGrace Logistics...
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Planning the Marketing Strategy for a Global Brand
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
How would you plan the marketing strategy for a new brand? What are some factors that marketing leaders should take into consideration when rolling out a new product? That is the topic of conversation of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, with my guest . Armen is the CMO at RSA Fraud & Risk Intelligence, which is part of the larger RSA Security, a 38-year old global brand. As his division expanded and with more revenue and customers around the globe, they decided to transform the Fraud & Risk Intelligence division into a stand-alone business. As the CMO, Armen was...
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Why Analytics is a Must in Account-Based Marketing
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
How do you formulate an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy? How do you decide which accounts to target? And what is the role of analytics in ABM planning? That is the topic of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast with my guest, Chris Rack, President at PureB2B. PureB2B leverages a database of B2B decision-makers in combination with their predictive analytics technology, to provide a full suite of solutions that help their clients meet their specific B2B demand generation sales and marketing revenue goals. Listen to this episode to learn how to plan a successful ABM strategy....
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Marketing’s Role in the Modern Sales Experience
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
B2B buyers have changed dramatically, especially during COVID. Consider these three recent trends, for example: B2B buyers are looking critically at any opportunity that comes to them, whether it comes from marketing content or from a sales conversation. B2B buyers are giving less access to sales people and traditional conversations. In fact, 83% of the buyer journey does not include a sales rep. B2B buyers place a greater priority on perspective and recommendations from people who aren't sales people, from their peers and from subject matter experts via content marketing. So, as marketers,...
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The Importance of Customer Data Marketing for Modern Marketers
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
Marketing professionals need to have a strong grip on data. These uncertain times have inspired marketers to rely less on qualitative insights and more on data-driven insights. This is what my guest realized during 2020. Paul Cowan, CMO at FreshBooks, joins me in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast to talk about why they are doubling down on customer data marketing in 2021. FreshBooks serves mainly the small business owner segment with easy-to-use accounting software. As many organizations, the pandemic affected their business initially but it then bounced back and they...
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Mission-Driven Marketing and Sales
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
The pandemic hit just about every industry hard and many companies are still trying to recover. That’s why stories of B2B companies helping out others around them are so encouraging. And I’m excited to bring you one such story in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast. My guest is , CMO at , a cloud-based contact center, unified communications and artificial intelligence software provider. Customers use their contact center software to scale and improve their customer support experience. Traditionally, customer support was limited to call centers, which involved agents...
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The Future of B2B Buying and Selling
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
What is the future of buying and selling? How do marketing and sales approach digital native decision-makers? That is the topic of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine with my guest, . Dave is the Chief Strategy Officer, XANT, where he divides his time between corporate development, corporate strategy, and operational strategy. He is also a board member of Forrester Research Inc. since 2017. This episode was inspired by two articles that Dave published on LinkedIn: Join us in this conversation to learn why marketers must understand the . The Journey of the Modern Buyer Both...
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Shifting the Conversation of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges
This is a different, but very special, episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast. My guest is Hang Black, VP, Revenue Enablement, Juniper Networks and I invited her to talk about her new book, . This book has the potential to be life-changing for some. Hang says the idea for this book was in her head for a decade. It not only describes Hang’s experience as a Vietnamese immigrant to the United States, but also deals with important issues of in the workplace. So don’t miss our fascinating conversation about inclusion, diversity and access from a perspective you haven’t seen before....
info_outlinePodcasts are becoming more popular each day (there are more than a million podcasts and more than 30 million episodes available). So it’s not surprising that marketers are deciding to create a B2B podcast as a strategy to reach their buyers.
But how do you start a B2B podcast and how do you make it work?
That is the topic on this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast with my guest Rachel Clapp Miller, Vice President of Marketing and Digital Engagement at Force Management.
Force Management is a B2B sales effectiveness consulting firm that helps its clients define sales solutions and create management tools that produce measurable results. In her role, Rachel manages communication and content generation that drive leads and client engagement.
She is also the host of The Audible Ready Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and revenue-driving executives, who share their best insights on how a focus on sales effectiveness can help companies increase revenue, improve sales margins and gain market share.
Listen to this episode as Rachel tells us how she started the podcast and those factors that have made it successful.
The Evolution of a B2B Podcast
The Audible Ready Podcast was born organically, almost by accident.
Rachel was in charge of content marketing, blogging regularly, posting on social media and running demand generation activities.
“I needed to get into the heads of the subject matter experts,” Rachel says. “So I started scheduling regular content chats with co-founder John Kaplan. We had conversations every other week about sales planning, pipeline, whatever it was we were producing content on.”
Rachel decided to record these conversations so she could listen to them later, but soon realized that she had a B2B podcast on her hands. So she kept recording the interviews as a podcast without telling John that she planned to publish them… A risk that paid off!
After producing and editing some of the interviews, however, Rachel asked for the official green light to make the interviews an actual podcast. Fortunately, she got the approval and the podcast launched in 2015 as The Force Management Podcast.
Although people liked it, originally it was just a hobby and not a regular production of content.
However, as the company was growing, the podcast evolved. Rachel evaluated the marketing tactics and realized the podcast was a low hanging fruit, an effective B2B marketing tool they could leverage. So she hired a writer for the marketing team to maximize resources and also contracted an outside company to edit and publish the podcast.
Rachel realized that since 2015, B2B podcasts had grown exponentially and to compete, Force Management had to take their podcast to the next level. That’s why in 2020 they did a complete rebranding, changing the name to The Audible Ready Podcast.
The Goals of a B2B Podcast
As a B2B marketer, how do you measure the impact your podcast has on your business?
The first thing is to set some goals, whether it is lead generation, sales enablement or branding.
For Rachel and her team, the goal is to increase visibility and brand awareness.
“There are many sales consulting firms, so we need to differentiate ourselves, and the podcast helps us do that,” Rachel says. “We sell to the C-suite and high-level sales leaders on the go. We want to give them different avenues to find us, other than the newsletter.”
The podcast also serves to remain top of mind with their target audience, in this case, sales reps, who are the users of their training programs.
Furthermore, they have integrated the podcasts as added content to their training program, which not only increases the audience but serves as a tool to reinforce learning. We do the same with the Modern Marketing Engine podcast and our Modern Selling podcast, integrated into our Vengreso On Demand training portal.
Where to Find Content for a B2B Podcast
So far, Rachel’s guests have been Force Management executives with stellar sales backgrounds.
“They are working with fast growing tech companies, so they have a boots-on-the-ground perspective,” Rachel says.
However, she is planning to interview outside guests in the future.
One thing that I loved about our conversation is that Rachel mentioned that the Force Management salespeople use the podcast to provide valuable information to their clients and even sometimes send her ideas for new episodes.
In fact, she has on occasion bumped episodes to incorporate ideas from the sales team. That’s what I call real marketing and sales alignment!
Measuring the Results of the Podcast
In business and in marketing we are always measuring the results of our activities to know if it is worthwhile to continue with that activity. A podcast is no exception.
Rachel says her primary metric for her podcast is the number of unique downloads. This metric has been increasing over time.
“The longer the podcast is out, the more downloads it gets. The podcast is building positive brand awareness, and that is valuable.”
Another way Rachel’s team measures the success of the podcast is by the feedback and engagement on LinkedIn. For instance, John Kaplan regularly gets comments on his LinkedIn posts from people who heard him on the podcast.
Don’t miss this episode to learn more about how a B2B podcast can help you build brand awareness and stay top of mind with your customers.
Featured on This Episode
- Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn
- The Audible Ready Podcast
- Force Management’s website
Outline of this Episode
- [2:25] About Force Management
- [3:25] History of The Audible Ready Podcast
- [9:33] Goal setting when doing a B2B podcast
- [13:34] Who to invite as guests for your B2B podcast
- [14:45] How sellers can use podcasts in their selling activities
- [18:26] Measuring the results of a B2B podcast
Resources & People Mentioned
- The Modern Selling Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr