Graham Brown: So Josef let's talk about B2B marketing and podcasts, how do you define this space? It seems to be a lot of SAS platforms occupying the podcast space. What is it in your words?
Josef Newton: I guess when you say define what do you mean in terms of a define?
Graham Brown: B2B can be a lot of different things. It can be, I guess what I'm trying to get to is define how this group of podcasts is different to let's say Sereal or Wondery, or, why it can be successful without a million downloads effectively. So specifically the B2B space.
Josef Newton: Got it. I think the key difference for our kind of B2B company podcasting is there are usually much more kind of sales, motivated purposes involved. It's not usually just take like Wondery's podcast or any kind of I'm thinking of like Joe Rogan, right? Obviously, the reason why a B2B company as podcasting is very different to why Joe Rogan is podcasting, and I think one of the key reasons for a B2B company is that you're trying to build a very kind of small Thai audience of really your kind of target ideal customer profile, right? That should, for me, that should be the main goal of the B2B podcast. I don't think you can approach a B2B podcast the same way as Wondery or kind of like traditional media company that may podcast. I think you have to approach it in a fundamentally different way because there's different objectives, and you call it just podcasts for the sake of podcasts because there needs to be some kind of tangible result from it because it's not cheap to podcasts. If you want to do it properly, it's not cheap. Producing a podcast itself can be relatively cheap, but I think the whole strategy around it and the distribution of a podcast that all has to be taken into consideration. So I think, yeah, I think the way that you approach a B2B podcast is very different and it's, it should really be about building and kind of cultivating an audience of your target ideal customer profile, whereas Joe Rogan he's just any other kind of media style, media company podcast. I think the angle there is very different.
Graham Brown: Yeah. I mean they're building advertising real estate, aren't they? Whereas B2B is really about creating Mindshare and influencing existing conversations. When you work on B2B podcast, do you build funnels for clients effectively, or are these sort of standalone entities? Because it seems to me like if it's B2B, it has to kind of sit inside a funnel somewhere. Doesn't that
Josef Newton: The approach that we take is more of a, I wouldn't say completely standalone because a lot of what we're doing, and a lot of what, take one of my clients, for example, the social housing podcast. I run that for it one of my clients called voice gate, so they are like a social housing, tech provider. And a lot of what we do with them is we're building the CEO's profile right. So, taking the content from the podcast where he sharing, a unique perspective where he sharing, an interesting for, and then we're distributing that across his LinkedIn profile. So it's kind of two different plays there of yeah, we're building The kind of standalone podcast and the brand of the podcast, but then we're also building the CEO's profile. But I guess to your point of the funnel is kind of difficult because I don't think I would track a podcast traditionally of how most people would do it of like, how many leads did this podcast generate. How many leads did this episode generate? Did we drive business from the guests that came onto the show? Like, I don't really approach it like that. I mean, how I think about measuring a podcast, looking at the podcast itself is really all we influencing key things, for example, Organic branded search. Right? So as a result of starting this kind of branded podcast play and building up the CEO's profile, are we then seeing that reflection and are more people now searching for my client on Google, more people now recognizing them as a brand. Are we getting more people go to his profile on LinkedIn? I think one key thing I'd say here is, it's very hard to directly measure a podcast, right? Like how many leads did we generate? You've kind of got a, the way that I approach it and I know not everyone does this, but the way that I would approach it is it's going to be more kind of indirect whereby we do this podcast, and then there's certain things that you can look at, like organic branded search that give you very strong indicators to if this is actually working.
Graham Brown: Do you get a lot of. Follow through from podcast organic branded search. I haven't really I'm aware of it. I can see it in anecdotal form, and obviously you've got the podcast Stripe that appears the carousel that appears on Google as well, which is actually, I think a bit of a hidden gem that people haven't realized that the competition for that is pretty low compared to websites for example. What was the sort of like, what's the correlation between podcasts and organic branded search? What have you seen?
Josef Newton: Yeah. So there are two more. I dunno if you were talking there about podcasts and, but when I say organic branded search, I'm more talking about people actually searching for the company, not the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So it's more, the idea is that like if this podcast is really working if we are actually influencing our target ideal customer profiles if it is actually generating the awareness and the conversations with these key accounts, that should be then reflecting in that, more people should now be searching for my client in Google, inside LinkedIn. That should be a direct correlation, right? If, if we're becoming more well-known in the sector, which we have been, that should then be a reflection of, okay, more people now that almost should have a down funnel reflection in the funnel. And the first point there is, okay, are more people going to Google or more people going to LinkedIn, search and got the CEO engaging with this content, or they are more people going to Google and typing in voice scape. Right. Because they're curious and they've heard the CEO talk now seven different times across seven different episodes, and they're now genuinely interested in what voice scape do. So, yeah, that's how I think about it.
Graham Brown: I haven't really seen anybody talk about. I mean what I was referring to, I guess it's more obvious, but it's probably your search, bringing up results of the podcast. But what you're saying is it's the awareness play, there's so many searching for a brand. You can measure the impact of the podcast through that. And are you seeing direct knock-on on that? You're seeing like X equals Y . How's it working? What sort of observations?
Josef Newton: Yes. So what we do is we kind of take it from the start. So when we first, when I first start working with a client, I'll kind of assess, okay. Where is organic branded to where is, for example, things like their number of LinkedIn profile, where is that app? Like before we start the podcast, and before we start this branded content play and then three months down the line, six months down the line, where have we seen an increase in that? And it's pretty obvious. It's not that you can never be a hundred percent sure if it was down to that book. If the only branded content play is the podcast. And that's the only really awareness thing that this company is doing. It's pretty obvious that the podcast is driving that organic branded increase. So that's how I think about it. It's like, where are they at before we start it? And then three, six months down the line, what does that number look like? And have we seen an increase?
Graham Brown: Where does that manifest most on Google or LinkedIn search? What do you find?
Josef Newton: I think it's both, I'd say for LinkedIn, it's more about the person, right? So it's more about I've stickiness. So what the CEO, John Doyle, his profile views have just massively increased and that's obviously both come from the content that he shared on LinkedIn, but it's also come from people are now listening to the podcast. And it's funny, he's told me that the amount of messages that he's got from people that have listened to the episodes that are that IED or customer profile, like literally fit their ideal customer profile has just shot up. Like, he'll get one, two messages every single week, which may not sound like a lot, but you've got to remember, it's a small focused audience that we are going after but one, two messages a week from your ideal customer profile saying John listened to the episode, it was amazing. Would love to hear more about, what you guys do, or just even just as a way to start a conversation. That's what I'm really trying to drive. It's like people who are becoming genuinely interested in what we do. So yeah. That's how it kind of manifested.
Graham Brown: So when you pitched the idea of podcasts to a brand in the B2B space, what is the main message there that works? Cause I can understand there's a lot of different things here, potentially. Brand awareness, thought leadership, increasing organic inbound search, highly aligned leads coming through your door. Where's really the sweet spot for you because I guess also it's what you can kind of control and guarantee that's important as well. Isn't it? And managing expectations.
Josef Newton: Yeah, of course. Look, I think there are, and we may come onto this of like of a podcast agency. But I know a lot of agencies that will approach clients on Mim clients. Who've been approached by agencies, but I pitched them on the whole we'll book you guests of your ideal customer profile. To me, that's a bit of a cheat way, right? Like I've done a lot of guest booking myself. I'm not going to say it's very easy, but it's not the hardest thing to do. It's you know, if you send someone an email, who's never been on a podcast before and you're invite them onto a podcast. It makes them feel special. It boosts their ego. They want to come on. They want, a lot of people will say yes to coming onto a podcast. It's not ridiculously difficult to book guests for a podcast. So to me, the whole kind of, and what a lot of agents will do is that pitch to client says, use this podcast is a bit of a sale relationships mover, right? Where you can invite your ideal account, account on that you're trying to close, and it can be a way to either start a new conversation with a prospect or try and nurture a current prospect. And to me, that works, but that's not a true long-term podcast play. What I'm pitching clients on is like, look. Let's actually try and build a brand here and let's actually try and build an asset that is genuinely going to create demand for your service and products. That's why I'm trying to do, I'm not trying to do a quick short-term three month thing where we invite a few ideal accounts on and it's a quick little sales play. How I'm pitching it is like, usually it's a relatively small marketing team. Sometimes it's like one or two people that are on the marketing team. So relatively small B2B SAS software companies, and they want to really start taking the kind of brand awareness play more seriously. And it's, okay. How do we create an asset, both with the podcast, and also the CEO's profile, whoever is the host of the podcast? How do we build both of those assets? So to genuinely create demand, inbound demand for your products and services and really start creating conversation. And that manifests itself in different ways. Like, people talking about the company about the podcast and then you direct messages, like how do we really create that booths effect? That's what I'm trying to do with clients. And yeah, ways of tracking that, like I said, is organic grounded search.
Graham Brown: Building the asset is key here. That's what's scalable. You can do the guest booking as long as you're booking guests, that's effective. But when that stops. But the asset continues to generate traffic in theory forever until people get, they move on to something else, but there's potentially years you can discover podcast years after they're published as well. So what do you find to be the resistance in conversations? I am a classic one being, oh, we've got to do video of podcasts. That's I mean, everybody's had that one. What else do you find? What are the sort of commonly held beliefs that you face when you're having these conversations?
Josef Newton: I think there's a few, I think like at the very kind of start. I mean, I guess at the root of it, it's fundamentally, my model will not work for a lot of B2B companies of how they kind of occur on this out of how that marketing engine sales engine is currently set up. It just wouldn't work because we'll get eight episodes in. We'll get 10 episodes then. And then the CRO chief revenue officer will come knocking and he'll be saying, okay, well, where are the leads? How many leads have this podcast generated this model that I've got it just, and I say this to a lot of people. It won't work for a lot of B2B companies because they're not setup to, their sales marketing engine it's just, it's not set up for this to work. Already my client basis, if who I can actually work with, it's a lot smaller, but I'm all right with that. I wouldn't want to be working with a B2B company where I'm having to always answer that way or the leads question. So I'd say that's like the first one, I guess then the second one there is I guess, on the former right of the podcast. And that's, I think a lot of B2B companies are ties to like the interview format. That seems to be the only format. I think there's very few that have kind of pushed themselves out of that.
Graham Brown: Is there anyone one they know that's the problem.
Josef Newton: Yeah. I mean, like ProfitWell would be a perfect example of a company. I always mentioned them because what they do is just, is amazing. Wistia there's a few examples of ones that are doing it differently. But I think there's so much more to be done on the format.
Graham Brown: What do they do that's different?
Josef Newton: They do, I mean, they've got a few different series and I think actually there's two, actually that I'd mentioned. So there's profit one and freight waves. Both of those really they've already took, I mean, at the top of the. The reason why, what they're doing is working so well is they're not approaching the podcast as like this little asset overhead that we can use to generate leads. It's this thing that we do on the side. Like the way that they approach marketing is more of a media company rather than we just have this little podcast overhead. So like, first of all, it's the approach that both of those companies use. So Freight Waves and Profit Well they approach, I mean, Freightways, they've got like 12 different podcasts. They're in like the freight sector and they have a news show they do. A daily news show where they invite people on in the sector and they, how they talk about everything that's going on. They have dif they have several different podcasts. They do like, they do lows. So in the profit world, they do a pricing page tear-down show. So I think it's first of all, at the very top, it's the approach that they're using. They're approaching their content, they're approaching their podcast. More of like a media company, rather than again, like I said, like a, B2B company would a traditional B2B company. And I think it goes, that actually goes to the point of maybe you don't just start one podcast. Experiment. You actually don't see a lot of B2B companies doing this. Right. They have this like one podcast and actually, why don't try four different podcasts, right? Obviously, it's good to focus on one, but at the same time, if you've got lots of different products and services and lots of different targets, ideal customer profiles, actually, it might make more sense to maybe try your hand at four or five different formats and actually experiment a little more. So I think there's definitely something to be said, first of all, at the top, and I'm going to keep saying it, but approaching it, approaching your podcasts and branded content more like a media company, first of all. But then also, be willing to experiment with different formats and different shows, particularly when you've got lots of different profiles that you're trying to get in front of them and lots of different audiences.
Graham Brown: The multiple shows one's very interesting. So the point about media, I think you have a great example. If we go back a few years, red bull, the drink, the energy drink very much approached what was the consumer packaged good sector with a different mindset, which is they became a media company. So they set up their own media house and they, in the early days of YouTube, they were creating a lot of content and they were like one of the big, probably the most popular brands on YouTube in the early days. Things have obviously changed a lot and but still they approached our whole space by saying that we have to generate mind share because literally all we have is fizzy water, right? That's it with a bit of caffeine in it. Therefore, how do we compete with that? We have nothing. We're no different from these guys. So all we have is the ability to constantly create media. In the same way I think B2B SaaS is similar. I mean, I know each of them will say their products are different, but in the minds of the customers they're not , they don't even, they don't have no idea. They don't know who the people are, what they do. And so this idea of being a media company and this freight waves is very interesting as well that putting that front and center, I like the idea of the multiple podcasts have seen the obviously, done different ways. And you think that comes back to, there isn't one person in the business. There are multiple storytellers, there's multiple public speakers. There's multiple leaders within the business. They don't have to be the CEO. Chief revenue officer could be, head of product. It could be the head of development, whatever it may be, or even somebody who manages key accounts as well, that they should have a voice. And then why not give them a platform to speak up as well? I think what the model we're moving to Joseph is that you're not going to have one brand one podcast. I really feel that it's going to be, one podcast for every leader in the organization and that's the model we're going to evolve into overtime where you could have potentially, I mean, I'm seeing it already with brands like McKinsey and McKinsey have like 20 podcasts, in future they could have 200. I mean, you can imagine every leader inside of McKinsey, that's a thousand, so that's a good account to get hold of. So yeah, but the point is, I guess that brands don't know, they don't know what kind of formats they don't know like they should be doing multiple podcasts and they don't know that it should be front and center. Because it's just kind of, oh, we've got this podcast thing going on the side. So how do you deal with that? What sort of like, what clicks with you and your conversations where you get them to put it front and center and say, look, or do you say, okay, let's start this as a side gig and then if this is successful, move it front and center. How does it work? Where do you start that?
Josef Newton: Yeah, I think, I'd be lying if I said, I come in straight away and we, create a whole media engine and arm for them. It's just, that's not going to be the reality for most companies. Number one, cause of cost. To have several different podcasts and to do all of that, that's a massive cost. But then number two, it's also, it's a big mindset change, right? For a lot of these B2B companies, even the ones that are trying now to embrace more of the brand style kind of a content game. So I think, yeah, initially you do have to come in with the single show or maybe one or two shows. But I think how I, from day one, I'm trying to change the mindset a little bit is maybe we have a different format that we're using, and we're breaking away from the traditional mold. So it's doing things in the early days that start to get them to think a little bit differently about, number one, the format of the podcast. But then also I think when it really I've noticed with my own clients when it really starts to open up for them is, for example, the CEO right when he starts to see the 20 CEO's of housing associations, which it says kind of target are engaging with this content on LinkedIn. I think that's when, I was on a call with one of the sales guys, the SDRs, they have a day of that client, and he was saying that there was a month, I think, back in January where they were having like an internal meeting. And the CEO, John had mentioned to everyone that this month he had, I think it was like 500 inbound requests from people that there's ideal target persona or profile like actually request them on LinkedIn and everyone was just blown away because it's just, that's like unheard of. That's unheard of in like the sales, B2B world. What I've seen that particularly podcast things are a little bit harder because it's a little bit more anonymous. And as B2B sales leaders, and as salespeople, we like to know exactly who is consuming the content. We want to know exactly who's done well and we want to track everything. So I think LinkedIn makes that a little bit clearer. And from what I've seen is that when, the CEO or whoever starts to see that actual engagement, they start to see who's engaging and they really start to go, oh wow, we're getting comments from this target account. We're getting shares from this target account. That's when it starts to become a lot more real, it's the more kind of qualitative stuff. It's the messages that the CEO is getting on his LinkedIn profile, where it's wow, how is this account just messaged me out of nowhere. Saying that he's been listening to five episodes and that he's binge-watched them all over the week. How has that just happened? And that's where you start to have the real mindset changes. I'd say it's the mindset change that doesn't come with quantitative data. It comes with qualitative feedback. It comes with when people when you're actually seeing visually, people that you recognize that you've already had conversations with all that you're trying to initiate conversations with and you're actually seeing that they're reaching out to you for a change, you're not reaching out to them. So that's where the change starts to happen. And then from there you can open it up and you can, I'm right now, kind of in the process of that minute of pitching them a new show concept where we're going to take content, that's going to cure rate KIPP content, housing content, news content and we're going to try and turn it into a daily, weekly show sharing news a bit like what Freightways has done. So yeah, it starts with, initially pitching the kind of single show and maybe differentiating a little bit and then once they rarely start to see that kind of qualitative feedback key they're qualitative, not quantitative, it starts to become a lot more real, so that's how I think about it. I'm still in the early days of this, but yeah, that's how I think about.