How we work: setting up and running a B2B podcast

To podcast, or not to podcast? It’s a burning question we continue to face as marketers. Some may remember the podcast boom in the 2010s, but recently we’ve seen a renaissance of sorts for the somewhat maligned format. According to Sounds Profitable, more than half of American adults now listen to podcasts every month.

Podcasting places people and their personalities in the spotlight, which can feel uncomfortable if that’s not a familiar approach in your brand marketing mix (and even more so if it’s you in the hosting seat.) But people can be a powerful differentiator in increasingly commoditised B2B markets, so it could be just the investment you need to move a stubborn brand awareness or lead generation needle.

Using the podcast we set up, run and host for our client CloverDX as an example, this article will share the reasons why you should consider a B2B podcast for your business, the tools you need and a step-by-step guide to going live and promotion.

Why create a podcast for your B2B business?

Before we get down to brass tacks, let’s review the core reasons why you’d spend time and budget creating a podcast for your business:

• Showcase expertise and thought leadership: Your business will be bursting with experience and expertise your target customers will find valuable, and that’s before you add external guests into the equation. Thought leadership articles remain an effective way to share these insights (and appease the SEO gods). But discursive formats like podcasts can prompt further revelations that demonstrate your experts’ original thinking and prove your differentiated value as a business.
• Reach your audience where they’re at: As we’ve already mentioned, podcasts are pulling in hundreds of millions of listeners. But beyond the numbers there’s a logic to expanding into new formats for your marketing. If you’re trying to break into the consciousness of a busy CEO, for example, an audio format could fit into their drive to the office or lunch break better than a whitepaper. They’re also more likely to spend more time engaging with you, with most people listening to podcasts for 20-30 minutes (compared to a minute or two skimming a blog post.)
• Fuel your content marketing engine: A podcast episode is more than just the episode itself. It’s a resource from which you can extract engaging soundbites or snippets for social media, as well as topics and viewpoints you can turn into blogs (a practice we call ‘blogification’ at Articulate) and case studies. For each episode of the CloverDX podcast, for example, we turn its content into a blog and four soundbite clips for social media.
• Elevate your sales conversations: A link to a recent podcast podcast where you interview a current client is more compelling sales collateral than a three-year old one-pager. You can send interviews with relevant people to others in their sector, but you can also invite potential clients to be guests on the podcast to amplify their business and plant the seed of partnership.
• Gain a deeper understanding of your customer base: Interviewing people about the issues that affect them and their businesses generates real insights that your sales, marketing and product teams can use. If they’re existing customers and you’re discussing a partnership or project, you may even have enough to develop case studies or inform reports or whitepapers.

The tools you need to set up and run a podcast

You don’t need a professional recording studio space or shiny, top-of-the-range equipment to get started. In fact, we’d recommend you don’t start there, even if you do have budget burning a hole in your pocket. Your first focus should be substance, with style following after you’ve found your rhythm. These are your podcasting essentials:

• Laptop/desktop with a working camera: In recordings, all that matters is that others can clearly see and hear you. No ultra HD necessary!
• USB microphone: You don’t need to shell out for recording studio brand names, but we’ve found that a good quality USB microphone provides a better ‘radio voice’ than built-in laptop microphones.
• Podcast software: We use (and love) Riverside for its all-in-one capabilities—it can record, edit, transcribe, and create clips from your podcasts in one platform. We then use Buzzsprout to host and distribute the podcast, but other options are available.
• Email platform or CRM system: This is an important tool for promoting your podcast to existing leads and keen listeners who want to be the first to know when new episodes go live.
• Social media accounts: You’ll need to promote beyond your website to maximise your potential listenership. LinkedIn is the obvious choice if you’re a B2B business promoting a podcast, but you might also want to consider YouTube—Shorts are proving to be effective for podcast discovery.
• Project management tool: You’ll save yourself panicked searches through emails and Download folders if you can track each episode through production and collate all the assets you need for recording and promotion in one place. We use Notion, but any tool that allows you to create timelines, tasks and asset folders will work.

A step-by-step guide to setting up and running a podcast

We’ll use examples from our client CloverDX’s podcast, which we set up, host and run for them!

Step 1. Plan your first season

Gather your team on a call or in a meeting room and open the floor for ideas. These are the areas you need to consider and some questions to help get the discussion going:

• Objectives: Clarify your goals and expectations. Which of your marketing objectives will your podcast support? What do you want it to achieve in its first year? Which metrics will you use to measure its success?
• Inspiration: Which podcasts, business-focused or otherwise, do you like? What’s the secret sauce that makes you listen? Are there any elements you can borrow that fit with your brand and objectives?
• Topics: What topics do you want to cover and what does your target audience want to hear about? SparkToro is an excellent tool for figuring the second part out as it often reveals what videos or podcasts your website users are listening to.
• Format: Is it a one-on-one interview? A group discussion? Or a solo piece to camera? Guests guarantee the listener something new every episode and often lend their own channels for promotion, so we’d recommend including them where you can.
• Name: An important decision that’s worth deliberating, but not losing sleep over. Make sure it will make sense to your target audience, suggests the value they can expect and keep keywords in mind—for CloverDX, for example, we went with ‘Behind the Data’ because better data management is their bag.

Step 2. Get your tech set up

Time to tap into your inner (or outer) nerd and get your podcasting tech set up. We do all of this for CloverDX, but if you’re going it alone, here’s what you’ll need to consider:

• Shared podcast calendar: Make it available to your wider team so everyone knows key dates for recording, publishing and promotion.
• Podcast software: Whether you’re using Riverside or otherwise, you’ll want to set up your account and familiarise yourself with all the features. We’d also strongly recommend a test recording—nothing will take the wind out of your podcasting sails faster than having to re-record an episode because the audio or video didn’t capture properly.
• Index page, RSS feed and subscriber form: Technically you’ll host your podcast on a third-party platform, but you’ll want a home for it on your website. If you also set up an RSS feed and create a sign-up form, subscribers will automatically get notifications when you upload a new episode.
• Analytics and reporting: If you want to see the tangible results of your audiovisual adventure, you’ll need to track and measure your podcast efforts. So ensure you’ve added the UTM code to your podcast page URL and build a podcast report in your CRM system that includes your promotional channels.
• Set up your gifting service account: If you’re trying to get guests on board for the podcast, a gift is a good way to show your enthusiasm and appreciation for their time. We have used &Open, which offers a customisable gifting platform and allows recipients to pick their own gift from a selection you authorise.

Step 3. Create your supporting assets

Podcasting doesn’t need bells and whistles to provide value to your audience. With that said, a slick suite of visuals and promotional materials will add polish and look more appealing to new listeners. These are the creative assets you’ll need to prepare:

• In-episode copy and design: A host bio, a featured image for audio listings, and a thumbnail, end-card image and video background art for the video listings. For your video version, you might also want to create and embed banners with the host and guest’s name and title.
• Scripts: For intros and outros. You’ll make the most of your recording time and your key messages if you script your intros and outros in advance, with tailored versions for the first and last episode of the season.
• Email copy and design: Templates for RSS email, podcast teaser email for your existing website leads and guest recruitment email.
• Social media copy and design: Graphics for the first season teaser and individual episode promotion and accompanying copy.

Behind the Data's cover art.

Behind the Data's episode end card for YouTube.

Step 4. Recruit and prep your guests

To get guests on board, you can either tap into a podcast guest agency or create your own targeted, tailored email outreach.

If you go for the latter, you can still use templates for the body copy, but it will boost your chances of a positive RSVP if you add a personalised sentence or two about the reason why you’re inviting them specifically. Referencing an existing relationship and the relevance of their recent work is helpful here, as is a little flattery about their professional achievements or position.

Start by creating and agreeing a potential list of interviewees with your team, then begin email outreach using your templates. For CloverDX, we started by asking their current clients to be guests on the podcasts, but we haven’t stopped there. We’ve also extended our invites to other experts in the data management space, which taps into a wider audience for CloverDX’s messages and offering. There are also podcast guest agencies you can tap into if you’re short on people power. They prefer to work with established podcasts with 30+ episodes so they can be useful once you are more established.

If they accept, ensure you confirm in plain terms the date and time of recording, as well as prepare them for the recording. That should include:

• Asking them to confirm they have a working device for recording
• Letting them know the general topic you’ll be discussing so they can read up on recent news
• Sharing a list of questions and asking them to prepare some notes in advance
• Asking them if they have any insights from their own work or businesses they can have to hand to share during the discussion
• We also send guests a short questionnaire via Typeform to capture their job title and other key information and to ask them to suggest some possible topics to discuss

Step 5. Record, edit and upload each episode

You’ve done all the work around the podcasting, so now it’s time to podcast. If you’re using a podcast recording and editing software like Riverside, this is a fairly streamlined process. You can record, edit and transcribe in one place with a few clicks. You can also use Riverside to easily capture video and audio snippets of the best soundbites to use on social media for promotion.

You’ll then need to use your hosting software (ours is Buzzsprout) to upload and schedule your episodes to publish across the streaming platforms where everyone gets their podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

This is also the time to make sure you’ve sent your guest their thank-you gift if you offered them one!

Step 6. Promote your season and individual episodes

Fire up and fill in those templates you prepared earlier and schedule your email newsletter and social media posts to promote the season and the individual podcasts as they release.

We also made sure each of CloverDX’s podcast guests received a promo kit containing graphics, audio and video snippets and some suggested copy for their social media or newsletters. It saves them thinking and creative time, making it more likely that they’ll share our joint efforts with their own audiences.

Step 7. Create more content

And done. Right? Not so fast. Each podcast episode is itself a treasure trove you can explore and plunder for more content. You can isolate short video clips from the recording to use on social media, but there’s also the ‘blogification’ approach that we use at Articulate to make the best use of each episode’s insights.

There are two key ways you can look at ‘blogifying’ your podcast episodes:

• Interview write-up: With some sharp editing, your podcast transcript can become a write-up of the podcast discussion. You also have the opportunity to add internal links and additional insights in between soundbites. This is the format we use for CloverDX, which you can see in this article about AI and the future of data integration.
• Topic expansion: Once you have your initial write-up you can also dip back into the topic (or topics) you covered during the podcast and follow the paper trail behind specific soundbites. With a little more desk research, you’ll have another thought leadership article on the topic that you can enrich with quotes from the podcast.

Need a podcasting partner?

We’re serious when we say that there are few barriers to starting your own B2B podcast. But you can achieve more when you work with an expert partner who gets the bigger picture for your business and can make your podcast a well-oiled cog in your Difference Engine®. That’s us! And we’d love to talk about your marketing. Get in touch with our team today to book a discovery call.