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While blogs have reigned supreme as a popular form of content in B2B, more brands are looking into diversifying their formats. Podcasts are gaining traction in the B2B world, and for good reason. Orbit Media’s 2024 blogging report found that creators who use audio such as podcasts are more successful with their blog results.
But like any other form of content, you can’t make podcasts just for the sake of making them – you need them to work with the rest of your marketing. To help businesses like yours make the most out of their B2B podcasts, we partnered with John Bonini and other partners to survey more than 100 companies about their podcasting strategies and tactics. This survey is connected to our Content Marketing Benchmarks Benchmark Group.
In September 2024, we also gathered more than 70 professionals for a live DBUG discussion on B2B podcasting to gain even more insights. 13 podcast experts lent their knowledge to this session.
We brought together knowledge from all the above sources to bring you this report on B2B podcast marketing. Today, you’ll learn about these insights pulled from our research:
Our survey of more than 100 businesses explored how brands plan, create, and promote their B2B podcasts.
Most of the businesses we surveyed have 50 employees or fewer.
The top goal businesses named for their podcast was thought leadership at 40.15%.
The majority of the brands we consulted have podcasts three years old or younger.
As you keep this context in mind, our survey covered the following elements of these businesses’ podcast marketing strategies:
While there’s no one answer to the right format and production for a B2B podcast, you can look at what other businesses are doing to gain inspiration.
Most respondents run episodes that last between 15 minutes and one hour rather than incredibly short or long episodes.
Almost 60% of survey participants use an interview format for their podcasts.
This answer reflects one of the discussions from our September 2024 DBUG session. James Carbary of Sweet Fish and Mario Martinez Jr. of Vengreso debated the merits of the interview format. Carbary pointed out that interviews could overshadow the host’s voice, making the guest seem more like the main thought leader. Meanwhile, Martinez stressed the benefits of interviews, especially how they build a solid network for the podcaster. Consider the pros and cons of your podcast carefully as you plan it out.
Topic planning tends to happen internally for survey respondents, with the two top ways to identify topics being internal brainstorming (77.87%) and observing industry trends (63.93%).
The production of the podcast itself, including, planning, interviewing, and post-production, usually takes up to 6 hours for the brands we surveyed.
Most respondents take care of production themselves, with 72.13% reporting they handle all production internally.
Most of the companies we surveyed take a straightforward approach to recruiting guests and preparing for an episode.
About 82% of respondents mainly recruit guests and schedule episodes in-house rather than using software or external help.
Most companies involved in our survey typically research the episode guest (77.63%) and share questions with the guest ahead of time (61.84%) to prepare for an episode.
The businesses in our survey count on a wide range of channels and networks to promote their podcasts.
When we asked companies how they distribute their podcast episodes, they answered with a healthy mix of channels:
When measuring these kinds of tactics’ success at generating play and downloads, respondents notice that these options are the most effective:
Meanwhile, when it comes to driving podcast subscribers, brands sharing the podcast through other channels (59.84%) and getting more prominent guests (53.28%) were the two most effective tactics.
The participants in our survey take repurposing seriously. More than half stated they frequently repurpose their podcast episodes into content for other channels.
Most respondents have an episode marketing cycle shorter than a month. 45.08% of them promote an episode for a week, while 32.25% promote it for two to three weeks.
Content attribution for podcasts can be tricky. While you can monitor plays or downloads as a metric, you’ll need to connect them to other steps in the customer journey to tell how they drive conversions.
This issue came up during our DBUG session. Cultivate’s Justin Brady noticed that while many companies in our survey wanted to measure their podcasts’ return on investment (ROI), they didn’t set specific goals. Tony Dowling of Real Inbound suggested tying podcast goals to broader marketing objectives and ensuring that each episode has a defined purpose to avoid this issue.
Fractional marketing director Leanne Dow-Weimer highlights the importance of the ways they measure ROI:
“We need to think about how we define and report our data. Often, what we find is that podcasts are a long-term play, building on multiple assets and touchpoints, not just one-to-one measurements. This often means conversions are not included in the attribution model, even though there are many tangible and anecdotal outcomes proving success from a business standpoint.”
Leanne Dow-Weimer
Independent Marketing Advisor at Leanne Dow-Weimer
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This is just one aspect of measuring your podcast success and dealing with potential challenges. We also discovered other ways companies gauge their results, the challenges they face, and whether they follow best practices for lead generation.
Most of the businesses we surveyed mainly measure success within the podcast, with 34.43% mainly looking at their number of downloads or listens.
ROI comes into play with their top challenges, too. Measuring ROI effectively, a lack of resources, and building a consistent audience were the top three issues the companies we surveyed deal with when creating and promoting their podcasts.
When asked how they leverage their podcast for lead generation, more than half of the surveyed companies reported they don’t do it at all.
In a similar vein, more than 70% of survey participants told us they don’t sponsor other podcasts when we asked what their sponsorship budget was.
Related: How Are Companies Measuring Podcast Success? 8 Successful Brands Share Their Frameworks, Best Practices and Tips
Repurposing came up frequently in our survey as a practice for promoting podcasts and integrating them into a content marketing strategy. It showed its impact in our survey and our DBUG session.
During the DBUG session, Content Brands’ John Bonini and consultant Max Traylor emphasized the importance of repurposing your podcast. Bonini sees many companies only promote their latest episodes, even though the real magic happens when you repurpose them into other types of content. Traylor added that repurposing keeps podcasts and their surrounding content fresh and engaging.
But if you aren’t familiar with repurposing, it can be easy to fall into the trap of simply sharing your podcast episodes elsewhere without reimagining it. So, we asked survey participants about their most successful repurposing tactics, and they shared these five ideas:
When you take a strategic approach, podcast repurposing can actually improve your content marketing strategy by giving you content ideas and supporting your broader goals. Two respondents integrate their podcasts into their content strategies for better marketing overall.
At InboxArmy, Scott Cohen hosts the InboxArmy Podcast, which covers the latest topics in email marketing. Cohen repurposes each episode into a blog post and distributes it through social media to make an impact through multiple channels.
“One of the most creative ways I’ve repurposed podcast content is turning key insights from each episode into detailed blog posts,” Cohen says. “After recording, my team and I take the most valuable points and expand on them in a way that adds real value to our audience. We then share these posts on social media and feature them in our email newsletter. This strategy has been double beneficial—increasing the number of podcast listeners and producing a lot of activity on our website.”
Rather than driving listens, Eric Doty prefers to use Dock’s Grow & Tell podcast to establish the company and its founder as thought leaders. The Grow & Tell podcast showcases stories from revenue leaders in sales, marketing, and customer success.
Doty says, “We’re less interested in promoting the podcast itself vs. using the insights/topics/guests from the podcasts to establish Dock and Alex (our founder) as thought leaders in the revenue/growth space. We’re really only just getting started with this, but for example, in this more SEO-focused blog post, we use a clip from the podcast to explain a concept in the blog. Not only does this improve the content, but it adds an element of social proof to our content as being truly expert-driven.”
Related: 10 Ways to Use Your Blogs and Podcasts Together
This repurposing tactic happens before you even create an episode. The discussion in our September 2024 DBUG session turned to question crafting, which has more to do with repurposing than you might think.
Ali Schwanke recommends considering how a question will turn out in repurposed content when you create it: “You can’t create impactful social media clips from rambling questions—they need to be concise to capture essential, engaging points.”
Amanda Smith agreed, stressing how important it is to set up your podcast for extracting insights that work with multiple platform formats. Smith said, “Before you even pose a question, consider its relevance and potential impact on your audience.” According to Smith, this approach sharpens focus and saves editing time.
Repurposing can happen within channels as well as across them, as John Tyreman of Red Cedar Marketing brought up in our DBUG session and survey. You can repurpose content from past episodes in your new podcasts to give them new life and attention.
“Podcasters often fall into the trap of monotony,” Tyreman said during the DBUG session. “One effective strategy to keep content dynamic is repurposing. Take clips from past episodes and blend them with new commentary to introduce them to new listeners or refresh them for regulars.”
Tyreman explains how he uses this strategy in his podcasts, Breaking BizDev and Podcasting in Professional Services, in his survey response:
“I use what’s known as ‘throws’ in the radio world. I record a monologue episode where I ‘throw’ to 2-3 minute clips of past guests. I shoot for 3-4 clips in these episodes. It’s a way to repurpose and refresh older content and cross-promote those episodes so listeners can go back. New subscribers today didn’t hear what you published 6 months ago.”
John Tyreman
Founder at Red Cedar Marketing
With B2B businesses often looking to one another for podcast and content ideas, it becomes even more critical to double down on what makes your podcast stand out. If you have a unique segment or approach in your podcast, look for ways to highlight it in your other content.
For example, Tegrita’s Brandi Starr takes a unique segment from the Revenue Rehab podcast and makes it an event. Starr says, “One of the most creative ways we’ve repurposed content from Revenue Rehab for podcast promotion is by turning our ‘Buzzword Banishment’ segment into a full-on competition. In every episode, we kick things off with a bit of fun: our guests pick a buzzword or phrase they’re absolutely tired of hearing. It’s always a great way to break the ice and sparks some lively conversation before we dive into the main topic.”
Starr continues, “Every March, we ride the wave of NCAA March Madness excitement and create our own 32-buzzword bracket. We use LinkedIn polls to let our audience vote for which buzzword they think should be ‘banished’ for good. Each post tags the guest who originally chose the word, which creates a fun, competitive spirit. Our guests often jump in to encourage their networks to vote, which has led to a lot of reposts, engagement, and even a noticeable bump in episode listens. It’s been a fantastic way to extend the life of our content, build community, and bring in new listeners.”
As you can see, unique tactics like this one that involve podcast guests and their communities can be especially impactful. You’ll expand your reach easily and naturally.
If you record your podcast as a video, you have all sorts of repurposing options at your disposal. Think video clips, screenshots, and transcripts. At Chili Piper, Tara Roberston has an in-depth repurposing process that drives traffic to Demand Gen Chat and its related content.
First, the Chili Piper team creates professional-looking audiograms. “We use Descript for this,” Robertson says. “The best part is you can create templates, so creating a new audiogram is as easy as dropping in soundbites into your template. Alternatively, you could use a tool like Opus. You paste in your YouTube video link and it comes back with a bunch of video clips already cut and captioned and even adds in emojis. You may need to tweak the captions slightly but, for a one-click tool, it’s a game changer. We use these clips across our own social channels (mainly LinkedIn) and share them with our guests ahead of their episode going live, and they often use these to help us promote their episode.”
Then, they repurpose the transcript from the podcast video. Robertson says, “We use Deciphr.ai, and I love it because you upload your podcast episode’s audio and then it will extract a transcript, episode summary, and timestamps, which is great for your YouTube video or podcast players that recognize timestamps (like Spotify). You put a lot of effort into producing compelling podcast interviews, and a tool like this helps you repurpose your spoken content into written content you can use on your podcast’s website, blog posts, social media captions, and more!”
They also upload the podcast video to YouTube. “We upload to YouTube And make sure you take advantage of their new podcasting features. When you turn a YouTube playlist into a podcast, you get separate analytics and you are also grouped on their new podcast page. You also get the chance to be featured on their podcast-specific page,” Robertson says.
Finally, Chili Piper makes a landing page for each episode using the media created through the previous steps. Robertson says, “Your podcast website is where you put your show notes, links, long-form blog content, and the full transcript. You should also embed the full video on that landing page. When you’re sharing your episode, this is the page you want to link out to.”
The closed-ended questions in our survey mainly looked backward at the strategies and tactics respondents have used so far. So, we also asked them how they plan to change or improve their podcast strategies in the next 12 months.
As Anna Furmanov of the Modern Startup Marketing Podcast put it during our DBUG session, “If you’re going to do this for years, you need to enjoy it. You, as the host, need to be just as excited to listen to your show as everyone else because you’ll be spending hours on it. Having fun is critical, and podcasting is one of the best ways to create content today, so staying in the game long-term is key.” And investing yourself in your podcast also involves looking out for its growth.
Here are four types of strategies that our survey respondents brought up:
Considering how much our research has already explored the power of repurposing and distribution, it’s no wonder some respondents want to improve these skills. They can go hand in hand, too, with your distribution strategy guiding where you want to repurpose your podcast.
At Flagsmith, Anna Redbond wants to find the best ways to repurpose and distribute The Craft of Open Source, a podcast on open-source development.
First of all, Redmond wants to identify “the best ways to repurpose for maximum reach and value,” such as “Finding out what type of clips and posts resonate most and finding the best ways to pull the most valuable information from the podcasts and distribute those to our audience.” Redmond says, “The goal here is to find the best ways to deliver real value for our audience for maximum engagement.”
Redmond also plans to establish “better ways to make it easy for partners and guests to distribute the podcast.” The questions involved are “How can we make it easy for guests to help us spread the word about their episodes?” and “How do we minimise lift for them?”
As you create podcast episodes, you’ll build resources to keep improving your series. Sometimes, you just need to recognize and tap into that audience, topic bank, or network to help your podcast grow. Or, if you already know what you can use, you might need to dedicate more time and resources to doubling down on your assets.
Agorapulse’s Partnership Unpacked podcast now has a bank of episodes and guests for Mike Alton to capitalize on in the future:
“Now that our current podcast is over a year old, we’re able to leverage past guests and topics to get better and better guests. This is allowing us to be more selective in who we talk to and create a terrific mix of known experts, practitioners from well-known brands, and brand partners who will assuredly help promote their episodes.”
Mike Allton
Chief Storyteller at Agorapulse
Databox CEO Peter Caputa IV has two goals for taking advantage of the Metrics & Chill podcast’s past success: “Doing it more frequently.,” and “Doing a better job of promoting it on social media.”
Caputa says, “We’ve had good luck taking the lessons from the podcast and using those lessons to write short posts on LinkedIn. These posts often result in great dialog with other people, which brings more attention to the podcast. [Combining] social, podcast, newsletters, and surveys allows us to create and distribute unique content in the way that individuals want to consume it.”
Some respondents want to try new episode formats to see if they get different results. You can switch up your episode formats with new types of guests, segments, and topics.
At Teamwork, Logan Lyles wants to expand on a new episode format for the Agency Life podcast, a podcast about digital agencies. Lyles says, “We just experimented with a compilation episode that was more narrative in style with commentary from the host plus clips from multiple interviews spliced together. The feedback from the episode has been fantastic. It serves as a nice changeup to the typical interview style and it brings in multiple guests who you can tap for a single episode to help share to their networks.”
Lyles continues, “We did this [episode] by doing a lot of quick man-on-the-street interviews at HubSpot’s INBOUND conference and plan to use a video survey tool (VideoAsk by Typeform) to do this sort of scale remotely when we don’t have an event or conference to leverage for getting so many ‘guests’ on the same episode.”
According to Jordan Figueredo, the Online Optimism team wants to bring in new hosts and cuts to the Online Offscript podcast, which covers trending online topics. Figueredo says, “We plan to diversify the guests that we have and not be tied to our two main hosts but bring in other employees who are more confident in the topic so guests can’t have a meaningful conversation. We also plan to reformat the way we do our cuts to keep up with podcast trends and find new ways for cross-promotion.”
While the respondents mentioned so far focused on growth for the future, some have challenges to overcome in the next year. One such issue is working with fellow stakeholders. Like any kind of content, it can be hard to get buy-in for a podcast, especially since podcasts don’t have as long of a history in B2B content as other formats.
At EndGame PR, Steve Mullen produces podcasts for clients and notices those podcasts fall to the side in favor of other strategies. Mullen says, “As I indicated in the survey portion, the biggest hurdle for my clients is time. While they love the podcast and the idea of the podcast, unfortunately many times it gets pushed aside by activities that are more directly related to their jobs. I have yet to solve this problem, but it’s something I’m continually working on, in order to convince them that the show is an important part of their job as well.”
When you distribute and repurpose properly, you can use podcasts to meet your broader content goals. But if you don’t know what the average content marketing performance looks like, it can be hard to tell if you’re doing a good enough job.
That’s why we created the Content Marketing Benchmarks Benchmark Group. When you join, you can compare your metrics to group-wide benchmarks in exchange for anonymously sharing your data. It uses the following metrics from Google Analytics 4, LinkedIn Company Pages, and YouTube:
…and more!
It’s free to join the group as long as you have the metrics you want to compare connected to your Databox account. Join Databox for free, then join the group here.
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Melissa King is a freelance writer who helps B2B SaaS companies spread the word about their products through engaging content. Outside of the content marketing world, she writes about video games. Check out her work at melissakingfreelance.com.
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