More than One Way to B2B Podcast
Podcasting has risen in popularity over the last decade, and companies have caught on. With over approximately 161 million listeners on a monthly basis, many B2B marketing teams have decided to venture into the world of branded podcasting as a way to extend their outreach. Despite the desirable results it brings, podcasting can be a challenge for those teams who are new to the practice. Numerous styles of podcasting exist; how do you determine which format works best for your company? Here we explore the purpose of B2B podcasts and explain different show formats to help you understand how each one could best engage your audiences.
What is a B2B Podcast?
Loosely defined, a B2B podcast is a branded podcast that focuses on topics surrounding a company’s industry. B2B podcasts generally include partnerships with industry-related experts, related educational content, and in-house talent. .
The Purpose of B2B Podcasting
B2B podcasts, just like most formats of content marketing, serve to expand awareness, establish trust and authority in an industry, and educate audiences. A useful way to envision how B2B podcasts function within marketing strategies is by applying their goals alongside a typical marketing funnel:
Top of the Funnel
At the very top of the funnel, awareness and demand generation are the main objectives. This can look like “talking about things that are relevant to your customers’ problems,” explains Heather Quitos, the Marketing Operations Lead at Nova. Developing a podcast that involves broader yet relevant insight into industry topics is one example of concept awareness.
Podcast content should appeal to a wide audience (within your niche). Think thought leadership content that top executives within an organization would find valuable. “Companies can leverage the subject matter experts they have internally,” adds Heather. Consider having your CEO host, co-host, or participate as a regular guest.
Middle of the Funnel
The consideration stage narrows down the objective towards a specific brand and nurtures the now-warm leads from top of the funnel. “Some B2B marketers may think of podcasting solely as awareness-level type of content, but it can definitely flood the whole funnel,” explains Heather. A podcast developed for the consideration stage can look like an informative interview with a decision maker or practitioner who recently implemented your company’s product or service.
Bottom of the Funnel
Here is where we want to convert prospects into customers. This stage involves a more detailed approach, covering areas that are specific to a product or service. Heather refers to a podcast developed for this stage as “Account Based Marketing.”
In one podcast Heather helped develop, “guests that we had were actually people we had targeted for future sales.” A podcast functioning in this stage revolves around relationship building directly with top prospects by inviting them as guests on a show, especially if your product/service has a longer sales cycle and needs a strong close.
Different B2B Podcast Styles
There are so many ways brands can choose to deliver a B2B podcast. Each format has its own purpose and adapts well into the top and middle of the sales funnel.
Interview Style
This format “is one of the more straightforward ways to go about creating a podcast,” says Julian, co-founder of StudioPod. “You have your host, who’s a thought leader in your industry at your company, and they’re talking to other thought leaders about the impact they’ve had on the industry, or their vision for the industry, trying to pull out insights that can ultimately help other people [in similar roles].”
Narrative Style
According to Julian, the narrative-style “is a lot more involved,” and “the idea is that you conduct an interview and then partner with a writer to craft it into a story.” Only some audio from the interview is used for the podcast to create a story-like flow. Hosts or a third voice can read from a script that the writer provides, to help “extract key themes and give a little bit more context (or their expert research) around what the guest is speaking to,” says Julian. The Science of Change Podcast, an Apple Podcast Top 50 Tech Podcast, does a phenomenal job of this.
Host-less Style
“The host-less podcast allows for you to have standalone voices in an episode or in one single piece of content,” explains Julian. This type of podcast compiles voices of expert customers or prospects who have spoken on the same topic to help drive a point forward. “Freshworks did this [with one episode] where they interviewed five different…[guests] on one single piece of audio content.”
As far as who conducts the interviews, Julian explains that a “writer [can] interview the guests to ultimately get the content that they need” and then write a script. “A third-party voice, which would be an internal voice or hired voice actor, reads that script,” he says, “...but they’re not necessarily hosting the podcast because the question being asked is not heard, and is instead centered solely around the voices of the guests.” The snippets of different voices with a third-party voice giving context to the topic comprises the host-less podcast.
Conversational Style
A conversational podcast involves “two hosts that are experts in a particular field,” says Julian. “There’s a dialogue between two hosts who are talking about an industry topic,” and it can sometimes be a bit more casual, because it involves “people who are well connected to one another in [a]...space,” says Julian. “Each person kind of has a different role in terms of what they bring to the conversation.”
Within a corporate organization, B2B podcasts in this format could be hosted by “people on your marketing team who have been in the landscape for a while and have worked for a handful of different companies in [that] space,” explains Julian. You can also include a segment that brings on a guest who is interviewed. “Just Checking In,” a podcast featuring Becky Buckman and Keyana Corliss, exemplifies a conversational podcast as both hosts discuss corporate communication in relation to tech-news cycles.
When considering implementing a podcast into your marketing strategy, it’s useful to know what podcast style is the best way to deliver your brand’s message and engage with your customers. You can discover some in-depth examples of B2B podcasts within the marketing funnel on part two of this blog.
StudioPod’s highly experienced production team can help you figure out the best approach for your brand. Get your company started with its own B2B podcast. Contact us here to learn how our standards of excellence in podcast production result in growth and success for our clients.