Processes and System to Create a B2B Podcast on Autopilot
This article focuses on the overall B2B strategy of creating a podcast, finding your audience, and creating a content strategy.
What Is a B2B Podcast?
There are two types of podcasts today: Audio-only and video podcasts.
Many podcast consumers listen to podcasts on their way to work, while driving a car, using public transportation, during a workout session at the gym, or while mowing the lawn.
No moment is wasted when you can listen to engaging, entertaining, and educating content in the background.
Podcasting for business has a strong focus on your company and industry. Episode topics are tailored to your ideal audience and your specific industry or niche.
Why Should You Create a B2B Podcast?
It is essential to stand out from the crowd in marketing. Even more important: To stand out among your competitors!
A B2B podcast allows you to stand out from your competitors! A B2B podcast can work wonders in terms of B2B growth.
According to the B2B Content Marketing Trends study by the Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs, social media posts are adopted by almost 94% of businesses, while podcasting is only adopted by 17%.
If you were promoting your business on Twitter, you would compete with 94% of your competitors.
That means that the probability that one of your tweets would show up in the newsfeed of a potential customer would be just 1.06%.
(Simplification: Potential customers subscribed to your and your competitor's accounts. Everybody is posting the same number of tweets. Copywriting skills and engagement skills are unaccounted for.)
On the other hand, if you had a podcast, you would only compete with 17%. As a consequence, your visibility would be much higher at 5.9%. That's 552% higher than social media posts.
| Type | Adaptation |
|---|---|
| Social media posts such as text posts, tweets, etc. | 94% |
| Case study | 73% |
| Video | 72% |
| Ebook and whitepaper | 71% |
| Infographic | 65% |
| Illustration and photo | 56% |
| Research | 37% |
| Tools such as quizzes, calculator,s or assessment | 33% |
| Podcast | 17% |
| Live Video | 17% |
| Apps | 11% |
| Film and television, for example, documentaries or short films | 4% |
| Virtual or augmented reality | 4% |
| Anything else combined | 11% |
B2B Podcast Facts
Look at these stats, and you'll realize that a podcast is far more than a good idea! 🙂
- There are 525,000+ podcasts on iTunes, in 100+ languages, from 155+ countries, with 18.5 million episodes and 50 billion episode downloads
- 124 million ever listened to a podcast in 2018
- 73 million are listening to a podcast every month in 2018
- Weekly podcast listeners listen to seven podcasts per week
- Podcasts have a high episode retention span. 80% of listeners listen to most of or the entire podcast episodes.
- 58% of podcast listeners listen to podcasts on their smartphones.
Defining Your B2B Podcast Strategy
It would be best to understand the overall strategy and purpose of creating a B2B podcast. If executed correctly, you will be able to attract a particular type of listener to your podcast who has a very close overlap with your ideal customer persona.
A B2B podcast allows you to attract a particular type of listener who closely overlaps your ideal customer persona! A B2B podcast will:
- increase your brand awareness
- generate leads for your business
- promote your products and services
- connect you with your ideal clients and customers
- build a community around your brand.
This has several benefits. You will be able to:
Establish yourself as the number #1 authority in your industry or niche.
As an established authority, selling becomes much easier. You have to spend far less time to convince others that you can solve their problems.
They are already presuaded, and trust your expertise and abilities because you have demonstrated your knowledge and wisdom on countless occasions throughout every podcast episode!
A B2B podcast allows you to presuade potential customers!
I cover many benefits of establishing yourself as a thought leader in my personal branding video on my YouTube channel.
Get more traffic to your website.
Every time someone visits your website represents an opportunity to sell. Every time someone visits your website is an opportunity to sell.
A good B2B podcast will bring many new visitors to your website! 🙂 Let's assume that 1% of your website visitors – on average – decided to reach out to your sales team and that 10% of these conversations turned into customers.
If your website gets 1,000 visitors per month, this will result in 1 new customer. (1,000 visitors x 1% contacted sales x 10% conversion rate = 1).
If you could get 10x the amount of traffic, you would also 10x the number of customers. (10,000 visitors x 1% contacted sales x 10% conversion rate = 10).
This is especially true if you have a particular and qualified audience similar to your ideal customer type.
Create publicity for your business.
You will notice that many podcast hosts are also guests in other podcasts.
This creates countless opportunities to bring awareness to yourself and your business. A B2B podcast allows you to build a personal brand along the way!
Rank higher on google.
If you're a guest in other podcasts, hosts usually include a link to your website and social media profile in their episode descriptions.
This allows you to create high-quality backlinks from respected industry sites, an essential ranking factor in Google's algorithm.
A good number of high-quality backlinks will help your website rank higher in Google for various search terms, which brings more visitors to your website, which, as we learned above, will result in more sales.
Get high-quality backlinks to your website with a B2B podcast!
Save a ton of time on content creation.
You can create multiple pieces of content from a single episode. You can:
- Create a transcription of your show and publish it as a long-form article
- Turn parts of your transcript into smaller social media posts
- Use single sentences that contain a tremendous amount of value and turn these into quote posts on Instagram or Twitter.
- Turn your audio podcast into Facebook and YouTube videos
- Create downloadable audio lead magnets
To name a few. In reality, the number of ways to repurpose your content is almost infinite!
By repurposing your B2B podcast episodes, you can create unlimited content!
If you want to learn more about repurposing a single content idea, check out my YouTube video on how to never run out of content ideas:
By repurposing your content, you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time and use the same piece of content for various media types and social media platforms simultaneously.
Later I will show you how you can set up systems and processes to automatically convert your podcast episodes into different media formats on autopilot.
This will save you a ton of time and make your podcast management a piece of cake! 🙂
Generate leads for your B2B business
With the right content strategy, b2b marketers can attract an audience for your podcast who are highly qualified and very similar to your ideal customer type.
By sharing the knowledge and expertise of yourself and your guests, you're showing potential customers solutions for their pain points and creating trust and confidence that you can implement them for them! This dramatically simplifies the sales process and cuts time along the line.
Simplify your sales process with a B2B podcast!
In later parts, I am going into more detail about structuring your episode content to maximize the number of new leads. If you want to learn more about generating leads for your business, check out my article How to generate leads on LinkedIn.
Finding Your B2B Podcast Audience
First, let's define your ideal podcast audience. Your podcast should target high-level decision-makers, senior influencers, and experts in your industry or niche.
Your podcast should target high-level decision-makers, senior influencers, and experts in your industry or niche.
Your ideal audience should also closely overlay with your ideal customers/customer avatar and share the following characteristics.
- Benefits the most from using your products and services.
- Have the resources to pay for your products and services.
- Lack of knowledge in specific areas that you will be able to address with your podcast episodes.
The meta-strategies behind this approach are:
- qualification of your audience to ensure that a high percentage of your listeners fit your ideal customer definition.
- improving the relevancy score of your content within your industry to be link-worthy". A relevant backlink from a respected industry website is much more powerful than a link from an unrelated website.
Exercise to find your ideal podcast audience
We will work our way from the inside out and start with the smallest possible audience: one person.
- Who is this mysterious person?
- What is his or her name?
- What's their sex or gender?
- How old is this person?
- What's this person's educational background?
- Where do they work? In what industry? What's their role? How much do they earn?
- Are they single, in a relationship, or married? Do they have kids?
- What are their values, interests, and attitudes?
- Describe their day-to-day lifestyle.
- What's their background story?
- How did they grow up?
- What are their current challenges and pain points?
- What are their hopes and dreams?
- How would your products and services help them to overcome their challenges and achieve their dreams?
- What topics that you could talk about in your podcast are they most interested in?
- Bonus: Do a Google Image search and find a suitable photograph.
Expand your audience definition
Once you have a very clear image in your mind and a good understanding of how this one person would be a perfect fit, go back to the drawing board and play around with each of these questions and test variations.
Example:
How old is this person?
Let's say you said 50 years. Now ask yourself: If nothing else changed except the age, would this person still be an ideal customer if they were 20, 30, 40, 60, or 70?
If you're less than 80% confident in one of the options, remove it from your range. At the end of the exercise, you'll have a comprehensive picture of your ideal customer types.
Narrow down and qualify your audience
In the last step, you're going to qualify each person. Go through your list of questions again, but this time with a different question:
Do any of the attributes make them unsuitable as customers?
If you have more than 20% doubt that this person isn't a good match, remove the point from your list.
Now you have a very comprehensive image of your ideal customer.
Someone who benefits from your products and services has the resources to pay for them and lacks knowledge that you can address with your podcast episodes.
Choosing Your B2B Podcast Format
There are four popular B2B podcast formats for you to choose from.
Solo podcasts
In this format, you are a one-person show.
It's just you talking to yourself to your audience.
Solo podcast shows are easy to pull off and great for a beginner since you can take all the time in the world to record multiple takes without overstretching the patience of an interview partner.
There are usually two different approaches to this style.
- You talk spontaneously without memorized words or a prepared speech.
- You prepare a pre-written speech and read it off.
Solo shows are great for teaching and explaining topics in depth.
Interview podcasts
One-on-one interviews are one of the most common podcast formats.
They are straightforward to set up. All you need to get started is a microphone, internet connection, Skype, and software to record your Skype calls.
Interview-style podcasts require more organizational skills to track all your interview guests.
Many fantastic podcasts use this format to create exciting and valuable content for their audiences. To succeed in this podcast style, you must work and improve your interviewing skills.
Another significant aspect of an interview-style podcast is that you can do it via video chat or on location.
Panel discussion podcast
This format is almost identical to the interview podcast. The only difference is that you question a panel of exciting guests instead of interviewing one person.
The logistics are slightly more complicated in this format.
You might need additional microphones and recording equipment for on-location production.
If you're recording a virtual panel, you might have to switch to a different software solution to record your interviews if your panel contains more than four people.
Repurposed content podcast
Repurposing your content is one of the most innovative ways to generate content for your podcast.
Are you speaking at a conference? Record your talk and publish it as a podcast.
Here are a few ideas of what content you can repurpose.
- Public speaking
- Speeches
- Talks
- Presentations
- Webinars
- YouTube videos
- Workshops
- Facebook Live sessions
Defining Your B2B Podcast Content Strategy
Your content strategy can make or break your podcast, and you should spend a reasonable amount of time crafting it.
Every good content strategy requires you to create themes and topics that are slightly more relevant for your ideal customer persona, the whole still general enough for everyone else.
If your topics and themes are too broad, they become irrelevant, and targeting your ideal buyer persona becomes impossible.
If your content is too narrow and niche-specific, targeting new listeners becomes difficult unless you can seed your initial audience with personal invitations.
Your B2B podcast has to find the right balance between industry-specific and exciting enough for everyone else.
The reason is that you need a certain amount of social engagement to grow your podcast organically.
If your topics are irrelevant to 99.99% of the population, the probability that anyone shares one of your episodes is close to 0%.
You get a higher social engagement and grow your podcast quicker by taking a niche-specific topic and making it relevant to a broader audience.
The niche-specific topics also guarantee that those who subscribe will likely match your ideal customer persona.
You rotate and mix different themes and topics to reduce listener fatigue. Remember the golden rule of content creation: Great content is both educational and entertaining simultaneously!
A great B2B podcast is both educational and entertaining simultaneously!
Here are some theme and b2b topics ideas to get you started. Check out my article on Storytelling for LinkedIn Marketing with 54 brand story ideas for even more topic ideas.
Past
Most people love hearing about the past of people on a similar path. Hearing other people's successes and mistakes allows them to learn valuable lessons, avoid mistakes, and can create confidence and resilience against mistakes and drawbacks in their own life. You can talk about yourself or one of your guests and explore events that took part in the past.
- How did you get started?
- What did you wish you knew when you had just started?
- Most expensive mistakes?
- Really interesting learning experience?
- Failures that turned out to be a win.
- Best past decisions you made by accident.
Current events
You can cover anything highly relevant to your industry and your audience.
- Industry news and their implications for the industry.
- Key findings from important announcements that will affect your industry.
- New laws and regulations.
- Visiting trade shows and reporting new products and services.
- Commenting on news events
Future
Anything that helps your audience prepare for the future is a great topic. This includes
- Predictions and outlook into the future of your industry
- Discussing and comparing strategic decisions to prepare for future scenarios
Debunk skills, execution, and knowledge
There is a ton of misinformation out in this world.
It can sometimes take years or decades to overcome common misconceptions and beliefs.
Episodes addressing some of these wrong ideas and offering solutions for what to do are very popular.
- Industry myths
- Bad practices and execution
- Mistakes and misconceptions in your industry
- Things that worked in the past but are now broken
- Debunking bad but unfortunately common advice
Teach skills and knowledge
Teaching skills and spreading knowledge is one of my favorite topics of all. Here are some ideas for a b2b content strategy that focuses on education:
- Strategies and tactics to survive and thrive in your industry
- How to guides for typical industry activities
- How to do X on a budget
- How to do X with a limited time
- How to overcome typical industry obstacles
- What everyone does wrong and how to fix it
- Learn from other people's mistakes
- Statistics and market reports
- Differences within your industry for different regions and countries
- How to be successful
- Decision making
- Systems and processes
- How to save money
- How to save time
- How to deal with clients
Opinions
Another great theme for a successful b2b content strategy is to discuss strong opinions on anything that is highly relevant to your listeners.
Think about interviews with influencers in your industry or niche who have polarizing opinions and discuss:
- Pros and cons of doing X in your industry
- Is it beneficial to do X in your industry
Reviews
You can also review pertinent anything in your industry
- Tools & resources
- Product reviews
- Event reviews
Questions & answers
Suppose you're running out of content ideas. Ask your audience.
Most of your listeners are happy to tell you what they want to hear about.
You can either ask questions in advance via comment or email or create a dial-in experience for listeners where you're answering questions in real-time on your show.
Branding Your B2B Podcast
Name of your podcast
To quickly find a good name for your podcast, take advantage of the numerous company and domain name generators.
Your name should be short and memorable and avoid possible spelling mistakes.
Here are some excellent company and domain name generators that you can try:
- Shopify Business Name Generator
I picked the name "100 Strategies" for my podcast because I love everything "strategy". Most of my interview partners will be experts who share specific strategies in three areas marketing, business, and life.
Naming episodes
- Don't include the name of your podcast in your episode title.
- Start with a proven headline formula to create excitement and interest in your title.
- Your episode number should be at the end of the title, not at the beginning.
I name my episodes by the following formula: Short teaser, which conveys a big takeaway or lesson from watching this episode + name of the guest + 100 strategies episode + episode number. Example:
How to grow from 0 to 30,000 followers on LinkedIn in 12 months by Tim Queen – 100 Strategies Episode 1
Logo
A logo is crucial to create trust and confidence in your brand. I recommend starting with a simple and inexpensive logo to keep costs low.
Once your podcast is more established, you can upgrade your branding and logo. Here are a few affordable options from least to most expensive.
What Do You Need to Start Your Own B2B Podcast.
You need five basic elements to create a successful B2B show:
- Recording
- Editing
- Publishing
- Promoting
- Community
What Software and Services Should You Get for Your B2B Podcast?
Domain name
If you already own a domain name, you have a choice: you can host your podcast on your current domain or purchase a separate email for your podcast.
If you don't have a domain, buy at least one ASAP: one for your business, one for your personal brand, and while you're at it, one for your podcast as well.
You don't have to build three websites.
You can start with one and redirect the other domain names to your primary website in the beginning.
I use Namecheap to purchase all of my domains. They offer a free Whois Guard service for all domain name registrations to protect your postal address.
Website + hosting
If an address can represent your domain name, the actual website would be the house.
This is where hosting comes in.
I recommend creating a WordPress website. It's free and has an entire ecosystem of themes and extensions that allow you to create a completely bespoke website for your podcast with minimal effort.
I use Themeforest for all of my WordPress themes. They offer premium WordPress themes that allow you to turn a boring-looking WordPress installation into a stunning-looking website.
If you search for "podcast" you'll find a couple of optimized podcast WordPress themes.
Website protection
- Cloudflare
Podcast hosting
Your podcast episodes need a place to stay as well. You can follow a DIY approach and host your episodes on your WordPress website with a free plugin such as
- Seriously Simple Podcasting
- PowerPress
- Podlove Podcast Publisher
- Simple Podcast Press
The following plugins require a paid subscription to work
- LibSyn Podcasting Plugin
- Smart Podcast Player
Or use a specialized service with additional functionality from the following list. Free plans with limited functionality are available.
- Soundcloud
- BlogTalkRadio
- Buzzsprout
- Podomatic
- Spreaker
Premium paid services
- Audioboom
- Backtracks
- Blubbry
- Castos
- Fireside
- LibSyn
- Pippa
- PodBean
- Podcaster.de
- Podigee
- Simplecast
Social media
Create an account on every social media network
- LinkedIn page
- Facebook page
- YouTube
- Soundcloud
Community
- LinkedIn group
- Facebook group
Theme song & intro for your podcast
Sound effects
Analytics
- Google Analytics
- Google Tag Manager
- Google Search Console
Video interviews
- Ecamm Live
- Restream
- Zoom
- BlueJeans
Audio editor
Free
- Audacity
- GarageBand (Mac only)
Pro
- Adobe Audition
- Logic Pro X (Mac only)
Recording interviews
Repurposing content
If you want to grow your podcast quickly, you should repurpose all of your content.
For example, you could turn an audio file from your podcast into a video and upload it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Or you could convert your Facebook Live videos into audio files and add them to your podcast feed.
Or you could automatically upload your Facebook Live videos on your YouTube channel.
I use software called Repurpose to do this on autopilot. I will show you more about my entire workflow in my next article.
What Gear and Equipment Do You Need to Start Your Own B2B Podcast?
Creating a podcast can be incredibly cheap or extremely expensive, depending on your level of professionalism.
I created a gear and equipment shopping list for different quality and budget scenarios.
As a beginner, I recommend starting with a microphone and pop filter.
As your channel grows and your desired quality level increases, you can upgrade your recording studio with a boom arm, shock mount, and sound shield.
Boom arm and shock mounts work together to minimize vibrations during recording. A sound shield minimizes echoes and unwanted background noise interference.
Microphone
Blue Yeti X microphone
I use this microphone myself. It comes with four recording modes cardioid, bidirectional, omnidirectional & stereo.
- The cardioid mode allows you only to record sound from the front and eliminate any noise from the background and sides.
- The bidirectional setting is ideal for interviews. It simultaneously records front and back and blocks out sound from the sides.
- Omnidirectional records 360 degrees of sounds. This is the ideal setting for recording a conference table.
- Last but not least, we have a stereo setting. This feature is most useful to musicians but could also be used for a certain style of interviews.
The Blue Yeti X gain control setting allows you to adjust its sensitivity.
You should set the gain to the lowest setting for the best audio quality and bring the microphone close to you.
This way, you can eliminate most background noises for crystal clear sound.
Pop filter
Shield with Pop Filter
You might not notice this in real life, but certain sounds in our language produce different amounts of air pressure.
This is most notable in P-sounds. Hold your hand before your mouth and make a loud P. You'll instantly feel the air moving.
This sudden air movement will cause Pop or click sounds in your audio recording.
This can easily be avoided by using a Pop Filter. These have a very fine cloth net that will break the sudden burst of airflow caused by P sounds and eliminate these Pop sounds.
They are also relatively inexpensive and greatly impact your recording quality.
Boom arm
Røde psa1 swivel
A boom arm, for example, the Rode PSA 1, is convenient for placing your microphone in the optimal spatial position and works best with a shock mount.
Shock mount
Knox Gear Shock Mount for Blue Yeti X
A shock mount can be combined with a boom arm.
It acts as a bridge between the microphone and the boom arm, removing any vibration or shock from your recording.
Without a shock mount, you might attach your microphone to your boom arm and your boom arm to your desk.
If you placed your arm on the table, you would cause a shockwave that would travel through the desk plate into the boom arm and finally into the microphone, affecting your recording.
Sound shield
Monoprice microphone isolation shield
A sound shield is handy to block any interference from background noises and echoes in your recordings.
You would place it behind your microphone, and any soundwaves that travel around your microphone are "eaten up" by the sound shield, so they can't bound around the walls of your room to hit your microphone as an echo from a different angle.
Summary + What's Next
Glad you made it that far. Now you have
- have a good understanding of the overall approach and strategy behind creating a B2B podcast
- narrowed down the persona of your ideal podcast audience
- created a content strategy to attract these highly qualified listeners
- decided on a suitable podcast format
- write down a list of topics and themes to cover in your future episodes.
- a shopping list to get your recording equipment, software, and services to create your first episode.