Sure.
You have a podcast, but do you have a media brand?
Let’s explore the difference in this episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, head of marketing for Unbounce, and Insightly.
Today I am joined by Ben Shapiro.
He is founder and CEO of. I Hear Everything.
Welcome to the show, Ben.
Hi, Val. Great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome.
Ben I saw this figure and my job really dropped.
Currently, there are more than 4.19 million podcasts available in the market.
Yeah. Yeah.
I actually thought you had some
dental work done or something, but that makes a lot more sense.
It is a jaw dropping number.
And, I think that most of those are probably, amateurs
that are testing out the platform and a lot of B2C, like, you know, content.
I don’t know if it’s quite 4 million real professional enterprise
grade podcasts and definitely not 4 million B2B podcasts.
I still think that there is plenty of meat on the bone in the industry, but,
it’s become easier and easier
to create technically, create a podcast, which is great.
It’s good for the medium.
It’s good for people to experiment and get their content out there.
Got it.
So let’s say a brand comes to you and they say I want a podcast.
How do you respond to that?
I think of it a little bit like when somebody comes to you
and they tell you they’re going to be a parent,
and when you’ve been a parent, apologies to the people here
that don’t have kids that are listening, but there’s so much that goes
into the process of raising a child that the thing
that’s actually going through my head is, what, different than what I say?
Hey, congratulations.
That’s really exciting. Good for you.
In the back of my head, it’s.
Do you have a car seat?
Do you have a baby bag?. Do you have a plan?
Do you have childcare?
Do you know how to breastfeed?
Do you know what formula do you want?
There’s a million different things that you could think about
from everything from, like the earliest step
all the way through what maturity looks like.
And by all means, in parenting and in podcasting,
I don’t know all of the answers.
When somebody comes to me and says they want a podcast.
I say, congratulations.
That’s really exciting.
And I think the first thing that I try to do
is urge them to think about who their audience is.
Marketing 101.
Right. Know who you’re talking to.
But then also think about what the problems that they’re trying to solve
are, and then what’s the right format to get the information to those people.
So it’s interesting.
So it’s engaging.
So it’s educational.
And and if you can kind of master those three things,
you got the beginning of a good podcast.
Let me probe there a little bit,
because I know some folks are on the audio only bandwagon.
And some folks say audio and video, like closing time is the way to go.
What’s your thought? There?
I’m a big fan of Closing Time, the song and the podcast.
I will refrain from singing the song for now.
I can’t promise I will continue to, but,. I was the audio only podcast guy for like,
seven years.
We started off doing the martech podcast.
It was born out of my consulting practice, and then
started
doing podcasts for other people, and I was always nope.
High volume, good quality, audio only podcast
because you want to have more swings of the bat.
Bites of the Apple and audio only podcasts
is a wonderful medium, and it’s growing like a bat out of hell.
I was wrong.
Don’t tell anybody.
And this is honestly from having experience
doing audio only podcasting, other people that are producing video podcasts
and also understanding how the mediums are sort of being blended
together, mostly because of YouTube.
It’s really the reason for the shift for my company to move
from being podcast producers to building media brands
is this idea that a podcast is part of the mix and you’re leaving?
So much meat on the bone?
If you’re going to put all the work into finding a great topic
and finding somebody to have a conversation with
and recording the content, that you should be putting it
all of the places so people can experience that in the right format.
And sometimes that can be tricky to figure out how to break those formats down.
But to me,. I think there is a higher calling.
When people say podcasts, they mean
content or media, and if you’re only putting it in the audio,
only channel, then you’re really pigeonholing yourself.
You know, there’s people that want to listen to podcasts in long
format and short format with video without.
If you’re going to produce the content, you should put it
the places where people want to see it.
Got it.
And let’s probe that a little bit.
Because with a media brand.
Yeah. You know, it’s beyond just.
It’s beyond just the audio podcast. Right?
You’re talking live stream social content.
Like, what does that full list look like?
Yeah.
I think that when you’re talking about
this sort of, proliferation of content, what I define
a media brand, really, I think about the content capture piece first,
and you can use a live stream as a way to create
a marketing event, like you would a webinar with your content capture.
Right?
What’s the difference between a webinar and a live stream?
The live stream has a connotation that it’s a gamer sitting in his basement,
but in reality, it’s a marketing event that you’re pre promoting
to tell somebody that they can engage with this conversation.
So I, like you do the live stream up at the top for the the capture.
Not everybody does that.
We’re you know we’re recording this in advance right now.
It’s fine.
But once you have the long format content and the full conversation,
then you can
break things down into your audio only format.
Your long format video.
You can break them into segments.
So kind of shorter form videos.
And then there’s your, like, one minute social shorts.
And out of the conversation you’re having, you can also extract
other types of content like quotes that you can use for tweets or,
blurbs that you could use for blog posts or newsletters.
There’s so much that you can get out of this
conversation between to experts about a topic.
It really is a media brand.
It is using media to create content that spans the entire, omni
channel marketing content landscape,
but sounds like a big bowl of word salad.
But basically, you can use pieces of these conversations
to put them in whatever channel your audience is going to find them.
Got it.
So let’s talk about the types of companies you typically work with
to create a media brand.
And how those clients of yours, how do they measure success of their media brand?
Yeah.
We generally work with B2B,. SaaS companies.
And honestly, that, factor of. I started as a marketing consulting,
and then my consulting clients wanted us to build podcasts,
and most of them were marketing at technology company.
So we have case studies there.
We’ve done work in the education industry and a couple other places, but mostly
it’s it’s B2B technology and SaaS
companies, some service providers as well.
But I think the the playbook of building a media brand is something
that is really applicable the way that we do it to any business.
But our marketing is kind of segmented towards places
where we could talk to our success.
I think probably more importantly is how to brands evaluate,
what is successful for a media brand?
I’m a recovering
consultant, so my answer is going to be it depends, right?
There is no one answer in the same way that when you think about
how is content useful for your brand or how is media useful
for your brand, it depends what you’re trying to accomplish.
Now, I don’t want to be overly vague.
And I think that you can
accomplish top of funnel, middle of funnel
and bottom of funnel activities using a media brand
and I’ll give you an example, an ABM strategy for top of funnel.
You build a podcast that is very segmented towards your specific ICP.
I’m having a conversation with a dental practice podcast next week.
They’re trying to meet dental practitioners.
So great.
We’re going to use that podcast as a way for them to meet new dentists.
And that’s their ABM strategy.
That’s how they it’s the tip of their spirits,
how they have their conversations.
And you need to have authority and trust and appear credible
to attract the type of guests that you want.
So top of funnel ABM strategy.
Middle of funnel, nurture, you’re using your podcast as a way
to continually stay in front of and present content
to your audience, either by getting them to be your followers or subscribers,
or pushing the content out to them through things like your newsletter
and then your bottom of funnel tactics.
Right?
Having calls to action in the content for how people can engage with you.
We have a practice where we can retarget
the people that are listening to podcasts so you can blend in your,
you know, sort of your brand activities with some of your PPC.
You know, there’s different ways where you can use your content to,
basically have a call to action and then push it through other channels
where, you know, you have an existing audience.
Like, here’s something that is a great piece of sales content that I recorded,
and I’m going to push it through my LinkedIn channel,
and people are going to engage with it because they like my LinkedIn post.
So there is no one size fits all evaluation.
Top of funnel might be who am I interviewing?
Middle of the funnel might be content volume distribution downloads.
Bottom of funnel.
You’re looking at sales and conversions.
So it’s kind of all of the things.
Got it.
So, what do you say to the people? Who?
Those, though I can do it myself. People? Right.
I’ve got a microphone and,. And that’s all I’m going
to need to be successful in the podcasting universe.
Good luck.
It’s not that you can’t I started there
my first podcast, which was a little bit of an art project.
I met a Lyft driver
who, defected from North Korea.
And as he was driving me from San. Francisco to, one part of San Francisco
to the next, he was telling me his story, and I said, that’s an amazing story.
Do you, want me to record it and turn it into a podcast?
I never recorded anything in my life.
And he said yes, and he showed up at my doorstep the next day.
I had to go buy two microphones, and it became a podcast,
and I marketed, and it was relatively successful.
It’s not that you can’t do it on your own, it’s that you, for a business practice,
probably don’t want to, for a couple different reasons.
Most of the time, what people do when they’re recording and editing
and producing their own content is they do it in the wrong format.
They don’t really have a good sense of how
to tell the story the beginning, the middle, the end.
Right.
They need a producer to help them figure out how to make
what they’re trying to say interesting, and also understand the format.
Then the medium that it’s going into.
So there’s that sort of like, what are we going to say piece
which you might want some professional help
with, but maybe you’re a great storyteller and you can do that on your own.
Then there’s the capturing piece.
And are we going to get high enough quality audio to make us sound good
so people don’t think that we’re amateurs
and destroy our credibility by having a subpar product?
Well, okay, you probably want some help there.
Then there’s the just sheer death by a thousand cuts
workload of, like, going through the content, editing it.
Yeah.
You can put your content into descript and you could edit out the oohs and ums
and Ahs.
It’s just going to take you three hours.
And that’s probably time where you’re better spent finding
a great editor and spending your 15 to $20 an hour having a professional do it.
And then that gets down to the end where you’re like,
all right, now I have this piece of content.
How am I going to evaluate it?
How am I going to publish it?. How am I going to promote it?
How am I going to distribute it?. Do I need to break it into video?
Do I need to break that video into social shorts?
There’s a lot of work that goes into making a
commercially viable marketing asset,
not just recording yourself on a zoom call.
And there is a difference between I want it to be simple,
so I’m just going to record my conference calls
and having a thoughtful experience, which then leads
to a clear, concise piece of content which people hear as simple.
I would say the next step after all of that very difficult labor
you just described is, now, how do I continue to grow my audience?
Right.
Yes. Yeah, the distribution piece is always overlooked.
I think
that there’s kind of four channels or four things to think about
when you’re building a media brand, and this is just kind of content advice
in general.
the four things you need to consider are viral, organic, paid and partnerships.
Right.
Virality is having your content, being shared
and most of the time mostly with podcasts
or sort of, creator type content.
The audience shares a little bit most of the time where you’re getting that
actual growth is who you’re talking to, who your guests are on the audience.
Mostly, if you’re doing an interview, are they going to share it?
Do they have an audience that’s relevant to my audience?
So finding the right people
to participate in your show is a great way to get virality.
And then, you know, there will be some sharing.
It doesn’t matter how many times you say,
like and subscribe or share the content with your friends,
people are going to make that decision on their own.
Organic growth is how much content are you publishing, and are you putting
the words into the algorithm that match what people are searching for?
And do you have the credibility to be one of the top ranking results?
There is such thing as SEO for podcast.
Nobody’s really mastered the algorithm yet,
but it is a true thing that if you put in more content
and people start sharing and liking that content and listening,
then you’ll be boosted in Apple and Spotify’s algorithm.
Paid is probably the most underrated part of an organic growth strategy,
which is building a podcast.
There’s wonderful tools out there that will help you build
and seed your audience.
Just to list a few my favorites. Mowpod.
They’re great for basically getting the either downloads
or followers or and getting some interaction
from the people that are listening to the podcast.
If you’re just starting out. Wonderful.
Other tools that people use are, pod roll.
I think Amaze Labs is another one.
There’s a there’s a whole suite of tools.
LinkedIn, Facebook where you can market your content
to try to get that initial audience to get the ball rolling.
Right, get the snowball going down the hill.
And hopefully if your content’s good enough, you pick up some steam.
And the last ones partnerships.
Val, you’ve been on my podcast.
I’ve been on yours.
Let’s call this the partnership.
Ways where you can distribute your content
in other channels, other sources with other distribution,
using the relationships that you have to to really get it in front
of the right people.
So I’m going to reflect back to you.
And as it’s nearing the end of our conversation,
because I feel like what you’re saying is like
media is a channel that marketers need to be using.
Just like other channels we have in our marketing mix.
Would you say that’s accurate?
The thing I’ll push back on is the word channel.
Media is a tool,
right?
Just like, creative is a tool, right?
Your imagery is a tool.
If you are going to create media, sometimes it’s earned,
sometimes it’s owned. Right?
It might be in your channel or somebody else’s.
You need to think about what it’s for,
what channel it is going to, And is it
the right match for that medium and does it answer someone’s problems?
So, you know, it goes back to fundamentally,
what are you trying to achieve?
Like I said before, when somebody says, hey, you’re going to create a podcast,
who’s the audience?
What do they need?
What are you trying to get out of them?
What’s the experience that would resonate with them?
Like, if you don’t have those answers,
then you’re just publishing stuff for publishing stuff,
and you’re doing all this work and putting it out there and hoping
if you know
what your audience wants and you know what channel they’re in
and you have access to them, so you can share your content
and you can really nail answering the questions that they have,
you’ve got a much higher chance of success with whatever
your outcome is, whether it’s top, funnel, middle or bottom.
But if you’re going at it blind because your CEO says, we need a podcast
because those are popular,. I have the president
and the the non president.. They’re all getting on the podcast.
Let’s all do those.
You haven’t thought through the real media strategy.
And you know, that’s honestly a recipe for spending a lot of time
and a lot of budget.
And not getting a lot of value out of it.
So it’s something that could be incredibly impactful.
But you need to know what you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish
most of all.
Well, Ben, thank you for appearing with me on one of the 4.19
million podcasts that are out in the market today.
With the name of one of my favorite songs.
So there you go. I won’t sing.
Appreciate that.
Thanks to Ben for joining us today.
Thanks to all of you for tuning in.
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and we will see you next week on Closing time.
♫ ♪ ♬ I know who I want to take me home. ♫ ♪ ♬
