With the right strategy, podcasts can be an incredible digital marketing tool for expanding your reach and increasing your brand awareness. Creating a podcast strategy, however, can be daunting because the intimacy and format of podcasts feel different from other content, such as blog posts or videos, tempting marketers to “reinvent the wheel” when developing a strategy. But podcasts are just another form of digital content. Below, we’ve demystified the podcast and created the ultimate podcast strategy checklist, including many B2B podcast best practices. 

B2B Podcast Stengths & Limitations

Before developing your podcast’s marketing strategy, you’re going to want to understand what kind of podcast content is appropriate for your business and what isn’t. Gaining this understanding will help you set accurate and feasible goals for your podcast’s success. 

Strengths

Podcasts are passively engaging, rather than actively driving listeners to complete a particular task. This kind of engagement is great for increasing brand awareness and expanding your business’s reach.  

Each specialist on your team has something to say about the work that they do. Give them a microphone and let them share with your listeners. Giving your team’s expertise a platform to shine is particularly important for B2B organizations that thrive on earned trust.  

A podcast can also position your organization as a resource and a thought leader in your industry. It’s a place to share bold ideas and discuss important questions about issues in your field.  

Weaknesses

Since podcasts are not likely converting listeners directly into customers, it can make podcast ROI a little bit harder to measure. Measuring the success of your podcast can certainly be done, however, and we’ll discuss the different ways of doing so later on. 

The podcast is not a quick solution. Strategizing and creating a successful, well-executed podcast requires a lot of careful planning, time, and energy. When done well, however, it can be well worth the effort. 

Set Goals for Your B2B Podcast

It’s essential to take time to set manageable goals for the success of your B2B podcast before creating, marketing and launching. Goals can always be adjusted, but by determining them beforehand, you can know what to look for as you gather your podcast key performance indicator (KPI) data. 

Listeners, subscribers, and downloads are typically the first metrics you’ll utilize as most podcast platforms provide this data to podcasters, and, alongside one another, they create an accurate depiction of your podcast success. 

Think of rankings and reviews as the equivalent of word-of-mouth for your podcast, establishing its credibility and building followers. Listeners trust other listeners when they leave your podcast five stars and a glowing review. Don’t be afraid to ask your listeners each episode to rank your podcast and leave a review if they haven’t done so already. 

Cast Your B2B Podcast Audience

Keep in mind that most of the metrics you’ll use to measure your podcast success are listener-based, so it’s important to determine who your ideal listeners are and adjust your content and marketing as you go. 

Taking a look at your company’s customer personas is a great place to start when identifying your audience. Ask yourself, “Who are my customers, and what are their goals, challenges, and questions?” Speak directly to your audience by addressing these topics in your podcast strategy. 

Create a Promotion Plan

Having a promotion plan in place to market your B2B podcast will ensure that your show won’t fall flat once launched.

Organic Social Media & Email

Creating organic social media posts with your podcast content is a great way to tease your current followers with new content while diversifying your social media posts. Anticipate cutting up small pieces of episodes containing great quotes or sound bites to feature across your social media. This material can also be used for email marketing campaigns to your already existing email lists.  

Social Proof: Encourage Rankings & Reviews

As mentioned earlier, rankings and reviews are important methods for establishing the credibility of your podcast. Don’t be afraid to ask your listeners each episode to rank your podcast and leave a review if they haven’t done so already. 

Paid Media

Paid media such as display and PPC ads can allow you to utilize your ideal audience criteria to target your preferred listeners and get your podcast in front of the most qualified eyes.  

Building Podcast Landing Pages for Search

Unfortunately, search engines don’t crawl audio on the web. So, you’ll want to create designated landing pages that contain the top keywords for your episodes, discuss the topics your podcast addresses and maybe include transcripts of your episodes as well.  

Partnerships

As you research other podcasts in your industry or complementary industries, develop partnerships with other podcasters. Leveraging the audience of existing podcasts that already have an established following can significantly expand your reach. This will also give you a better sense of other podcasts in your space and help you differentiate your content from potential competitors.  

Launch With At Least 3 Episodes

When preparing to launch your podcast, you should have at least three episodes ready to publish at once. If a listener falls in love with your podcast in the first episode, don’t let the flame die out; keep them interested by having a few episodes available for listening and downloading. 

Editor’s note: This content was first published by Beacon Digital Marketing. Yes& has since updated the article to ensure accuracy, relevance, and clarity. 

Work with Yes&

Although getting started with your podcast can be intimidating, your goals are much more likely to be met or exceeded with the right podcast strategy in place. Want to work together on your podcast strategy? CTA: Get in touch with our team! 

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