Investing in a B2B podcast is a great idea — but how much are you willing to invest in developing and growing it into a success?
This is a question you have to ask yourself, especially with all the podcasting tools on the market today. For some brands, it may seem worth it to try the DIY route for hosting and promoting a podcast to “save” money.
Some may think going with cheaper options at the beginning is smart. After all, how do you know your B2B podcast will yield a return? But we’re going to challenge you here.
It’s no secret that we believe in the power of podcasting to drive a business forward. Podcasting, when invested in correctly, offers the opportunity to give your audience a new place to connect with your brand. Not to mention, the amazing and unique insights and expertise that your podcast embodies that can be used across your organization.
So it should come as no surprise that we believe you should invest in your podcast. An inexpensive or free podcast tool can be adequate to complete a prototype and get a few episodes under your belt, but there is also a lot of work involved in wrangling all of the tools that go into creating, managing, and promoting a podcast. Add on top of that, the work that goes into consolidating the data from across the platforms.
Suddenly, these cheap tools start to eat into your time. And let’s be honest, a marketer’s time is likely the most expensive line item in your budget.
Still not buying it? Let’s take a closer look at why we believe investing in better tools for your podcast is both an investment in your audience and in your team of marketers behind the show.
1. You Don’t Own Your Audience
When you think about where to host your podcast, your first thought may be to host it with one of the big name providers we’ve come to know. But why? Hosting with a provider on another site seems like an odd thing to do when we’ve been conditioned to think about owned versus earned channels.
If your podcast is an owned channel (and it is) and you host it elsewhere, you don’t have all the access you should to your audience. The big platforms aren't going to share any good engagement data with you unless you go with their podcast solution, and then you only have data from that particular platform. Ultimately, you don’t own your show in the way you need to. Isn’t that the glory of a website and blog? You can better gauge who your audience is and what they prefer.
By looking at more premium podcasting platforms, you have the option to host your podcast on your own site using unique pages that you can track like any other web page.
Hosting on your own site immediately opens up new data through your analytics platform that cheap or free podcast hosting can't deliver. You will immediately be able to show value from your podcast simply by identifying which episodes are creating entries, keeping users around longer, and engaging them. And Casted Insights will even show you which companies are tuning into your show.
That seems worth it, doesn’t it?
2. You’ll Have Limited Options
Using a cheap or free B2B podcast platform may make sense at the start. Sure, it enables you to dabble in the world of podcasting without investing a lot of money. But if you’re serious about your podcast and want it to be successful, then you can’t expect to yield much of a return using freebies (as they say, you get what you pay for).
One reason is the limited options for much-needed features. For example, you won't get analytics tools to help identify how well your episodes are doing (aka converting). As we mentioned in the previous section, most tools don’t give you access to that data. You’re stuck with total listeners and downloads, and trying to make sense of what that might mean is like trying to complete a puzzle with most of the pieces missing.
You’ll also find that free solutions (including free podcast software) have limited bandwidth, which can hurt the growth of your podcast.
3. You’ll Lack Much-Needed Integrations to Grow Your Podcast
A disconnected B2B podcasting tech stack creates a big ol’ mess. Not only do you have to manage multiple platforms, but you’ll also lack the insights needed to determine if your podcast is generating results.
One of the top issues podcasters deal with is attributing conversions to their podcast. So not only do free podcast hosts not offer the analytics you need — but they also don’t provide the integrations that can help your podcast excel.
Having integrations simplifies life for marketers. So you’ll want a podcasting platform that offers integrations like:
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- Content management systems like WordPress to publish your podcasts directly to your website.
- Marketing tools like Hubspot, Marketo, and Pardot to see how contacts and buyers behave with your podcast content (episodes and related collateral, such as blog and social media posts).
- Conversational marketing tools like Drift to see which content your listeners are consuming (so you can continuously improve your strategy). A live chatbot also allows listeners to talk to your brand directly.
4. You Won’t Have Features That Can Amplify Your Content
As a B2B marketer, you already know the importance of promoting every piece of content you create. Otherwise, it’ll sit there in the interwebs collecting virtual dust.
Simply publishing B2B podcast episodes to your website and platforms like Spotify isn’t enough. You need to focus on driving organic traffic, which means honing the power of SEO.
With a more robust podcast marketing platform, you can access features, such as full transcription services. Transcripts are amazing because you can publish the full conversation to your episode page or within a blog post to help rank for keywords. You can publish with each episode to cater to folks who may prefer to read the conversation vs. listen to it.
Professional tools also offer ways to transform each episode into video content, video clips, audio clips, and social clips to share on other channels (and even your blog posts). Again, this enables you to attract those who enjoy watching online videos.
Taking a multimedia approach to your B2B podcast is vital to amplify its presence and reach your target audience.
5. You Won’t Have Access to Actionable Insights
The key to developing a successful B2B podcast is the same as with any other type of content you produce: You need to offer high value to your target audience.
Now, you can sit around guessing what’s valuable to your listeners, or you can use hard evidence to drive the direction of your podcast. With a more robust B2B podcasting platform, you can get the data you need to do this.
For example, you’ll have access to metrics that matter, such as a unique engagement score and content attribution. You’ll know precisely how your podcast episodes impact the buyer’s journey, and you’ll have a ton of content feedback to improve your strategy.
Ultimately, you’ll be able to track every cent that’s generated directly from your B2B podcast. No more trying to convince your boss podcasts matter — you’ll have data to prove how the episodes fuel your pipeline.
6. You’ll Spend More Time Managing Tools than Amplifying Your Podcast
Podcasts offer a new way for marketers to develop an insight-rich, expert-driven content strategy. But too often, marketers get stuck using it as just another siloed channel. Why? Because creating a podcast as a separate part of a strategy with many different (though cheap) tools is time consuming.
If you invest in your podcast by purchasing more robust platforms, you’re investing in your marketing team to give them the tools to fully amplify the voices and insights from your podcast into their broader strategy.
When using more DIY-style tools, marketers will find themselves spending more time just getting the show to publish than actually wringing out the content to its fullest potential.
That is a waste and marketers deserve better.
Just like we have tools to maximize email channels, blog posts, and video, don’t we deserve more robust tools that make our jobs easier not harder when it comes to podcasting?
Done Trying to Grow Your Brand for Free?
Having excellent podcasting equipment is one thing — but if you don’t have the tools to develop and execute strategies to attract, engage, and convert listeners, then you’ll undoubtedly struggle.
So if you want to take your B2B podcast seriously, then investing in it is crucial. Premium podcasting platforms that offer all the marketing integrations and features necessary to grow your content’s success is the way to go.
Want to get a taste of what makes a premium podcasting platform great? Then schedule a demo with Casted today!
