A lot of B2B brands get into podcasting as an experimental side project, just to see if they can reach a wider audience and open up a new content marketing channel. How that podcast fits in with the rest of their marketing strategy is something they’ll figure out later on… if the show succeeds, gains an audience, and gets buy-in from leadership. Often, it seems too risky at first, too hard to figure out, like trying to count your chicks before they’re hatched.
It’s impossible to intentionally build a strategy around a podcast or video series while simultaneously launching the show, right?
Actually, no. As B2B buyer behavior changes, marketing strategies must be more dynamic and agile, and easy-to-consume channels like audio and video provide faster ways for buyers to find out what a brand has to offer. That increases the value of podcasting, and with an understanding of a particular industry or category, cutting-edge brands can craft successful marketing strategies around shows they’re simultaneously creating from scratch.
That’s exactly what Chief Marketing Officer Meredith Albertson and Content Marketing Manager Nicole Wood at Zylo did when they launched their podcast SaaSMe Unfiltered. Not only would the podcast become the source of all their content, but it would support and align with all their big-picture marketing goals. There are other benefits too: By amplifying their marketing, Zylo gets a lot of mileage out of every episode by repurposing and reusing content in other channels. With a small but super-efficient content team, Meredith and Nicole have helped Zylo become a leader in the fairly new SaaS Management category, and on this episode of The Casted Podcast, they’re going to tell us how they did it, what their podcast goals were from the get-go, and how they determine the value of their content marketing strategy.
Digging into Key Takeaways
For each episode, we like to highlight some key takeaways. Think of it as a podcast outline or live show notes. Here are just a few of the takeaways that really stood out to us in this episode.
Why SaaSMe Unfiltered Was Strategically Aligned from the Start 🔥
Just as Casted has seen with customers across industries, many B2B brands give audio or video podcasting a try. They don’t invest much, if any, money or resources up front, and expectations within the organization are super low.
That’s not what Nicole and Meredith did with Zylo’s podcast. This wasn’t a try. This was a show that they intended to not just align with Zylo’s overall marketing strategy, but to actually be the main driver of that strategy, an ongoing source of content, and a contributor to business goals. They also intended to show audiences exactly who their brand is, and nothing does that as authentically as recorded conversations.
How Zylo Differs from Traditional B2B Marketing 🗣
As mentioned in the episode, B2B buyers today research and decide about the tech stack solutions they purchase differently than they did even two years ago. They’re more interested in “social validation” from colleagues and networks, and they’d rather watch a 3-minute video or listen to a clip from a podcast than read a blog post or a whitepaper.
With these trends in mind, Zylo never came to podcasting in a traditional or experimental way. Instead, Meredith and Nicole valued being agile and dynamic over playing it safe. This allowed them to confidently plan out an overall marketing strategy at the same time they launched the core of that strategy, the SaaSMe Unfiltered podcast.
Measuring the Value of Your Content 📐
While measuring content performance is a critical part of knowing how successful your marketing strategy is, the more subjective part is measuring the value of your content to your audience. It’s getting easier to track engagement metrics that are relevant to your brand’s goals, but there’s nothing like hearing how your podcast directly impacted and improved a listener’s life at work straight from your actual audience.
How Amplified Marketing Impacts the Business 📣
To answer the #1 question content marketers get from the C-suite: Yes, absolutely, yes, podcasts and video series drive revenue. It’s a longer (and arguably stronger) play that really does bring in leads and ROI. Amplifying podcasts and video boosts audience reach. And in Zylo’s case, building their marketing strategy around their show helped make revenue performance provable faster.
Interested in More from Zylo?
For more on how Zylo is leading the way in SaaS Management, be sure to visit Zylo.com. And to discover all the ways Meredith and Nicole are driving the bottom line with audio and video content, check out their podcast SaaSMe Unfiltered.
Want to skim through Meredith and Nicole’s episode instead of listening? Read the transcript here.
About Season 8 of The Casted Podcast
Welcome to Season 8 of The Casted Podcast, where we focus exclusively on our customers, brands who know the value of delivering high-quality podcast, video, and written content that their audiences truly want. Hear from the most forward-thinking brands discovering how to harness the power of conversation and amplify their content marketing in a range of formats and channels — and how they build integrated marketing strategies around podcasting. They're practicing what we preach, and we want you to hear all about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and most of all, how you can do it too.