In the fall of 2022, the financial performance management SaaS brand Planful acquired Plannuh, a marketing performance management platform. As you might imagine, it’s a match made in heaven, bringing the best of both companies to the foreground to serve finance and accounting professionals, CFOs, and CMOs around the world.
Of course, there’s a period of transition where the two companies determine how best to combine their powers, assets, and staff, and while merging the technologies of the two brands in a way that serves their blended audience is the main objective, both Planful and Plannuh are also recognized thought leaders in the industry with a lot of content and strategy to bring together.
That’s what our guests discuss on this episode of the The Casted Podcast. Rowan Tonkin, CMO and host of the Being Planful podcast, and Peter Mahoney, Planful’s new General Manager of Marketing Performance Management have a lot in common. They’re both deeply interested in helping their customers plan campaigns and maximize ROI. They both have extensive experience in marketing for finance and accounting professionals. And they’re both podcasters who have created a successful content marketing channel for their brands, with Rowan launching the Being Planful podcast and Peter launching The Next CMO at Plannuh. Today they share how they’re bringing the best of both companies to the surface to continue connecting with their audience but in a deeper and more helpful way. Plus, these two seem to have a lot of fun in their roles.
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.
Looking at the Bigger Picture 💭
A B2B podcast is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. The longer you keep running, the more powerful the return is. But building that kind of momentum takes time, expectation management, and tying your podcast to your brand’s bigger picture.
With 30 years’ experience in measuring marketing performance, Peter Mahoney doesn’t just look at audience numbers or concentrate on only proving that conversions are coming directly from the podcast. He absolutely is tracking those things, but he sees podcasts as a greater asset for a brand, how they tell a brand’s overall message, how they engage customers like no other channel, and how they spark powerful relationships among guests, customers, and partners within your industry.
The Importance of Consistency 🧑💻
As a marketing leader who understands all the benefits a podcast brings to a company, you have to remind the rest of your brand from time to time about why you’ve launched a show and how that helps the brand at large to grow and achieve business goals.
As Rowan Tonkin shares in the episode, consistency is the critical factor here. You have to not only communicate to your marketing team how the show is tied to strategy, but you have to do it on a continual basis for the entire brand as well. Otherwise, parts of your company may lose sight of how your podcast allows you to talk to guests and customers that you’d never reach through your other brand channels. 
The Merging of Brands and Acquiring New Strategies 🎉
A big reason one brand acquires another is to reach an audience that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible to connect with. Sometimes, the acquired company and all its assets become absorbed, and their services, products, or content are rebranded. Sometimes that also means certain parts of the acquired business are sunsetted.
However, in today’s B2B world, companies are often acquired for their value to customers, and in the case of Planful acquiring Plannuh, Peter’s The Next CMO podcast was one of the Plannuh gems Planful wanted to keep leveraging. To determine the value of The Next CMO, Rowan asked the basic questions marketers should always keep focused on: Why does the podcast exist? Who is the target audience? How can we absorb all those valuable conversations into our larger strategy and serve our audience in an even more engaging and helpful way?
Interested in More from Planful?
For more on how Planful delivers the content that financial planners and analysts want the most, be sure to visit Planful’s website. And if you’d like to hear more about how Rowan and Peter are leveraging exemplary content post-acquisition to grow their audience and connect with them in even more significant ways, check out the Being Planful podcast.
Want to skim through Rowan’s and Peter’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.
