You know that often misquoted line from Field of Dreams: “If you build it, he will come?” Well, in the case of Oak Street Funding in the midst of the pivotful pandemic, that’s just what happened. Except the “he” was really a “they,” a whole audience interested in learning more about what the small business lending brand has to offer.
On this episode of the The Casted Podcast, Kira Singer, Oak Street’s Senior Marketing Coordinator and Producer, tells how the brand had to stop relying on in-person events and begin investing in webinars. As a result, the content performed well and brought in ROI, which led the brand’s leadership to see the sense in constructing a full-on studio. From there, it was a fairly logical decision to go beyond webinars and launch OnPoint with Oak Street Funding. The podcast is now a major part of their overall digital strategy, and in this episode, Kira shares all the lessons she learned along her climb from podcast launch to marketing amplification.
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.
The Importance of Having a Consistent Voice for the Podcast and Across All Content 📣
Like all parts of a business, B2B podcasts sometimes suffer from turnover. Hosts pursue other career opportunities, and in some cases, that creates a discontinuity for the audience who have come to rely on a particular host’s voice and interview style. This can become a repeating problem over time, and some podcasts have been shuttered because of it.
However, consistency was on Kira’s radar as she was about to launch Oak Street’s OnPoint podcast, and her team made a thoughtful decision up front that would impact the show beyond the launch and beyond the first season.
How to Maximize Your Reach and Gain Insights on Success with a Content Amplification Strategy 📝
Creating a show is one big project, but like all the other content a marketing team creates, creation’s only a part of the overall business goal. Performance, conversions, and brand awareness are the ultimate ROI considerations, and that means you need to promote your podcast channel and decide which KPIs you’re going to measure for success.
That’s where an amplified marketing strategy can ensure you’re getting the most mileage out of everything you create and reaching the greatest possible audience. Through repurposing, even a small content team can amplify every podcast episode by embedding clips into blogs and social media. As Kira shares, tracking KPIs that are important to your business helps you both measure the podcast’s impact on the bottom line and continuously refine and improve your show according to your audience’s needs.
The Evolution of a Podcast Strategy 💥
As with most major endeavors, you have to start somewhere, knowing you’re going to learn and improve your podcast over time. At first, the goal is to line up expert guests, record the episodes, and push your podcast out to the public.
But as Kira discusses, those are just the first two stages of the B2B Podcast Maturity Curve. For the channel to drive your business goals, you’ve got to evolve into growing your audience, amplifying your content marketing across all relevant channels, and finally integrate your podcast strategy and performance into your overall marketing program.
Interested in More from Oak Street Funding?
For more on how Oak Street Funding can help small businesses reach their goals, be sure to visit Oak Street Funding. And if you’d like to learn more about how Kira and her team created a winning digital strategy around a podcast, check out the OnPoint podcast.
Want to skim through Kira’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.
