By now you’ve probably done a lot of planning, preparing, and researching to take as much guesswork as you can out of launching a whole new marketing channel for your brand. You’re no longer experimenting with the idea of a B2B podcast — you’re doing it. And congratulations for getting this far, because many shows never do for various reasons.
As you get ready to record your first show, you might realize there’s still a few boxes to check. Do you have all the recording logistics you need to not only complete this first episode, but to create an ongoing repeatable process? Do you have the resources to keep up a consistent cadence for your first season or series? Do you have a structure in place to identify and attract the guests your audience wants? And do you have a system for how to leverage your brand’s and your guests’ networks to further promote the show?
In this episode, we wrap up the discussion of the first two stages of the B2B Podcast Maturity Curve that brands work through when getting a show off the ground — Stage 1: Channel Experimentation and Stage 2: Show Creation. As you’re about to launch your podcast, our podcast sages have a few more tips to keep in mind to make your show succeed from the get-go.
From Salesforce, Lindsay welcomes the creators and former hosts of the Salesforce Marketing Cloudcast, Megan Hostetler (Collins), Tina Rozul, and Heike Young, and from HubSpot’s podcast team, Ellie Mirman and Mike Volpe join the discussion on what to do before pressing record, how to adapt to unexpected surprises, and how to establish a guest experience that impacts your show and your overall business goals.
And if you don’t know where your podcast fits on the maturity curve, take our quick assessment and enjoy the show:
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.
What to Do Before You Press Record on Day 1 — Nailing the Small Details Is Super Important ✅
From a content marketing perspective, structure helps you scale all the work and promotion around a podcast by defining a repeatable process and achievable goals.
Former host of the Salesforce Marketing Cloudcast, Megan Hostetler (Collins) leaned into a series approach — over an ongoing multi-season approach — and this allowed her team to focus better on quality and give each series the love and attention it needed to serve the brand’s overall goals.
The Importance of Adapting to Mistakes — The Best Podcasts Know How to Pivot ✨
One thing is guaranteed to happen when you create and launch your podcast: You’re going to make mistakes. But that’s no reason to be discouraged. Learning from mistakes as you go is a part of ascending the B2B podcast maturity stages.
If you’re one of the first ones out of the gate, you might make a few more mistakes than those who come later. In the episode, Ellie Mirman, former producer of the HubSpot TV podcast, shares her experiences from the early days of B2B podcasts and recommends constantly monitoring your show, the topics you cover, and the guests you have on. These are all key to moving through the maturity curve stages and to keeping your podcast engaging over the long haul.
Why Guest Experience Is Crucial for the Success of Your Interview-Style Show 🤩
Podcasts have in many ways taken one odious responsibility off the content marketer’s plate, and that’s having to be the subject matter expert on a range of topics, whether you know anything about these topics or not.
But as Heike Young, former host of the Salesforce Marketing Cloudcast, discusses on the show, guests aren’t just sources of thought leadership. They’re also a networked army of show promoters, and to increase the likelihood that they’ll share their episode and your show with others, you should provide an excellent guest experience and deliver templatized content that makes it easier for guests to share. Be prepared, do your homework before recording an episode, and look for those questions that your guests have never had to answer before.
Want to See Where Your B2B Podcast Lies on the Maturity Curve?
If you’d like to see which stage your brand’s podcast is at, what you can do to reach the next stage, and how Casted can help you along the way, take our quick B2B Podcast Maturity Curve assessment.
And for more, stay tuned to Casted’s new series How B2B Podcasts Grow Up for a stage-by-stage discussion of how a B2B brand takes a show from launch to mass marketing amplification, and all the expert strategies, tips, and insights you need to create and grow your own audio or video podcast to serve your brand and drive growth.
Want to skim through the episode instead of listening? Read the transcript here.
About How B2B Podcasts Grow Up
As Season 3 of The Amplified Marketing Podcast, How B2B Podcasts Grow Up will cover the five stages of the B2B Podcast Maturity Curve, where we discuss the best strategies and models for creating a new show in a new channel, for growing and engaging your audience, for expanding across all the channels your audience prefers, and for integrating your podcast program into your overall content marketing strategy. And of course, we’ll discuss all the ways you can create meaningful content and then get the most traction from that material by wringing it out and amplifying it across all channels.
