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Your CMO: “Let’s start a podcast!”
Great idea! Maybe.
Listen, there are a lot of podcasts out there.
2.5 million on Apple Podcasts. 4.7 million on Spotify.
If you listened to one episode of each of the 2.5 million podcasts, it would take you 285 days to do so (assuming you don’t sleep).
So when we’re living in an ocean of podcast content, should you even start one?
Short answer: It depends. (Every marketer’s favorite answer 😅)
In this article, I’m going to dig into: Is podcasting worth it? What’s the ROI? And is it time to start?
(If you already know you want to start a podcast, check out our podcast producer's article about how to get started).
Here are the main benefits of podcasting (from one B2B marketer’s perspective):
My favorite part of being a marketer who markets to other marketers, is that the people I’m marketing to are a lot like me.
I love reading marketing newsletters, so I write a marketing newsletter.
I always listen to podcasts when I’m doing other things — walking my dogs, doing the dishes, folding laundry. So I host a podcast!
If you’re marketing to an audience that doesn’t listen to podcasts, it’s best not to waste your marketing efforts there. Hosting a podcast might not be worth it if your target audience spends most of their time on reddit — no matter how good the podcast is.
And if you’re not sure either way, I’d recommend doing some research about your target personas and where they hang out before you spend a ton of time planning out a podcast just because someone on your team is excited about the idea.
The term ‘brand awareness’ is thrown around so often that it’s almost lost its meaning, but it’s one of the core benefits of hosting a growing podcast.
Here’s the gist of why it’s so important:
The vast majority of your target audience probably isn’t in buying mode. Maybe they will be in 3 months or 12 months or in 2 years when they start a new role, but right now they could care less about digitally transforming their whatever.
But most of your target audience is always in content consumption mode. In the case of marketers, we’re always looking to expand our marketing knowledge. And we're constantly on the hunt for tactics and strategies that work — so I invite some of the smartest people in marketing to share their tactics and strategies that are working, so our audience can walk away with tactics to try out for themselves.
Every time you invite someone on your podcast, you strengthen your relationship with them. Some of my online besties in marketing are people who I’ve invited onto my podcast!
Then those relationships might turn into them inviting you to their event or to work on some other co-marketing initiative together.
At the same time, you’re building relationships with all of your podcast listeners. I get so many nice messages and connection requests from podcast listeners on LinkedIn and it brightens my day every time:
Thanks, Hanna! :D
Every time I finish recording a podcast, we end up with a lot of awesome content that we can slice and dice for other mediums. We will:
That’s just from a single <1 hour episode! This is a key reason we’ve prioritized our podcast: We don’t have many content marketing resources to dedicate to creating tons of new content from scratch week-over-week.
I approach guest outreach as a chance to meet industry experts who I look up to and want to learn from.
This may not apply to you if your target audience is very different than you but in my case it works well!
My first step is writing down all the industry experts I think is smart or would have interesting marketing insights to share. I organize them into a spreadsheet with the following columns:
Then I keep my outreach organized with these columns:
I constantly add to the spreadsheet by:
When thinking about who to reach out to, here are the factors I try to consider:
This is the most important factor for me. If I don’t care what they have to say, why would my listeners?
When planning each season of Demand Gen Chat, I try to do a mix of different topics. Content strategy, paid ads, ABM, data, ops, etc. Each of these areas are changing from year to year, so I try to bring on an expert to talk about what’s new and what our listeners should know.
I’m cognizant that a lot of podcasts out there are just two (or more) white men with microphones and that’s not really the vibe I’m going for.
I do my best to invite diverse guests onto the podcast. But to be honest it's not very challenging, there are so many amazing diverse people in marketing.
There are a few core pillars of our distribution strategy:
One of the most important things I learned about podcasting is that people consume content in different ways. While I prefer an audio-only format, some people prefer reading content and others like to watch the video format (I was surprised to learn some people watch 40+ minute interviews on Youtube!) — so we distribute our episodes everywhere. This means:
A big mistake people make with using social media marketing is they just post from the company account once and call it a day. In reality, social media posts are fleeting — and company accounts have the smallest reach compared to personal accounts.
Instead, promote your podcast episodes from multiple touchpoints across social media, including multiple social media platforms.
Here’s our organic social distribution process:
At the same time, whenever someone posts about Demand Gen Chat we share in our internal #chili-love Slack channel — where we ask other Pipers to engage with posts to help increase reach.
We take a clip that might be relevant to one of our audiences (for example, Ops) and then use it in paid ads, kind of like this one.
In addition to hosting a demand gen podcast, I also write The Sauce — our monthly newsletter for marketers! I’ll always share a key takeaway from the podcast and a link to listen in case newsletter subscribers don’t follow the demand generation podcast closely.
As a Demand Gen marketer, I always hold out hope that people will click on the UTM-ed link from my podcast to sign up for a demo. Unfortunately, it never happens that way.
Podcasts are notorious for being a black hole of metrics.
The main thing that we focus on is subscriber growth and downloads. If we’re growing week over week, we know that we’re doing well.
Another thing we do is set up Gong notifications for keywords like “podcast” or “demand gen chat”. That way if people are bringing those up during sales calls, we get notified.
We also have a “how did you hear about us?” form after someone submits a qualified demo request that’s linked to an internal Slack channel. Every time someone writes “podcast”, my Demand Gen heart is so happy.
When budgets get cut, brand marketing is often the first to go because it’s hard to attribute revenue and lead generation. And brand marketing so often includes ‘tofu’ programs like podcasts.
I may be biased because I’m a podcast host… but I think that’s a mistake. Here’s why I think you can still get a great ROI from podcasts:
A lot of people think running a podcast is time-consuming (it can be!) but compared to hosting a virtual or in-person event, the marketing efforts required for podcasts are actually relatively minimal — but you can still get a lot of the same benefits.
You can still get that 1:1 interaction with your audience. And, even better than an event, you can be super selective about who you invite to join you for a conversation.
Original content is the name of the content marketing game in a post-Chat GPT world. While Chat GPT can churn out a glossary of your email marketing terms to publish on your website, it can’t host a podcast (yet).
Original audio and/or video content featuring your team and influential people in your industry is still a great way to create content that stands out on social and gets in front of your audience regularly. Also, "repurposed content" is like music to every content marketing manager's ears.
One of my most favorite parts of hosting a podcast is the relationships I’ve built along the way!
As an introvert, I can sometimes have a hard time making new connections without a clear reason to reach out. Getting a kind message inviting you onto a podcast is a great opener, and I’ve been surprised at how many amazing people have said yes!
Account-based marketing can be another benefit of launching a B2B marketing podcast, although it isn't the focus of our podcast strategy.
If you want to successfully implement account-based marketing as part of your marketing strategy with regards to your podcast, I'd recommend inviting your best customers or prospects as podcast guests — and making that experience as amazing as possible.
In the end, people want to look good — so if being on your podcast makes your customers or prospects look good, it could help your sales team close that next deal (or at the very least, could help build that relationship).
As I mentioned in my intro, I’m a big fan of multi-tasking while listening to my favorite podcasts. Here are my go-to podcasts for marketing tips and inspiration:
Hosted by Melissa Moody of Gated & Ashley McGovern of PostPilot.
2 Pizza Marketing is a series of conversations with marketers working on small teams to create success, learn from failure, and stay sane.
The stories you'll hear are relatable, honest, and packed with solutions to help anyone wading through the mess of marketing at an early-stage company.
Check them out here. They're on Apple podcasts and Spotify.
Hosted by 42 Agency’s Kamil Rextin
42/ is a conversational-style interview show hosted by Kamil. He brings on a mix of marketers you've definitely heard of and marketers who are more behind-the-scenes.
Hosted by Metadata's Jason Widup & Mark Huber
Demand Gen U is one of my favorite B2B marketing podcasts. It goes deep on one topic to bring you actionable, no-fluff B2B marketing lessons they've learned along the way.
In each episode, the Metadata team shares their successes (and failures), plus teach you what they’re doing to drive results. It's full of actionable tips that help you do your job better.
If you want to check them out, subscribe here. They're on Apple podcasts and Spotify — and drop new episodes every week!
Hosted by Dave Gerhardt
Exit Five is one of the more general B2B marketing podcasts. It's a go-to resource for all things B2B marketing.
Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, marketing strategy, marketing growth, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content strategy, social media, and more.
Check it out here. They're on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosted by Daniel Murray The Marketing Millenials podcast is a decidedly not-boring marketing podcast. Definitely one of my favorite marketing podcasts out there.
It’s a no-BS, unfiltered marketing podcast where Daniel Murray unpacks playbooks of marketers at the top of their game. They get deep into conversation with some of the coolest companies in our industry. They come up with new episodes every week!
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. 😉
Demand Gen Chat is all about talking to the smartest marketers in B2B to hear the latest tactics and the marketing campaigns that are driving revenue. In Season 4, we’re looking at a dramatically different B2B landscape and trying to find the silver linings and opportunities in a really challenging time for B2B marketers.
If you’ve checked out the podcast I’d love to hear your feedback! DM me on LinkedIn.
The Customer Engagement Lab podcast is hosted by our friends over at PandaDoc. They interview smart folks from cool companies who are doing things right. They touch on B2B marketing topics, but they touch on other things as well.
They cover B2B marketing topics, but they also have episodes for sales or customer success folks, who are bored by traditional business podcasts.
You can listen to them on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check it out here.
Hosted by Seija Lappalainen and Reeta Westman.
This podcast helps you grow and scale up your B2B SaaS business. Seija and Reeta talk to founders, VPs, CMOs, and more about all kinds of stuff happening in the marketing world — sales and marketing alignment, lead generation vs demand generation, how to do marketing expansion right, etc.
So what do you think? Is starting a podcast right for your team? If you’re ready to take the next step, you should check out our podcast producer Nolan’s post about all the tools and automation that can make your podcast look professional while not taking up your entire workweek.
Your CMO: “Let’s start a podcast!”
Great idea! Maybe.
Listen, there are a lot of podcasts out there.
2.5 million on Apple Podcasts. 4.7 million on Spotify.
If you listened to one episode of each of the 2.5 million podcasts, it would take you 285 days to do so (assuming you don’t sleep).
So when we’re living in an ocean of podcast content, should you even start one?
Short answer: It depends. (Every marketer’s favorite answer 😅)
In this article, I’m going to dig into: Is podcasting worth it? What’s the ROI? And is it time to start?
(If you already know you want to start a podcast, check out our podcast producer's article about how to get started).
Here are the main benefits of podcasting (from one B2B marketer’s perspective):
My favorite part of being a marketer who markets to other marketers, is that the people I’m marketing to are a lot like me.
I love reading marketing newsletters, so I write a marketing newsletter.
I always listen to podcasts when I’m doing other things — walking my dogs, doing the dishes, folding laundry. So I host a podcast!
If you’re marketing to an audience that doesn’t listen to podcasts, it’s best not to waste your marketing efforts there. Hosting a podcast might not be worth it if your target audience spends most of their time on reddit — no matter how good the podcast is.
And if you’re not sure either way, I’d recommend doing some research about your target personas and where they hang out before you spend a ton of time planning out a podcast just because someone on your team is excited about the idea.
The term ‘brand awareness’ is thrown around so often that it’s almost lost its meaning, but it’s one of the core benefits of hosting a growing podcast.
Here’s the gist of why it’s so important:
The vast majority of your target audience probably isn’t in buying mode. Maybe they will be in 3 months or 12 months or in 2 years when they start a new role, but right now they could care less about digitally transforming their whatever.
But most of your target audience is always in content consumption mode. In the case of marketers, we’re always looking to expand our marketing knowledge. And we're constantly on the hunt for tactics and strategies that work — so I invite some of the smartest people in marketing to share their tactics and strategies that are working, so our audience can walk away with tactics to try out for themselves.
Every time you invite someone on your podcast, you strengthen your relationship with them. Some of my online besties in marketing are people who I’ve invited onto my podcast!
Then those relationships might turn into them inviting you to their event or to work on some other co-marketing initiative together.
At the same time, you’re building relationships with all of your podcast listeners. I get so many nice messages and connection requests from podcast listeners on LinkedIn and it brightens my day every time:
Thanks, Hanna! :D
Every time I finish recording a podcast, we end up with a lot of awesome content that we can slice and dice for other mediums. We will:
That’s just from a single <1 hour episode! This is a key reason we’ve prioritized our podcast: We don’t have many content marketing resources to dedicate to creating tons of new content from scratch week-over-week.
I approach guest outreach as a chance to meet industry experts who I look up to and want to learn from.
This may not apply to you if your target audience is very different than you but in my case it works well!
My first step is writing down all the industry experts I think is smart or would have interesting marketing insights to share. I organize them into a spreadsheet with the following columns:
Then I keep my outreach organized with these columns:
I constantly add to the spreadsheet by:
When thinking about who to reach out to, here are the factors I try to consider:
This is the most important factor for me. If I don’t care what they have to say, why would my listeners?
When planning each season of Demand Gen Chat, I try to do a mix of different topics. Content strategy, paid ads, ABM, data, ops, etc. Each of these areas are changing from year to year, so I try to bring on an expert to talk about what’s new and what our listeners should know.
I’m cognizant that a lot of podcasts out there are just two (or more) white men with microphones and that’s not really the vibe I’m going for.
I do my best to invite diverse guests onto the podcast. But to be honest it's not very challenging, there are so many amazing diverse people in marketing.
There are a few core pillars of our distribution strategy:
One of the most important things I learned about podcasting is that people consume content in different ways. While I prefer an audio-only format, some people prefer reading content and others like to watch the video format (I was surprised to learn some people watch 40+ minute interviews on Youtube!) — so we distribute our episodes everywhere. This means:
A big mistake people make with using social media marketing is they just post from the company account once and call it a day. In reality, social media posts are fleeting — and company accounts have the smallest reach compared to personal accounts.
Instead, promote your podcast episodes from multiple touchpoints across social media, including multiple social media platforms.
Here’s our organic social distribution process:
At the same time, whenever someone posts about Demand Gen Chat we share in our internal #chili-love Slack channel — where we ask other Pipers to engage with posts to help increase reach.
We take a clip that might be relevant to one of our audiences (for example, Ops) and then use it in paid ads, kind of like this one.
In addition to hosting a demand gen podcast, I also write The Sauce — our monthly newsletter for marketers! I’ll always share a key takeaway from the podcast and a link to listen in case newsletter subscribers don’t follow the demand generation podcast closely.
As a Demand Gen marketer, I always hold out hope that people will click on the UTM-ed link from my podcast to sign up for a demo. Unfortunately, it never happens that way.
Podcasts are notorious for being a black hole of metrics.
The main thing that we focus on is subscriber growth and downloads. If we’re growing week over week, we know that we’re doing well.
Another thing we do is set up Gong notifications for keywords like “podcast” or “demand gen chat”. That way if people are bringing those up during sales calls, we get notified.
We also have a “how did you hear about us?” form after someone submits a qualified demo request that’s linked to an internal Slack channel. Every time someone writes “podcast”, my Demand Gen heart is so happy.
When budgets get cut, brand marketing is often the first to go because it’s hard to attribute revenue and lead generation. And brand marketing so often includes ‘tofu’ programs like podcasts.
I may be biased because I’m a podcast host… but I think that’s a mistake. Here’s why I think you can still get a great ROI from podcasts:
A lot of people think running a podcast is time-consuming (it can be!) but compared to hosting a virtual or in-person event, the marketing efforts required for podcasts are actually relatively minimal — but you can still get a lot of the same benefits.
You can still get that 1:1 interaction with your audience. And, even better than an event, you can be super selective about who you invite to join you for a conversation.
Original content is the name of the content marketing game in a post-Chat GPT world. While Chat GPT can churn out a glossary of your email marketing terms to publish on your website, it can’t host a podcast (yet).
Original audio and/or video content featuring your team and influential people in your industry is still a great way to create content that stands out on social and gets in front of your audience regularly. Also, "repurposed content" is like music to every content marketing manager's ears.
One of my most favorite parts of hosting a podcast is the relationships I’ve built along the way!
As an introvert, I can sometimes have a hard time making new connections without a clear reason to reach out. Getting a kind message inviting you onto a podcast is a great opener, and I’ve been surprised at how many amazing people have said yes!
Account-based marketing can be another benefit of launching a B2B marketing podcast, although it isn't the focus of our podcast strategy.
If you want to successfully implement account-based marketing as part of your marketing strategy with regards to your podcast, I'd recommend inviting your best customers or prospects as podcast guests — and making that experience as amazing as possible.
In the end, people want to look good — so if being on your podcast makes your customers or prospects look good, it could help your sales team close that next deal (or at the very least, could help build that relationship).
As I mentioned in my intro, I’m a big fan of multi-tasking while listening to my favorite podcasts. Here are my go-to podcasts for marketing tips and inspiration:
Hosted by Melissa Moody of Gated & Ashley McGovern of PostPilot.
2 Pizza Marketing is a series of conversations with marketers working on small teams to create success, learn from failure, and stay sane.
The stories you'll hear are relatable, honest, and packed with solutions to help anyone wading through the mess of marketing at an early-stage company.
Check them out here. They're on Apple podcasts and Spotify.
Hosted by 42 Agency’s Kamil Rextin
42/ is a conversational-style interview show hosted by Kamil. He brings on a mix of marketers you've definitely heard of and marketers who are more behind-the-scenes.
Hosted by Metadata's Jason Widup & Mark Huber
Demand Gen U is one of my favorite B2B marketing podcasts. It goes deep on one topic to bring you actionable, no-fluff B2B marketing lessons they've learned along the way.
In each episode, the Metadata team shares their successes (and failures), plus teach you what they’re doing to drive results. It's full of actionable tips that help you do your job better.
If you want to check them out, subscribe here. They're on Apple podcasts and Spotify — and drop new episodes every week!
Hosted by Dave Gerhardt
Exit Five is one of the more general B2B marketing podcasts. It's a go-to resource for all things B2B marketing.
Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, marketing strategy, marketing growth, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content strategy, social media, and more.
Check it out here. They're on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosted by Daniel Murray The Marketing Millenials podcast is a decidedly not-boring marketing podcast. Definitely one of my favorite marketing podcasts out there.
It’s a no-BS, unfiltered marketing podcast where Daniel Murray unpacks playbooks of marketers at the top of their game. They get deep into conversation with some of the coolest companies in our industry. They come up with new episodes every week!
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. 😉
Demand Gen Chat is all about talking to the smartest marketers in B2B to hear the latest tactics and the marketing campaigns that are driving revenue. In Season 4, we’re looking at a dramatically different B2B landscape and trying to find the silver linings and opportunities in a really challenging time for B2B marketers.
If you’ve checked out the podcast I’d love to hear your feedback! DM me on LinkedIn.
The Customer Engagement Lab podcast is hosted by our friends over at PandaDoc. They interview smart folks from cool companies who are doing things right. They touch on B2B marketing topics, but they touch on other things as well.
They cover B2B marketing topics, but they also have episodes for sales or customer success folks, who are bored by traditional business podcasts.
You can listen to them on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check it out here.
Hosted by Seija Lappalainen and Reeta Westman.
This podcast helps you grow and scale up your B2B SaaS business. Seija and Reeta talk to founders, VPs, CMOs, and more about all kinds of stuff happening in the marketing world — sales and marketing alignment, lead generation vs demand generation, how to do marketing expansion right, etc.
So what do you think? Is starting a podcast right for your team? If you’re ready to take the next step, you should check out our podcast producer Nolan’s post about all the tools and automation that can make your podcast look professional while not taking up your entire workweek.
Tara Robertson is a B2B marketer with over 10 years experience in various marketing roles. As the Senior Manager of Demand Gen at Chili Piper, she also hosts our podcast Demand Gen Chat and writes our newsletter The Sauce. Tara is powered by pizza and negronis. Connect with Tara on LinkedIn!
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