In this episode, Jeremiah sits down with Eli Woolery, Senior Director for Design Education at InVision, to chat about the impeccable execution of their content platform and podcast, Design Better.

Design Better is an entire brand within InVision that produces books, industry reports, a podcast, a newsletter, blogs, and so much more. It’s entirely focused on delivering high-quality education and value to its audience.

Tune in to learn why they built Design Better as a complementary brand to InVision, how their focus has changed over the years, how they execute their 6-season podcast, and why they believe in investing in podcasting for the long haul.

Guest-at-a-Glance

Name: Eli Woolery

What he does: Senior Director of Design Education at InVision and Lecturer in Product Design  at Stanford

Connect with Eli: LinkedIn | Twitter

Key Takeaways

Create content that is useful to people without expecting anything in return.

The entire philosophy behind InVision’s Design Better brand is creative generosity. They produce content that’s useful for people purely with the intention of helping them become better at what they do versus promoting their own product. When you lead with value, you have a better chance of building a loyal community around your brand.

Growing a podcast takes time, no matter who you are or what brand you represent.

Even though InVision started with a base email list of millions of subscribers, it still took them a couple of years to really build up the Design Better podcast. It’s important to set the right expectations from the start that these things take time. You won’t see an immediate ROI, so your leadership team needs to have the confidence and patience to let the podcast run its course.

If you, as a host, are bored of your content, your audience likely is too.

How do you know when it’s time to switch up or expand your podcast? Eli says when you, as a host, are bored and no longer curious to learn, that’s when you need to move beyond the topics you normally cover. Because if you’re bored, your audience likely feels the same if they’ve been following you for a while.

Your podcast content should continuously align with the overall direction of your product.

Whether you’re working on a podcast, blog, newsletter, video series, or a combination of all channels, your content should always align with the direction your product is taking. If your product is now serving a purpose for a broader audience, your content needs to reflect that broadening as well. Design Better, for example, shifted its focus from primarily design-heavy content to more broad collaboration to reflect the change in InVision’s target ICP.

Themed seasons help create guardrails around who you want to bring on as guests.

Each of the 6 seasons of Design Better has a unique theme, and the purpose of those themes is to help anchor the content and guest roster. However, they make sure the theme is flexible enough to where it doesn’t restrict them when they want to bring someone really interesting on the show who might not fit the exact criteria.

Podcasts are a great top-of-funnel strategy to build brand awareness.

With podcast metrics being hard to track, InVision focuses its podcasting efforts purely on brand building and brand awareness. To them, success comes in the form of audience growth season by season, which means more people are exposed to the InVision brand and hopefully stick with them throughout the customer journey. They also repurpose podcast content on their blog where they can better track click-throughs on their CTAs.

The quality of your podcast reflects the quality of your brand.

If you’re asking people to listen to you for 45 minutes, it’s in your best interest to provide them with good quality audio. By simply switching from Zoom to Riverside or Zencastr, you can 10x your audience’s listening experience. Remember that your podcast is a direct reflection of your brand. The higher quality you provide, the more your audience will trust your expertise.

Podcasts are a great alternative to traditional media channels.

Podcasting allows your audience to connect with you on a deeper, more personal level for longer periods of time than any other traditional media channel allows for. You’re better able to have discussions and go deeper on topics, which means there’s a better chance for you to build credibility and trust with your audience.

Plan to invest a year’s worth of time into your podcast before you see any tangible results.

You can’t run a podcast for a few months and expect to see any results out of it. This type of format requires a long-term mindset and a lot of patience. You need to be willing to invest at least one year’s worth of time before you see any tangible results, like audience growth or an increase in customer leads.

Don’t discount the power of audio storytelling.

Even if you have a smaller audience, if you look at your numbers and see your listeners are engaged and growing (albeit slowly), you’re still building an intimate connection. This isn’t something you can normally do with other forms of media, including video. It’s harder to keep someone’s attention through a one-hour video than it is through a one-hour podcast. The power of audio is unbeatable.

Mentions

• Freehand
• Seth Godin Design Better Episode
• Riverside
• Zencastr

In this Q&A episode, Jeremiah covers various ways you can use B2B podcasting to help your company grow. We’ll cover everything from how you can use your podcast to empower your sales team to how it can fuel ongoing market research.

We’ll also cover examples of great B2B podcasts you can use to emulate or take notes from, and we’ll provide you with a couple of agencies and tools we’d recommend to help you get the job done.

Key Takeaways

Use your podcast to empower your sales team and shorten the sales cycle.

Build a library of episodes that cover common concerns your sales team hears from prospective clients. This way, whenever that question comes up in the sales process, your team has multiple, long-form episodes they can share with prospects for them to consume asynchronously without the pressure of a sales call. This also gives clients the opportunity to share internally with the rest of their team so everyone can get on board.

Having a B2B podcast helps you build serendipitous relationships.

The people you interview on your show can eventually become industry partners, collaborators, co-sponsors, or even future customers. Your B2B podcast gives you the platform to connect with leaders in your industry and create mutually beneficial relationships due to the trust that is built throughout the interview process.

You can build an audience and community around your brand.

Think of your podcast as an audio version of your newsletter. It gives you the opportunity to build an audience that’s connected with you and wants to hear what you have to say every week, outside of social media. While social followers are looking for quick insights, podcast listeners are allowing you to take up 40+ minutes of their time.

Your podcast helps you stand out from the competition.

Your competitors are likely all on social media or have a newsletter. But depending on your niche, they may not have a podcast yet. This means you could be the first in your industry to capture the power of audio with your branded podcast. Even if there are 10 other shows in your space, you still have the opportunity to be the best, to provide the most value, or to be the most creative. It also helps give your brand a voice that listeners can grow an affinity towards.

B2B podcasts act as amazing content marketing engines.

Your podcast can either drive or supplement your content strategy. For established B2B businesses with long-standing content plans, a podcast can help drive more content into their channels and can supplement specific topics or themes they want to cover for the month. But for B2B startups without a strong content team, your podcast can drive your entire strategy, meaning you take the content from each episode and turn it into 20-30 pieces of content for each of your marketing channels (articles, newsletters, videos, social posts, etc.).

Your podcast can fuel long-term market and customer research.

Similar to your marketing team listening to sales calls to better understand your customer’s pain points, you can use your B2B podcast on a wider scale to learn more about how top leaders in your ICP think about specific topics, what their day-to-day is like, what content they consider valuable, what they do to grow their business or their careers, or common pain points they all share.

Avoid “podfade” by setting realistic expectations from the start.

Most businesses give up on their podcast after 10 episodes because they don’t see results as quickly as they’d like to, which is why it’s important to set your expectations before you start. The average podcast gets about 175 downloads per episode, so if over the course of your first year, you’re able to get to 500 downloads per episode, then you’re doing really well. As you continue to grow, if you can get between 500 to 5,000 downloads, you’ll perform better than 90% of existing shows, which can have a huge impact on your business.

A great way to grow your B2B podcast is by guesting on other shows.

The idea here is you guest on as many related podcasts in your niche as possible that reach your target ICP. When the host asks where people can find you, you can mention your podcast, the hook of your show, and one or two episodes you think will appeal to that specific audience. This gives listeners the ability to continue to learn from you, for free, without feeling like they’re being sold to.

You can grow your podcast by sponsoring an episode drop in another show’s feed.

Another more unique way to grow your show would be to sponsor other podcasts in your space that you know your target ICP is listening to. But instead of paying for a typical 30-second ad read, you could suggest sponsoring an episode drop, meaning you’re paying to have one of your episodes dropped on their feed with an intro read by their host. You benefit by exposing an entire episode of yours to their audience, and they benefit by having fresh content on their feed with no production time.

Make sure your B2B podcast has a web presence.

This is where so many B2B brands go wrong. They launch a podcast and do a terrible job of promoting it on their own sites. Make sure you create an episode directory on your site with episode pages, show notes, embedded audio, graphics, etc. And be sure to add your podcast to the main navigation menu or mark it clearly under your resources/education section. Don’t just bury it in your blog.

Examples of great B2B podcasts:

• Drift Insider (Drift) - a podcast network tailored to their diverse ICPs
• Design Better (InVision) - a podcast designed to reach every level of management, as their SaaS tool expanded
• Metrics & Chill (Databox) - niche, specific show custom-tailored to attract their target audience
• Breaking Brand (Buffer) - a great example of an innovative, storytelling and narrative show

Production agencies we recommend:

• High cost, high production: Pacific Content or Pineapple Street Studios
• Middle cost, B2B-focused: Caspian Studios
• Lower cost: Hatch

Mentions:

• Descript
• Podcast Guesting Guide
• Podcast Tour Strategies
• How to Build a Podcast Website

In today’s episode, we sit down with Drift’s Content Marketing Manager, Elizabeth Hilfrank, to talk about the company’s amazing execution of Drift Insider, a video podcast and article repository.

Drift is the world’s leading revenue acceleration platform, focused on transforming the way sales and marketing teams work together to drive more revenue. They had a record-breaking year in 2021 making $120 million in revenue, which is why we were so excited to chat with Elizabeth about their content strategy.

Tune in to learn more about how Drift launched their network, how they create their show concepts, how they select hosts, and how they repurpose episodes into articles, webinars, and videos.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Elizabeth Hilfrank

What she does: Content Marketing Manager at Drift

Connect with Elizabeth: LinkedIn

Key Takeaways

Audio and video allow your customers to get to know the people behind your brand.

Drift is a strong believer in the human element of B2B buying and selling, which is why they add audio and video elements to their content marketing. This strategy gives customers the opportunity to connect with them on a more personal level, which in turn builds brand trust.

Measure the success of your show on the type of content you deliver.

While Drift does pay attention to the downloads and engagement rates of their shows, they also look at whether the host and listeners are getting what they want out of the content. Are the listeners learning what you set out to teach them? Does the host feel aligned to the original mission of the show?

Your host should embody the persona of your podcast listeners.

Because Drift uses internal employees as hosts, they know exactly what’s going to resonate best with their audience because they live and breathe the same problems as them. The more interconnected your host is to the listener, the better content you’ll create.

Look for guests who are passionate about the topics you cover.

When looking for guests to bring on your podcast, it’s important to find people who are not only experts in their field but are also passionate about the topics you want to cover. Look at their LinkedIn, research past interviews, watch their videos, or read any articles they’ve written to gauge whether they would want to be on your show or not and also to help you personalize your outreach to them.

Having prospects or customers as guests gives them another touchpoint with your brand.

Drift believes podcasts are a brand awareness play that allows them to build relationships with prospects and current customers. When they have the opportunity to bring them on as guests, they give them another point of contact to Drift and a better understanding of the company as a whole.

There’s a lot of planning that goes into launching a new podcast.

For Drift, launching a new show takes about 3 months. First, they ideate on the overall concept and goal of the show. Then, they figure out a title, description, and hook. Next, they move into the requirements. What’s the length? What type of guests do they want? What will the artwork, trailer, and promotions look like? And finally, they record a backlog of episodes before they officially launch.

Don’t reinvent the content wheel every time you need new content.

The power of repurposing content means you can find value in what you already have and spin it off into something new. Drift repurposes episode content from their various podcasts by turning any interesting takeaways into blog posts or even webinars. They typically pick a general theme from the episode and turn it into a listicle or a tips-style post.

SEO is the name of the game in 2022.

Don’t forget about SEO when it comes to your podcast. Make sure you optimize titles, show notes, and descriptions to align with the keywords you want to rank for. It’s also helpful to add embeddable clips or videos within the articles you write referencing your podcast to boost organic traffic.

Use your blog to promote the launch of a new show.

Whenever a new show launches in the Drift network, the content team teases the launch with a blog post focused on some of the biggest takeaways from the show so the audience knows what to expect over the course of the season. Think of it like a written trailer for your podcast.

Don’t underestimate the amount of collaboration needed to start a podcast.

Content marketers often forget how much cross-team collaboration is needed to launch a podcast. Think about the coordination of content, guests, host schedules, social calendars, blog writing, video editing, etc., and make sure you have a strong team in place who can execute a successful podcast program. If you find there are certain pieces of the puzzle that require too much internal bandwidth, like audio or video editing, look into how you can outsource those tasks.

Mentions

• Drift Insider
• Conversation Starters
• Asana

In this episode, we’ll talk about how to design and create a podcast website that encourages visitors to listen to your episodes, subscribe to your show, and makes it easy to search and find any other valuable content you want to present to your listeners.

We’ll cover common mistakes we see, why your company needs a website or web presence for your podcast, design components you’ll need to think about, and technical considerations.

Think of this as the ultimate guide to building your very own podcast website.

Key Takeaways

Make sure you separate your podcast episodes from your blog and link it prominently on your website.

If you’re going to add your podcast episodes to your existing company site, make sure to give them a dedicated home versus mixing the episodes into your blog. This will allow visitors to easily distinguish between written and audio content. It’s also important to link your podcast page prominently on your site (add to the main navigation, not just the footer) to increase visibility.

Take full advantage of your episode pages.

Make your episode pages robust and intuitive for your visitors. Rather than simply embedding the audio and adding a description, think about how you can incorporate top quotable moments, important resources mentioned, more info about the guest, related episodes, and even the full transcript. Not only will this encourage your visitors to engage further with the episodes on your site, but it will also give you some residual SEO benefits.

Giving your podcast a web presence opens you up to backlink SEO benefits.

By having a podcast landing page or section on your website, you’re making it easier for others to share your episodes on social media and link to your site if they want to refer to any of your episodes in their own content. This helps you build backlink SEO juice, which improves your overall domain authority on Google.

Many people prefer to listen to your podcast on your website vs. a podcast player.

We often see this with clients where the number 2 or 3 most listened to platform for their podcast is their website, oftentimes ahead of Google or Amazon and sometimes even ahead of Spotify or Apple.

Your podcast website or directory listing should include a robust episode search.

Allow listeners to search and filter by category, topic, or keyword to make it easier for them to find exactly what they’re looking for. This search could also surface related articles or guides making your website a stronger and more robust content play.

Include a clear CTA on your podcast website.

You can invite visitors to do a number of things on your podcast website, like subscribe to your show on their preferred platform, submit questions or guest requests, or sign up for your newsletter if that content would be relevant to them. You want to make sure you promote a clear call-to-action so listeners know what step to take after they’ve visited the site and listened to your show.

If you’re trying to build a long-term community around your show, consider building a separate podcast website with its own domain.

Rather than nesting your podcast within your company website (yoursite.com/podcast) or even tying it to a subdomain (podcast.yourcompany.com), you’ll want to consider giving your podcast its own branded domain name if you’re thinking of building a long-term community from this. The benefit of this is it gives your podcast a completely distinct brand identity, separate from your company’s. You can style how you want, give it a different navigation menu, include forums or Q&As, etc. It also helps you build implicit trust with your audience because they won’t feel like they’re being sold to.

Building your podcast site as a sub-directory on your company website gives your brand more visibility.

When your podcast lives within your company site, you’re better able to take advantage of the SEO benefits of adding all this content to your site, and it lets you promote your brand more. Your podcast listeners can view your full navigation and explore your product, use cases, or even book a call without having to go somewhere else to find you.

Along with your website, you’ll need a podcast hosting platform.

This is where your episodes are hosted and then distributed to all the major podcast players. We recommend a platform like Transistor or Simplecast. This is where you’ll upload your episode audio file, artwork, show notes, and transcript for it to be shared with Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, etc.

Consider automation tools to help you build your podcast content on your company’s website.

Apps like Zapier allow you to build automation funnels where when an episode is published, it can automatically create an episode page on your website and put it into draft mode. It could pull in the title based on the title of your episode and maybe even automatically pull the episode description. This will help save your marketing team from having to rebuild episode pages on your site after inputting all information into your podcast hosting platform.

Mentions

• Webflow
• WordPress
• Squarespace
• Ghost
• Transistor
• Simplecast
• Zapier
• Mailchimp Presents
• Design Better by InVision

In this episode, we chat with Nathan Barry, creator of the wildly popular email marketing platform ConvertKit and host of “The Art of Newsletters” podcast. One of the many reasons we wanted to talk to Nathan is because he’s been an avid podcaster long before it was popular (circa 2014).

In addition to hosting his own show, Nathan and his team created a network for ConvertKit where they currently run 3 different podcasts. Nathan is also a veteran of the podcast guesting world, appearing on dozens of shows to spread the word about the brand.

Listen in to learn more about how ConvertKit built their network and why, how they think about the ROI of their network, advice for guesting on other shows, and so much more.

Guest-at-a-Glance

• Name: Nathan Barry
• What he does: Nathan is the creator of ConverKit, an email marketing platform powering 250K creators, including Tim Ferriss, Gretchen Rubin, Tim McGraw, and more. He is also the host of the podcast “The Art of Newsletters” where he covers topics like marketing, self-publishing, and building a profitable online business.
• Connect with Nathan: LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Website

Key Takeaways

Podcasts allow you to grow your network, educate customers, and generate ideas.

Nathan podcasts for three reasons. First, he’s able to meet new people through the guests he has on his show, which allows him to grow his network and, in turn, convert some of those guests into customers. Second, he uses his podcast as an educational content machine for his 250,000 customers where he teaches them how to build and grow a business. And finally, podcasts are a great way to generate content ideas. He can refer back to his library of 50+ episodes to analyze how his guests answered a particular question and then write about it in his own newsletter.

Even if your podcast isn’t popular, you can still use it as a powerful content machine.

Measure the success of your podcast doesn’t always go back to download numbers. For ConverKit, they use their podcast network as a powerful machine that feeds into their content ecosystem as a whole. Rather than starting from scratch on a specific topic, they can turn to their collection of episodes to pull insights from to build their next piece of content, be it a newsletter, article, case study, video, etc.

The biggest mistake you can make is launching new shows without growing the ones you already have.

Nathan and his team are really careful about how many shows they add to ConvertKit’s network because too many people make the mistake of launching new podcasts without taking the time to grow the ones they already have. Growing a podcast is a huge challenge that takes a lot of time, dedication, and consistency of output. So think twice before you start a new show if the shows you already have aren’t hitting their growth marks.

If you cut a show due to loss of motivation, you’re dead in the water.

Many projects in the creative world rise and fall based on the motivation of the person behind them, which is a terrible recipe for success. If you’re running a podcast, you’ll likely lose motivation far before you see results, meaning you need to push through and stay consistent before deciding whether to cut a show or not.

ConvertKit uses its podcast network to raise the profiles of the people on the team.

While Nathan believes it’s critical to have an honest assessment of your show’s downloads and subscribers, it is equally important to understand how your show builds brand affinity and helps to create deeper connections with customers. ConvertKit uses its shows to deliberately raise the profiles of the people on the team so customers associate the brand with leading voices in the industry.

When it comes to creating shows, think about how you can build a skyscraper versus a strip mall.

When creating shows for a podcast network you run the risk of growing too big, too fast by expanding horizontally. Meaning, if you take 5 experts from your team and create 5 different shows, now you have 5 separate entities you have to take care of, much like a strip mall. Instead, Nathan suggests you create a Venn diagram to see where their expertise overlaps so you can dedicate your time creating one or two killer shows (a skyscraper) versus a handful of small ones with less of an impact.

Breaking shows into seasons is a great way to better manage your team’s time.

If podcasting isn’t your full-time job (which it likely isn’t for most of us), you’ll benefit from breaking your show up into seasons. Produce a set of episodes in a season, take a break, and then come back and do another season. This gives your team the ability to step back and focus on the other priorities, and it gives you an opportunity to promote new seasons as they come out. On the flip side, seasonal shows don’t necessarily make sense for consistent interview shoes where there’s less continuity between each episode. It’s also important to not break your momentum between seasons by setting deadlines, which then forces you to plan your content better.

Podcast guesting is one of the best ways to grow your own show.

Being a guest on other podcasts allows you to speak to an audience that is already loyal and interested in the topics you cover. It also allows you to insert a more organic CTA where you have the ability to drive listeners to your show versus having to sell them on your product or drive them to a landing page.

If you’re new to podcast guesting, start with smaller shows that don’t feel worth your time.

Rather than going for the big guns, start with shows that don’t really feel “worth your time.” This is where you can refine your message, practice being in front of a microphone, and gain the confidence needed to be interviewed on bigger shows.

Don’t be afraid to ask the host questions.

Think about things you want to learn from the host and work those questions into the conversation. This not only helps you elevate your profile as both a podcaster and a guest, but it makes the episode more interesting for the listener. It also makes it a win-win relationship between you and the host because you’re giving the host air time to talk about their own expertise.

Mentions

• Daily Content Machine
• Notion
• Khe Hy’s Rad Reads
• Marie Poulin Notion Workflow Training
• My First Million
• Indie Hackers

Thinking about starting a podcast for your company? In this solo episode, Jeremiah covers everything from how to set your creative strategy to producing and growing your show.

Rather than going into depth on how to set up a great podcast website, or the exact recording tools you should use, this episode is focused more on what you need to know before starting a podcast for your business. Do you know what your goals are? Is your team aligned on how to measure ROI? Have you done your research and talked to your ideal audience to better understand what your show should cover?

We take you through each step of the process so you know exactly what to expect before you dive in.

Key Takeaways

3 things to know before starting a podcast for your business:

You need to evaluate the commitment, expectations, and bandwidth required to start a podcast for your company. Are you willing to commit yourself to this project for the better part of a full year? Is your team aligned on how you will dictate the success of your show? Do you have the bandwidth and budget to dedicate a team to this for the next 6 to 12 months? These are all crucial questions you need to ask yourself before you dive in.

Determine how your podcast fits into your business goals.

What are you trying to get out of this podcast? If the goal is sales enablement, for example, make sure your episodes cover any objections your customers have. If your goal is to share your company’s point of view and strategy, focus on creating a branded show. If you want to promote internal communications, think about starting an internal, private podcast instead.

Don’t skip creative strategy.

This is where a lot of companies go wrong. Rather than researching their competitors in the podcast ecosystem and talking to their ideal listeners to better understand their pain points, they skip the creative strategy altogether and create a lookalike show. Spend your time evaluating 20 to 30 shows in your space and talking to at least 10 to 30 of your happiest customers to craft your position in the space.

Decide on your hook, scope of content, cadence, and style.

After your creative strategy is done, you need to define your hook (what sets your show apart from the rest), the exact type of content you want to cover, how often you want to publish episodes, and what style of podcast you want to create (narrative, interview, solo, hybrid). Jeremiah recommends publishing at least once a week to really build momentum.

Your host should be a subject matter expert with a flexible schedule and a willingness to commit to the podcast.

Ideally, the host of your show is a subject matter expert on the topic you want to cover. Why? Because they’re going to ask the right questions, understand the audience better, and have more engaging dialogue because they can push back, disagree, or elaborate with confidence. It’s also very important that they have a flexible schedule to fit in recordings (particularly if you’re going to have guests on your show) and a willingness to commit to hosting for the long haul. The last thing you want is your host to bail on the show two months after launch forcing you to find someone else to take over and risk the show taking a dip in quality.

95% of the work that goes into creating a great show happens behind the scenes.

This is why it’s so important to create a strong architecture to run your show. You’re going to want to create a repository where you keep all your episode information (episode number, guest info, interview date, prep guides, production status, release date, and show notes) so everyone can see what stage each episode is in. If you’re managing your show internally, you’ll also want to use a project management tool, like Asana, to build out repeating tasks for your team to keep each episode on track.

Your podcast episodes shouldn’t live in your blog.

Make sure you build out a space on your website where every episode lives and has its own piece of content. Don’t bury these within your blog! Whether it’s a separate landing page or a section of your “Resources”, it’s important to give your podcast a home. This is where you can embed sound files, videos, show notes, transcripts, and information about your guests.

Produce 1-2 months’ worth of content before launch.

The more episodes you have in the bag before launch, the easier it will be to stay true to your publishing cadence. This will make sure you’re ahead of any inevitable hiccups like guest reschedules, content shifts, holidays, sick days, etc. You’ll have plenty of episodes in the pipeline in order to help accommodate those gaps.

Growing your show takes time, patience, and consistency.

It's really tempting to look at 150 downloads after 4 months and think your podcast isn’t growing fast enough and scrap it. But being patient and consistent will help you see larger numbers as you go. It’s also important you listen to reviews and feedback, repurpose your episode content on the channels your audience hangs out in, and consider running a podcast tour to grow your reach.

Mentions:

• Best podcast hosting platform: Transistor
• Best podcast recording platform: Riverside
• Best noise-canceling microphone: USB Mic
• Best DIY editing tool: Descript or Riverside
• Best repurposing tool: Descript or Headliner
• Best done-for-you editing: Hatch
• Best sound design: Artlist or Soundcloud

In this first episode of BTP Season 2, we talk to Jonathan Barshop who is responsible for all podcast growth at HubSpot. In case you didn’t know, HubSpot is making major moves in the world of podcasting. They're building one of the most impressive podcast networks, acquiring top shows like “Goal Digger” and “My First Million” to join the network.

We talk to Jonathan about the paid and organic channels he’s either used, is using, or plans to test to grow HubSpot's “My First Million” podcast, along with how a numbers-driven organization thinks about attribution for what is traditionally a dark, unattributable channel.

We also dive into TikTok’s effect on podcast growth and how Jonathan thinks about social attribution. This episode is full of advice for other brands who are thinking about starting a podcast or growing a top show.

About the Guest

• Name: Jonathan Barshop
• Role: Head of Podcast Growth at HubSpot
• Goal: Create a podcast growth playbook and apply it to all the shows in the HubSpot network, like My First Million and The Hustle
• Connect with Jonathan: LinkedIn | Twitter

Key Takeaways

08:58 – If you’re tired of renting space on other channels, pick a platform you can own.

HubSpot was tired of renting space on other platforms and felt like they milked all their SEO juice as far as they could, so they looked at podcasting as a platform they could both own and grow that could feed into all their other marketing channels.

“Basically, they kind of tapped into all the SEO juices they really could. And so they looked at the ecosystem and we're like, okay, what are other channels that we can leverage? And that we're just tired of renting space on. And podcasting was kind of the biggest one. Podcasting is something they've been doing also for the last 5-7 years. And so they had some experience there and a lot of the content that they're making on these podcasts are transferable to the blog, to YouTube, etc. So it just made sense for it to be the cornerstone of all the other strategies that we're building.” 

11:27 – It’s important to keep your cost per download between the $1-$5 range.

With HubSpot being a data-driven organization, it’s important for them to track their cost per download, which equates to the number of downloads per dollar spent and the number of subscribers per dollar spent. Jonathan says it’s important to keep the range between $1 to $5. Anything lower typically translates to lower quality, short-term listeners.

“Ideally across all of our paid strategies, the average CPM is in the $1 to $5 range. You can pay 50 cents or less per listener, but you're going to get very, very, shitty listeners generally. It might not be like a click farm per se, but that's kind of what we're seeing on some ends. Some of those campaigns drive a good amount of downloads, but almost none of them end up staying.”

24:59 – Be strategic with your host-read ads scripts.

When creating scripts for host-read ads, focus on a happy medium between open-ended and highly scripted. Jonathan suggests using Jordan Harbinger’s talking points as a template and recommends giving the host 3 episodes from your show to choose from to call out in the read.

“Think about it in that way of what's scripted enough to where they don't miss any of the key things, and what's not overly scripted to where they can like still freestyle a bit? Rather than giving the host a laundry list of episodes to choose from, let me just pick three that I know will play well in an ad read, and then if they want to expand on it, great. But if they just mentioned, ‘Hey, they bought Michael Jordan's home or they want to buy Michael Jordan's home and turned him into a museum,’ it would still turn out good.”

30:22 – In order to increase your show’s chart rankings, you need to gain a large number of subscribers over a short period of time.

The best way to do that, according to Jonathan, is through giveaways. Dedicate a portion of your budget to a giveaways contest, like Jonathan did with My First Million. Anything you can do to entice listeners to subscribe over a short period of time will help you move the needle and increase your chart rankings.

“Number of subscribers over a short period of time is the biggest driver there. We did that early on and we got 300 plus reviews in 14 days, which was incredible, but it didn't really move the needle. Then, we did a more dialed-in [giveaway] where you can win 60 minutes with Sam and Shaan if you follow My First Million on Apple Podcasts and that worked. We got to the number 4 spot in the entrepreneurship category and 15 on business. But it's hard to do that really well.”

43:23 – Creating viral podcast clips for TikTok takes talent and dedication.

You can absolutely create video content from your podcast in-house using programs like Descript. However, Jonathan says if you want something with more “virality” for a platform like TikTok, you need to be prepared to dedicate 3+ hours towards scripting, finding B-roll footage, and editing. In this case, you might want to consider hiring outside help or working with a video editing agency if you don’t have the talent in-house to create that level of content.

“Do you want to just focus on TikTok and have someone pull those clips and make those style videos and have a huge opportunity to go viral there? Or do you want to be everywhere and then edit it in Descript and pull all those clips for all the different channels and sort of do a spray and pray approach? I don't think either of them is wrong, but you just got to decide what your goals are.”

45:32 – Podcast guesting, Facebook ads, and cross-promotion are the top 3 ways you can grow your podcast on a smaller budget.

If you have a smaller budget to dedicate towards podcast growth, Jonathan recommends staying away from host-read ads and network ads, and instead focusing on guesting on other shows, running targeted Facebook ads with your video clips, and working with other podcasters on cross-promotion.

“Save your shackles. Buy Descript, figure out that workflow, and then go the route of testing a few Facebook ads, just to see if that could be a viable option, guest on other shows, find cross promos. And then you have some budget to play around with and decide, ‘What can I funnel back into the quality of the show to make it better?’”

57:43 – Be realistic about your goals behind your podcasting strategy before you jump in.

If your goal is to start a podcast to get to the top of the charts, good luck! Jonathan says, even with wildly successful shows like My First Million, it’s a really challenging goal to run after. Instead, think about how podcasting fits into your business goals.

“I think first things first, just get real with yourself. Do you want to do it for the clout? Or do you have other business goals? If you have other business goals then pe...

We're excited to announce that season 2 of Brands that Podcast launches next Wednesday with Jeremiah as your new host! Whether you're a communications or marketing manager, we can't wait for you to hear what we have in store for you this season. 

We've lined up interviews with the people running podcast strategies at Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce, and many more incredible brands. In these episodes, you'll get insights into how they run live networks, how they grow listenership and downloads, how they think about strategy and ROI, and so much more.

You can also expect bonus live strategy episodes where we take a company not currently using podcasting and talk through a full strategy breakdown along with short Q&A episodes where we tackle specific topics, like how to measure ROI or get buy-in from your team.

If you already use podcasting at your company, we know the content in these episode will help take your strategy to the next level. And if you're not, you'll get a free crash course on how to get your own podcast strategy off the ground.

Be sure to follow Lemonpie on social for the latest drops and message us directly with any questions you want hear answered on the show.

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See you on Wednesdays!

Buffer is a social media management company serving small businesses, and it's especially known for one thing: radical transparency. 

From the start, the company has openly shared revenue numbers and the ups and downs of building the business. This transparency extends to its two podcasts: the Science of Social Media and Breaking Brand. 

The podcasts serve different purposes and are produced quite differently, but there is one commonality: each places a premium on providing value to the audience. 

In this episode of Brands That Podcast, Ash Read, Buffer's Editorial Director, sits down with Erik to discuss: 

• Why podcasts are valuable (even if audience growth is slower than a blog)
• Transparency as a tool for growth
• How to get creative with your podcasting style
• Being resourceful with your podcast content

And a ton more. As always, hope you enjoy it and use it to grow your own brand.

Should invest in SEO or a podcast? In this "unedited" episode, Jeremiah talks about the pros and cons of each, the goals that each channel is trying to achieve, best case scenario for both, and how ultimately - they play really nicely together.