On today's episode, we dive into all things sports, theatre and podcasting with the amazing Jason Bradwell, Sr. Director of Marketing at Deltatre. As Jason says, the company "is the best kept secret in sports broadcasting.” 

While Deltatre is fascinating in its own right, the success story we discussed was even more so—how to leverage a podcast to generate social proof, credibility and trust with potential customers, in industries where customers aren’t terribly eager to provide/approve case studies.

Jason and his team launched a podcast last year called Field to Fan, which has allowed them to get in front of 4 - 5 clients that had gone cold prior to then.  

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• A podcast isn’t meant to be a sneaky play to get a customer to talk about your product, but it can happen naturally if there is no pressure.

• How to set measurement targets and benchmarks for your podcast.

• How to sell the ideas of starting a podcast to leadership.

• Why Jason believes every marketer should take an improv class.

• How to create a podcast on a shoe-string budget.

• How to repurpose podcast episode content.

• The two key functions of marketing—demand generation and brand building—and how they (should) play together.

Jason's recommendations for company sponsored podcasts:

1. Make sure you allow your customers (and other guests) to review the final episode content before pushing it live, to ensure that they are happy with what is going out there.

2. Choose how you will measure the impact of your podcast. HINT: it doesn’t need to be listenership and downloads unless your goal is to compete with media companies.

3. Consider whether launching a podcast will make you a “big fish in a small pond” in terms of competing with competitors.

4. Start small—don’t worry about a professional studio or hiring a professional host.

5. Don’t over-prepare. It’s ok to have a guideline, but focus on having real conversations rather than forcing it down the path you planned to take.

6. Share the podcast with your sales team so they can share it with their networks.

7. Focus on building real relationships with your guests.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

• Jason doesn’t know his blood type… and apparently neither does Mike!
• Jason is very excited in testing out Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces this year for B2B marketing.
• Don’t use the phrase “move the needle” around Jason...

Proofpoint’s POV:

We at Proofpoint are obviously very much in support of podcasts as a viable marketing channel. We've launched two podcasts: this one and another show called Mixing Business with Pleasure (currently on hiatus). We've met some amazing people through podcasting. Some of our guests have turned into amazing friendships and connections, while others have turned into real business opportunities. But the most important part is how it's allowed us to create a content engine.

You may come across some that will tell you that they only way to measure a company podcast is by the number of business conversations generated. We strongly disagree, for two reasons:

1. Most people have caught on to this trick and are wary of the “podcast sales pitch."

2. By doing this you are potentially creating an incentive for mediocre content, which won’t help you across all the other channels you could leverage this content on.

Sure, you can focus on building a niche audience that is in your ICP, but many people mistake that to mean you should only invite guests onto your show that are directly in that ICP. Your ICP cares about more than just listening to their peers, and you have an opportunity to facilitate that.

If you're creating great content, you'll foster better relationships with your guests and listeners in the long run.

Speaking of great content… in this episode Jason provides many great suggestions on how to repurpose your episode content, and there are a few in particular we want to highlight and add:

1. Providing podcast content as assets to your sales team. Not only the full episodes, but also the micro-clips and potentially blog recaps.

2. Creating a blog summary, though simply providing a transcript won't be enough to have any impact on SEO, and likely isn’t enticing enough for someone to read unless they know the person on your show or have immense interest in the topic being discussed. We recommend  a recap style format like this one. While it does take longer (about an hour for each of our episodes) it's well worth it.

3. Focus on the micro-content. You and your team will likely have significantly more reach on social media than you will via the podcast directories—and people on social media have short attention spans. Prioritize 2-3 short-clips from your recordings in the form of video or audiograms.

Now for the fun part—measurement—how do you measure whether your B2B podcast is successful? There are several quantitative and qualitative indicators we recommend:

1. Are the right people (people in your ICP) engaging with the content on social media?

2. Is your sales team leveraging podcast content assets in their outreach? Is it helping them have more conversations?

3. Is your sales team using the podcast guest invite as a way to start conversations with prospects?

4. Are you seeing increased brand search traffic after the podcast launches?

5. Are prospects mentioning the podcast in their lead submission forms or on sales calls?

If this episode does anything for you, it should give you the permission and tools to start creating your own podcast. Get started and let us know how it goes! We're happy to connect if you have any questions along the way.

A bit more about Jason:

Jason has over a decade developing strategies for everything from niche consultancy firms to enterprise technology businesses. He believes B2B marketing is broken and is on a mission to fix it. Jason shares some of his learnings on how to do better marketing in his weekly newsletter, The B2B Bite, and interviews other amazing audience builders on his podcast, B2B Better.

Helpful Links & Resources:

• Jason’'s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-bradwell-40b45751/
• Jason’s podcast: https://b2b-better.buzzsprout.com/
• Jason’s newsletter: https://b2bbite.substack.com/
  
  

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

• Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
• Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
• LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proo...