Welcome to the new joiners. I’m George, from Orama a content studio that helps Β2Β brands grow with podcasts. The September sprint continues with a critical question: Business Development.
Listen to the podcast, read the edited transcript below, or watch the video for a visual bonus.
In this episode get into the heart of the matter, podcasting for business development. I've hesitated to do this episode because if you're an insider, it's a bit taboo.
You don't want everyone to know that your podcast is about sales. It's a go-to-market strategy. It’s different from a content strategy where the audience is the target client. Here it’s the guests themselves. And how would your guests feel about that?
I convinced myself to go ahead because firstly, I don’t think it’s that much of a secret anymore. The word is out, many brands apply that and that includes many Orama clients. Secondly, it's not a straightforward playbook. I want to revisit it and clarify. As always, I write with mainly B2B Fintech in mind. But if you're in another industry, consider yourself lucky in terms of marketing because B2B fintech faces a lot of challenges. It's finance, so it's highly regulated. And think about selling to banks. That's got to be a long and complicated conversation, right?
We’ll break it down:
* Unlocking enterprise sales with a podcast (Why it works)
* Content-based networking (How it works)
* How to make it work in practice
Unlocking enterprise sales with a podcast
The idea: create content to connect with others and build relationships.
* build a platform
* invite people you want to meet for a conversation
* collaborate on the content
* follow up after the content collaboration
* deepen the relationship over time.
* reap the rewards (sell more)
It works.
I can’t share details from our clients, but I can share my firsthand experience from returns on my podcast.
To keep it relevant for enterprise sales the reference is:
* Not THIS podcast
* Not podcasting services, which are my main business at Orama (Also it doesn’t work to interview people in Fintech just for the odd chance that one of them would want a podcast - see Alignment below).
Instead, I will use:
* My now-defunct podcast The Fintech Files, which explored B2B Fintech
* Consulting services that I offer on the side, opportunistically (bus dev, marketing)
Two guests became clients, Mockbank and Nordigen. I also did a consulting mission for this organisation, which was not a guest but was a connection from a guest. And through podcast connections, I was also invited to interview for a head of marketing role at one of the big Open Banking firms (I was not in the market for a job, and it wasn’t for me, but it’s still an opportunity)
Keep in mind: I wasn’t doing podcast interviews with a sales agenda, the opportunities appeared spontaneously.
There was a connection between all of those: Open Banking. A topic I was curious about and that I became well acquainted with through 5 conversations on my podcast. I didn’t even think about it then, but now that I look back I was connected with the Open banking community.
NB: since then I transformed the podcast into somethig different and I interview authors and academics in the investment space with 0 probability of them giving me a ‘job’. The reason for this pivot is for another episode.
Content-based networking
Use podcasting for targeted connections
Similar opportunities might arise serendipitously if you network intensely, schmooze and attend all the right industry events. The power of networking is nothing new. You can also refer to it as the power of weak ties. “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”
But you can bypass serendipity or the randomness of being in a room with the right people and go straight to the CEO's office, the investor table, the meeting you want -through this medium.
The title of the chapter is from a book, that I’m loosely referring to here.
Collaborating > Networking
The other advantage is that it's not just about networking.
You're going to work together to create content, not just one conversation, but repurposing this content in many different forms. Your incentives are aligned, for example, you want to get as many people as possible to watch the content.
Collaboration (on content) is a step towards a more commercial collaboration.
Podcasting and ABM
From a B2B marketing perspective, you can see it as an ABM (Account-Based Marketing) tool. You can target specific organizations that you want to connect with. This can be part of a broader go-to-market toolset: ads, events, outreach, etc. that will create multiple touchpoints that form a cohesive strategy.
For smaller organizations, it can work as a standalone strategy, because it doesn't cost much, and it's very accessible If you don't have a budget for anything else. Connect with the CEO of your ideal client, can open a lot of possibilities.
WIIFT
A key principle is that you put the spotlight on your guests. It's about them. They're the stars of the show, the heroes of the story.
It's What's In It For Them (WIIFT), and that provides a very different approach to cold email.
What is the success rate if you approach executives with a carefully crafted commercial proposal that corresponds to their needs, is personalised, etc?
Answer(s): a) it depends b) very low. Both are correct!
If you invite people to your podcast the success rate will be very high. First you need to have a few episodes on your belt. They need to be well-produced. You need to do a decent job at promoting them. But this is the bread and butter of podcasting.
To be specific, for my Fintech podcast, where I was booking CEOs or senior executives, the default answer was yes. I’d say the success rate would be around 80%. And that means there was no need to chase the 20% who didn’t respond because there were always enough guests available.
I’d split the guest booking experience into three phases:
* Start with “friends” to build a track record (3-5 episodes)
* Then you can start reaching out to people.
* People contact you to appear on your show. Many CEOs pay PR companies to book them onto podcasts, they’ll do the job for you and help with questions and logistics.
Your agenda
Obviously, it's not to sell them something. It's a relationship-building exercise and the sales can come later. But it’s your agenda, and you can ask them anything you want, or at least suggest the questions. You can guide the question and you can understand very important things pertaining to your specific goal. It's also good for market research. This ABM approach is not just about, entering the organization, but also about understanding your target organization.
How to make it work in practice
Let's talk about practical aspects, starting with my personal experience related to Open Banking.
Genuine interest
I hadn’t started with an agenda of “getting involved in Open Banking”. I was genuinely interested and that’s why I invited multiple guests to discuss the topic. One conversation led to another, I was immersed in that community and from there opportunities came naturally.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be strategic about it and that’s about alignment.
Alignment
From a business perspective, you need to carefully align your podcast’s purpose and guest strategies with your market.
For example, if you sell, software to higher education, your ideal guest could be the CTO of these companies. If you're selling marketing services, then you should target their CMO.
But often it’s not that simple. Maybe the marketing decision for what you’re selling is not taken at the CMO level, maybe it’s someone in content or social media.
For enterprise sales, it’s probably not a single person or department, you may have many stakeholders, influencers that weigh on the decision. But that’s where the opportunity to interact and explore through your platform is even more beneficial. If that’s your case, I recommend the Goldman Sachs guest and host strategy.
Content collaboration in practice
There are many ways, and many platforms to do that. For the B2B FinTech, LinkedIn matters more, but you can adapt. Some of the obvious things you can do on LinkedIn are:
* Create a post to thank the guest and link to the full conversation
* Create clips, long or short. Even if you don't have videos, you can create clips with animated audio.
* Carousels with quotes from the podcast
Those are examples that we typically create with each episode for our clients, but
The importance of the workflow
If this is not your core business, you don't want to spend too much time on this and it's easy to get distracted.
I’ll revisit this in a future sprint (another one: I’ve got a lot of drafts!) but as these are recorded and edited conversations, they require a few steps and tools or providers.
A seamless workflow is the key to making it last and getting all the long-term benefits (don’t exhaust yourself).
Network beyond the episode
The conversation can be part of your ABM strategy, your sales team can leverage it. But you can also use the content to help build a relationship over the long term.
We discussed it previously.
You can post regularly about them, even if you had one conversation, that was a year ago, So you've got a good workflow. It's part of your schedule. You get regular guest, your network grows and it'll be easier to seize the opportunity or push for them use this to trigger a commercial relationship that's how you grow your business as you grow your podcast.
Further thoughts
If that sounds interesting, but you’re not ready to commit, you can start with a Minimum Viable Podcast:
Relationships can unlock enterprise market sales, and podcasting is a very effective relationship-building tool.
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