How B2B Podcasts Grow Up: Start on the Inside to Impact the Outside

Lindsay Tjepkema: Sometimes the best way to prove your point is through a story. I mean, lots of times, actually. I'm talking to a bunch of marketers here, so I know that you get it, right? In this episode, we're diving into a real stage five impact story, one that will inspire, uplift, and give you tons of tactical advice on how to amplify your podcast both internally and externally for maximum impact. This is the story of SaaSMe Unfiltered. I'm Lindsay Tjepkema, a lifelong marketer and proud CEO and co- founder of Casted, the B2B marketing platform for brand podcasters. And I've teamed up with experts across the top sales and marketing teams in the world to detail each of the five stages of this maturity curve and what you can do to launch and grow a show with confidence. This is How B2B Podcasts Grow Up, an original series from Casted. Once upon a time, about a year ago, in far off land, Indianapolis, Indiana, the team at SaaS optimization and management platform Zylo started a podcast. They named it SaaSMe Unfiltered. Why am I telling you this story? Well, because Zylo's podcast is kind of a perfect case study for how a podcast can be amplified for true business outcomes. Okay, let's take a minute to go back to the basics. What kind of business outcomes can we actually see from a podcast? Yes, we know the basics as far as performance goes, audience growth and increase in brand awareness, but let's remember some of the more boardroom focused ROI. Leads generated, top of funnel conversations hosted, relationships with potential customers built, social followers gained, pieces of content generated from single episodes. These are real impactful business results that a podcast can and really should be driving in stage five of your podcast journey. But in order to amplify your impact outside of your company, you've got to start on the inside and that's our story here at Zylo, one that they know very well. CMO Meredith Albertson is back to share their experience with internal amplification of their podcast, SaaSMe Unfiltered.

Meredith Albertson: As much as I would love to think that everyone listens to all the content and reads everything that we put out there and watches every webinar.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Obviously.

Meredith Albertson: Obviously. As much as I would love for that to be the case, that's not. People are busy, they just have a lot going on, so sometimes being able to directly share with our AE team, " Hey, you're looking for a success story. You're looking for something a customer has said, that you have a prospect who has a specific challenge that they're looking to overcome and wondering if Zylo's going to be that partner for them?" Being able to send them a link and have them go directly to that moment in the webinar or the podcast, and hear that section, hear that customer specifically talk to that point? That's really been just an incredible functionality of the platform. I know our sales team loves it, so that's been really great.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Getting internal buy- in on your show is sometimes an uphill battle, but guess what? Your internal audience is going to be your biggest evangelist if you properly explain the value of the podcast to them. Like Meredith said, doing the legwork of creating bite- size pieces of content from episodes and sharing the value with different teams is going to be a huge asset in building this amplification flywheel that we're talking about. I love the example that she shared about her sales team. If you are having customers or potential customers on your show and they're talking about any of your value props, that clip is going to be gold for your sales team. Package that clip up for them and have it ready to add to an email and boom, you're creating an impact loop just by putting it in the content link work. I mean, just by looping them into the process. Your sales team is happy because they have an easy win solution for sharing a customer story right in their outreach. You're just handing it right over to them. And you're happy because you're exposing new ears to your show. It's a win- win and it's providing both internal and external impact. Now, let's apply this beyond just a sales case, shall we? What about the rest of your marketing team? Let's get back to the heroes of our impact story over at Zylo and this time we'll hear from Nicole Wood who is their content marketing manager. She's going to tell us how their team is squeezing the juice out of their podcast.

Nicole Wood: It just goes back to our mantra of squeeze the juice that I think just comes naturally. But I think to your point, once we started the podcast, it just made that so much easier. It's like one fueling the other, but we're coming up with ideas and we're like, " Hey, there's a podcast episode with a awesome quote that we can use for that." Or, " Hey, somebody told me they had this call with this company and they had this problem," and" Hey, let's get them on the show and let's put a podcast episode about that." And even just into the written content, like the transcripts that we get from Casted, like" Let's create some blogs," or" Let's create one from all the segments that we've already done." It just makes it a no- brainer. It makes it so easy.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Okay, not only that, but we have to talk about how they're seamlessly intertwined, the podcast brand SaaSMe Unfiltered with their live event SaaSMe, which is creating even more of an amazing amplification loop for their marketing team. At their recent event, they did a live recording of the podcast and included that in a recent season of the show. Beautiful, right? So one keynote session of their conference, planned and taken care of. If you are a marketer who has planned any sort of event or conference, you know the value of that alone. Internal impact galore. The external impact? Man, they just exposed a whole new subset of their audience to their podcast and likely they created some lifelong fans by engaging them in a real life experience that they got to tie to their podcast. So amazing. Now, let's talk about the impact for the most important people in the room, right? We've talked internal, we've talked external, but what about in between? The insiders, the fans of your brand, the people who invest in you and your products and solutions, the most important people of all? Your customers. Zylo's podcast does an amazing job of featuring customer stories without having to turn into a sales pitch for their product. Instead, the show is a platform to showcase their customer's expertise and excellence. And at the end of the day, Meredith and Nicole agree that it is the most important outcome of all, and I'm sure you would probably agree too. Here's the moment that each of them realized the impact the show that they had so lovingly created was having on the business.

Meredith Albertson: I remember exactly where I was. We had not launched the season. I had gotten the first sort of our final cut of the first episode, had it on my phone. And I'm a big podcast person. I love to listen to podcasts, and so I was like, " All right, I'm going to put myself in the shoes of our listeners." I was like, " I really want to be authentic and go through this process." So got my phone, hopped in the car, was like, " I'm going to drive to Target. This is what I'm consuming my podcast." And played the episode and it was our first episode with the former CIO, Brad Pollard at Tenable, and I got goosebumps. It was not a long, laborous episode, it was 20, 25 minutes. It was thoughtful, it was funny. I had learned stuff by the end of the episode. I probably got a little bit teary- eyed at the same moment of just like this was the magic we were looking for. To bring, I mean, our customers are incredible, and to elevate those voices and have them just authentically talk about the partnership with Zylo and how we're really helping them solve these challenges and making an impact in their businesses? I still get a little bit excited about it. But that was definitely, I remember sitting in that parking lot at Target and I was like, " This is it. This is what we were trying to do."

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's so cool. How about you, Nicole?

Nicole Wood: Definitely some of those same feelings. I think just being more tactical, boots on the ground. There's been, I'd say, a few moments just throughout the whole process, and similar to Meredith, I mean, that was one of them, just hearing these priceless things from our customers and just even naturally bringing up Zylo in there, which is makes our heart's flutter a little bit. But then even to the Meredith point on sharing the feedback from our customers. I remember there's one email that our host Cory forwarded to me, and this person listened to a podcast and was like, " These ideas were great. I brought them to my leadership. And now we're going to implement them at our company." And that just felt super validating to me that we were really onto something and then even as we got toward the end of season one and were starting to see the brands that we're like exposing to this podcast were just incredible and definitely just keeps us building and building.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Amplifying your podcast content goes so far beyond just creating video clips for social media. And that's what this stage is all about, finding meaningful, impactful ways to amplify the content that you're capturing for the podcast both internally and externally. It's been so fun to watch how Zylo has created a tangible value for their internal teams and their customers through their podcast, and I personally cannot wait to see what they do next. Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of How B2B Podcasts Grow Up. Go ahead and join us for the next episode. Go ahead and press play, and it's already up on the feed. We'll be diving into some tactical tips for creating real business impact with your pod. See you there.