Using Content to Engage the Next Generation of Customers with Caterpillar’s Hailey Wheeler

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This is a podcast episode titled, Using Content to Engage the Next Generation of Customers with Caterpillar’s Hailey Wheeler. The summary for this episode is: <p>Caterpillar's Marketing Communications Consultant, Hailey Wheeler, joins Casted's Senior Customer Success Manager, Katie Nehrenz to discuss how she's leveraging podcasts to reach the next generation of Caterpillar customers.</p><p><br></p><p>Key Takeaways:</p><p>🌼 05:01&nbsp;-&nbsp;06:19 How Hailey keeps content fresh and exciting</p><p>👏 06:49&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:45 Utilizing your podcast as a way to connect with your customers</p><p>😪 12:22&nbsp;-&nbsp;14:31 What life was like before Casted</p><p>🧩 16:21&nbsp;-&nbsp;18:01 How themes can impact future marketing campaigns</p><p>🔎 20:57&nbsp;-&nbsp;23:04 Success metrics to consider when reviewing your podcasts' performance</p><p>👀 23:28&nbsp;-&nbsp;25:10 What Casted Insights can do for you</p><p>🧑‍💻 29:18&nbsp;-&nbsp;30:44 Advice for enterprises entering the podcast/content marketing world</p><p>🔊 31:34&nbsp;-&nbsp;33:02 Q&amp;A: Why do you think some brands are hesitant to make podcasts a part of their content strategy?</p><p>🔊 33:21&nbsp;-&nbsp;35:23 Q&amp;A: When you're talking about amplifying content, can you give us an example where repurposing and refreshing existing content was really successful?</p><p>🔊 36:21&nbsp;-&nbsp;38:55 Q&amp;A: What are some stories you cover on your podcast that really resonate with the audience, and why do you think they resonate?</p>
🌼 How Hailey keeps content fresh and exciting
01:18 MIN
👏 Utilizing your podcast as a way to connect with your customers
02:55 MIN
😪 What life was like before Casted
02:09 MIN
🧩 How themes can impact future marketing campaigns
01:40 MIN
🔎 Success metrics to consider when reviewing your podcasts' performance
02:07 MIN
👀 What Casted Insights can do for you
01:42 MIN
🧑‍💻 Advice for enterprises entering the podcast/content marketing world
01:26 MIN
🔊 Q&A: Why do you think some brands are hesitant to make podcasts a part of their content strategy?
01:27 MIN
🔊 Q&A: When you're talking about amplifying content, can you give us an example where repurposing and refreshing existing content was really successful?
02:02 MIN
🔊 Q&A: What are some stories you cover on your podcast that really resonate with the audience, and why do you think they resonate?
02:33 MIN

Katie Nehrenz: Welcome to the Casted Podcast. This season, we're exclusively talking to our customers about how they're using the Casted platform to deliver audio and video that fuels their content marketing and grows their business. Content marketing is still one of the hardest jobs out there. And we love sharing our customers unique experiences, which in turn helps our audience find ways to dig deeper into the challenges they face and the solutions they're discovering. I'm Katie Nehrenz, senior customer success manager at Casted, the B2B podcast and video platform built by marketers for marketers. And I'll be your guide on this episode of the Casted podcast. When the pandemic canceled in person meetings, many brands had to rethink their content marketing strategy. They had to lean into digital and above all, they had to be creative. For my guest today, that creative solution was podcasting. As the marketing communications consultant at Caterpillar Oil& Gas and Marine, Hailey Wheeler has one foot planted firmly in modern day digital transformation and the other foot planted in one of the most recognized brands in the US. Likewise, Hailey has two big goals reaching the next generation of Caterpillar customers while also serving the brand's legacy audience. And she's accomplishing both goals with multichannel content, where she can track engagement data with an eye towards optimizing future content. Hailey also practices what we preach here at Casted. She's amplifying her content through all the channels her audience prefers, driving brand awareness as well as pipeline. Today she's going to share her thoughts on the power of podcasting, why Caterpillar did it in the first place, how they've adopted their shows to speak to their audience, and all the way she's amplifying and measuring Caterpillar content to keep reaching new and existing customers. We're live on the Casted Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by air conditioning, which I'm really appreciating right now in this 90 degree heat in Indianapolis. And I have with me, Hailey Wheeler from Caterpillar, who is in a much hotter place than I am.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah.

Katie Nehrenz: Do you have air conditioning over there?

Hailey Wheeler: I do have air conditioning. Yes. Yeah. I am in Houston, Texas, and I think it's like probably 105 today. So that's really awesome.

Katie Nehrenz: Well, thank you for joining me. It is so exciting to do this with you. We get to connect on a monthly basis regularly and to be able to just chat amongst ourselves, but in front of the rest of the world is pretty cool. Let's maybe tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do at Caterpillar.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah, definitely. So my name is Hailey Wheeler. I am a marketing communications consultant within Caterpillars Oil& Gas and Marine division. I certainly wear a lot of hats in my role, but my main responsibilities involve supporting the planning and executing of our marketing campaigns along with our content strategy for these campaigns. And as for content that I specifically own, I produce our webinars and our podcasts.

Katie Nehrenz: So you're no stranger to all of this. You're just normally behind the scenes.

Hailey Wheeler: Exactly. This is my very first podcast that I'm actually like a guest on.

Katie Nehrenz: So excited to have you. You work at Caterpillar and there's a lot of different business units within Caterpillar. So you mentioned oil and gas, there's marine. I know there's a ton of others. So do they all develop and execute on their own content strategy or does it all kind of like bubble up, I guess? What's that structure look like?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So all business units develop their own content strategy, marketing campaigns, things like that. And our business unit is no exception. So all business units are choosing what marketing mix works best to get the message across to their unique customers. Like you mentioned, there's so many different business units in Caterpillar and they're all very specific, they all have very specific customers who have specific needs. So it is dependent, that content strategy really is dependent on the business unit.

Katie Nehrenz: Sure. That makes sense. And with Caterpillar being around for like almost a hundred years, right?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah.

Katie Nehrenz: So like it'll be a 100 years in what, 2025?

Hailey Wheeler: Around that time. Yeah.

Katie Nehrenz: Okay.

Hailey Wheeler: I believe so.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. I couldn't remember the exact, but really close. How do you keep content fresh and exciting for the next generation of customers and partners and also like making it accessible and easy to consume and digest for your legacy customers?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So that's a really good question. And this is something that I've thought a lot about too. The next generation is ultimately going to be the people buying Cat products. They're going to be our customers. This up and coming generation in five years are going to be making these big purchasing decisions. We obviously want to target this younger generation and to do so we need to take a look at the new ways and preferences for consuming content. And podcasts are one of those types of content that this new generation is interested in, which is one of the main reasons why we chose to do a podcast in the first place. We still use our traditional ways of connecting with our legacy customers too, think like webpages articles, emails, press releases, things like that. That's how we connect with these older customers. But it's nice that we have the ability to mesh those older forms of content with newer forms of trending virtual content, like podcasts, like webinars to where we can meet legacy customers and new and up incoming customers where they're already at.

Katie Nehrenz: That's huge. That's absolutely huge. And I'm so glad you brought up the podcast, because that's exactly what I want to talk about next with you. We already kind of know a little bit of the reason for starting a podcast, it's what the younger generation is interested in, it's what they want to hear from, but that aside, what were some of the other reasons that you started a podcast for oil and gas and Marine?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So the idea of starting a podcast came at the beginning of 2020, which we all know what happened at the first part of 2020. And we were trying to find a way to connect with our customers in a time where face to face interactions were limited. That person to person interaction had obviously proven very successful for us in the past, but with lockdowns and restrictions due to COVID, we had to get a lot more creative in this all new, all virtual space in order to engage customers. With how popular podcast had become during this time and also how successful other business units within Caterpillar had been with their podcast, we decided to go for it and start a podcast as a way to, not only connect with that newer generation of customers, but to also build brand awareness, drive customer loyalty and generate leads as well.

Katie Nehrenz: Absolutely. It makes me just wonder statistically like how many, like B2B podcasts were created around that same timeframe as a way to do exactly what you just said? So like just something that's very interesting to me-

Hailey Wheeler: Definitely.

Katie Nehrenz: ...Shout out to marketing.

Hailey Wheeler: You know.

Katie Nehrenz: You mentioned that you are reaching your customers through Cat Power. Is your customer base the sole target audience or are you also targeting prospects or partners? I guess, what does that look like?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So our podcast is generally targeted at people who are already our customers, but not only customers who want to learn more about the products and services that we offer, but also customers who are invested in our brand and customers who want to know more about what's new and what's trending and the global oil and gas and marine industries. Yeah. Like you said, beyond customers, we're also hoping to reach prospects as well. Beyond prospects, we're also seeing that our Caterpillar dealers are listening to our podcast. Going back to prospects, I think there's a lot of people that are listening to our podcast who might just be brand ambassadors who are interested in learning more about what's going on in the industry and what Caterpillar is doing in this space. And we can talk a little bit more about that, but yeah, I mean, ideally we're wanting to target customers and potential customers and prospects as well.

Katie Nehrenz: Absolutely. Everyone you can reach basically.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah, basically. Everybody who's interested in Caterpillar, yes. But particularly those who are interested in buying our products and inaudible.

Katie Nehrenz: Oh, of course.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah.

Katie Nehrenz: Of course. Absolutely. So you implemented this show or you kicked off this show in early 2020, were now in 2022. I know that, kind of early on into the process, you kind of restructured what the show... Or I guess you kind of restructured the show in some way. Can you tell me a little bit about why you made those changes and how you knew to make those changes?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah, definitely. In the very early stages of our podcast, we were doing everything internally, which was great, because it was 2020, we didn't have a crazy big budget for podcast, but we still wanted to do them. By doing everything internally, this meant that we had, actually one of our Caterpillar sales managers as our host. And we were also working with our technical writer to script every single word that was said in these podcasts. So we had exactly what our host would say, exactly what our Caterpillar guest would answer. And this honestly, it was a great jumping off point, but it led to a fairly flat and unexciting listener experience. So we made a couple of tweaks that next year. So first we got a professional podcast host who was good on the fly. He could keep an engaging conversation going. And as a result, we were able to stop scripting the podcast and instead we could just send over to our podcast guests and our host a list of potential questions that they should be prepared for. And we did both of these things. So getting a professional host and just sending over questions, not scripts. We did both of these things to give our audience a better overall experience. So a big part of this podcast, like I mentioned, is driving customer loyalty, and we wanted to produce something more professional and more engaging to our audience to listen to that would leave them with a really great impression of Cat Oil& Gas and Marine.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah, absolutely. And Sergio is awesome. He's very captivating to listen to. He definitely draws your attention in. So yeah-

Hailey Wheeler: Mm-hmm(affirmative). Definitely.

Katie Nehrenz: ...He's a great host.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So then you were live for, like roughly about a year before you teamed up with Casted. Give us a little bit of a glimpse of what life was like managing this podcast prior to Casted or teaming up with Casted. Yeah, definitely. So life before Casted involved a lot of extra work and a lot of extra money. A great example of this is, a little bit before we were working with Casted, once we had a little bit more budget to work with, we wanted to create audiograms and videograms of our podcast to promote on social media because we really saw the value in them. And we had tried creating these grams ourselves, but they were too time consuming. So we started working with an external vendor to create them for us. But this vendor was pretty pricey, and honestly, also really time consuming. So we were working with a company who was in another country and because of that being in another time zone that I think was like a 12 hour difference, content and edits took a really long time to finalize. In my opinion, I thought the price was a little high for the quality that we were receiving and it just wasn't the best situation, but... One of the biggest selling points for Casted for us was that, audiogram and videogram creation was all fully integrated into the platform. And so that was a big plus. But beyond this, the audiogram and videogram creation, before Casted, we only had very basic metrics that we could track. Plus our podcast was very fragmented. We didn't really have like a central platform that provided us with the visibility that we needed, so it was just... Between like everything being really fragmented, wanting to create audiograms and videograms, but just like not having the best situation surrounding that. That's really what we were dealing with before we joined with Casted.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. It sounds like a lot of chasing just like going between different platforms and chasing down like deadlines on different parts of the process and stuff. Well, hopefully you sleep a little bit better at night now.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. I do. I really do.

Katie Nehrenz: Good. So moving more into like the amplification piece and creating the content to begin with. How do you determine the topics that you're covering in each episode?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So we try to tie topics back to our marketing campaigns. And our podcast for the most part are used as supplemental marketing content to promote the products or services that are featured in our campaigns. These podcasts topics are typically presented or our guests are leaders in the industry. So whether those are Caterpillar lead engineers or subject matter experts that are our guests. Sometimes we've had guests that are leading customers, who've bought our products and use them in their operations. Those have been a guest on our podcast too. So those are typically the types of people that we have on the show. And like I mentioned, all of our podcasts relate back to our marketing campaigns in some way.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. Absolutely. And so now you've taken a little bit of a break with the podcast. I know eventually you're going to go into a new season and you've recently started using themes within Casted.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah.

Katie Nehrenz: So I would love to hear about how themes has and will impact the topics that you're choosing for the next season of Cat Power.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah, definitely. So Casted themes has been really great. It actually helps us determine where our content gaps are. At the beginning of the year, I hold strategy planning sessions where I talk with senior leaders, sales managers, and subject matter experts to determine what our main business goals are for the year. This year, for example, we want to focus on topics like ESG, system integrations and services, just to name a few. And with Casted, we can plug these business goals into themes and we can see what podcast that we already have available are hitting on these goals. And we can also determine what goals aren't mentioned or like what types of messaging isn't mentioned in our podcast that we should focus on. So it's a really great metric for us to track because we can then show our leaders that yes, our podcast content is directly hitting upon our yearly business goals. And like here's all the different sections that it's hitting on those topics.

Katie Nehrenz: That's really cool. So you don't have to sit down and like kind of brainstorm and go through a bunch of things. It's just kind of like there for you, nice and accessible.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. Exactly. It really going back to what I said, it really helps us determine, okay, what are our gaps? And what podcast do we need? Like a podcast focus on like system integration, because I don't think we really have one. So that's also something to keep in mind when figuring out, okay, what podcast do we want to have for the year and how can they relate back to our marketing campaigns, but also relate back to our business goals.

Katie Nehrenz: That's so awesome. So awesome. With the content that you have and will create, what is your favorite way or your preferred way, I guess, to promote that content and how does Casted help with that?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So primarily we promote our content through our social media channels. So we use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to get the word out to our customers. But beyond this, beyond social media, we also send out emails to our marketable contacts with links to our content as well. And then sometimes e- newsletters might have certain content in there too. But in terms of how Casted has helped promote our content, so Casted helps us determine the specific piece of content that we want to promote. And then also helps with, I guess, the actual promotion as well. I'll give you a good example. So currently my team is working on an ESG/ sustainability campaign. By using Casted themes, actually, we know that a lot of our already existing podcast episode touch upon topics like ESG, sustainability, governance and so forth. Instead of having to create new content, we can pinpoint what content we already have that hits upon our messaging goals, and we can just amplify this existing content, which is a lot less work on our end. In terms of the actual act of promoting, Casted makes this easy with like the managed services. We've got somebody helping us with creating key takeaways for our podcast, we could help creating audiograms and videograms of specific snippets of the podcast where we're talking about ESG, for example. So Casted makes it really easy for us to reuse and repromote our content again and again, even when we are like not coming out with any new episodes, we can look back at old episodes and just pull that and amplify that.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. And you've been doing such an incredible job, but that so... I'm feeling the love here.

Hailey Wheeler: I'm glad. No, it's been really awesome.

Katie Nehrenz: Awesome. It all makes me so happy and shout out to Dion out there from managed services who has just been killing it. let's talk a little bit about the other side of this, which is like measuring your success. And I feel like that's one of the most difficult things for B2B podcasters to do. I guess first off, what are some of the success metrics that you are focused on when you're looking at how your podcast is performing?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So we are looking, first and foremost, at total listens/ views because our podcast is audio and video. The podcast is, like I mentioned at the very beginning, primarily aimed at driving brand awareness and customer loyalty, which is a little hard to measure, but the more eyes and ears on it, the better. When we post our episodes on social media, we're also looking at engagement and impressions and reach. But when we put episodes on cat. com landing pages or in an email, we also are wanting to look at, okay, how many clicks does this podcast get on the email or on a landing page? This is something that I've really started doing as of late, so is including a trackable call to action on our podcasts to determine if customers who watch our podcast on YouTube, for example, are interested enough to fill out a form to contact their local dealer, for example, after watching the podcast. I'd say we're looking at more typical success metrics that probably most other companies do for their podcast, but between looking at like engagement, impressions, total views and looking at those trackable CTA links, that's kind of for the most part what we're looking at.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. Absolutely. And then with, the hope is to reach customers. And your assumption is that you're reaching customers, especially based on the subject matter that you're covering, but... Before you were using Casted, how were you validating that you were reaching the intended audience?

Hailey Wheeler: We weren't. We were guessing. So we were targeting customers. So we assumed that customers were watching, but we really couldn't say for sure. And that's why I was very interested in Casted Insights.

Katie Nehrenz: Great segue because I was actually going to ask about-

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. I figured.

Katie Nehrenz: You were one of the first people to raise your hand for Insights beta, I was going to ask what attracted you to Insights, but it sounds like it was kind of a great fit to a very visible problem that you had.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. Yeah. Like I mentioned, I mean we weren't able to validate who exactly our podcast audience was before Insights. And we had had many leaders ask if there was a way to see exactly who was listening, and the answer was always no, we knew what countries our audience was from, we knew how many people were listening, but we didn't know many specifics. We didn't know what companies these people were from or any other specific information like that. And that's important if we want to know if it's customers that are listening or not. The fact that Casted was the first platform to have this ability to show this type of data like what companies our customers worked at, I was totally on board to, and that is why I raised my Casted hand for Insights, because I thought that was really cool.

Katie Nehrenz: Absolutely. Tell us about your experience with Insights then.

Hailey Wheeler: My experience with Insights has been very eye opening. It's great to get validation that our podcast is reaching the people that we wanted to. I think that's been the highlight of my experience. But the tool itself has been very easy to use as well. So it's easy to click around and see the list of companies that are listening to our podcast. We're able to download an Excel file too to look at the data in spreadsheet format. And I know that you all have mentioned that there's a lot of new features and functionalities eventually coming our way on Insights. So that's exciting as well, but it's been a really great experience just like using Insights and getting Insights on the people that are listening to the podcast.

Katie Nehrenz: I've found that it's really hard to like not say the word Insights when talking about insights.

Hailey Wheeler: I know.

Katie Nehrenz: So I just like roll with it and I'm like, it's funny.

Hailey Wheeler: I mean, it's a great... It's obviously a great name for that tool.

Katie Nehrenz: Absolutely. I guess I challenged you to do a validation exercise, to look at the data and tell me like, what are you seeing from this? What's standing out to you? Was there anything that surprised you when you did that exercise?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. So I was surprised with how many people who weren't customers, weren't Caterpillar dealers, and weren't directly connected to the oil and gas and marine industries in any way that we're listening to our podcasts. I think it's interesting to think that maybe these people are just like brand ambassadors that want to hear what we're up to. So that was really interesting to see. But on the flip side, I was surprised and excited to see that we actually did have customers, Caterpillar dealers and people within the oil and gas and Marine space listening to our podcast. So it was nice to see that what we hoped our podcast will do, which was to target people within this space, is actually doing what it was intended for.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. That's awesome. That's got to be so rewarding for you to see.

Hailey Wheeler: It is.

Katie Nehrenz: Now you have Insights as a great tool in your back pocket. What are you hoping to use that for to help propel Caterpillar forward and help meet or exceed, hopefully exceed, your business goals?

Hailey Wheeler: So I guess, first and foremost, this data affirms that the podcast is accomplishing what it's set out to do, which is getting customers to listen to our content. On the other hand, we also have a better understanding of our gaps. So yes, customers are listening to our podcast, but a lot of customers aren't. And a lot of fairly random companies are listening. So we could use this data to determine maybe where we're falling short, maybe look into tweaking certain things and seeing if these changes increase or decrease overall customer viewership. Looking into the future, I think there could be eventual plans for this data to impact our sales funnel in some way. So maybe this information that we gather from Insights could be shared with our sales team in order to identify potential customers before those customers even reach out. The strategy with Insights is certainly still being worked out, but I can certainly see it being very beneficial to us moving forward and looking into like a bigger strategy for our podcast and for using the Casted platform.

Katie Nehrenz: That's so exciting. Just like thinking about like, the Hailey managing or overseeing this podcast from its inception, like-

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. Literally.

Katie Nehrenz: Two years ago. Yeah. And seeing the tools that you're armed with now, it just makes me so excited to see like, one another like year or two is going to bring for you, for Caterpillar, for Cat Power, everyone involved. I love that so much.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. It's really exciting. And I'm glad we hopped on board with Casted because it has given us so... Just so much more information and data. And has really made me think about like, okay, we've got this really awesome platform, let me come up with this really awesome strategy to go along with it. So yeah, I can only imagine what the next couple of years are going to bring for this.

Katie Nehrenz: That's so awesome. What a great story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us today. My closing question to you is, what advice would you give other enterprises in the podcasting/ content marketing world?

Hailey Wheeler: Well, since I'm kind of on the topic of it, I mean, I would say come up with a podcast strategy out of the gate. So think about questions like, what's the objective of your podcast? What goals do you have and what metrics do you want to track to show that this podcast is meeting your goals? Determine who your target audience is, what type of content that they're interested in. And then, determine a content plan, how often are you going to post, on what cadence, what are those posts going to look like, et cetera. My last piece of advice would be, using Casted is a great option for your podcast. So I mean, having inaudible.

Katie Nehrenz: I didn't pay her to say that.

Hailey Wheeler: Having these amazing tools like Insights, themes, additional services like having an account manager, having managed services that help with like transcript writing and audiogram and videogram creation and kind of weaving this into that podcast strategy that I was just talking about, working with Casted not only helps us determine a better overall strategy, but it also takes a lot of work off of our plate and also allows us to amplify our content in so many different ways. So yeah, I would say those are my best pieces of advice for any enterprise interested in getting into the podcasting space.

Katie Nehrenz: Well, thank you for the shout out. I could get real, real good feedback, but I'm not going to. I'll save it for later, but it has been such a pleasure to hang out with you throughout this journey and to just see all the different things that we've been able to implement and try. So yeah. It's, likewise been a pleasure working with Caterpillar as well.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. That's awesome to hear. It's been great working with the Casted team and with you, of course, Katie.

Katie Nehrenz: So let's head in system Q& A. I have a really great question to kick us off here. Mark is asking, why do you think some brands are hesitant to make podcasts a part of their content marketing strategy?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. I would say, it's a lot of work. Podcasting is a lot of work. I mean, for us, I was at the very inception of this podcast and it took many, many months to get off the ground. It took for enterprise as big as Caterpillar, we had to go through a lot of approvals, a lot of talk with legal, we had to make sure that like literally every single thing that we did from like the logo to the name of the podcast was approved. So it's certainly a lot of work. And I think you can be a little intimidating because you're like, okay, what are customers even interested in a podcast from our enterprise, who in the company is going to be running this podcast, who's going to be coming up with the strategy. I can see how it can be very intimidating, but based off of my experience, once you get rolling with it, it works itself out. I mean, it's been a really great... I'm glad we started one. It's been a really great way to engage with our customers in this new virtual way. So I'm really glad that we did it. And I would really encourage any enterprise that is looking into starting a podcast, if it's something that they think makes sense, kind of come up maybe with that initial strategy, figure out if that's something that works for them. And then I'd say, just do it. It's been really awesome for us.

Katie Nehrenz: That's fantastic. All right. Let's see. Next question. When you're talking about amplifying content, can you give us an example where repurposing and refreshing existing content was really successful?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. A while ago, so quite a while ago, we did a campaign for an oil and gas engine called the G3600. It was like the 30th anniversary of the G3600, which was a really big deal. And we did a podcast with one of the original engineers that has been working with this engine his entire career, literally 30 years. We recently have gone into a podcast hiatus. It's, not to get too detailed, but there's been a lot of restructuring. We're trying to figure out, what marketing campaigns were going to run, things like that. And since our content is tied to our marketing campaigns, we just haven't done any podcast, but we still wanted to repurpose our older content, because we see the value in it. We think other people see the value in it as well. Other customers see the value. We were like, okay, let's post a videogram that Casted had helped us create, let's post this on social media. And we got like a 600% increase in engagement from doing that. It was really awesome, and honestly, really unexpected, but the fact that we were in a podcast hiatus, we haven't published a podcast in several, several months. Actually, yeah, we haven't published one this year yet, but the fact that we can still repurpose this content and get crazy amounts of engagement on it. We did the same thing with a few others and we were looking at like 200% increase in engagement based off the last time that we published. The fact that we can continue to do that, even if we are in this like hiatus right now, is really, honestly, really amazing. I'm like, honestly, pretty unexpected too. That's been really great to see. And again, going back, I love audiograms and videograms. I really see the value in them. And it seems like customers see the value in them too, especially with such an increase in engagement. So that was really great to see.

Katie Nehrenz: Yeah. I love them too. LI had a customer use the word snackable and it's like my favorite word to use for it too, because it is, it's like a little snack.

Hailey Wheeler: It is.

Katie Nehrenz: And you get to get a nice little highlight from that podcast. And it can pull you in, there's several podcasts that I listened to that I found on audiogram and thought it was really great and now I'm subscribed. So that's a great way to get attention

Hailey Wheeler: Mm- hmm(affirmative). A 100%. I mean, that's how we're getting the majority of views and listens on our podcast, is just publishing a videogram or an audiogram and then people click that link and then watch the full video. It's awesome to see.

Katie Nehrenz: That's fantastic. Oh my gosh, those numbers are inaudible.

Hailey Wheeler: I know.

Katie Nehrenz: Oh my gosh. Well, it looks like we have one more question in here. Let's see. What are some of the stories you cover on your podcast that really resonate with the audience and why do you think they resonate?

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. I like how that says, like, what stories do you cover? Because originally... Going back to what we were talking about about the... Before we did like the restructuring of the podcast, before we got a host and everything, our podcasts were very technical. They were like very, very engineering focused and it wasn't... It wasn't like we were telling a story. So when we signed on Sergio as our host and when we stopped doing this more scripted stuff, we started bringing in. I mean, one of the big things that we did was, we started bringing in customers. I'll talk about one. We did a podcast with a boat builder customer. We got him on the podcast. He was the... I think he's the president of the company. And he was just talking about his background, how did he get into boat building, why do they use Caterpillar, what do they love about Caterpillar, they recently had an engine installed into one of their boats. And so we talked about that, but it's kind of just like crafting more of a, not so... Crafting more of just like a conversation. It's more conversational, and that podcast was one of our most successful ones. And I think that people really want to see that, they really want to see just people just like chatting. It's still very informational and educational and engaging, but it's not so technical. And that's really that shift that we started to do with our podcast is okay, like let's have customers on here, or like let's have lead engineers on here. Another one, we had a lead engineer talking about one of our marine engines. And so he just talked about, not anything technical, but just like... He talked about his background, he talked about how he started working on this engine, from the very beginning to seeing it go to an open order board. I think stuff like that, just having a just a casual conversation about just what Caterpillar products and solutions are, what they do. I think that really resonates with our audience. And we've seen such a big increase from our old podcasts that were a lot more scripted to our new podcasts that aren't scripted and are more of a conversation, we've seen a lot more engagement in these new podcasts. So yeah, people are interested in that more like story based conversational type of content.

Katie Nehrenz: Absolutely. That's really cool. And I agree. I mean, being able to hear from someone that sounds human, that you can identify with it, it sounds like just a group of friends talking. That's definitely... That's very attractive to listen to, especially-

Hailey Wheeler: Yes.

Katie Nehrenz: ...When you're trying to get information on a specific product or industry or anything like that.

Hailey Wheeler: Mm- hmm(affirmative). Yeah. 100%.

Katie Nehrenz: Fantastic. All right. Well, that is what we have for Q& A. Haley, I just want to take a minute to thank you again for spending some time with us today, talking through some of my questions. It's always such a pleasure talking with you. This was a ton of fun, so thank you.

Hailey Wheeler: Yeah. You're welcome. And it is always great to talk with you too, Katie. I'm always happy to do a podcast for you all. This is a lot of fun. I had a really good time talking about our podcast. So yeah, it was really awesome.

Katie Nehrenz: Awesome. I'm so glad. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. To learn more about Caterpillar and all the insights Hailey shared with us today, make sure to visit Caterpillar. com and check out any of their podcasts like Cat Power and Beyond the Iron. To learn more about how Casted can help you, visit Casted. us. And be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, to get the latest on all things, amplified marketing, B2B podcasting, and so much more.

DESCRIPTION

Welcome to Season 7 of The Casted Podcast. In this episode, Casted's Senior Customer Success Manager, Katie Nehrenz, talks with Hailey Wheeler, Marketing Communications Consultant at Caterpillar Oil & Gas and Marine. Hailey discusses how she's leveraging podcasts to reach the next generation of Caterpillar customers while also serving the brand's legacy audience. She's also promoting content through ampliflied marketing. Listen now, and stay tuned for the Q&A portion where our TCP listeners ask Hailey a few content marketing questions.


Subscribe to The Casted Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and for more on B2B marketing and podcasting, sign up for the Casted Newsletter.

Today's Host

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Lindsay Tjepkema

|Co-founder, Casted

Today's Guests

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Hailey Wheeler

|Marketing Communications Consultant, Caterpillar