Incorporating Your Podcast Into Your Digital Strategy with LogicGate’s Carolyn Chapin

Lindsay Tjepkema: Well, it's our fifth season of the Casted podcast. And this time around we're highlighting our very own customers here at Casted. Why? Well, not only because we love them so much, but because when a brand signs on with Casted, it's a pretty clear demonstration of that brand's commitment. Not only to podcasting, but also to the bigger picture of how their shows fit into and actually fuel their integrated sales and marketing strategies. So I may be biased. In fact, I probably am. But I think that you will agree that these brands are doing some really cool, incredible, exciting, inspiring even, work with their shows. They're harnessing expert voices and amplifying them across other channels to elevate, not just the show, but the overall brand. They are practicing what we preach here at Casted. And I want you to hear all about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how you can do it too. I'm Lindsay Tjepkema CEO and co- founder of Casted. The first marketing solution built all around brand podcasts. And this is our podcast. How does podcasting fit into an SEO strategy? What role does it play with demand gen and what should a marketing leader expect from a really, really great podcast? These questions were swirling in the mind of today's guest, Carolyn Chapin who's the director of marketing at LogicGate. The company's show GRC& Me was reaching some really incredible milestones after two years on the air. And it has a lot to do with how Carolyn and her team approach it. As well as what they do with the content gold that is produced from every interview. And how they use it to fuel not only other marketing efforts, but also in a sales enablement capacity too. Hear Carolyn's story of how she inherited the podcast and how it's changed her perspective in today's show.

Carolyn Chapin : I'm Carolyn Chapin. I am one of the directors of marketing at LogicGate a tech startup in Chicago, and our podcast is called GRC& Me.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. So tell me a little bit as we get into all of these interviews, and we usually start off by talking about your show and how you get started. But I'm interested in talking about you specifically. Because you come into this role from a little bit of a different background, more of a technical background. So let's start there and kind of your perspective on podcasts and kind of how that's evolved. Let's use that as a touchstone.

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to start there. So actually going way back, I started my career as a journalist. And that kind of evolved into content and going to the marketing side. And then that evolved into Search Engine Optimization and really focusing on SEO. And I love SEO so much because it's just a marriage of making sure you have technical best practices in place for your websites and your digital strategy, and then combining that with really great content that people want to consume. And making sure that they can find it when they're looking for it. And so when I started at LogicGate a little over a year ago, and I first heard about GRC& Me, I was super excited because I knew it was great content that the team was creating. But my brain immediately went to how does Google and how do search engines process audio files? How does this fit into our SEO strategy? And I was more focused initially on more traditional content, like words on the page. So that was one of the first things I started wondering about. And I love podcasts. It's something that I listen to a lot in my personal life, but I was curious about how this would fit into our digital strategy. So the first lens I brought was," Okay how do we make sure that people are finding this and that this is optimized for SEO?" And then also I have a demand gen background. So my second thought was," Okay, how do we tie this into revenue? Is this influencing pipeline? Is this helping us grow the business?" And at the time we were mostly just tracking how many downloads and how many listens we got. So it was hard for me to wrap my head around," How do we make sure that this is doing what we want it to do?" So that was the initial lens. And then it was only when I started talking to our leadership and hearing stories from the field that I was like," Oh, this is really more... It's helping us build our community and boost awareness. And it may not fit into how I had traditionally approached SEO and things like that in the past, but it was still a really important part of our strategy."

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love that. There's so much to do here. Let's talk a little bit about... So GRC& Me, what does GRC stand for?

Carolyn Chapin : Governance, risk and compliance.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Awesome. So you've made a really interesting show out of that. Which crosstalk goes to show that really truly can. Once you know who your audience is and what they want to know about, if you serve it up to them, you can have a really successful program entire strategy, just like you have at LogicGate.

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah, totally. And actually before I started that LogicGate, one of the first things I did was listen to GRC& Me. And I was so impressed when I started listening to the episodes and hearing how passionate our guests were. I think one of the first episodes I listened to was the most controversial man in GRC or something like that. Podcasts are so great because they... Every niche out there there's a passionate audience and there's people who are really looking for that information. And so it was really my first entree into GRC, which was super. Which is such a great way to learn.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Because you're able to become the audience. Right? And to soak up all the information pretty quickly. So, how long has the show been on? So you joined about a year ago, but how long has your show been running?

Carolyn Chapin : So it started the year before I joined. It started in 2019. So we've had two seasons. We just finished our sophomore season.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Nice. And what role do you play in the podcast? I know that your role is much bigger and involves a lot more than the podcast. So how do you touch the show?

Carolyn Chapin : So my role at LogicGate encompasses demand gen, content, our digital strategy, all of our digital channels. And so James on my team is really the podcast producer. So I work closely with him and with Megan Phee, our host of the podcast to ideate on the concepts that we're going to cover. And then really thinking about how the podcast fits into our content strategy. So how do we take these great episodes that Megan and James have created and really thinking of the podcast as the orange and squeeze the juice out of that?

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love that.

Carolyn Chapin : How do we incorporate the podcast into our email nurture streams? How do we incorporate it into how we are positioning our blogs? How do we enable our sellers to use the podcast in how they are talking to their prospects and in the buying process? So really looking at the podcast and thinking about how do we use the ideas and concepts that are being discussed there. And how the audience is responding to them. And use those same ideas in other parts of our content strategy. And then, like I said, actually taking the podcast and using the Casted clips, and the videos that we capture when we're recording the podcast, and placing those in different channels and using them throughout our strategy. And then also using the podcast to actually connect with both the guests who are appearing there, but then also with the community that we're trying to build in the risk management space.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah. And I love that. So this whole season is featuring our customers like you. And I have really, really loved watching basically what you just described. Not only do you have a great show, and it's really strong, and you're creating really great content, you have a great team, as you just mentioned that is producing a really great show with really helpful episodes that really truly do speak to your audience. But then quite often, what I see just at large is companies that have a podcast, it's set over here in this separate thing. In its own little box, in its own little space. Right? And that content, whether it's a host and their passion project, or if it's a person who is either told to, or allowed to go start a podcast. And so it's kind of its own thing. And then everything else that you just ran down that's really encompasses your role is separate. And what I love about what you specifically are doing and what your team is doing, and what LogicGate is doing is you're saying," Nope, it's all part of the same thing." And really this show, not only is it part of the strategy, but it's fueling the strategy.

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think we're at the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more than we can do. But it's definitely, especially heading into 2021, a big part of how we're thinking about our content strategy, marketing strategy overall. And I actually just hired a new Content Strategist. And one of the first projects that I'm having her tackle is listen to all of our episodes of GRC& Me and think about ways that we can both incorporate that content. Whether that's like I said, putting it in a nurture stream, or adding clips to the website. Whether that's within blogs or even on our pages that are talking about our product. Because they had a relevant clip from one of the episodes. But also, like I said looking at which of the episodes got the most listens and how the audience responded to that. Which ones got people talking on social. Because those are definitely concepts that we should be reusing and that we know are resonating with our audience. So, yeah, I'm super excited about how we can... Like I said, really squeeze all the juice out of each of these pieces of content really is what they are.

Lindsay Tjepkema: For sure. Absolutely. You're amplifying those expert voices that you get to come onto your show. And why in the world would you stop with your show? Okay, So I want to talk to you, kind of tying it all together. So you came from demand gen, SEO, which is still... It's an important thing. It's important part of your role. It's important to you, it's important to the business. But knowing what you know now about your show, how do you see the podcast impacting the business? Like how is it, how should it be, how do you want it to be and how has that possibly changed over time for you?

Carolyn Chapin : I think we're still on the journey of how we get all those measurement pieces in place, but a few things. I think one thing that I'm super excited about that happened with our second season is that we got... And we just released the last episode, not that long ago. But we've gotten close to a thousand new listeners. And if you think about, especially right now in, COVID, in quarantine and we're not doing live events, and we don't have as many speaking opportunities where you're in an auditorium and have a captive audience who you know is interested in your subject matter. It's so amazing to me that we were able to get a thousand new people who didn't necessarily know what we were doing, or know anything about us. Who are clearly interested enough to just want to spend time because a podcast is a time commitment that you're taking time out of your day to listen. So to me, I mean that in and of itself, if I was able to sign our CEO up for a speaking engagement where he got in front of a thousand people who are interested in our product, I would jump at the chance. So I think that's one way we know it's definitely boosting awareness and getting us in front of people that are interested in what we're doing. Also, just another way that I'm seeing the impact is the social conversations. Because we are especially since we started using Casted and sharing the clips in social, then that way people can actually listen to a bite- sized clip if they aren't ready to make that commitment and spend a bigger chunk of time with us. We've seen some of the conversations that are happening in social that either thought leaders in the space, or consultants, or potential customers are talking in the comments. So we're seeing that, that we're able to be part of the conversation and able to get the conversation going. So that's another way that I can see the impact. And then our sellers and just the internal buy- in I see as any good marketer should I sometimes listen in on sales calls. And when I hear our sellers talking about the podcast and they're so excited about this very well- produced professional sounding thing that we're doing. And the guests that we're getting on the show. And that the prospects are like," Oh yeah, that sounds interesting." I mean, I consider that internal buy- in, and the way that our prospects are reacting is success. And yeah, I mean, I think as I'm thinking about the future, I think that there's... I have a lot of ideas of how moving forward we can start to measure more impact on pipeline.` There's things that we could do in terms of which... We use account based marketing tools, so we could use those to see what accounts are viewing the pages that we have links to our podcasts and draw inferences there. So I think right now I feel really confident and comfortable with the fact that we are... I know that we're boosting awareness, that we're getting new ears on the brand. Right? So there's a lot of qualitative feedback we're getting. And then I think there's definitely ways that we can continue to work towards grabbing the quantitative as well.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Would you say that your view about it having to be directly attributable to this exact metric has changed? Or do you think that... Because on one hand it seems maybe that's not really how it works, but on the other hand, maybe you're getting a lot more data that says maybe it's not just impacting this one thing, it's impacting lots of things.

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah. I think it's more the latter. Sometimes the demand gen marketers can be like... Or thinking of it from even a field marketing standpoint, you're like," Okay, how much influence did this have? What percentage of pipeline did this influence?" So I think we do have the softer engagement metrics. And that's important too, especially for a company at our stage where we're trying to boost more awareness and win more mind share in the market. So yeah, I feel like we are increasing the amount of data that we have. And yes, my perspective has changed a little bit on like, it doesn't have to be," Oh, it was X amount in revenue that this influenced." But getting a thousand new people who are aware of our brand is super exciting as well.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And then hopefully it ends up being both. Right. Hopefully it ends up-

Carolyn Chapin : Right. Totally. It probably is.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about some of the challenges or learnings that you've had along the way. What could you share with people who might be in some of those right now?

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that I'm really proud of that the team, James and Megan have done a great job at is being flexible and adapting. None of us expected that the majority of 2020 was going to be spent in quarantine. And we weren't going to be able to get face to face. And James, hasn't been able to use all of the equipment that we had in the office, our soundproof room with the soundboard. So being really flexible and ready to pivot, I think that's true for anything, but that definitely proved true for our GRC news strategy this year. And also we had to change some of our plans in terms of subject matter. We pivoted for one of the episodes that had Gina our CMO Matt Kunkel our CEO talk about our response to COVID- 19 and how we were handling it. And how we were going to make sure that we maintain business continuity. And then we did an episode later in season talking about strategies for return to work. So I think being ready to be flexible and pivot, and best laid plans. You think you're going to go one way and then you have to go another. And I think what we were talking about earlier, being ready to learn from your mistakes. I think we have been guilty in the past of recording an episode and then sharing it on social and being like," Yeah, we did it." So I think we're backtracking now a little bit. And it's not too late to do that. And looking at," Okay, we recorded this episode. It might've been six months ago, but this is great content. Let's write a blog on it." We started halfway through the season, starting to post the videos from the episodes, and making sure that we were thinking about the ways to optimize the content. So I feel like you can learn from your mistakes and it's never too late to rectify those.

Lindsay Tjepkema: So on that note, how has, assuming that it has, the show helped you stay connected with... You mentioned a thousand new listeners. Those are new connections. And then your existing listeners, and your existing audience, and customers, and prospects. Has the show been a part of helping you stay connected or gain new connections with people?

Carolyn Chapin: Yeah, I mean, I would say one thing that I love that Megan always does on every episode is have the guests share some sort of personal human story. At the end of the day, we are all humans. We want to connect. And it helps really to shine that spotlight on the guests. So I feel like having those human elements included... I know we did an episode on transformative risk management and the guest told a story about how he explains risk management to his daughter. And I know there was another episode where Megan talked to the guests about his hobby of playing hockey and how that fits into being a risk manager, the risks he takes doing that. So I feel like bringing in those human elements really has helped us not only connect with those guests, but then also help our audience feel like we're all humans here, we're all connected. And help build that community that we want to build. So I think really highlighting those human elements. And yeah, I mean, I think just like I said, when I've listened to the sales calls and people are talking or get excited about what they're hearing on the episodes. And the sellers, our actual internal team getting excited about it as well. There's something very intimate about podcasts and about somebody's voice being in your head. And I feel like people as much as this pains me as a former journalist, not everyone has the time or desire to sit and read all the time. And so having this other option that you can take with you when you're going on a run, or exercising, or walking to get coffee is just a great way to connect with the audience that you're trying to reach.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Absolutely. We talked earlier about the subject matter that you're covering. I mean, it's some heavy stuff you're getting into, and that you're trying to say," This is engaging and this is important. Not only is it important for you to know, but this can be really entertaining and educational, inspiring." And I love how you're finding ways to humanize something that can otherwise be very, very black and white, very cut and dry. Some people might say even dry potentially. Right?

Carolyn Chapin : Some people might say that. That's true. [crosstalk 00:18: 08 ].

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah. You're refusing to look at it that way. Because it doesn't have to be because for the people who are in it every day and who are trying to be the best in their roles and seeking out information, you have that information. So why not make it fun to listen to and engaging to listen to, and really human. Right?

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah, totally. And I think what you're getting at too is the continuing education part. This is something that, especially right now when we're all stuck at home for the most part, that people want to want to learn more. And want to educate themselves. So I mean, it's another way to do that. And actually we had to pivot our first user conference that was scheduled for July and we planned to do it in person. And we planned to do live broadcast from agility, from our user conference. And obviously that plan is changed and we ended up doing that as a digital or a webinars style event. So instead we ended up taking clips from some of the best sessions and creating a podcast episode from that. And so it was another way to share some of those learnings and that thought leadership with another audience. Because really inaudible to our user conference for our existing customers. So it was a way for us to repackage that educational content and get it in front of not only our customers, but anyone from the community that might be listening to the podcast or potential prospects.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Absolutely. And it's just such a reminder that no matter what product or service you are representing in your marketing role, there is an audience out there that really, really truly cares and they are humans. Right? So you are a human trying to talk to another human. And so just, you have to know that audience well enough to deliver the information that they're looking for in a way that a human finds engaging. What's next? What's on the horizon for... You said you just wrapped up season two. What's next for GRC& Me?

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah. So we're planning for season three. We are in the throws of doing that. We just did a big retro on what we learned from season two, and what we think we want to do for season three. We are toying with the rebrand. I'm not going to spill the beans on that yet, but so stay tuned. And like I said content strategy is a really big part of what we are planning for season three. Really making sure, like I said earlier that we are getting not just audio files, but we're getting a video, we're getting a blog post. We're getting the clips to share on social. We're incorporating that into our sales [ inaudible 00:20:27]. So making sure that we're really atomizing and squeezing the juice out of every episode. I think that like I said, I feel like we've done some things right with sales enablement, but I think we can even do better. I want to make sure that our sellers feel enabled with the clips from every episode that they use them like they wrote a one-sheeter or a blog post, they use them just how they would another piece of content as part of their outreach process. And like, I was just saying really more... I think more customer interaction. How can we get more customers on the show and foster more of that. Like, what's your best practices? We're all in this together. Let's have that community vibe to do the season. So I think lots of good things in the hopper.

Lindsay Tjepkema: It's exciting. It'll be exciting to watch that all come together and to see about a possible rebrand. I like that. That's fun.

Carolyn Chapin : We'll see.

Lindsay Tjepkema: For those of us who get to watch. I know how much work it is on your side. So, okay. And then before we close, what advice do you have for others who are in your shoes or the shoes of people who are on your team, and that are working on or within a podcast on behalf of their brand?

Carolyn Chapin : Yeah. I mean do it. Anything new could be scary. And like I said, when I first came to LogicGate, I wasn't sure how to engage with the podcast or what this meant and how it's growing the business. But it's such a great way to connect with your audiences. And like I said, it's really just recording conversations that might be happening anyway and letting others in on the fold and adding, adding some polish to it. And there are, like we talked about, there are tribes and communities out there who are interested in what you have to say. And this is just a really great way to build an intimate connection with them.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for letting us peek behind the scenes of GRC& Me. And for sharing your perspectives on how it all fits together at LogicGate. Thanks so much. I appreciate you being here. That's our show. Thanks for listening. For more from today's guest, visit casted. us to subscribe and to receive our show as it's published, along with other exclusive content each and every week.