For B2B SaaS Companies, Podcasts are a No-Brainer: Jeremy Shere

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Mark Evans: For many b to b SaaS companies, podcasts are a compelling proposition. The podcast creates opportunities to connect with customers, prospects, and influencers. And as important, it can generate a lot of content by extracting insight about multiple topics. Yet it can be a challenge for marketers to sell a podcast to senior executives who can't see the ROI. On today's podcast, I'm talking with Jeremy Sheer, founder and CEO of Conversa, which helps brands like HP and AMD create podcast to connect with prospects, generate content, and grow brand awareness. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Jeremy.

Jeremy Shere: Well, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Mark Evans: As people operating in the eye of the podcast hurricane, we clearly see the benefits. In my business, the value is clear and obvious. Launching a podcast in 2020 was probably one of the best professional decisions that I've made. So here's the question. Why do you think many b two b companies struggle to embrace podcasting? What stops them from jumping on the bandwagon?

Jeremy Shere: Well, I think, you know, you touched on it already in your intro, Mark, that number one, they might just be a little wary of the ROI or knowing they're gonna have to prove the ROI and not knowing how to do that. I think it can seem like a very heavy lift, Not so much necessarily to get a podcast started, although I think that's another reason a lot of b to b marketers just might not know exactly where to begin. But also the thought of starting something new, especially something like a podcast they haven't done before, building an audience for it, just might seem like a gargantuan task that they don't have time for or the energy for, and they're already nurturing all these other channels. You know? So at the end of the day, I think it's it podcasting seems to a lot of b to b marketers like a nice to have, but not a need to have. And given that time is short and a lot of b two b marketers already have so much on their plate, it just seems like something like, yeah, that would be cool, but the time's not right.

Mark Evans: Timing is a very interesting idea because as the economy has softened, as demand for B2B products and services has sagged, a lot of marketers need to focus on what truly matters. Budgets have been reduced and whatever you do need to generate ROI, more specifically leads because every CEO these these days is demanding leads, leads, leads. So do you think that some of the enthusiasm for podcasting has dissipated because due to the current economic positions, it's just not seen as something that they want to embrace right now? I mean, that's not what I'm seeing, actually.

Jeremy Shere: So I have a lot of discussions with b two b marketers. And recently, I'm not hearing that, you know, because of the economy, now is not a good time for podcasting. In fact, I'm hearing the opposite. I'm hearing, like, yes. We, in fact, we are very interested in podcasting for 2023. But, you know, we need to learn more about how it works and how to make a business case for it. There's kind of the inkling that, like, yeah, actually, this would be a good play. We can make a good business case for it. We're just not exactly sure how. So, I mean, that's what I'm hearing.

Mark Evans: So, conceptually, marketers get the idea of a podcast. They understand that it's a great way to establish connections and generate lots of content. So theoretically, it makes sense. But what you're suggesting is that the mechanics, the work involved, the resources that need to be allocated are probably the biggest blocks right now for many b two b companies.

Jeremy Shere: I think that's a big part of it. And I think some marketers definitely see the value of using podcasting as a way to connect with people, with prospects, and generate content. But just as many don't necessarily see that. I think they see podcasting in the more traditional way of the brand awareness play. We'll start this thing. We'll build up an audience. So some don't really see past that either, like I said before, and that's kind of a reason why maybe they're not ready to get into it. But, you know, but you make a good point in that. There there definitely are other ways to look at the value of podcasting alongside building up an audience.

Mark Evans: Well, that's the obvious or next question here is how do companies measure the success and ROI of a podcast? You know, in a world dominated by data, you know, what are the traditional metrics to use? And as importantly, what are ways to measure ROI from a qualitative perspective? You know, in a sense, a podcast ROI is a combination of art and science. Some metrics, downloads, number of streams, subscribers are going to be front and center and you can look at a KPI dashboard and say to your CEO, look, the numbers are going up. But in other respects, a lot of the ROI of a podcast is hidden. It's behind the scenes. It's conversations that are happening. You know, marketers like Chris Walker talk about dark web and dark social. All those interactions, all those recommendations and brand awareness that's happening without brands even being aware of it. And Yeah. And that's one of the challenges of a podcast is that there are some obviously high level metrics, but lots of different ways that a success of a podcast can be measured.

Jeremy Shere: The most traditional way is to look at your podcast dashboard and see how many listens are we getting. You know, how many unique listeners are are checking us out. And per episode over the lifetime of the podcast over the last month, what do the numbers look like? How many downloads are we getting? That's the traditional way, and it's a perfectly good way in in its own limited way. I mean, it does give you a sense of, are you gaining traction, or has it plateaued, or are you losing listeners? Right? So definitely one way to look at it. But a few caveats. Number one, it does take time to build up an audience for a podcast, just like for any channel. And so it depends when you're looking at the dashboard. If you've launched your podcast and you have five episodes out there and you've been publishing for five weeks in a row and you look at the dashboard and the numbers aren't where you want them to be, that's too soon to to conclude that it's not working. It just takes a while for a podcast to catch on. And it also depends how well you're promoting it. And in the bigger picture, that's just one way of measuring the value of a podcast. And you've you already began to touch on some of the others. As you mentioned, I think, a few minutes ago, another way to mention to to look at the value of a podcast is how are we using the podcast to generate content? So, ideally, you can if you're doing it the right way, you're using a podcast as at the very center of your content generation machine Because you're starting with discussions just like we're doing now, the most natural thing in the world. We'll probably end up recording here for probably at least twenty minutes, you know, twenty five minutes, something like that. You you can easily turn our discussion here into many different kinds of content. We're recording video. You can produce the video version, produce video clips to promote in social media. You can transcribe our discussion, turn it into written content. And I think there there are and and I think that's valuable in two specific ways. One, the the the efficiency of it. It's a lot easier to go from a spoken conversation that you've transcribed that's been recorded and then turn that into written content because you're already starting with the content there as opposed to starting from scratch. And also, think just the quality of the content that there's something about a conversation, especially between two people who who don't already know each other, Well, we're exchanging ideas and kind of sparking off each other, and it can lead to insights or ways of looking at things that are fresher and newer than you might get when you're just cranking out yet another blog post from, you know, your internal subject matter experts you've already gone to many times. It can start to sound a little bit the same. So I think that the the quality of the content, again, if you're doing it the right way, can be higher. So there's that content generation piece of it. And then also there's who you're talking to on the podcast. You know, I think a lot of people that I talk to in the very early exploring stages, they kind of assume, like, well, we'll be talking to, you know, the people at our company, our subject matter expert. I say, okay. Yes. You definitely should, especially in the early phase of the podcast when you're just getting going to establish it. But then as soon as you can, you need to start reaching out to people outside your company, outside subject matter experts, and especially folks who, if you're working closely with sales, are also your prospects. And and this just makes sense. Right? I mean, with all your marketing, you're aiming it at your audience, which is composed of your prospects. Same thing with a podcast. The difference is that you can invite people onto your podcast you wanna get to know and talk to. And I think that is a major part of the value. You're having in-depth discussions both in prep calls before and then during the podcast with the very people you need to get to know in order to grow your business. And a podcast is a way to do that that's not a sales conversation. You're not trying to sell anything. You know, it's low pressure. It really is just shining the spotlight on your guests and getting to know them in a way that can really help build the kinds of relationships that you need in order to advance people, to get people into your pipeline, and then advance them down your pipeline. So I think that's where a lot of the value lies. When you combine that with the audience that you can also grow from a a brand awareness standpoint, if you package that together with the content that you're generating for your other channels, look at it more holistically like that, and I think you can begin to see the value coming into shape that's more robust and well beyond just the raw numbers you get on a dashboard.

Mark Evans: There's a lot to unpack there. One thing I will say when it comes to inviting customers, prospects, influencers is that I look at a podcast as digital catnip. It is very hard for someone to resist a podcast invitation even if it's coming cold. So in my experience, on my path my podcast over the last two years, I've had a small handful of people turn me down. And I have reached out to very high profile marketers, people like Chris Walker and Rand Fishkin and people say yes. And at the and conversely, I've had very large b to b SaaS companies, Clearfit, Typeform approach me to appear on my little podcast. So there's something compelling about appearing on a podcast that people find hard to turn down. So if you're a brand and you're looking at your potential guest universe, It's amazing how many people will say yes is simply if you ask them. I also wanna touch upon content. I was reading a LinkedIn post this morning about six trends for b to b marketing trends for 2023. And number one was doubling down on content. The idea that if you create insightful, prescriptive, thought leadership content that meets the needs and interests of your target audiences, that will be a great way to break through. And it's not necessarily a volume game. It's about quality. And I wanna pick up on your earlier comment that podcasts are amazingly fertile material for great content. You get insight from the horse's mouth literally speaking or proverbial speaking that you won't get from simply doing some research and writing a SEO optimized podcast. And I think that's something that a lot of brands need to appreciate as they try to leverage content to break out and break through.

Jeremy Shere: I agree a 100%. I mean, to go back to your first comment about the podcast catnip, that is totally true. I get emails all the time, people wanting to come on to to my podcast just like you do. And I I think it's just basic human nature. You know? People like to be featured. They like it's flattering to have someone reach out to you and say, hey. I would you like to be featured on my podcast? And as long as it's basically a good fit and it makes sense, yeah, I've had the same experience. Most people I invite say yes because what do you stand to lose? I mean, you you get something from it. It's a much easier yes than a cold email saying, hey. Can I have fifteen minutes of your time to demo my software? Right? Or to, can I have fifteen minutes of your time so you can tell me all about your pain points, and then I can market to you or sell to you? That's a good you're gonna get a lot of no's because what's in it for me? You know? But, hey, if you wanna be featured on my podcast all about you, you're gonna get content out of this that you can share and promote your own personal brand. Why not? That's an easy yes.

Mark Evans: And I think the other thing too to remember is that really don't have to do a lot of preparation for a podcast. You can certainly provide the guest with a number of questions just to frame the conversation, but a lot of people love to talk. It's easy for them to talk about the subjects that they know a lot about. And the other thing is that many podcasts are simply audio or many guests don't look at a podcast as a video conversation. They look at it as an audio conversation. So they're more comfortable. They're more relaxed. They don't have to prepare as much. So that's something to consider when you're looking to get people on your podcast.

Jeremy Shere: For sure. Right? You you give them options. I mean, I found that most people seem to be pretty comfortable with video as well. And that's maybe that's because of COVID when we all spent pretty much all day every day on Zoom on you know, whether it was recorded or not, you didn't even know most of the time. But it's just we've grown comfortable with this, you know, sort of seeing ourselves in these little boxes on the screen. And that's valuable too. And I think a lot of people are like, oh, you're gonna record videos so I'll get some video content of myself too? Cool. Let's do it. You know? It's just a very attractive proposition, like you said.

Mark Evans: One thing I did wanna ask you about going back to KPIs like download subscribers, number of streams. When you work with clients like HP and other big brands, what advice do you give them or what help do you give them to promote their podcast? It's one thing to produce a podcast, get the video clips already and the audio clips. It's another thing to make sure that you distribute it in the right places to the right people. Yeah. How should a brand approach distribution to make sure that all the hard work that you're putting into a podcast generates brand awareness, listeners, and ROI?

Jeremy Shere: Well, there's quite a bit that goes into it. I mean, in some ways, promoting a podcast is no different than promoting any channel that you have. So you're gonna do all the basic things. You're gonna use your existing channels. You're gonna focus on the ones where the audience you're hoping to reach with the podcast focus on the channels that are most likely to reach them. I mean, I think some things that are maybe a little more peculiar to podcasting to one degree or another. I mean, the the key to to success with podcasting, by far number one, is, being consistent. So publishing episodes on a regular cadence, whatever that cadence is, weekly, twice a month, whatever, sticking to the schedule. So that's number one. Even if you're promoting it well, but you don't stick to the schedule, it's not gonna work. But assuming that you are being consistent, then also being consistent with your promotions, and that's no different than promoting. That's really, I think, where video can really come in handy that even if you're not necessarily into producing a full length video version of the episode because I think data have shown that on average, more people listen to podcasts than watch them. Although YouTube is such a powerful search engine. I I do think it's a good idea to to produce some sort of full length version of your episode just because of the power of YouTube. But anyway, even if you don't, recording video promos and publishing those promos on social media as a way to promote the episode, I think, very powerful just given all the data around how well video does in social media. A really good way to promote podcast, a tried and true way, is to get on other podcasts, to find podcasts that have audiences that are similar to the one that that that you're trying to reach. And that works well because then you're getting yourself in front of the very audience that you wanna connect with. There are podcast listeners. They subscribe to at least one other podcast about the topic that you wanna talk about. When you go on another show, the idea is not just to blab and blab and and promote your own show. You know, it's not an it's not a commercial. But, you know, kinda like what I'm doing just now. Right? You know, I'm I'm your audience is hearing from me. And you mentioned up top that I, you know, have a podcast production company, and I have my own podcast too called the b two b content show. You're gonna be a guest on that show. It's it's just an opportunity to let folks know that it exists and for them to get, in this instance, for them to get to know me a little bit on your show. You know, what I'm all about and what I sound like and and the kind of things I like to talk about, they're much more likely then to check out my podcast now than they would be if I wasn't a guest in your show and they never heard of me. You know? And I and I think that just works generally. So if you're trying to promote promote a podcast, get yourself booked on as many other podcasts as you can. That's a really good way to do it.

Mark Evans: I'm not sure about the tools that you use for podcast promotion, but I will tell people and recommend highly that if you are looking to promote your podcast, create videos, audio clips, one of the most friendly tools is Descript. Uh-huh. It's a platform that allows you to edit using words. So you can edit a video by simply editing the transcript. And then you can export that to YouTube or raw video or audio clips. It's a lot of work putting the podcast together. It's a lot of work to produce a podcast and distribute it. But there are lots of tools out there that'll make your life a lot easier. The other question that I wanted to ask you is that there's a big focus on marketers capitalizing on the power of podcast. Maybe dive into a little bit into the role and place of podcast within the sales landscape. Mhmm. How can sales leverage podcast to nurture and win deals? And what are some of the ways that you've seen companies drive sales with podcasts?

Jeremy Shere: I think there are a couple of ways. One is and and, actually, this is how I got into podcasting in the first place, sort of gave me the whole idea for podcasting as, a business communication tool. For one, if you're a larger organization, like for an enterprise organization, you have a a big sales team or many different sales teams all the all over the world, podcasting can be a really great way for salespeople to learn from each other. So if you create a podcast as an internal communication tool and it features top salespeople, talking about how they win, how they close deals, you know, all that stuff, I think that can be a really great great way for salespeople to learn from each other and get better at what they do. And another play is using podcasting as a way for marketing and sales to work together to target leads that are in the pipeline but stuck somewhere in the middle. I think every every sales team deals with this. It I think it works simply by having this tool, having the podcast where marketing can go to sales and say, look. We we're looking for guests. Who do you have in the pipeline that would be a good guest in this podcast? Where are they in the pipeline? What have you already talked about with them? What do you know about them? What would it help you to to learn more about in order to move this prospect further down the pipeline? Again, it's you you bring, invite that invite that prospect onto the podcast and have a discussion with them about whatever is is most appropriate, whatever will enable you to learn more about them and deepen that relationship. It's, of course, not a guarantee. It's not a silver bullet that they'll come out the other side of that experience and say, wow. I'm ready to buy now. Send me a contract. But they'll know you better than they did before. They'll be a little bit further down that pipeline. It's another touch with that prospect. And, again, you're offering a lot of value. It's not just, hey. Can I bother you again to talk to you one more time about our offering? No. No. Thank you. We we we already know what we need to know to know. Hey. Would you like to be featured on our podcast? We're gonna create some content with you in audio and video. Oh, okay. Sure. That sounds good. It's the same kind of process, the same play that we described before. Just if you can use it to target prospects that are stuck somewhere in the pipeline. And, you know, I think it's just sales one zero one. Right? The more touches you have with the prospect and the more value you can offer without asking for stuff in return, the better it's gonna go overall. And I think a podcast just lends itself to that really well.

Mark Evans: One of the things about the marketing and sales process that I find interesting is triggers. At some point in time, a customer will wake up and decide that they need a specific product or service. Mhmm. It may be something that's built up over time or it may be something that the straw that broke the camel's back. In your business, when you start with B2B clients, what's triggered the decision to get into podcasting? I suspect that it's marketers leading the charge. How have they been able to convince their bosses that a podcast makes sense? Like what is it that finally gets senior management to say, okay. I'll let you do a podcast.

Jeremy Shere: Yeah. That's a great question. Well, first of all, I think it makes a big difference to really have, like, a champion at the company. And that might mean, you know, the VP of marketing, which is that's that's who I'm usually talking to. And they might have done a podcast at a previous company, or they're just a big fan of podcasting and are really behind it. It also helps if their boss or the CEO also is into podcasting, and it's just a little easier to convince them to to take the leap and and give it a shot. I think you the timing has to be right. Almost always with new clients. The podcasting has been something they've been thinking about for quite a while. Often, maybe they've tried it before without much success, or they just don't know where to get started. But they're you know, they have budget, and they're looking toward to diversify their channels. And they probably have some competitors in their space that have that have a podcast. So they look and say, oh, they're you know? And and they listen to their podcast. And I think that's that's often one of the big triggers where there's already a couple of podcasts in their space. So there's an example of what it could do and what it could look like. And they check it out, and they're like, wow. They're having some really cool conversations on their show. The content they're creating is really different. It's it's free flowing. It's more spontaneous. It's real people just kinda chopping it up. That's, you know, I think if you ask any b to b marketer, like, what are you looking for in good content? They're gonna say, well, it needs to be authentic. You know? It needs to stand out. It needs to be different than what's already out there. It needs to have some expertise, you know, whether that's data baked in or subject matter experts. And, I mean, I think podcasting really checks off all those boxes if you're doing it in the right way. It's again, like I said this before, but that's what I like about it. Like, the conversation we're having right now wasn't it's not scripted. It wasn't really planned out. I mean, we met before to talk basically about what we're gonna talk about, but we're kinda just riffing right now. And it's hard to capture that in, like, written content when you're writing a blog post or even in a webinar. I think it's a little different. It's a little more planned out. It's a little more like, I'm gonna lecture you and teach you this whole thing that I've prepared for the last month. There's just a kind of spontaneity to it that is sort of undeniable. And so I think it's really attractive content when you see it or hear it. And you're like, yeah. We could we should be doing that. You know? We want that high level content too. So I think that's one of the triggers.

Mark Evans: You have to agree that one of the things or one of the many things I like about podcasting is the creativity, the spontaneity, the idea that a conversation can go madly off in any direction. And then it's not necessarily structured. It's not well defined. I mean, so much marketing is planned out and mapped out and framed out that it becomes very stiff and formal, particularly when you were talking about b to b and b to b SaaS marketing. One final question. How do people learn more about you and Conversa?

Jeremy Shere: Please go to our website. That's conversa.com. It's Conversa with two n's, c o, double n, Versa. I I really probably should have just made it one n, but, you know, there were that one was already taken. So it's conversa with two n's. I'm very active on LinkedIn. You can find me there. Happy to connect with anybody. My email is jeremy@conversa.com. Happy to chat with anybody anytime about just about about anything, really, if you wanna chat, especially about podcasting.

Mark Evans: That's a very general invitation. I'm sure people should take you up on it. Thanks, Jeremy, for the great insight about podcasting, which you and I are true believers, and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and, of course, share via social media. To learn more about how I work with B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and on positioning and messaging development, email mark@markevans.ca, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.