Flip CX is all about voice, specifically the voices calling customer service and getting routed to the right place. Like other SaaS brands, Flip wants to reach their customers wherever they are with engaging and relevant content that shows how exemplary their solution is and what their brand is all about.
One of the tools Flip uses to raise brand awareness and rank as an industry authority is their Spamming Zero podcast, an increasingly leveraged marketing channel for growth. With 43% of decision makers tuning in to podcasts for business-related content, you can see how powerful the medium is for connecting brands and customers.
But what about the people managing the show? What do they need to not just do their jobs, but do them well? From recording and booking guests to promotion and creating related content, B2B podcast teams have a lot to keep track of to ensure a high level of quality, the thing that audiences want most from a show.
Recently, Casted got to chat with James Gilbert (CMO) and Summer Interior (Content Creator and Marketing Specialist) to hear how Flip CX manages their show and all the content they build around it. At the heart of their production process lies their main goal: To connect with their audience about the topics they’re most interested in. But being part of a small team can make that challenging.
It’s no secret that B2B content marketers and podcasters are under a great deal of pressure to consistently produce content. At Flip CX, the podcast team was also pressed to produce high-quality content that engages the audience and keeps them tuning in to the show. But it can be very tough to accomplish this with just your internal stakeholders.
According to a WebinarCare post:
Two-thirds of content creators are struggling to do their jobs and achieve their goals, and while those numbers apply to content marketing in general, the same is true for podcasting, which can be compounded by a lack of resources.
To run a B2B podcast that's going to serve your brand and your business goals, you ideally need a team of people with specific, complementary roles, such as:
Some podcasts have larger teams to handle uploading and publishing episodes and related content to the website, managing platform distribution, social media promotion, and content planning. Some are even responsible for creating social, email, and blog content themselves.
The reality, however, for many companies is that tough economic times reduce budget and limit internal resources. In other words, you have to fulfill all these roles with the staff you have. If you're lucky, maybe you have three people. Often, it's less.
Flip found themselves in this situation and began looking for a solution that would take some of the load off their marketers’ shoulders and function like an extension of their internal team. And they’re not alone. Nearly 65% of B2B marketers outsource some or all of their content creation.
97.7% of podcasters believe that quality content is essential, but consistently maintaining high quality can be compromised by two or three marketers having to run every facet of producing a podcast.
What can make a huge difference for even a small team are tech solutions, platforms, and tools that allow content marketers to create content from a podcast in an easy, fast, and accurate way. Here’s how Flip’s Summer Interior describes the difference a podcast marketing platform can make (and yes, in this particular case, it’s the Casted platform):
“We’re a very small team. So we’re split in a million different directions, which is fun and also hard,” Summer says. “So when it comes to podcasts, it’s not a secret on my team that the podcast is what I’m most passionate about. I really believe in what it does... I help to manage the visual, the video, the audio, that kind of stuff, guest interactions, but what I contribute in terms of content myself is all the written.
“So being able to work on all of that and get all of that ready and then plug it right in, being able to preview and know what it’s going to look like, being able to go back in and change easily, without being like, ‘Oh, now I have to download the whole dang thing again just so I can fix that indent that was incorrect,’ it makes things a lot easier and saves me a lot of time, because even though it’s what I’m most passionate about in terms of my to-do list, it’s just one of the many, many things that I have to do, so in that sense it feels sort of like a really consistent partner.”
Like many content creators, Summer doesn’t need a cumbersome set of tools you have to get certified for. “It’s clear, and it’s intuitive, which I will be the first to say that I am not the most techy person,” she explains. “And this one, it’s not hard. I’m able to do all the things I need to do. I feel like I have control over it, which as the PM for the podcast, that’s important that I feel like I can handle all the elements within it.”
Flip’s CMO James Gilbert sees the same value from a higher level: “It’s also got the ability to take the RSS feed and actually make it look nice on a page. It’s not just like this bunch of text and garbage that doesn’t look good. So as a CMO, that matters to me from a design perspective. And it’s just a really easy tool to use. I like the aspect of the SEO stuff that also Summer can go in and do there later.”
A podcast team also needs something in addition to a tech solution. To manage and strategize all aspects of a show, they need more people who are invested in success the same as they are. So while outsourcing is a trending necessity, it really matters which vendor you go with as Summer shares:
“We’ve worked with contractors on different things. It’s really apparent when they do or do not care. Because once again, as a content creator, you put so much into it, and when you read something or see something and you’re like ‘Oh, they phoned that in. They just… blip… and didn’t care… or this is not even what this episode is really about. Did you, actually…?’ You know, that kind of thing. It’s very apparent when someone cares and when they don’t… When we did have issues, you guys responded immediately. There was none of that like, ‘Well, I’ve sent two emails, and I think we’re being ghosted.’ None of that.”
Partnership goes beyond prompt replies when problems, big or small, arise. Your podcasting vendors should also care about your podcast and its performance. Whether your goal is brand awareness and audience growth or driving overall company growth, the partner you need is the one paying attention to your show just like you are.
This is what Flip gets from Casted, as James says, “Because you are invested in our brand and you care about it, you actually understand it more than any other vendor that we’ve ever worked with on a podcast, which means you could actually give us really good advice on it.”
In B2B companies, the customer experience is super-critical to a brand’s success, and if you want to see or hear how Summer and James have used a podcast to be the voice of Flip and deliver conversations with CX experts on topics their audience wants to know more about, check out the Spamming Zero podcast, hosted by CEO Brian Schiff and James. You should also check out the top-notch content Summer wrings out from the show. And if you’d like to hear more from James about how Flip scales their show for maximum business impact, check out his episode on The Casted Podcast.
Any good partner or vendor should care about serving you well, and sometimes like in the case of Flip CX and Casted, when you’re lucky enough to work with people you really like, there’s no better way to achieve success. As James puts it:
“We don’t want to work with people that don’t care about our vision and don’t care about what we can do to change things that are real problems that we help solve in their lives. So like that’s it. Again, like, tech changes. It can develop. Like product engineers can build something whenever, but finding people that actually care and do that, that’s rare.”