Here at Casted, our passion is helping our clients maximize the use of their content. We are dedicated to creating a platform that allows you to wring out rich content and get the most value out of it on behalf of your brand. This is exactly why we developed our Amplified Marketing Strategy, to provide you with the resources and support you need to get your brand where you want it to be.
Part of this comes from our Casted Podcast, where we interview experts in the industry to bring our listeners insights that will help them optimize their content. Over six seasons, we have brought Casted users on to interview (pro tip, this is one of our favorite strategies we suggest you use too). We gain insights from them and highlight just how Casted’s methods have helped their brand when integrated into their marketing strategies.
In a recent podcast episode, we sat down with Josh Wales from the open-source intelligence provider Janes. His show, the World of Intelligence, delves into the open-source intelligence industry (OSINT), which is an area that is new to many, making it all the more fascinating.
The show is essentially about sharing information, and that lends itself quite well to the podcast format. You see, after launching in 2019, the show has grown organically, but as Josh points out, “That’s not by accident.” Josh shared a little about how he measures success and awareness and lead generation, how critical guest networking is for the World of Intelligence, and how content diversity is necessary to get the widest reach possible and meet the audience’s preferences.
Josh commented about how Casted has helped Janes up its game, particularly in optimizing their use of content spread across multiple marketing channels.
“We have access to lots of different influences within the open-source intelligence community. And we’ve just been able to grow through word of mouth really with that and using our marketing channels as well.”
Podcasts Continue to Grow, and More Niche Subjects Are Being Explored
Speaking of growth — it is no secret that podcasts are exploding in popularity with each passing day — Josh shared his take on what he sees for the future of podcasting. In a nutshell: It’s all about finding your niche(s).
“It’s been said that [podcasting] is a saturated market, [where] you just need a mic and a laptop in theory,” said Josh. “[This] doesn’t mean that the market’s going to stop growing necessarily. We’re still seeing more podcast genres evolving, like true crime, for example, and investigative journalism. So, I think it starts to fragment the market, and there starts to be even more niche areas that are being explored in podcasting.”
Josh also explained how these niche areas and diversity in content allows podcasters, and Janes, in particular, to reach a wider audience while also meeting each listening audience member’s unique needs.
“Podcasting is really just another form of content, and people have their own personal preferences of how to consume this content,” said Josh. “So if we have more diversity of content, which includes podcasting, then we’re going to be able to reach more people and meet their individual needs.”
Tracking Growth and Success
As these new audiences are reached and continue to grow, we wanted to know a bit more about what Janes sees as success and which metrics the company uses to keep tabs on all of it.
Josh shared that “from a brand awareness perspective, the monthly average listeners that you’re getting is really important, how that’s evolving over time and changing, and then, with the lead generation as well.”
According to Josh, it’s all about getting that perfect combination of brand awareness and lead generation and attributing those leads to the podcast using the technologies of Casted and HubSpot. He pointed out how Casted has helped in this area especially.
“You’re able now with Casted to track the contacts on HubSpot. So it has that HubSpot integration, and you’re able to create campaigns with UTM tracking as well. So we can really see the attribution there by using UTM tracking and HubSpot across social media posts and email campaigns that we use to promote the podcast.”
The Winning Combination of Brand Awareness and Lead Generation
The podcasting arena has a lot of players. And usually, with many players comes fierce competition, with podcasting being seen as a competitive, saturated space. However, Josh explained that in the OSINT community, things aren’t so cutthroat and are instead focused more on sharing information.
“If you just go on to Twitter and look up the hashtag OSINT, what you’ll find is a lot of crowdsourcing going on and information sharing, and this community are very much open to getting the results and getting the information out there in the best way they can. So they share that information, and it’s open source, so it’s free, using different tools.”
He added, “If you just look at it in general, there are all kinds of people on Twitter, et cetera, who are using this open-source information that we have and sharing it. And that also applies to podcasting within OSINT, or open-source intelligence, because these people who have podcasts in this area, they’re not very competitive in that way, but they’re actually helping each other to share information on podcasts. And it’s a really friendly community in that sense because if there’s a good podcast, then it will be shared. And if there’s information within that podcast, then that will also be shared.”
That being said, it’s still imperative that brands know what they are and what they have to bring to the table — and the content they’re bringing better be good. This makes brand awareness among the top integral elements needed for podcast success.
As for lead generation, Josh shared how it has definitely helped to have such a great, connected network that has seemed to adopt that “it takes a village” mentality.
“It was a bit new to me, but I had help from our podcast host, who basically has a large network of people that he knows within the OSINT community. So they’re able to reach out and then become guests on our show, and that’s been really helpful to showcase the kind of guests that we can get and also just promote that as well. So it really helps with the growth of the podcast.”
Continuously Sharpen the Difference to Stay Ahead
According to Josh, once you know your brand inside and out, it is vital that you dedicate yourself to what he calls “sharpening the difference,” which is a term he first learned from an old lecturer in his past.
“When I looked up podcasts in intelligence and defense, even that industry is just full with endless podcasts from companies, so you do really need to spend hours realistically listening to them and see how your company would be able to fit into that market and how you can actually differentiate and plan for how you’re going to differentiate. Because that word differentiation is really important in marketing.”
He elaborated on this “sharpening the difference” approach: “Sharpening the difference in marketing is what allows you to innovate and be ahead of the competition and just always adapting and evolving each year and each month because if you’re not able to continue sharpening your difference, then you’re going to fall behind.”
We definitely don’t want you to fall behind, and sometimes that requires help and support along the way. That’s why Casted has combined the ability to host, transcribe, schedule, create clips, share on social, embed, and so much more into a single platform for maximizing your show’s (and brand’s) ROI. Let us show you around with a quick demo.
