We talk a lot around here about embedding podcast episodes and clips into other marketing content. That's because embedding show content allows you to infuse all of your written, social, email, and video content with podcast insights in a way that’s valuable for your audience — and, frankly, just so darn convenient.
What if you took your podcast marketing strategy one step further and embedded the idea of podcasts — all the brand voice and thought leadership topics you've captured in your show — into your entire marketing strategy?
As one of the fastest-growing marketing channels, podcasting deserves more love and attention in your content strategy. The two go hand in hand. Let’s take a look at the reasons why B2B podcasting demands a seat at the strategy table — and how you can get it there.
Why You Should Mix Your B2B Podcast into Your Content Strategy
Audiences have made it clear they prefer intriguing, connected experiences across channels. And brands who invest in creating this engaging content are winning big and learning how a podcast content strategy can fuel your overall marketing strategy.
But here, the key insight isn't about the medium or the channel itself. It's about what excellent podcasts are made of: Conversations.
Audio and video podcasts are the hands-down best way to capture good, old-fashioned conversations in a way that written content simply can’t. And here are a few reasons why:
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- Audiences prefer more human exchanges. People prefer more engaging methods of communication — it’s in our nature. That’s why stale, robotic copy and monotonous research papers won’t cut it anymore for all the people considering buying your brand's product or service. Conversational marketing is taking over, and brands who embrace real, transparent messaging are seeing huge returns.
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- Podcasts capture true thought leadership. Thought leadership can’t be created in a silo. It must feature diverse ideas and draw on multiple perspectives to be most impactful and credible. Podcasts make it easy to capture conversations from both internal and external experts, creating a wealth of information that breeds new thought leadership. As a brand, it’s important to harness dimensional ideas from true experts to go beyond what everyone else is saying.
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- Podcasts breed inspiration. With ideas and concepts from the guests you interview, podcasts inspire new content for your marketing strategy (not the other way around). As you carefully select show topics and guests, the plans you map out should naturally align to your audience and the goals you’ve set out for your brand, meaning the two can work together for a fuller, more plentiful content strategy.
Podcast Packages Are the New Campaigns
As marketers, we’ve been trained to build our content calendars around entire campaigns. Yet when it comes to podcasting, episodes are all too often treated as “one and done” pieces of content that are left untouched after being published. What a waste!
There’s so much gold to mine from even a single episode. When unpacked as multiple clips, a transcript, and broader content ideas, an episode can be spun out into tons of great evergreen content to be reused and embedded in so many different ways.
Creating a podcast package not only allows you to squeeze the most juice (read: ROI) out of each episode, but sets you up to come up with other podcast content ideas and plan other relevant pieces around it: social media campaigns, landing pages, webinars, you name it!
For every podcast episode, plan to create a launch package that includes the following:
- The full podcast episode with show notes and key takeaways.
- The podcast transcription (in full or in part), which can live as web copy to boost SEO and/or be used in the creation of additional content. A platform with a downloadable version of the transcript (like Casted) can also fuel your SEO strategy when used in conjunction with a keyword-focused database.
- Amplify your podcast episode with several other content pieces that align with the podcast topic. These can be top-of-funnel blogs, further down the funnel case studies and downloads, a group of social media posts, and sections to highlight in your newsletter. Once a raw interview is available, charge your content team with identifying new or related topics that fit.
- Audio and video clips and takeaways that you can embed in related content as key component of your podcast marketing plan.
- Rich fodder for brainstorming. Gather the team and think through things like: What insights opened up in this episode? How could sales use this conversation? Where could we embed some of the key nuggets?
The team at OpenView never lets its content stand alone. Instead, their content strategy is designed to work harmoniously, using different channels to drive key messages.
“We’ve created this community of people who...can get tactical information and key takeaways to help them grow their businesses. That’s our ultimate goal,” says Bayley (Dietz) Markopoulus, former Senior Marketing Manager at OpenView.
“We use the podcast as a way to supplement that goal... connecting the leaders we know in our network with our community of readers — just in a different channel," Bayley says. "The blog is still very core to what we do, and the podcast is a great way to supplement that.”
Meg Johnson, Senior Manager of Creative Strategy at OpenView, has built a marketing strategy around podcast content unlike most other brands. And she her own name for her kind of amplified marketing:
"The next piece of advice I have for you on content marketing is to reuse, repurpose, and repeat. And by doing that, you create what I like to call a content carousel," Meg advises. "All of the pieces of our marketing strategy are like horses on a carousel, or dragons or rabbits or whatever theme carousel you want to have. The first horse is the content, so whatever you're building this content carousel around. In this case, let's use the example of the Build Podcast with Blake Bartlett. So horse number one is the podcast, which focuses on bringing in people who are excited to talk to us and share their insights on something that they're very enthusiastic about. Horse number two is our blog. And so, as you can see, our content fuels our blog. Horse number three is our newsletter. This newsletter then points to horse number four, which is our social media channels. Then, see where I'm going with this, our social media channels, horse number four, goes all the way back to horse number one, which is the content. And that's completing one cycle on the content carousel."
Embedded Bliss
Once you start weaving your podcast more fully into your overall content strategy, you can easily start embedding, reusing, and repurposing the content you create into other mediums like emails, ABM campaigns, sales cadences, customer education, and so much more. As long as there’s an audience to consume it, the list of potential content you can create is endless.
It’s time for the conversations you’re having to reach their full potential. At Casted, we’re kind of obsessed with conversations, and we’ve mastered the art of using them to fuel better marketing through strategic podcast management, activation, and measurement. We’ve 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. Sounds like a lot, but we make it so simple!
For more on brand podcast strategy for your business, download The Marketer’s Complete Guide to B2B Podcast Strategy. If you’re ready to see the Casted platform in action, reach out to us — we have so much to show you! And if you’d like to see how a podcast can help grow your business, subscribe to The Casted Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
