Ep 34 How do we convince internal stakeholders that a podcast is right for the business?.txt
English (US)
00:02.720 — 00:17.880 · Speaker 1
I don’t need a podcast that’s not going to make the cash register ring. These are some questions we get asked. Thank you, Claire, for your question. She asked, how do we convince our internal team that a podcast is right for the business?
00:22.080 — 00:22.960 · Speaker 1
How do we do that?
00:23.000 — 00:49.360 · Speaker 2
How do we do that? You’ve got to make a business case. You’ve got to understand what the objectives are of the business. So if you understand what those stakeholders care deeply about, then you build a case study for how the podcast is going to support that business problem. That objective, and much like you would use a case study to support any other marketing tactic, you’d start there.
00:49.640 — 01:01.080 · Speaker 1
Okay. It to me, it seems like it’s a brand building exercise, and then it’s just the classic difficulty in convincing people that they need to build brand and not just focus on sales, sales, sales.
01:01.120 — 01:15.540 · Speaker 3
Yeah, well, it doesn’t have to just be brand either. Mhm. I mean, if I think about some really great content that’s pushed the needle on some businesses. Um, there was this um, you know these ancestry research websites.
01:15.580 — 01:15.780 · Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:15.780 — 01:16.460 · Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.
01:16.500 — 01:17.580 · Speaker 1
Family tree kind of.
01:17.620 — 01:28.580 · Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. They did a digital show that promoted people from going, signing up, and something like 80% of the viewers of that show were driven to the website.
01:28.580 — 01:29.300 · Speaker 2
Incredible.
01:29.300 — 01:29.939 · Speaker 3
So
01:30.980 —01:38.780 · Speaker 3
that. Oh, I suppose it’s brand awareness as well. But it had a direct call to action to it really move the needle on sales and subscriptions.
01:38.820 — 01:40.180 · Speaker 4
Yeah. So I think.
01:40.220 — 01:44.420 · Speaker 1
That it can have cold calls to actions in it. Yeah. Okay.
01:44.820 — 02:42.880 · Speaker 2
I feel like in a, in a world where AI is starting to really become part of the day to day things that a brand does that contain real humans and real interaction between people and discussion is going to be the thing that differentiates, especially corporates. You know, there’s a tremendous amount of distrust, um, of, you know, where am I getting this content now?
Has it been AI generated? Is it even real? Can I believe it? And there’s nothing more real than having a bunch of people discussing a topic. Doesn’t even have to be a video podcast. It could be an audio only podcast. But that really gives the listener this intense feeling of truthfulness of realness and and credibility.
Absolutely. So I think in terms of developing brand authority, a podcast is one of the best things that a business can.
02:42.880 — 02:45.280 · Speaker 1
Do, and that shouldn’t turn shorten the sales cycle.
02:45.320 — 02:46.280 · Speaker 2
20%.
02:46.280 — 02:53.920 · Speaker 1
So it is adding people to the top of your funnel essentially. Yeah, but the funnel is getting shorter. Yeah, because you’re kind of in their face as the whole time.
02:53.960 — 02:54.840 · Speaker 3
And like Janet.
02:54.840 — 02:55.280 · Speaker 1
Says.
02:55.760 — 03:03.880 · Speaker 3
It does that bit of trust building in the the start of the relationship that you don’t have to do face later on.
03:03.890 — 03:04.170 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
03:04.450 — 03:22.970 · Speaker 3
You know, you’re starting a relationship on a basis of you’re trusted and you’re corporately trusted by by a lot of people or peers or or competitors. Um, so, so so yeah, podcasts do really, really well at introducing to to the authentic people behind the brand.
03:22.970 — 03:32.530 · Speaker 1
So what, uh, metrics can we promise these, uh, stakeholders to show that there is some kind of efficacy?
03:32.570 — 03:33.210 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
03:33.650 — 03:44.170 · Speaker 2
It’s a digital piece of work that you’re doing when you develop a podcast. So like any of the other digital tactics out there, you can measure the hell out of it.
03:44.170 — 03:44.610 · Speaker 4
So.
03:45.330 — 04:20.870 · Speaker 2
You know, all of the things that we, um, concern ourselves with, um, in the online space, click through rates, impressions, visibility online and all of those things we would be measuring. Um, so, you know, for a podcast, we probably want to be able to show the business that in order to say, um, meet an awareness, um, uh, deliverable.
We want to see how many people has our podcast reached? How many people have downloaded it? How many people have listened from start to finish? Um, that’s a starting point.
04:21.430 — 04:25.270 · Speaker 1
Okay. So ROI seems to be the term on everybody’s lips.
04:25.310 — 04:25.750 · Speaker 4
Mhm.
04:26.070 — 04:38.310 · Speaker 1
Uh, and obviously anyone who’s going to be investing money in something, especially a higher up in a business wants some data on that. How will we prove that this investment has been worthwhile?
4:38.350 — 04:39.070 · Speaker 4
Worthwhile.
04:39.590 — 05:26.850 · Speaker 2
I think it is important that everyone agrees right at the beginning what success looks like. So obviously if you know what the business is trying to do. So let’s say, for example, their objective is better brand awareness. Uh, they want to be seen as an authority in a, in a sector. Um, then you would look at the metrics that would showcase your work, moving them towards those goals.
And in terms of the ROI discussion determining what five rand will get you. Let’s say five rand gets you the reach of five people, and everyone in the business is comfortable with five rand equaling five people. Then when you get ten people for that same five rand, you can all agree that you have great return on investment.
05:26.850 — 05:33.130 · Speaker 1
So the investment in Raw doesn’t necessarily need to be financial.
05:33.370 — 05:34.810 · Speaker 2
Well, no.
05:34.850 — 05:36.890 · Speaker 4
It sounds in the short term.
05:37.050 — 06:04.450 · Speaker 2
Yes. Um, because there’s certain things in marketing that are very difficult to measure. Um, and they can be measured, but sometimes at great cost. And then it’s then you kind of circling around the story of, you know, well, what is it cost and how much does it cost me to find out what it cost? Um, so I think the return on investment discussion, you have to start with a discussion in agreement on what we are all looking at in terms of what success looks like.
06:04.490 — 06:05.770 · Speaker 4
So sometimes I agree on that.
06:05.810 — 01:06:10.710 · Speaker 1
That’s called R0. Return on objective.
06:10.750 — 06:11.150 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
06:11.190 — 06:11.870 · Speaker 2
And I think.
06:11.870 — 06:12.590 · Speaker 4
That.
06:12.710 — 06:20.030 · Speaker 2
You know, all of these are some things return on ad spend return on um objective return on investment.
06:20.070 — 06:21.270 · Speaker 1
Two more examples, please.
06:21.310 — 06:21.870 · Speaker 2
That’s a run.
06:21.870 — 06:22.470 · Speaker 4
Driver.
06:23.670 — 06:24.270 · Speaker 4
They.
06:24.550 — 06:59.310 · Speaker 2
Um, they are all trying to help a person understand the one thing. Have I spent my money wisely? Yeah. And when it comes to deciding whether or not a podcast is right for the business, if you have other activities where you have already got good metrics for ROI, apply those same ones to this tactic. And you can’t go wrong with getting getting it across the line with the business because you could say, well, these are the tactics we’re currently using.
These are how we’re succeeding in those spaces. This will do the same. It makes sense for us to do it.
06:59.510 — 07:00.150 · Speaker 4
Okay.
07:00.510 — 07:11.200 · Speaker 1
I mean, it’s the age old discussion. Like a stakeholder in a business is quite happy to spend money on, say, a Google shopping ad where they can see someone clicked on here and it resulted immediately.
07:11.200 — 07:12.360 · Speaker 4
In the purchase there.
07:12.400 — 07:31.160 · Speaker 1
So this is a bit of a longer game. It’s adding adding leads to the top of your funnel, um, which is still necessary. Very necessary, but it is a longer term game, and having a podcast going for a long period of time will also just shorten your funnel. Yeah. So the leads going in the top are coming out.
07:31.440 — 07:39.920 · Speaker 2
I also think there’s there’s plenty of case studies out there where you can look at how a podcast is also generating revenue through sales and lead generation.
07:39.960 — 07:40.280 · Speaker 4
Yes.
07:40.320 — 08:20.140 · Speaker 2
You know, so it’s um, our first port of call is often brand awareness brand authority. Develop the equity around my brand that the podcast ticks those boxes very easily. Um, but I think, I mean, every one of us has watched an influencer with a particular beverage placed, um, on the, on the table. And, you know, for a fact that’s been put there by an advertiser.
I’m telling you now, the challenge is just getting people to be convinced that there’s a revenue generated through product placement and those kinds of things. So, um, it doesn’t it doesn’t always have to be this long tail story.
08:20.180 — 08:25.140 · Speaker 1
It will take time to build your following, though, before that sort of opportunity presents itself.
08:25.180 — 08:25.780 · Speaker 4
That’s true.
08:26.020 — 08:34.539 · Speaker 1
I think one of the challenges would be, even if you have managed to convince someone and you started their podcast that there is an amount of time you need to do it.
08:34.539 — 08:35.620 · Speaker 4
For yes.
08:35.659 — 08:58.940 · Speaker 1
Call. You mentioned a number of episodes that you need to kind of do. Uh, which was a scary number, but I get it. You know, even if you go and look at some of the biggest, uh, content producers, now go look at their first videos and look at the amount of likes and things on those. It’s it’s quite striking. It’s dismal, but it takes time.
08:59.020 — 09:41.800 · Speaker 3
Yeah, it takes time to build an audience. And whatever you decide that magic number is, it’s sometimes for a content creator, it’s episode 100. And then the next cliff is episode 1000. Um, and everybody always says, you know, you either give up on 99 or you make it to 100 and build an audience. And same thing for 1000 episodes.
Uh, the podcast is a long term strategy. It cannot be a short term strategy. Uh oh. Unless you’re doing something really tactical. But in general, we’re talking about long term strategy building, audience building, brand awareness, uh, leadership, authority, all those things.
09:42.080 — 09:54.000 · Speaker 2
So I actually feel like, um, in terms of a modern way to market a business, we could, uh, align a podcast with traditional PR.
09:54.720 — 09:55.240 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
09:55.280 — 10:22.860 · Speaker 2
You know, businesses used to work with PR agencies. I mean, they still do. But typically you were working with a PR agency to help build the back story, build the credibility of your brand in an in in a public that maybe doesn’t know you particularly well and you know that was important for businesses when back when you know, the kind of data that we have now didn’t even exist and yet businesses still bought it.
10:22.900 — 10:23.260 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
10:23.300 — 10:25.540 · Speaker 2
And it’s because it really works.
10:25.580 — 10:25.900 · Speaker 4
Yes.
10:25.900 — 10:44.420 · Speaker 2
But like podcasting PR is something that you do for years and years and years and you, you don’t typically start and stop it. You just have it. It’s there always. So, you know, I think what Carl is saying is true. There’s got to be a level of commitment. And for that there’s always going to be a cost.
10:44.460 — 10:47.540 · Speaker 1
The last thing about these things is it’s sticky. Once you do get there.
10:47.580 — 10:49.020 · Speaker 4
Yeah. You’re there.
10:49.060 — 11:03.740 · Speaker 1
You made it. You’re not. You haven’t got there by just throwing money at Google or something like that. You’ve done the hard work. It’s like doing good SEO on a website. Yeah, organic SEO, once you’ve got it done and you’re ranking really well, you’re there. Yeah, you’ve got to maintain it, but you’re there.
11:03.780 — 11:04.180 · Speaker 4
Yes.
11:04.260 — 11:41.190 · Speaker 1
Whereas if you’re just paying for Google Ads, you might be sitting at the top while you’re paying, but you stop paying and you’re gone. Um, I think another thing about Podcasting is the cost of efficiency versus some other things. It’s it’s it can seem like it costs quite a lot of money, but but relatively it doesn’t.
And the amount of content you get from it. Yes. You can get, uh, your show notes, as we talked about in a previous episode on your website. So using the SEO value, you’re cutting it down to make social media posts. You can, you don’t know, do newsletters, do blog posts.
11:41.230 — 11:41.950 · Speaker 4
Yeah. No, no, the.
11:42.070 — 11:43.230 · Speaker 1
Actual content, the blog.
11:43.230 — 11:43.470 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
11:43.670 — 11:47.550 · Speaker 3
The amounts of repurposing potential in a podcast is massive.
11:47.590 — 11:48.790 · Speaker 1
Especially a video podcast.
11:48.830 — 12:45.010 · Speaker 3
Yeah. So it becomes the vehicle to generate content through. Yeah. Um, and we love that for brands because often if we’re doing campaign, campaign, campaign, we lose consistency. Yeah. So if we start building an audience that can go across campaigns, that’s ability to be able to be consistent and sustainable is really important.
And like you said, the costs. Um, because of specialized podcast producing facilities like IO, it’s, it’s we’re geared to create the content at a really low cost. Um, if you compare it to a production company, um, that would have to cost it per shoot or whatever, whatever their costing model is. Um, we now have bespoke production agencies that can produce at a really small, um, cost per minute.
So it really becomes effective.
12:45.330 — 12:59.010 · Speaker 1
And then are there ways to kind of mitigate the risk for for a stakeholder. How how could we do that. Like how could we show them what this is going to look like and potentially how it’s going to benefit them.
12:59.050 — 12:59.450 · Speaker 2
Show them a.
12:59.450 — 13:00.370 · Speaker 4
Sample. Yeah.
13:00.370 — 13:10.090 · Speaker 3
So very common practice is to while we’re developing the podcast is to bring our hosts and do a pilot.
13:10.210 — 13:10.570 · Speaker 4
Okay.
13:10.610 — 13:33.670 · Speaker 3
So there you can check, um, what it’s going to look like. You can test topics. You can test chemistry between the hosts. You can test colors and graphics and all that type of stuff in a very safe environment. And you can you can present that to your stakeholder or or whoever for feedback without it being them feeling like, well, now it’s gone to air and we can’t change that.
13:33.710 — 13:34.750 · Speaker 4
Too late. Yeah.
13:34.790 — 13:38.630 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay, so filming pilots is fairly common.
13:38.950 — 13:50.990 · Speaker 3
Yeah. Fairly common practice. We like it as well, because then everybody knows what they’re buying into, because everybody’s got a different idea of what it looks like until they see it.
13:51.030 — 13:51.470 · Speaker 4
That’s it.
13:51.470 — 14:05.830 · Speaker 3
Yeah. No matter how many presentations you do, these things happen. So by having something really solid and saying, this is what you’re going to get, this is how much it’s going to cost and this is what it looks like. Uh, it really, really helps. Yeah.
14:05.910 — 14:19.410 · Speaker 2
I think there’s other ways of, of showing what it could look like as well. So doing the pilot allows you to introduce the brand and have the kind of people that would potentially be hosting.
14:19.450 — 14:20.690 · Speaker 1
Yes, actually, what there would be.
14:20.730 — 15:19.980 · Speaker 2
Yes. And be covering the kinds of topics. And then I think also depending on the business and their industrial space, you could also look at other podcasts and show those to the team. You know, I think there’s a tremendous amount of value to be found in developing content like a podcast, when your businesses are the B2B or quite complex, because the format allows for discussion and delving really deeply into topics.
So, you know, for some stakeholders that can all just feel a little bit like, well, I’m just going to be giving away trade secrets. And what about all our IP? And do we want to be sharing all of this? If you can show them, you know, the the examples of other businesses that have participated in podcasts or have their own podcasts, you can show that a topic can be covered in an educational Way without them having to, um, show their petticoats.
15:20.020 — 15:20.260 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
15:21.060 — 15:22.780 · Speaker 1
So there could be some, uh.
15:23.180 — 15:24.260 · Speaker 4
Case studies.
15:24.420 — 15:24.740 · Speaker 1
Would be a.
15:24.740 — 15:25.900 · Speaker 4
Good. Yeah, a case study.
15:25.940 — 15:55.100 · Speaker 2
I think anything that you can go back to the business with in terms of showing how it will work and how it will fit into the business. And, you know, as a as a marketing manager, you will probably have access to the budget and you’ll have an understanding of where you’re already spending and what kind of value you’re getting back from that.
And adding a podcast into that and showing it in the same format will allow the people that are making the decisions to go, okay, I can see how this works. The case is there for it.
15:55.100 — 15:55.420 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
15:55.460 — 16:00.220 · Speaker 2
Um, and if they’ve got a pilot as well, it’s it’s a much easier.
16:00.260 — 16:01.060 · Speaker 4
Yeah. Thing to sell.
16:01.100 — 16:03.740 · Speaker 1
Does the pilot typically become the first episode?
16:04.140 — 16:08.820 · Speaker 3
Uh, in our experience, no, I think it’s a it’s a bit, um.
16:10.380 — 16:11.340 · Speaker 2
Probably a bit loose.
16:11.380 — 16:11.940 · Speaker 4
And yeah.
16:12.180 — 16:15.060 · Speaker 1
Once you’ve got there by and I assume they have suggestions.
16:15.100 — 16:15.420 · Speaker 4
And things.
16:15.540 — 16:39.920 · Speaker 3
I think it’s a bit naive to assume that the the pilot will become the first episode. Um, just purely because it’s still in development and it’s a it’s a way to fast track development to greenlight is is piloting. It’s not a sitcom where you’re developing the pilot with a executive producer, and you’re working together to produce a pilot.
16:39.960 — 16:42.400 · Speaker 1
The concept is already there. Everyone’s already bought in.
16:42.440 — 16:43.080 · Speaker 4
Yeah.
16:43.160 — 16:51.720 · Speaker 3
Um. Oh, of course you can take that approach. But in our experience and corporates, you normally presenting the pilots as part of a presentation.
16:51.720 — 17:04.040 · Speaker 1
It’s the same for us. When we pitch something, the pitch very seldom becomes what anyone actually goes with. It’s just sort of a proof of concept, proof that we could do it. We say we’re going to do a proof of the benefits.
17:04.280 — 17:04.880 · Speaker 3
Yeah.
17:05.040 — 17:13.360 · Speaker 1
Hey. Thanks, guys. So, guys, do you need help convincing stakeholders that a podcast is for them? Let us know in the comments and we’ll answer those questions for you. Cheers.
