Episode Summary
When you hear the word podcast what do you think of Most of us imagine a host and a guest discussing a particular topic But what about podcasts that dont follow that standard pattern Would you be interested in listening to them
If your answer is yes youve come to the right place because our guest is Marc Thomas of Powered By Research Marc hosts SaaS Marketing Bites a podcast dedicated to all SaaS marketers who want to grow their companies And rather than a podcast featuring back and forth interviews Marc relies upon solo episodes to drive the content each and every week
Marc and our host Tristan Pelligrino discuss different podcast frameworks and emphasize the importance of consistency and structure Marc also shares what it was like being a journalist and how this experience helped him turn the idea of a podcast into reality in just a couple of days
Guest Profile
Name: Marc Thomas
What he does: Marc is the Head of Growth at Powered by Search
Company: Powered by Search
Noteworthy: A journalism background made Marc a perfect candidate for any content creation position As a journalist he mainly dedicated his time to interviewing However once he joined Powered by Search and suggested they start a podcast he knew he wanted to explore different genres This led him to becoming the host of one of the most recognizable podcasts in the SaaS space SaaS Marketing Bites
Key Insights
- You want to create different formats to make your content accessible to different people Marc is especially proud of the content he and his team produce As he explains Powered by Search has a fantastic blog every SaaS marketer could benefit from Still once he joined the company he immediately started thinking about what they could do to make their content attractive to different audiences We wanted to produce different content that you could feasibly consume any day of the week whether its podcasts webinars newsletters blog posts whatever it is So it was about Hey lets expand what we do here to make it more accessible to more people and at a greater frequency
- Structure is the key element of every successful podcast Although listeners love the immediacy podcasts bring podcast hosts still need a structure to conceptualize each episode Luckily even those inexperienced can find a framework like ABT and but therefore that meets their needs Heres what Marc says about the structure and formula he uses We have a very structured content process at Powered by Search which Im proud of because it produces consistently high-quality work The first thing that we do which I see almost no one else doing is what I think they call sonic branding So we have a sound that plays right at the start of every show that we produce And also right at the end Then we have a pre-intro its just music The intro of every episode is me stating a common belief that people have about SaaS marketing and then I say Okay that means that this thing happens So pain agitation and then a solution Then well do the intro which is just me introducing it and saying Hey welcome to SaaS Marketing Bites and then we dive right into the meat of the post Then right at the end I pull it all together by restating the intro in a more resolved way and then we go into an outro which is like a call to action and then back to that audio branding
- Audiences respect and reward consistency Experienced podcast hosts know how essential being true to yourself is Its the only way they can be true to their listeners too Thats why it is of utmost importance to define your podcasts fundamental idea and purpose Of course that doesnt mean you cant change your podcast but you need to keep that X factor that makes it recognizable For us the key to consistency was having a simple-to-produce format and being very disciplined about it So every Thursday morning I record an episode Every Friday morning I add to it or edit it The episode goes out on a Tuesday at 900 AM and then on Wednesday morning I set up the distribution and then follow that because it has dates attached to it And thats how weve managed to be so structured
Episode Highlights
WITH A PODCAST YOU DONT HAVE TO BE STUCK WITH INTERVIEWS
A lot of people they start a podcast because they want more customers not because they want to help their customers or their listeners or they want to help people become customers in a way that fulfills their needs
The tendency to do the back-and-forth interview often results in fairly thin interviews I dont want to offend anyone but a lot of people arent good interviewers
There are just so many interesting formats that you could use for your words to help people stay around and listen to you so they can absorb your message in a way that they can get to like you
When they get to like you theyre going to realize Hey this person has a product that solves my problem and then theyre going to convert and when they do theyre going to stick around and thats the goal of SaaS marketing
SAAS MARKETING BITES AN IDEA TURNED INTO REALITY WITHIN 72 HOURS
I was like Okay Ive got ideas for at least three formats for the show and were going to launch three shows in the next year
The first one was a narrative profile style that eventually became an inflection point Then we had another one to do something around marketing strategy but it wasnt really clear what I wanted to do I just knew I wanted to have a podcast about marketing strategy And then the third idea was to do short 15- to 20-minute episodes where wed cover a specific topic that we have a lot to say about
I was like Look lets take our blog posts which people are obsessive about and well turn them into monologues People seem to like my voice Ill just read one of these blog posts into a microphone
I just recorded it one day I didnt ask permission or anything I just recorded it and said Look this is ready to go Im going to put it out Are you okay with that My boss at Powered by Search was like Yeah totally go for it Within minutes we were getting comments like Oh man you sound like the Headspace guy
BEFORE HITTING THE SHARE BUTTON ASK YOURSELF WILL THAT MEANINGFULLY IMPACT SOMEBODYS DAY
Weve got a blog post podcast email and I repurpose them I may also then take that email and repurpose it for Twitter So much of what we do is about creating once and then repurposing for many formats
I did have a pretty formal structure in place for doing that I had a to-do list that I replicated every time and we automated that and that was good
We were producing so much content that it just became formulaic So now I still produce that to-do list every time But every time one of those to-do items comes up say Write a tweet or write a thread about this I think to myself Will that meaningfully impact somebodys day Because if it wont Im just gonna mark it as done and not do it
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE TO CONTINUALLY PROVIDE VALUE
Our agency only covers a small set of services We wouldnt call ourselves a full-service agency like a lot of people do We specifically help you with SaaS demand gen SEO and PPC
So were going to have to think about the format here Now maybe we end up doing remixes of old shows and putting the best bits together into something new maybe once a month we do like a different style of an episode or maybe we do have a guest come on and supplement for like five or ten minutes So I think thats the consideration going forward
