Episode Summary
How do you build a loyal podcast following in a saturated industry and keep people coming back for more?
Inbound marketing expert Kathleen Booth knows exactly how. As the host of The Inbound Success Podcast, an inbound marketing podcast with over 180 episodes and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Kathleen has built a loyal following, engaged community and long-lasting relationships with episode guests.
Podcasting has also helped Kathleen “punch above [her] weight” — she’s interviewed industry leaders who would otherwise have no reason to take her call.
“Those relationships, if you nurture them well as a host, they’re just worth their weight in gold,” Kathleen says on this episode of Recorded Content. She’s not joking — one of her first 10 podcast guests ended up acquiring her company!
Learn about Kathleen’s path from inbound marketer to podcasting guru and how to build a successful podcast, including:
- Building (and nurturing) relationships through podcasting
- Her go-to podcasting tools for syndication, transcription, shareable assets and creating website content
- Why you should view podcasting as a channel and not a product
Guest Profile
- Name: Kathleen Booth
- What she does: As the host of The Inbound Success Podcast and VP of Marketing at clean.io, Kathleen Booth helps marketers master their inbound marketing strategy by interviewing experts and getting to the bottom of what moves the needle (and what doesn't).
- Company: Clean.io
- Noteworthy: Kathleen was named one of the top 50 B2B marketing influencers in 2019 by TopRank.
Key Insights
- Podcasting is about building relationships, not lead gen. When Kathleen first started her podcast, she thought it could be used for lead gen. Looking back, she says this thought was "misguided." Podcasting is all about downstream benefits like building relationships and creating a community. Instead of focusing on generating leads, understand it's more about staying top of mind and building trust for when someone is ready to make a purchase.
- Cutting through the noise is a must. Inbound marketing podcasts are a dime a dozen, making it crucial to produce valuable, standout content. Kathleen found her opportunity by focusing on how marketers can take action, instead of only telling you why (like every single marketing conference at the time seemed to do). If you're going to start a podcast about a topic others already cover, like inbound marketing, you need to differentiate it and make it better.
- Use your podcast as a springboard for community building. Think about how you can leverage your podcast listeners into a highly engaged community. Kathleen recently started working on this for her new upcoming podcast, Ad Ops All-Stars. She's creating a Slack community as a place for industry leaders to connect, which podcast guests will be invited to join.
Episode Highlights
Create a format that empowers you and your listeners
“I think the most important thing you need to think about as a content creator, in general, is you need to really know yourself, and you need to be honest with yourself about what format is going to empower you to not only create the quality of content that you want but also that you’re going to be willing to be consistent with. I can write — I think I’m a pretty good writer — but it’s a longer process for me. It doesn’t come as naturally, whereas talking, having a conversation, is very natural to me and I enjoy it. I get so much out and it’s quick, so I knew that I could stick with it.”
Podcasting as the purest form of inbound marketing
“To me, [podcasting] is the purest form of inbound marketing in the sense that true inbound is very much a pay-it-forward mentality. … In the belief that by giving, by helping, by educating, at some point, that’s going to come back and pay off. It isn’t necessarily going to be with the guests you interviewed — it might just be that the guest is a peer of the types of people that may eventually buy from you, or it might be that guest introduces you to somebody who might buy from you. There are many ways that happens, but I think you have to go in with that very pure inbound mindset of this is all about helping and giving and educating and, if I do it well, the lead gen will solve itself.”
Utilize podcasting as a channel, not a product
“Forget about advertising. If that’s what you’re going into it for, that’s a different business — that’s podcasting as a product, not podcasting as a channel. You’re looking to monetize your podcast, but if you go into podcasting as a channel and you do it well and you have a really small niche, it doesn’t mean you can’t get advertising. … You’re not going to get rich off of it necessarily, but it would be a nice little bonus for sure.”
Syndicate your podcast in all the right places
“Where you distribute your podcast or where you syndicate is also important. There are a lot of different platforms out there you can use for syndication. I happen to use Libsyn, which is short for liberated syndication. It’s done the job for me and it syndicates my podcast everywhere — it goes to Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, I can’t even name them all. It’s everywhere and I don’t have to do anything. I just press a button and it does it, which is really great.”
Finding hacks to serve your audience while also serving yourself
“I’ll ask a question along the lines of, ‘Where do you turn to for information about how to do your job better?’ Again, that helps the listener but it also tells me these are great places that I should be either advertising or sending guest blogs to. It gives me the information I need — the market, the audience research — to do my job well. I love those little hacks of serving your audience while also serving yourself.”
Ask guests about genuinely successful tactics, not one-off campaigns
“180 episodes in, I’ve come to realize that not all great inbound marketing can be packaged in the form of a campaign. So I’ve broadened my definition and the way I approach conversations to go far beyond campaigns. I always say, ‘It’s not just campaigns — it’s tactics, it’s strategies, it’s whatever people are doing that’s getting great results.’ Very few of my interviews have focused on campaigns and more of them focus on either channels or tactics that are really producing results now.”
