How to capture the voice of your customers with Adam McQueen

Episode Summary

Many podcast hosts are content creators and marketers, which is good because they have experience with creating and distributing a message. But many of them may not have in-depth knowledge about the product they sell or the industry they operate in, especially in the B2B space.

For marketers who aren’t experts in the technology their company sells, it’s important for them to include a subject-matter expert within their content production process. And that’s why a podcast comes in very handy. Experts capture the voice of your customers and share details to help the audience get the most value from a podcast.

In this episode of Recorded Content, our host Tristan Pelligrino welcomes Adam McQueen, the Content Marketing Manager at Klue.

Adam shares what it was like transitioning from journalism to content marketing, how he came up with the idea of starting a podcast, the challenges he faced, and the lessons he learned along the way.

Guest Profile

Key Insights

The key to success for companies such as Klue lies in collaboration between the product team and sales. While the product team works on product building and creating a message for the target audience, sales provide insights from the field. That's why these two teams need to collaborate to ensure that the company reaches its aims. "That's the key. Klue is trying to unlock that partnership even more to bring product marketing closer to the revenue engine. The best product marketers I talked to work in lockstep with the sales team. They [Sales] are sharing messaging with them on competitors' sales and giving them information based on what they hear on calls and what they're hearing about competitors. And it's just this virtuous cycle of feedback loop."
Educate rather than sell. Adam created the podcast to bring competition enablement closer to their audience. His primary objective was to educate the listeners, and so he knew he needed a subject-matter expert to provide value. "I couldn't be the expert and feel confident about writing and creating content, whatever that content would be, with an authoritative voice. And that's what we needed to do when creating competitive enablement. It's a space where you need to educate your buyer. You need to educate them a ton. And I didn't feel confident doing that. So I needed to figure out a way to get the voice of the expert in."
Producing a podcast is more than recording an interview. The misconception around podcasts is that it all starts and ends with an interview. Although the conversation is the fundamental part, the success of an episode depends on its post-production. "There's a lot more to it than just recording an interview and chucking it out there. There's a lot that goes into distribution. There's a lot that goes into post-production editing. There's a lot that goes into thinking through the clips or the hooks that are of interest to your audience."

“I’m having these great interviews, why don’t I just broadcast them?”

Adam McQueen

Content Marketing Manager

Klue

Episode Highlights

Klue’s Target Audience

“It’s product marketers. They’re in charge of competitive enablement at their organizations. So the product marketers obviously wear a lot of different hats — messaging, helping with sales enablement, sales collateral, monitoring what competitors are doing, and enabling their reps, product teams and, executive team to beat the competition.

[…] At the enterprise level, there’ll be companies that have dedicated competitive teams, and it’s not the same as a product marketer. They’ll have more robust teams with more than one person dedicated to competitive research.”

Content Is More Than Writing a Blog

”I’m an avid podcast listener, whether it’s sports, news, culture, or something related to my workspace. I love being able to listen to content. I love the audio element. […] There are tons of different ways to create this. So I started to think that I’m having these great interviews with people. Why don’t I just broadcast them? Why don’t I show them?

Then, I started to build out a business case for the podcast itself to make it one of our distribution channels, one of the pillars of our content. […] It can be the thing that’s posted on social media. It becomes the fuel and engine that drives all the other pieces of content.”

Beginner Mistakes

”I was trying to read off of a script too much. […] I was taking the air out of the conversation sometimes. I was just more nervous. It takes a while to feel comfortable on the mic in conversations because it can be daunting, to begin with, even though there’s no live audience in front of you.

Plus, I said ‘um,’ ‘but,’ and ‘like’ 7,200 times. And after going back and editing, I realized that, I need to stop this to be able to do the rest of my job because my whole day is cutting out ‘ums’ and ‘buts.”’

Quality Over Quantity: Feedback vs. Downloads

”The metric to care about is downloads. And I say, ‘Okay, a couple hundred here, a hundred there, maybe this one didn’t land as much.’ But then, what I started to realize was the [importance of] qualitative feedback — internally and externally.

I almost value that more than just straight download numbers. Now, I can look at download numbers. I can see just topics that hit the people who want to listen to them. Listening times will help me understand what resonated. But I started to get over that hurdle when I started to get initial qualitative feedback like, ‘Oh, there are humans out there that are listening to this and enjoying this.”’

People Love Real-Life Examples

”People like stories. I like to set people up ahead of time now, and say, ‘I’d love some examples on this,’ but I’ll try and pull real examples out of people because the stories are more memorable […] Those real stories are way more human, people will remember them more, and the guests will start to open up and you’ll get to hear their real voice.”

Running a Podcast Helps You Build Perspective

”I always refer to the expert. I have not run competitive enablement at another company, so I don’t have that first-person lived experience. But I’ve also talked in great depth with so many different product marketers competing for leads about the pains they face and the experiences they’ve had.

It’s what we live and breathe at our company. The cool thing is that I’m building my perspective. I’m building a point of view, and that helps add another texture or layer to a podcast conversation right now, instead of just teeing up questions for my guest.

[…] My marketing director was like, ‘I want you to start building your perspective. Don’t feel that because you’re in content and marketing, you can’t have a perspective. I love what you’ve done. So, hand over the mic a ton, but it’s also time to start building your thoughts on the space.”’