How to use a podcast within your paid strategy with Toby Phillips

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Episode Summary

If a mainstream star like Taylor Swift were about to release a podcast, she would probably have millions of listeners in less than a day. But, for companies (and their podcasts), attracting and growing an audience is challenging.

Therefore, they use various techniques, including organic distribution and paid marketing campaigns, to spread the word about their show and the value it could bring to their target audience. 

In this episode of Recorded Content, we are joined by Toby Phillips, the VP of Marketing and Communications at Kolbe and one of the leading figures behind his company’s Powered by Instinct podcast.

Toby shares why his team decided to start a podcast, how they approach organic and paid marketing and the benefits of both, and how B2B companies measure the success of their shows.

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Episode Highlights

The Podcast Has Become the Central Point of Our Content and Product Marketing Strategy

”Sometimes, if you want written content to get out the door, especially at a company where lots of people have opinions, that can be a pain in the butt. 

I found that my subject matter experts and my leadership team love to talk. They look good on camera; they sound good on audio. And when I ask them questions, they spit out gold, and we can get something out in a day versus if we wanted a white paper, an e-book, or an article, which would take weeks, months, or longer.

And now that I put people onto a podcast, and we have a set way to distribute every episode, our content marketing function has exploded.”

The How-To Behind the Organic Content Distribution 

”We have a robust email list. So every other week, we’ve got a company newsletter going to some of our consultants or our highest engaged customers and also to some other folks we want to re-engage with.

Everything gets scheduled. The blog is scheduled on LinkedIn. We’re doing a fair amount on Facebook. We’ve got about five robust Facebook communities. So we drop video or blog content into those communities to see what resonates with folks. And that’s when we turn on the paid [distribution].”

Pieces of Content Used for Paid Marketing Campaigns (and the Overall Process)

”Most often, it is the video clips. It’ll be one minute; maybe some of them are 90 seconds. I’m using LinkedIn and YouTube. And so it depends on the episode and piece of information that is being provided. […] 

I’m trying to get that to people that I think we can close right away. Also, my CEO or my president are explaining the theory, why it’s important, and how it fits into the current marketplace. So I put some of those to our top-of-the-funnel folks who have never heard of us but I think should hear about us.

We had a guest recently who was pretty well-known in the COO/CEO space. And I didn’t even wait for the blogs to be produced or the episode to launch. I grabbed some of those clips, and I was like, ‘I know who I need to get these in front of.”’

How to Quantify the Success of Your Show: Powered by Instinct as an Example

”I used to say I didn’t care how many people downloaded it, but then I started looking at the stats, and I’m like, ‘I care how many people downloaded each episode.’ And I’ve been pleasantly surprised. So one measure of success is the downloads. […]

Another measure of success is, ‘Is this helping my content distribution plan for the year? Does this still help me get content out the door?’ And it does.

It also helps with product marketing. We had a meeting a few weeks ago about Q4 with my leadership and sales team, and they were like, ‘We need to push this product. What campaign can you launch?’ And it’s easy for me now because I can say, ‘What guest is the best for talking about that on the podcast?’ 

We’ll have a guest talk about this specific product, get a new blog about it, distribute it in the newsletter, and have a link to the product at the bottom. It becomes this whole campaign that starts by having one conversation on the podcast. 

The other thing I’ll add is that we’ve got 800 or so external consultants, and it also serves as content for them. So it’s not only working as content for me to sell to other companies, but also my external consultants are using it to sell to their clients.”