Episode Summary
Rebranding your podcast is often needed so you can accomplish your goals. For some, the key to rebranding a podcast means changing the show’s concept and focusing on stories that go beyond the standard business-related topics. However, rebranding may also include some major changes in terms of the episode structure, the questions asked, and the desired guests.
In this episode of Recorded Content, Ben Winn, the Manager of Community & Events at Catalyst, and the host of the Humans of SaaS podcast, and our host, Tristan Pelligrino, uncover the key lessons learned from rebranding a podcast and how B2B marketers know when it’s time to pivot their show. Tristan and Ben go through the strategies for rebranding a podcast, choosing the right topics for the show, and the importance of experimenting. They both agree that customization plays a vital role in creating successful podcast episodes, which Ben learned from a few bad experiments.
Tune in to this episode of Recorded Content to find out more about crafting and rebranding a successful branded podcast and creating episodes that resonate with your audience.
Guest Profile
Name: Ben Winn
What he does: Ben is the Manager of Community & Events at Catalyst and the host of the Humans of SaaS podcast.
Company: Catalyst
Noteworthy: Aside from doing an excellent job as a Manager of Community & Events at Catalyst, Ben hosts Humans of SaaS, a popular customer success podcast.
Key Insights
- Once it feels stale, it’s time for a rebrand: Ben believes that a podcast needs a rebrand when topics, guests, and conversations feel stale and repetitive. It’s time for a rebrand when it’s becoming stale. Not in terms of losing listeners, it’s bad and no one cares about your show, but more that it just feels stale for you. Never let it go stale. Once it feels stale, it’s time for a rebrand. Or kill it altogether and start a new show.
- Podcast experimentation is very important: Ben points out the importance of experimenting with different topics and guests as it can help hosts create a show that resonates with their target audience. You can make educated guesses, but you still need to test, validate, experiment, run A/B tests, and try new things in order to figure out what the best fit is going to be. And so it’s the same with podcasting—experiment with structure, guest profiles, length, the format, everything.
- Listeners want to hear more about the guests’ experiences than their career: One of the reasons why Catalyst decided to rebrand their podcast was the idea of putting the guests’ stories in front of their careers. Turns out that’s what listeners want to hear. That’s why Edwards Catalyst CEO episode was so great as our first episode ever. Because we didn’t talk about Catalyst or customer success. We talked about his experience with his brother, his daughter being under pressure, how he handled that pressure, and his mental health—that’s the stuff that resounds with people.
Episode Highlights
From a customer success podcast to the show that tells people’s stories
“I feel like I can’t deliver an optimal experience and optimal episode for our guests or our listeners if I am not personally excited by the person I’m speaking with and the topic I’m speaking about. And customer success gets very old very quickly. I love it as an industry. I love the people in it so much. It’s fantastic. It is something that I’m working on all day but do I also want to spend extra time podcasting when there are other several great customer success podcasts out there.”
Stephanie Waldner from Lattice said, “I don’t listen to your podcasts. I’m doing customer success all day. That’s all I’m thinking about. Why would I want to listen to another hour or 30 minutes of customer success content on my way home or on my way to work?” That makes absolute sense. I don’t listen to podcasts about podcasting on my way to or from work. I listen to stories that interest me as a human.
So it was definitely intentional to create something that people would enjoy listening to after work and that was interesting, relaxing, and still related to things they were interested in.
What are the benefits of being a host
“I’ve been able to expand my network and build my personal and professional brand. I’ve also become a better interviewer and a better speaker. I’ve learned about audio equipment that I didn’t think I’d need to learn. There’s been a lot that I’ve personally benefited from by running this podcast. And it’s given me confidence that if I wanted to launch another podcast—whether it was with a different company or if it was a personal thing—I know I could do that and I’m confident it would be successful, which is something I wouldn’t have had before.”
As a host you should insert as much of yourself as possible in the episode
“I wanted to make them podcast episodes more free-flowing and more conversational. That came with having a story and removing the questions so it feels more like a conversation. I also knew what I wanted to push the guests to end up talking about.
I want the episode to be about the guest and the guest experience, but the feedback I’ve also received is that people enjoy when I chime in with different anecdotes or things that I can relate to personally. So that’s something I’ve also tried to be a bit more intentional about because in season one I was a little more reserved. I wanted to make sure that I was giving the guests the full spotlight on everything and that doesn’t let the regular audience get to know you. Because you’re the one consistent thing from episode to episode and it’s something I hadn’t thought of in that way before. But a great retention strategy is to insert as much of yourself as possible. Obviously, you don’t want to overshadow the guest. But letting them know you better bit by bit over the course of an episode or a season is a great strategy to build a loyal audience regardless of what the name of your show is or which specific guests you have on.”
You are the Oprah of customer success is the best feedback I’ve ever received
“Personally and on a very superficial level, the VP of CS of a prominent tech company coming up to me and telling me I’m the Oprah of customer success was probably the best compliment I’ve received in my entire life.
On a deeper level, internally getting feedback from our leadership and our sales team that the podcast is making a difference where they are having the podcast come up on demos and they’re able to use it as an outreach method. If we talk about a certain concept or a story, they’re able to work it into their outreach in a way that is genuine and offers value to the person they’re emailing.”
We are building a community that inspires
“We’re not building a community where you just come and you share your customer success strategies and you talk about comp structure and that sort of thing. We’re building a community where you talk about mental health, where you talk about how you can adapt what you’re doing or find a new job or be an incredible leader or a manager or be accommodating to those around you who might be struggling or have disabilities that you don’t know about. That’s the community we’re building and we’re able to communicate that on a weekly basis through Humans of SaaS and we’re also able to inspire. I think the biggest thing for me personally is that I have felt more inspired during the season than ever before because I’m speaking with founders who’ve built billion-dollar companies and some of them started with 2000 or 3000 bucks.”
