The 8 benefits of starting a podcast after you take on a new marketing role

As a marketer, you want to stand out in the first few months after taking your role. You want to gain the trust of your new teammates and demonstrate your capabilities to leadership.

But there’s a lot to do in a short period of time.

At Motion, we produce shows for tech companies (we run nearly 50 shows right now). And we traditionally work with small, scrappy in-house marketing teams.

Over the last few years, we’ve interacted with quite a bit marketers who are brand new to their roles. And when taking on a new marketing role, we’ve witnessed all of the new things you have to learn.

If you’re new to the industry, then in many ways, you’re starting from scratch. You have to understand your customer, understand the problem your company solves, and determine how your company is different from the other alternatives.

And even if you’ve been involved in your particular industry for a while, there are still a ton of things to learn as you adapt to a new company. You have to build a personal relationship with management. Understand how the different teams work together. And determine the best ways to communicate with your own team.

In your first 90 days, there’s a lot to cover.

But there’s one thing that can help speed up the process — starting a podcast.

As a podcast agency, we’ve seen first-hand the positive impact a successful podcast can have on an entire organization.

And in this article, we drill down and cover the major benefits of starting a podcast as a new marketer:

  1. Capture customer insights
  2. Meet other industry players and influencers
  3. Build relationships with partners
  4. Build rapport with the leadership team at your company
  5. Build relationships with other people in your organization (not on your team)
  6. Demonstrate your ability to deliver quality content, consistently
  7. Identify weaknesses and build new skills
  8. Build your personal brand
I ran a video agency for over a decade. But when I decided to start a podcast for the first time, I didn’t know where to begin. And if you’re a marketer on a small, scrappy team, you might be in the same position. Podcasting probably isn’t a part of your core set of skills. Instead, I’m guessing you come from a background in content marketing, paid advertising, demand generation, or a handful of other disciplines. And if you’re tasked to start a podcast, it’s unfamiliar territory.

1. Capture customer insights

If you’re a B2B marketer (or any type of marketer honestly), one of the most valuable things you can do is talk to your customers. It’s the best way to get feedback about your products or services, and to find out what people really want.

But it’s not always easy to get information from customers (or even potential customers). And it’s harder to have genuine conversations with them.

That’s where your company’s own podcast comes in. One of the biggest benefits of starting a podcast is having a reason to reach out to your customers and have real conversations with them. And as a newcomer to your organization, the business’ podcast provides a conduit between you and your company’s customers. It gives you the fast-track to customer insights without having to setup a formal survey or other customer research project.

And most importantly, gathering customer insights in your first few months will help define your own priorities. The feedback you get from a podcast conversation can help reinforce the marketing plan, provide quality content ideas, and get everyone on the marketing team aligned.

2. Meet other industry players and influencers

In any industry, there are always people who stand out amongst their peers. They have more knowledge, more experience, and more connections. These are the professionals who get featured at conferences, give keynotes, and appear on the industry’s best podcasts.

These people are called influencers, and they can be a great resource for you as you’re starting out in your new marketing role.

One of the best ways to meet influencers is to start a podcast for your company. When you interview someone on your show, they’ll automatically view you as a peer. And when you produce a podcast episode with these types of professionals, it helps solidify your own position within the industry. That’s how you grow your audience, grow your company’s audience, build more brand awareness, and get exposed to new people in the industry.

“I couldn’t be the expert. I needed to figure out a way to get the voice of the expert in our content.”

Adam McQueen

Content Marketing Manager

Klue

3. Build relationships with partners

When you start out in a new marketing role, it’s important to get a sense of your company’s entire ecosystem. When working for a B2B tech company, your organization probably collaborates with a lot of different partners.

Your company may have formal channel partners in place. Or, you may have other informal partnerships in place to help provide customers with solutions. Partnerships are a big part of any business serving customers and you need to get familiar with partners as soon as you can.

With a podcast, you get a chance to collaborate with your company’s partners. Some of the most common ways to integrate partners in podcast episodes are through live events, roundtable discussions or interviews.

The most successful podcasts put a spotlight on your partners, demonstrate a commitment to serving customers, and open the doors to co-marketing opportunities.

4. Build rapport with the leadership team at your company

B2B marketers understand the importance of involving leadership when creating content.

But, when you’re new to a company, it can be tough to build relationships with the people in charge. They’re busy, they have a lot on their plate, and they might not even know who you are. This makes it difficult to get them involved with any type of long form content creation.

Can you imagine asking your CEO for a 2,000 word blog post in the first 4 weeks of starting?

One way to break through the barrier is to focus on podcast content. Since a podcast has a lot of visibility to those on the outside, it does give you a chance to build relationships with the leaders on the inside.

A podcast is also a very efficient way to collaborate with your company’s leadership to create audio, written, and video content.

When you interview the leaders of your company on your show, they’ll get to know you and your work. And when you make good use of their time and position them as a thought leader in the industry, you gain their respect.

5. Build relationships with other people in your organization (not on your team)

When starting a marketing role, it’s not just the people in charge that you need to build relationships with. It’s also the people who are not on your team. These are the people who can help you get things done, and who can give you insights into other parts of the company.

One way to build these relationships is to get other team members involved with your company’s podcast.

Interviews are one way to get direct support from other teams. But, you can also use the business’ podcast as a way to collaborate with others, too.

When you start a podcast, talk with other teams and get their feedback on episode topics, podcast guests, and different podcast formats. Successful podcasters seek out the insights from others and realize how it helps them as a marketer.

Rather than pushing your own ideas right away, you get a chance to solicit feedback from others in your company and demonstrate how well you listen. The relationships you build with other team members can help you out down the line when you need different types of support for the marketing team.

6. Demonstrate your ability to deliver, consistently

When you’re new to a job, it can be hard to prove yourself. You might not have a lot of past experience with your role or you might be new to the industry. And many folks within the organization may not know the type of work you’ve done in the past.

One way to prove yourself is to start a podcast and deliver episodes consistently. Podcasts aren’t easy to create. And when you create a video podcast, there’s a lot involved.

But if you can launch one episode and then pull off consistent production of great content — you immediately put yourself in a great position within the company.

Video podcasts give you a chance to produce audio, video, and written content based on genuine conversations. After releasing 3-4 podcast episodes, you’ll look like a marketing superhero.

When you commit to regularly publishing new episodes, you’ll show that you’re reliable and that you can deliver results. That’s how you build a personal connection, trust and credibility in your new role.

7. Identify weaknesses and build new skills

When you’re new to a job, it’s normal to feel like you’re not good enough. You might feel like you lack industry knowledge or need additional skills to be successful with your new role.

One way to speed up the process to acquiring industry knowledge and building new skills is with the production of a podcast.

By interviewing people who are more knowledgeable than you, you’ll identify gaps. But at the same time, you’ll start to acquire new knowledge to help with your marketing projects.

And since video podcasts have so many different types of components, you can work on the development of new skills, too.

  • Do you want to be a better video editor & get more practice with editing software?
  • Do you want to become a better writer?
  • Do you want to see how a podcast episode can turn into a youtube video?
  • Do you want to improve your social skills and reach your target audience more effectively?
  • Do you want to learn how to repurpose video content into other formats?
  • Do you want to work on graphic design?
  • Do you want to understand how remote recording software works?

If there’s a marketing skill you want to improve, chances are starting a podcast can help you get better. Identify what you want to work on for personal reasons, and then collaborate with others to get the podcast launched.

8. Build your personal brand

Your personal brand is the way that people perceive you. It’s what makes you unique and sets you apart from other people in your field. Building a personal brand can mean you never have to apply for a job again.

Producing a podcast for your company is a great way to build your personal brand.

If you host the show, you get a chance to “put yourself out there” and build relationships. You get to be on video and are a core part of the marketing of your company.

But even if you’re not the podcast host, you get a chance to capitalize on the show’s content. As the in-house producer, you have access to all the content produced from the show. And you can share a lot of content on social with your own perspectives.

When you put yourself out there and share your ideas with the world, you’ll attract attention from the right people. And if you do it well, you’ll establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Want to learn how other B2B marketers are building their personal brand?

Rep Your Brand is a podcast for B2B marketers who are looking to build their career through a strong personal brand. It’s hosted by Nick Bennett, voted one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices of 2020. In each episode, Nick captures stories about how to overcome the challenges marketers face with growing their personal brand. And, ultimately, Rep Your Brand helps marketers open doors to opportunities they never thought were possible. Listeners can tune in to get tangible tips & launch strategies to build their own personal brand right away.

Start a podcast and start off on the right foot

If you’re in the early stages of your new marketing role, there isn’t a better idea than starting a podcast.

A podcast can help you connect with people when starting your new marketing job. The show helps build relationships, prove yourself to be reliable and competent, identify weaknesses and build new skills, and start to establish your personal brand. And those are the personal reasons.

On the company side of things, you get a lot of marketing benefits. Everything from building brand awareness to enhancing your digital marketing strategy and producing high-quality content for your audience.

Looking at starting a podcast for your company? Check out our free resources and get a sense of what it’ll take. Or, if you want to fast forward the process, schedule a call with our team and we’ll help you out.

Looking to get more from your company's podcast?

Recorded Content is a show for small, scrappy marketing teams who are looking to launch & grow a successful B2B podcast. In each episode, we provide stories on how to overcome the challenges of launching, running and growing a show. We tackle issues with technology, content marketing, distribution and more. We help you become a B2B podcasting hero with an amazing show.

Written by Tristan Pelligrino

Tristan Pelligrino is the Co-Founder of Motion. He’s a serial entrepreneur who started his career as a consultant with large IT companies such as PwC, IBM and Oracle. After getting his MBA, he started and grew one of the fastest video production companies in the country – which was listed on the Inc. 5000. Tristan now enjoys leading the content marketing strategies of some of the most innovative B2B technology companies in the country. You can find him on LinkedIn and Facebook.