Content Strategy: Six Legit Reasons To Start A Business Podcast

The Growth Report #32

Sandro Meyer

Sep 25, 2020

Bonjour bonjour You Maverick!

Good news or bad news first? Bad news? Okay.

Look, how should I put this…I think its best if I make this short and painless for you…

There will be no Growth Report for the coming two weeks.

I know…I am so sorry. But I’ll be on vacation and I promise to make it up to you okay? 😘

— Now on the good news

I have recorded another four video-podcast episodes with people whom I regard as some of the best minds in the marketing industry. 🎙️

When I come back from vacation, I’ll start summarizing the best insights of the interviews every week. Which in turn means you get to hear the best career-, marketing-, and leadership-advice without having to listen to 60 minutes of conversation if you don’t want to (or don’t have the time).

I am super excited to share this with you!

And with those news out of the way, let’s get started:

Today's topics include

📈 Content Strategy:
6 Legit Reasons To Start A Business Podcast

⚒️ Tools of the Trade:
Educational Resources and Inspiration for Marketers

⛑️ Reflections from the Trenches:
You Create Your Own Luck

📈 Content Strategy

6 Legit Reasons To Start A Business Podcast

If you've been reading this publication for a while, you know I am a huge advocate of (video-) podcasting for businesses. It's just such a fantastic way to get your brand out there and get people to talk about your company.

A brand is not your logo or website. It's your reputation. This is is a practical example of how you can build one.

What's the right podcast format for a business?

While there are dozens of different formats out there on how you can structure your podcast, I personally prefer and have gotten great results with interview podcasts. You might think there are a dozen companies doing this kind of podcasts in your industry already, but for the reasons outlined further down in this article, it will bring results for you too if you put in the work.

Here's how I approached this in the past:

Think about an anchor-topic that interests you, is under-covered in your industry and is highly relevant for your target audience.
Go to your sales team and ask them to make a list of their Top 100 dream customers (if you don't have a sales team, get it from the management team or do it yourself).
Identify and make a list of the decision makers at those companies. Now do some research and make a third list on who you think are the heroes of those decision makers? Who would they listen to?
Okay, now you got a hyper targeted prospecting list of potential clients and the people that influence them. Reach out to both groups and ask them if they would have a 30-60min conversation on air with you. If you did a good job on step number one, most will say yes because you give them a platform to share their ideas about a topic they care about.

Here are the top 6 reasons why this works so well

You Have a Podcast - A Repository of Long-form Audio and Video Content. Just think about this for a second. The idea that you can have your target buyers listening to, and talking on YOUR podcast for 30+ minutes is ridiculous on its own.
You have a Never-Ending Stream of Micro-Content for LinkedIn or Instagram. Post-produce the content into short video or audio clips that are published through personal and company pages on LinkedIn. Link to the podcast in the comments for free user acquisition. Use quotes and stories from your conversations to write short posts and tag your guests.
You Network with Thought Leaders. The people you talk to usually have an audience of their own. And even if they don't, they are certainly credible influencers in your space who now have heard of your product. Plus you get to talk to and hang out with the smartest people in your industry!
You engage in Buyer-Centric Prospecting. Invite the decision maker of your target accounts onto your podcast and talk to them like a human. Seems like a better strategy than running banner ads for e-book downloads.
You do Market Research. Marketers never talk to customers. Here’s your chance to talk to your wishlist ICP buyers (or their influencers) on a weekly basis for FREE. Even if you don't care about all the other points on this list, this one alone will make the whole effort worth it. You will learn so much about how they think, what their challenges are and ultimately how you can help them achieve their goals.
Nurture Active Pipeline and Closed Lost Deals. A far better version of an automated email nurture or “checking in” Sales emails. Where the content is fresh and actually delivers value. You are always top-of-mind without being annoying.

Build a Content Machine

It feels like a no-brainer to me. Imagine if you started a podcast today about a core topic for your business/your customers and published one episode per week. You would have had a conversation with 52 potential customers and influencers in your space:

You would have 52 videos to build a YouTube channel
You would have 52 articles for SEO to help build traffic to your site
You would have 52 clips for social media to build your following (probably a lot more!)
You would have 52 quotes to pull for LinkedIn or Instagram
You could turn all that content into an ebook with the best learnings around your topic
You could learn from the best episodes which content your audiences wants and build an event around those topics

This one "anchor" show will give you all of the leverage you need to build the content machine you require to build a brand today.

Or how Dave Gerhardt likes to say:

Don’t build a marketing team. Build a media company for your niche.

🛠️ Tools of the Trade:

Educational Resources and Inspiration for Marketers

Graph of the week:

Marketing Education

The Second Mover Advantage in Content Marketing - Great article on how you can rank first on Google, BECAUSE you are not the first in your niche to write about a certain topic.
How to Build a Credible Personal Brand From Zero - I am a fan of Wes Bush and salute him on how he created the number one community on product-led growth in a matter of months. Great podcast episode with many lessons on building a (personal) brand and community.

Brands and Products that caught my eye

Ahrefs Webmaster Tool - My favorite SEO tool Ahrefs just introduced a free product to replace your Google Search Console.
Mailbrew - Great tool that I use to reduce my email inbox and content overload from newsletters, YouTube videos, Twitter posts etc. It'll calm your mind, I promise :-)
Airtable Marketplace - I am really impressed by Airtables newly launched marketplace. A milestone for the no-code movement. This is huge, because now you can build your own tools based on database entries without writing a single line of code.

Best Reads of the week

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Focus - The misconceptions we have about focus hinder us to actually achieving any.
High Leverage Time Management - A great 80/20 analysis on how to get better at managing your time. Really practical advice that has worked wonders in my own life as well.

⛑️ Reflections From the Trenches

You Create Your Own Luck

I read the following quote this week and damn, it really hit home:

“Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.” ~ Branch Rickey

Luck is the residue of design.

What a great line. And it's so true.

How do you design your day?
How do you design your life?
How do you design your business?

At GrowthBay Kevin and I try to take out a considerable amount of our time to think deeply about what we want to do, why we want to do it and how we want to it. It doesn't "feel" productive in the moment, but it just sets everything around us up for success in the longterm. It is probably the highest leverage activity we will do all week.

Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor.

You can't plan for luck. But you can plan to intelligently design your environment and give your damn best every day. It's all you can do. The rest is up to luck, fate, the universe, whatever you believe in.

How Seneca said so prolifically:

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity

Don't wish for it, work for it. You create your own luck.

That's it for this week.

Have a great start into the fall season 🍃🍂

See you again same time same place on October 16,

Sandro