How to Use Podcasting as Part of Your B2B Demand Gen Approach

Podcasting offers an approach that B2B marketers can leverage to build relationships and create trust by having meaningful conversations. But how do you start? What should you focus on?

In this week’s episode, we have an engaging conversation with seasoned B2B marketer Casey Cheshire (Founder & CEO, Ringmaster Conversational Marketing) about podcasting. During our discussion, Casey talks about why he thinks podcasting is an important part of the B2B marketing mix, what mistakes to avoid, and the importance of understanding who your ideal guest (and audience) are. He also elaborates on some key metrics to measure and what major challenges podcasting faces.

https://youtu.be/XUv3DX6ero4

Topics discussed in this episode:

• Casey shares his thoughts on why podcasting should be part of the B2B marketing mix [2:35]
  
• Some of the common mistakes to avoid, and some misconceptions when it comes to B2B podcasting [7:33]
  
• Casey explains what he means by “connect before tech” and how podcasting is the key to getting that first strategy [25:51]
  
• Casey’s advice on how B2B marketers can get started on podcasting [35:30]
  
• What are some of the major challenges that B2B podcasting is facing right now? [42:48]
  

Companies & links mentioned in this episode:

• Casey Cheshire on LinkedIn
  
• Ringmaster Conversational Marketing
  
• The Hard corps marketing show
  
• Casey’s book: Marketing Automation Unleashed
  
• Amber Khan’s Repurpose Den
  
• Adele Revella’s Buyer Persona Institute
  
• Chris Krimitos’ book Start Ugly
  

Click here to access the episode key takeaways.

SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Sandra Long

Christian Klepp  00:00

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for B2B marketers that helps you to question the conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry, and take your marketing to new heights. Each week, we talk to B2B marketing experts who share inspirational stories, discussed our thoughts and trending topics, and provide useful marketing tips and recommendations. And now, here’s your host and co-founder of EINBLICK, Consulting, Christian Klepp. Okay, welcome, everyone to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, where you get your weekly dose of B2B marketing insights. I’m your host, Christian Klepp. And today I’m joined by someone on a mission to he

SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Casey Cheshire

Christian Klepp  00:00

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for B2B marketers that helps you to question the conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry, and take your marketing to new heights. Each week, we talk to B2B marketing experts who share inspirational stories, discussed our thoughts and trending topics, and provide useful marketing tips and recommendations. And now, here’s your host and co-founder of EINBLICK Consulting, Christian Klepp. Welcome, everyone to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast where you get your weekly dose of B2B marketing insights. This is your host Christian Klepp. And today I am joined by someone who is on a mission to launch B2B podcasts that drive growth. So coming to us from New Hampshire, USA, Mr. Casey Cheshire, welcome to the show, sir.

Casey Cheshire  00:46

Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here.

Christian Klepp  00:49

Likewise, and Casey, I gotta ask, you know, before we dive right in and be careful, man, because the answer will determine if we’re going to continue this conversation or not, but do you have Thor’s hammer with you?

Casey Cheshire  01:01

I do. I don’t leave home without it. It’s right here.

Christian Klepp  01:05

Let’s see it. Yeah. Boom! 100 points. No, don’t use Google. 100 points. If you know the name of Thor’s hammer.

Casey Cheshire  01:14

It’s like, God. Like, it’s like mirror thea Mirror Mirror meal, something like that. 

Christian Klepp  01:22

Play charades? Right. Just keep going. Keep going. 

Casey Cheshire  01:24

God.

Christian Klepp  01:25

Mjölnir.

Casey Cheshire  01:26

Okay. Okay. So

Christian Klepp  01:28

All right. 

Casey Cheshire  01:28

Yeah, I’ll take that as like, that’s the I don’t know how to pronounce this exotic equipment. But you have a good pronunciation of that. So, I think what we’ll do is we’ll take a screenshot grab of you saying it. Yeah, I’ll just dub that over me saying. (laugh)

Christian Klepp  01:44

Well, it’s recorded now and I’ll send you the audio file. 

Casey Cheshire  01:47

Yes man totally. 

Christian Klepp  01:49

Look, I just got done watching Vikings. So that’s why I’m, you know, I’ve got the I’ve got the Norse pronunciation down.

Casey Cheshire  01:56

What a great show, I love Vikings.

Christian Klepp  01:58

Perfect. Alright, man, let’s dive in. Because, you know, this is something that you’re passionate about. I’m passionate about it, too. But um, today’s about you. Right? So, Casey, you’re a successful marketer. You’re a serial entrepreneur, and you have… the understatement of the year, you have an adventurous spirit, right? So let’s talk about B2B conversations today, right B2B podcasting. And let’s focus on the topic of how B2B marketers can use podcasting as part of their demand gen approach. So why do you think the podcasting is such an important part of the B2B marketing mix?

Casey Cheshire  02:35

Totally B2B marketing is broken. It’s broken. We’re all playing a silly game, several silly games. And some of us know it, some of us just feel it. And no one really talks about it. Because there’s so much sass, and there’s so much industry around playing the silly game. And the first game is, hey, notice me I’m here, right? Know that I exist. And then it’s, Hey, now that you know I exist, can you please get on the phone? And it doesn’t matter how much amazing confetti we shoot out of a silly blaster gun. In the end, no matter what ABM we do, or cool new marketing strategy you heard about on a podcast, you still have to play the game of “please get on the phone with me.” And even if you sent them a pair of socks that were the same color as their alma mater, they don’t want to be on the phone with you. And so that’s the problem. And whether it’s sales getting you on the phone or marketing, that’s a problem. Oh, and by the way, the bonus round game is, while I’m trying to get you to notice me. And while I try to get you on the phone, which you don’t want to do, please just ignore the competition, the competition being my competitors, the status quo, and everything else that is taking up your time. So we’re trying to do all these things. Meanwhile, we think we know who these people are. But we have no idea. And so the soapbox I’m on, what I found podcasting, really addresses is the fact that one, we don’t know what the heck is going on in our customers minds. We think we do. We have all these internal biases. I’m way guilty of this. And then two, we’re all about the tech, right? I’ve just spent 10 years working in marketing automation. And I love the technology, there’s so many great things you can do with it. But in the end it if you don’t know what your customers biggest challenge are, you don’t really know what they are. And you’re just kind of making guesses. All you’re doing with your automation, all you’re doing with all this technology, it’s just making bad marketing a little bit worse by making it scaled to the infinite degree. So I’m just trying to get people to connect with their buyers and do some good old fashioned friend making like let’s create relationships with people and then see if we can help them.

Christian Klepp  04:42

Can I get an amen for that?

Casey Cheshire  04:44

Amen for that. Totally.

Christian Klepp  04:47

Man you unpacked so much in those past couple of seconds there. I want you to go back to some of them. Let me go back to some of them. No, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you on… In fact, I had a couple of people on the know, on the show one guy like about two weeks ago, and that was something that he said, which really struck a chord. And it’s going back to what you were saying, it’s like people are getting so obsessed with herding prospects into that sales funnel, right? Let’s just herd them as much as they can. And let’s just, you know, think about the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, all the content that belongs in each of them. But you know, in reality, do people really behave that way online? Do buyers really make a decision based on all of those steps? Chances are, they probably don’t. And, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me, the beauty of podcasting is, you know, like what we’re doing right now. We’re having conversations, we’re building these relationships, or building  this rapport with people that eventually we either will work with, or we will have partnerships with them, or shocking. We might even become friends.

Casey Cheshire  05:54

Friends, drink some beers. Have fun in Toronto. Absolutely. And you know, what’s crazy is this is a very much a one to one thing, right? I’m not, I can’t check my email and do a podcast. I also, you know, I can’t be distracted by many things. It’s just you and me having a one on one conversation. It’s it’s like anti scale, right? And, and I know I’m guilty of this, I’m like the scale master. I’m all about automation. But at the same time, after so many years of that, I realized that it’s kind of empty, it’s kind of numbers on a page, and you’re just forced feeding people through a system. And in the real turning point wasn’t whether you use this tool or that tool, if you’ve done this feature, or that feature. It was do you actually know the people you’re emailing, and if you know, you can use some stupid system. And you can have the worst technology ever. And you’ll do just fine, because you actually know who you’re talking to right? And I think there’s nothing quite like having a conversation like this with an ideal customer on a podcast, to find out all that information, you find out the information, you make a connection. And then Wow, all the rest of your marketing is going to suddenly improve magically, like literally, by if by magic, it’s going to improve just because you had a little bit of a conversation with someone and you learned what actually keeps them up at night.

Christian Klepp  07:14

Absolutely, absolutely. And you touched on something that I’d like to go back later on with regards to like technology and strategy. But before we go into that, um, talk to us, and you’re gonna have a field day with this one, common mistakes and misconceptions when it comes to B2B podcasting, and what people should do to address those.

Casey Cheshire  07:33

Freaking great question. And, and I’ve heard this a little bit. Am I too late on podcasting? Right. There must be… everyone has a podcast now. Right? Any guesses? I don’t know if you’ve seen the stats, any guesses? Christian? How many podcasts? You can round to the nearest million if you like?

Christian Klepp  07:50

Um, just in general? Like, how many podcasts around the world? Over 2 million, close to three?

Casey Cheshire  07:58

Yep, that’s right, about 2 million. You know, we round to millions that like, we’re friends, you know? Like, it’s about 2 million right? Now, there’s these little things called blogs. I don’t know if you’ve heard of blogs. I think we’ve all heard of blogs at this point. But you know, there was a period of time in the last decade where you had to really beat down the door to get some of the older executives to understand this search thing is a real deal. And you can get all of your business from it. So we really need to have fresh content, we need to have thought leadership. Let’s do a blog. Right? Any guesses on how many blogs there are out there in the world?

Christian Klepp  08:32

Oh, I looked this one up. Wait, hang on a second. 60 mil?

Casey Cheshire  08:38

Times 10. 600 million. Right? So when you think of, okay, I must be a late adopter with podcast. No, you’re early man. You’re not but not so early that it’s like you and Joe Rogan being silly in the basement. There’s a lot of great podcasts out there. Right. And so there’s a good, good setup of it. And hey, it’s a good time right now to get into that where you’re not behind. You’re also not super trailblazing. There’s a lot of people have proven this before. So it’s like that perfect time. And I’ve experienced this before. I was almost 20 years ago. I don’t know how many years ago, this was, I was a little marketing coordinator at a company. And my VP of Marketing came to me and said, there’s this thing called Twitter, I want you to go and sign up for it. And I’m like, what the hell is Twitter? Okay, boss, you know, I didn’t say like that. I’m like, okay. But I signed up for it. And I found out later that I was in the group of the 19 million users. You can look it up, you can actually look what user number you are. And I was in the group of 19 million, which sounds like a lot compared to these podcasts. Well, now there’s something like 227 million users of Twitter plus or minus depending on who’s the president, right. So there’s a lot more users now. So that same feeling I have with Twitter is a feeling I’m having with podcasts. There’s not too many of them. There’s a only a few of them actually, technically speaking to what things are happening in the final thing… sort of the cherry on top is… Quick question, do you have Netflix?

Christian Klepp  10:10

I do. 

Casey Cheshire  10:10

You do? I do, too. And I found out recently that more people listen to podcast and watch Netflix. And I just assumed that Netflix was something that everyone had. Because how else can you chill? If you don’t have Netflix, Right? You gotta have it. So if you don’t have it, what are you doing? Maybe you’re doing something else? But yeah, more people listening to podcasts now than Netflix, so it’s, it’s a thing, it’s here. But it’s still early. So it’s like now’s the time. It’s like a good early point where it’s like time to get in. So that whole idea of like, Oh, I’m too late, the ship already sailed. Or maybe I’m too early. It’s like, no, you’re at the perfect time to adopt this new thing. And in one of the stories I think really helped illustrate this is I had a good friend, who is great sales leader, and he recently started working for a new SaaS startup. And he pinged me, we had a little conversation on the phone, he’s like, Hey, this is what we do. We’re going after CIOs. And we’re, we’re selling this kind of tech software and does X, Y and Z, right? And he’s like, What do you think it would take to get the attention of the CIOs and like interviews with them, you know, like, sales calls and stuff with them. And, and I had two thoughts in my head simultaneous. And the first one was my old school traditional marketer mentality that we’ve all ever I’m sure everyone listening to this, we’ve all experienced, which is what the company’s been a part of, okay, I’m going to do a massive run on all the events, we’re gonna have a huge booth, we’re going to try to attract as many people as we can, we’re going to spend money on this thing. CIOs are not easy to get to. So we’re gonna get all the people on their staff, and hopefully, we eventually bubbled up to them. And you know, they’re not doing PPC ads, per se. So we have to do a lot of heavy lifting to make us look like a brand that maybe in a year or two, they’ll actually have heard of, they might actually check us out one day, if the need arises, right. But in my mind, I thought, Oh, I don’t know if I want it. You know, he didn’t ask me to join that company or whatever. But in my mind, I’m like, do I want to help do this, I was like, Man, that sounds like a lot of work. 

Christian Klepp  12:10

Well, sounds like a ton of money too right?

Casey Cheshire  12:12

It’s a ton of money, you know, and it’s not my money or your like, we’re giving it to the events and all these other things, all to try to get the attention. And that old school mentality just sounds expensive. It just sounds like a lot of work for not a lot of pay off, right. And you wonder why marketers get bounced from companies and all that. It’s because this is it’s a heavy lift. And it’s nothing’s really guaranteed. But then I thought back to all the podcasting that I’ve done, and some that I’ve, you know, we’ve helped some clients out with theirs. And one of the most magical things you can do is you can literally invite your ideal customer profile to be a guest on your show. And while they say no to that game we talked about earlier than notice me game and they say, I don’t, I don’t care to notice you, I don’t care to be on the phone with you. It’s amazing how they’re super tight schedules where there’s no availability opens up like a flower, if you’re inviting them on your show to feature them. Right. So when you make it about someone else, it’s amazing how much time opens up. And then they’re all about it. And so what’s crazy about that is in the contrast, if I was trying to reach all these CIOs, I know, I could create a CIO podcasts. And yes, there are many of them. And there’d be one more, and I would invite all the CIOs that our ideal customer profiles for this particular startup to be on the show. Are they all going to accept? Maybe, maybe, maybe not? I don’t know. But many will. And I pretty sure I could have an interview within a week or two, depending on their schedules. Right. And so it’s like, wow, and now we would… we have we have an interview with them, they be on the show. They would absolutely, by the end of the prep call of the show know what this company, this new company does, right. So the brand would be clear in their minds, because they can’t not know after being in this process. And then guess what, we might actually have a great relationship with them. And we’ll know all the challenges that they’re facing right now. Like, triple win. And, and like a mere fraction of the cost. It’s crazy.

Christian Klepp  14:07

Absolutely, man. Absolutely. And I love it. But um, there was something you said earlier on, when you started giving your answer, which, which really struck a chord with me, and it’s going back to that whole in this world of endless supply in the sea of sameness. How are you going to stand out? Because if everybody’s trying to do the same thing that you’re doing, well, how you get your prospects to remember you, right?

Casey Cheshire  14:36

Cool, cool. I guess the first part is, everybody isn’t trying to do this right now. 

Christian Klepp  14:41

Right.

Casey Cheshire  14:42

With only 2 million and that includes all the fun people too, and the people just doing it for giggles. And me I’ve got a cigar podcast if anyone is interested, right? That counts in the number. So it’s not like there’s a lot of competition in the B2B world, a lot of B2C folks. super competitive there. But what’s interesting is the difference on the B2B side, this is where the magic is. In the B2C world, you need a huge audience because a percent of them will go to your CBD store and buy your product, right? In the B2B world, it actually doesn’t even matter if you have an audience, because most importantly, is the relationship between you and the guests. Like, if no one listens to this show, and I know actually a lot of people do. But if no one did, the benefit is man, we chatted and we’re probably gonna do business together, and maybe got a friendship and we got some beers we’re gonna make happen in Toronto or New Hampshire or Boston, right? And so if you look at it from that perspective, you, you are guaranteed a win every single week with a new potential customer, right, your guarantee. It’s happened. It’s not like, you know, we have to play the funnel game and maybe some will trickle through, you will just literally create a connection now, will you be besties with everyone? No. But but what’s different is in the B2B world, there isn’t competition, because it’s literally you as a unique host inviting that guest. And that’s a unique combination. Have they been on another show? If they’ve been on another show, they’re actually more likely to be on your show. It’s actually easier to get someone and that CIO, that VP of marketing, or Head of IT has been on to the podcast, guarantee they’re going to be on your show, because they’ve already been through it.

Christian Klepp  16:19

Yeah, no, that’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. It almost sounds like it’s a modern form of relationship building.

Casey Cheshire  16:27

Yeah, amen. Man. That’s it. Totally. You know, there’s a great dude up in Toronto, that…  two great dudes, right, you and this guy, my two favorites in Toronto. And Dan Sullivan is his team. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He’s a coach, cool program. He teaches some great coaching classes and basically teaches companies how to grow even faster. And one of the things he brings up is about asking the right questions of your customers. He hasn’t connected this to podcasting just yet. But his quote is, everyone’s competing for your attention. No one’s competing to give you attention. Right. So to your earlier question around is there so much competition, there is if you’re trying to take. That game where we’re saying, notice me I want to steal your attention. Get on the phone, I want to steal your time. There is competition with everything, even with you know that execs’ family who wants them to be home early, so they can go drive the kids to the check play. Right? So there’s like, everything’s competing for attention. But if you’re giving attention, very few people do that. 

Christian Klepp  17:32

Yeah. Well, that’s absolutely right. Um, talk to us about a challenge that you and your team have managed to solve in the past 12 months?

Casey Cheshire  17:41

Yeah, you know.

Christian Klepp  17:43

Probably a few.

Casey Cheshire  17:46

Well, I think we’ve done a lot of work with marketing teams. And even if we say we had this conversation about the connection, I think sometimes our teams are, are thinking of this method as content creation. And I gotta be honest, that’s why I started my podcast in the first place three or four years ago, whatever it is, I just thought, hey, I need thought leadership need to create a bunch of stuff, I don’t have the time to write it. Let me just speak it and talk to great people and learn from them. 100% that happens, right? You will have gobs of content. I know I’m speaking the choir, you have just so much content, it can come from one hour podcast, I spoke to Amber Khan. I don’t if you know, Amber, I introduce you, if you don’t know her, she’s this badass chick in the UK. Who keeps inviting me to go BASE jumping, she is like, super cool. And she has a group called the repurpose den. And in her whole point is take a thing like a podcast or some kind of recording, and let’s repurpose it. And let’s turn it into other kinds of content. And on the podcast together, she was like, it can turn into a million things. And I was like, okay, okay, hold on, how many can it really turn into and I like, had her stop and start listing them out. And I got my little check marks out. And I made like a little tick mark every time she said a kind of content that could come from a one hour interview, like what we’re doing. Any guesses what she got up to? How many different kinds of things could be created? 

Christian Klepp  19:09

Like, as in different forms of content? Right? 

Casey Cheshire  19:11

Yeah, different forms of content across social and written and all that stuff? 

Christian Klepp  19:16

20? 30? 

Casey Cheshire  19:17

Yeah, double that. 41 She got the 41. And you know, if people go listen to episode, you’ll hear her just go Go, go, go, go, go go and list them all out. And yeah, and not even need 41 pieces of content, especially because that comes from just one show. And if you’re doing a weekly show, that’s what 41 times 52 Like, you don’t need that much content. That’s a lot of content. Right? But the capability is there and so content will be handled, but a lot of people think in terms of ROI of any kind of been rightly so. So ROI of a podcast, is it the content? Well, yes, you can. You can get rid of that content function. Not that people end the company but I’m saying you can get rid of the larger spend like if you’re if you’re outsourcing it somewhere, and then you still need smart people to be able to repurpose it for sure. But then really the focus and the ROI is not going to come from the content as much as it comes from that guest right. And so if you even have a mix, where most of your guests are ideal customers, some of your guests are just great for content, then you track the heck out of that pipeline, and you’re going to have direct ROI straight from the podcast. And what we like to do is the groups we work with is, and we do all the math with you. But we what we like to do is, is work it out, so that all we need as one of your guests to become your customer. And it pays for the services we do when we produce the podcast, all that. Pays for the whole year. So all you need is of your 52, you just need one of those conversations to turn into your business and it pay for the whole thing. And then essentially, the other 51 conversations are your ROI to keep right, so it’s like and who doesn’t convert, you know, friends, and and there’s a really cool quote from Zig Ziglar. And it’s if people like you, you’ll listen to you, and if they trust you, they’ll do business with you and a podcast address both.

Christian Klepp  21:13

Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. You read my mind there, man. 

Casey Cheshire  21:17

Good. 

Christian Klepp  21:18

Yeah, no, because like, you know, we get the you know, we always get the ROI question, don’t we like, especially when it comes to podcasting? And like, and I’ve heard this, this before. And I’m sure you have as well all this nonsense about well, don’t you count the number of downloads and the number of followers and subscribers and you know how to how do you justify all of that? And to which all I say is, well, those are vanity metrics, if I’m going to be perfectly honest, and that’s just my opinion, other people might disagree with me. But it’s, it’s going back to what you just said. It’s, yeah, it’s that relationship building. It’s those relationships and those connections that you then make, because it’s something a mentor of mine here in Toronto, keep saying it’s, he’s Scottish. So he says, shoe leather, right.

Casey Cheshire  22:07

That’s awesome.

Christian Klepp  22:08

You’re building, you’re building this loose network, which then becomes, you know, widens like a net. Right? 

Casey Cheshire  22:15

Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  22:16

You just think about those old telecom commercials in the 90s. Where, you know, the the globe lights up. Yeah. And it’s kind of like that, right?

Casey Cheshire  22:22

Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s so true about the vanity metrics. Now, if people are confused, that’s because in the B2C podcasting world, it’s true. Your vanity metrics will be what gets you the sponsorships. 

Christian Klepp  22:34

Sure. 

Casey Cheshire  22:35

But in the B2B world, it’s actually more of a micro segmentation strategy, or micro nano segmentation strategy, however you want to call it, the idea is not how many people do we have. But how many of a certain kind do we have. One of my favorite examples of this is, there’s a type of person that works in the US government, called a contracting officer, and they do all the purchasing for the US government seems like a neat job. But somehow we end up paying like 20 bucks per pencil. So I don’t know exactly how that works out. But I know there’s several hundreds of these people, let’s say 800 of these people, US government contracting officers, they help the government buy. Well, there’s a podcast called US government contracting officer podcast, right. Not a very creative name but if you’re a contracting officer. You know, precisely that that shows for you. Yeah. And so And guess what? They listen to it. And in a majority of them listen to it, because who else would make a podcast just for them? That is their niche. Right? That’s them. But there’s a line out the door of giant military and government contracting, folks who would love to win a million dollar contract? Who wouldn’t mind spending a little a couple 1000 here and there to advertise on a podcast to hopefully influence a contract down the road? You know. You don’t need to have 1000s of people listening. Just a couple hundreds of the right people listening makes them worth sponsoring. And actually, actually, I learned recently they stopped getting sponsorships, because all they’re doing is funneling the attention from that podcast into business for a company behind that, which is a consulting company, teaching those big companies how to win contracts with the government. Right. So it’s perfect…

Christian Klepp  24:25

There you go. 

Casey Cheshire  24:26

channel for them just like it is for anyone else.

Christian Klepp  24:29

Well, exactly. And it’s going back to what you said earlier about, like, you know, targeting CIOs, well, how many CIOs do you need? 

Casey Cheshire  24:36

Right, right? 

Christian Klepp  24:37

To be listening to your podcast. I mean, do you need 100,000 CIOs or what will 5000 do? Alright, yeah, or even smaller than five thousands? 

Casey Cheshire  24:45

Yeah. I told you I had 100 CIOs in the healthcare space. Listen to this podcast. There’s some legs of that. Because it’s a combination of do I have a concentration of a particular kind of person, but also, how hard is it to build a list of those people, and how hard is it to contact them. And back to the CIO thing, if I had a podcast that reaches CIOs, there’s a lot of people that are like, we’ve been trying really hard to reach them. We’ve been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the events, like the ideas that the very beginning. And if you have this list for them, that’s why a lot of people even creating podcasts just to reach those people, so they can sell sponsorships to other folks.

Christian Klepp  25:24

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Hey, it’s Christian Klepp here. We’ll get back to the episode in a second. But first, is your brand struggling to cut through the noise? Are you trying to find more effective ways to reach your target audience and boost sales? Are you trying to pivot your business? If so, book a call with EINBLICK Consulting, our experienced consultants will work with you to help your B2B business to succeed and scale. Go to www.einblick.co for more information.

Okay, we’re gonna go back to what I was saying earlier, cuz, you know, you touched on, I believe, it was like, you know, technology and what kind of tools and a lot of marketers get caught up in that and even when it comes to podcasting, but talk to us about the importance of like, not focusing too much on the tech, but focusing instead on your strategy. Like, there’s got to be a strategy behind all of this, right? So…

Casey Cheshire  26:19

Totally, yeah, you know, my new thing is connect before tech, right? Connect before tech, and you can hashtag me whatever you want to do connect before tech, and it might inherit like heresy from someone who just spent like, decades geeking out and like, for a while they’re calling me, Mr. Pardot? Because I couldn’t shut up about it. You know, and anyone, any grandma on the subway, like, do you have marketing automation, and it wasn’t that bad, but it felt like everyone I talked to, there’s like all about marketing automation. So I, I hear you, there’s some very exciting things in marketing automation can do, I still love the tools, I love the technology, I mean, the fact you can have dynamic content, change your website based on the segment your buyers in, so they feel very tailored, like there’s so many magical things you can do. And in shortening the forms based on what you already know about someone. Good stuff, the problem that I’ve seen, I’ve helped, like, literally over 3000 groups implement these tools. And the problem was never the tools, even if you’re migrating from something else, right? That was that was another game or maybe this new tool will help me do this better. No, it’s not. It’s not, that’s not gonna be the fix the new tool. Now, there are some pretty bad ones out there, I’ll give you that. But by and large is not the tool. It’s just that, to your point, you’re missing the strategy. And very early on, we create recreate this roadmap, it’s in my book, it’s on Amazon. It’s called Marketing Automation Unleashed. And there’s a roadmap, there’s 10 steps to maximizing marketing automation. And I made the price super low. So anyone can just go grab it, right? So let’s go get it and just use that. It’s all strategies. But the early strategies, it’s all the number one is know your buyer and segmentation, right? Because we’re just blasting all these emails at people. We are not segmenting our buyers, we don’t know who they are, we don’t know what their pain is. I had one time had coffee with a buyer with a prospect of a company I was at. And in five minutes, I learned something eye opening earthshattering to totally explain to me, why they acted the way they acted, but also what they were trying to drive and who their customer really was and what the product was like, Oh my gosh, like I know exactly what to do. Now, I also know exactly what to say, to get their attention. And all I needed was five minutes. And so I think the challenge that we’re dealing with now is the tech is really good, right? And so you need the strategies, for sure. And the number one strategy on this roadmap, you’ll see it on there is like, get to know your buyer, build out some buyer personas, do we even know what that is? And there’s a lot of tech companies out there telling us what they think they are. But they’re selling us marketing software. So we got to be really careful about what people are telling us to do. So number one, we got to connect with our buyers beforehand. But this brings up the real problem, which is why haven’t we already done that? That’s because it’s kind of hard in marketing. We’re kind of shy, like we’re not shy at Dreamforce. I get that. But at the same time, we’re not sales, right? If we were sales, we’d be like, Yeah, I’m gonna just call up. I’m just gonna call up customers, and they’re gonna reject me, I’m gonna be okay with that. Because I’m sales, right? Marketing, we tend to be a little bit more in our heads about things. We’re great at metrics. We’re great at process, we read all these things, creative. But when it actually comes to being on the phone with someone, like what do we say? What do we do? Right? So I had the great privilege of talking to Adele Revella she wrote the book buyer personas, you should totally have her on your show if you haven’t already. And she schooled me live on the air. I was drinking some HubSpot Kool Aid about what a persona was I was completely wrong. And she helped me see what a persona is and also how to get it what kind of questions to ask. And really you just take someone back to the process of when the need first arose to get to get some kind of solution, what was happening? Tell me like what triggered the need to hey, we need to go get the software, we need to go get this service and then she just walks people forward right? So that aside you can go check her out. She’s amazing her book buyer personas’ amazing, but we just lacked a few things in marketing. We lacked what questions to ask because that makes us really nervous. The second thing is, how do I get them on the phone? Right? And sometimes we can get them on the phone to ask them to do a case study, or not everyone wants to do a case study. And we don’t even know if there’s a case to study just yet when we’re getting on the phone, right? What is it? So we need some kind of device that allows us…  just like a networking event makes it okay to say hello to a perfectly good stranger. They don’t think you’re trying to harass them or pick them up or anything. They’re just like, hi, nice to meet you, right? Just as we get that acceptance and those kinds of things. marketing needs something to have a conversation. And I found that a podcast does that. Because again, you’re honoring your customer. No one says no to that. You have to worry about rejection. You know, we’re not in sales, we don’t get rejected, you’re not gonna get rejected. We’re inviting them to tell about how awesome they are on the show. And that for me was the bridge. You know, I’m the same way I’m like, I don’t want to call this person. What do I say? Are they gonna be happy? Nope. But yet, I’ve podcast with almost 300 people now. Because I make it about them. And so the combination of having some questions from Adele, and then having a something to get on the phone, and a podcast will do that. Put those two together. And now you have your roadmap for getting that first strategy, which is understanding your customer.

Christian Klepp  31:38

Boom. 

Casey Cheshire  31:39

Yeah, boom, right?

Christian Klepp  31:40

Wow. I mean…

Casey Cheshire  31:41

Hammer drop, right? Hammer drop.

Christian Klepp  31:42

Hammer drop. Yeah, forget the mic drop, like hammer drop. Man. That’s Hammer time. Um, now let me let me just backtrack here. Man, there were so many things that you brought up, which I thought were I mean, worth repeating. So for example, like, you know, about getting to know your buyers and developing the buyer persona, and not like, coming up with personas, like Frustrated Fred, right. Who like, Yeah, I mean, like, you know, that kind of stuff. 

Casey Cheshire  33:06

Yeah, Marketing Mary, Hey.

Christian Klepp  32:07

That belongs in the history books.  Um, yes. But I would also argue that besides coming up with your buyer personas, also think about your anti personas. So who are… who is not, who is not the right fit for what you do, or what you provide. Right? The so that’s one. The other one was… And you know, you broke it down so beautifully, this a little bit of a disparity between marketing and sales, and why marketing, sometimes they just rely a little bit too much on sales. And sales is a little bit reticent to let marketing talk to the customers and so forth. And granted that it differs from one company to another. But I think it’s really important for marketers, to talk to the customers and to actually understand what it is they’re going through. Because you know, you’ve seen that perform, and you read some of the content out there. And it’s very clear if that person has ever talked to a customer or not.

Casey Cheshire  32:59

Oh, yeah, totally. You know, the fun thing is you can literally drop those buyer persona questions straight from Adele, right into your podcast script. So that every single guest, you ask them, one of my favorite questions is what keeps you up at night? What’s the challenge you’re really wrestling with right now? And then outcomes, a challenge that your customer is wrestling with. And maybe you can help them off the call, right? Maybe you have a resource you can send them or just now you know, that of the 100 ideal customers you’ve talked to, 70 of them have the same problem. Maybe we should address that.

Christian Klepp  33:30

Absolutely. And you’re brought up I think it’s a key word. Help them. Don’t pitch them. Help them right. Absolutely.

Casey Cheshire  33:40

It’s true. Like you could, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. You could use this to just get people on the phone. And then you could abuse it and try to sell them. And then that’s not so good. It’s the same thing happens to people that are on LinkedIn that connect and then they try to spam me right after you connect. I blocked instantly those people and they’ve lost the connection, they can never get back. Because essentially, when you’re blocked on LinkedIn, you’re like, dead to the business world. So it’s like not a good thing. That the people that abuse it, it’s very clear. In fact, it’s so clear that you can even sniff it out early on. I’ve received LinkedIn notes from people saying, George, I can’t wait to talk to you, join my podcast fill out this form. Here’s a link. Like what kind of… what is this? It doesn’t feel special. It doesn’t feel about me. It feels about you when you do it that way.

Christian Klepp  34:28

Well, absolutely. Or they just shower you with some what I call fake love. Like I got one a couple months back where somebody wrote to me like I viewed your profile and I was shocked by your excellence. (laugh)

Casey Cheshire  34:42

Uh huh. 

Christian Klepp  34:43

And I was like, Okay, I might be… well let’s see where this goes. And I wrote back well, what shocked you so much about my profile?

Casey Cheshire  34:53

I love that you know what? You should add this to your social tagline now. “Shockingly excellent”. (laugh) I think that’s… I think that’s you.

Christian Klepp  35:03

I was really tempted. I was really tempted to do that. Casey, except that my a friend of mine, another guy in Toronto wrote a post the next day saying he got exactly the same message and everybody chimed in. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. So I didn’t feel that special anymore. (laugh)

Casey Cheshire  35:18

One of 300 people that is shockingly excellent. Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  35:21

Shockingly Excellent. Yeah. Oh well, there we go. It was fun while it lasted. 

Casey Cheshire  35:26

It was, it was, it was good until the bubble burst. 

Christian Klepp  35:28

Exactly. Casey, we get to the part of the conversation where we need something actionable. And let’s appreciate that, you know, a lot of the stuff that you do, it doesn’t happen overnight. There’s no app that you can download. And then presto, you know, you get all these instant results. But there are some small steps you can take. Right? So, what can B2B marketers do right now to use podcasting as part of their demand gen approach? What are like? What are some quick wins? What should they be focusing on?

Casey Cheshire  35:58

How do get started? Right? Three things. Who, What, Ask. Who? Who do you want to talk to? Who is your ideal customer? And this kind of thing brings up a question of do you actually know who your ideal customer is. And I’ll be the first to tell you I’ve interviewed people and I’ve asked them this question many times. It’s not easy to come up with an ideal customer profile. ICP. Yeah, ABM people sling that around, like, it’s easy peasy is not. So I understand that. So sometimes you just need to know, before something like a podcast, which is a very direct, I mean, you’re literally going to ask people on an individual basis to come be on your show. So you should know who those people are. Right? So developing that ICP is some great resources for it all over the place. But who do you want to talk to? Who’s your ideal customer? And it’s okay if you don’t know, but it’s worth struggling with the answer for a little bit, work with a great company, or working with a great company, and their podcast is doing absolutely fantastic. They’ve been doubling, doubling up even talking as many people as they can. When they first came in, they thought their buyer was one particular role in a large enterprise. And, and they thought there was three different people that were involved in the buying process, and that this one was key, they found out from interviewing all of them, that none of those people were the ones actually driving the sale. In fact, there was this fourth, missing the fourth element, right? That was mysterious, and there was it. It’s a classic role that’s in all these enterprises, they found out that’s actually the role. They started inviting those people on. And then their pipelines started filling up. But they use this as a way to find out who’s the ideal person to talk, but at least they were talking to the ideal companies at the time. So one thing to think about with podcasting, the cost of acquisition is not cheap, right? This is not like a 10 cent, not that we have 10 cent clicks anymore, right? We’re not that, that shows how old we are. This is not $1, $3, click here. This is not a white paper. But a lot of these people you’re trying to reach aren’t doing that anyways, you’re just getting their team. So this is this is a couple hundreds dollar thing. So you don’t want to shoot low and be conservative. You want to go for the whales. Who would be your dream 100 clients to have. You don’t have them now, but they would be absolutely fantastic. You would put them on the footer of your website, you would be tickled pink to have them speak on your behalf if it’s the next big industry event. Who are those people? Right? So who’s your ICP? And then who are the biggest, baddest ones you could possibly dream of getting. These people who would be the ones you will invite on a podcast. So that’s who? So figure out who you want to talk to. Then the next one is what. What do you want to ask them? What are you going to say? What kind of things do you want to learn from them, it’s all about learning from them. Because they’re the, they’re the rock star on your show, your show is not about your expertise in your industry and what you do. And arguably, if they were going to be asked questions about your stuff, and they were good at it, they would need you. So don’t… you don’t want to ask them questions and put them in a bad light. So that’s why you want to bring them on your show that’s around the general topic. And it is something they can knock out apart, right? So you want to put them in a good light. What could you learn from them? What are the strategies that they’re doing that make them the best CMO, the best CTO, the best CEO, get to CEOs, they love the talk on podcast. Right? So what are the things you want to ask them? This ties into Adele Revella buyer personas. What are those questions? Even three or four. She mentions them on the podcast in her book, go get it but like, there’s just a few questions that you could just slip in the middle of your podcast, right? You put them in a good light at the beginning. Then midway through you ask them some challenging questions like What are your challenges? And tell me about this story and that story? Right. So what do you want to say? You don’t have to know the perfect answer, right? You have to have the perfect questions. A lot of them evolve over time. If you go back and listen to my episode number one, I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t even have video for it because GoToMeeting dropped the video on me. Thanks. GoToMeeting, right. So it’s like, I didn’t know what I was doing but you evolve over time. Then the final thing from Who What is asked, ask three of them, right? Get your list of 100 ideal whales. Ask three of them to be in a podcast. It doesn’t exist yet. Now a quick tip. Typically when we’re working with a group, we’re gonna have them invite their favorite customers and partners as their first couple guests on our show. But whether you invite those people or three people from that, that whale list. Either way, ask a couple. And in making sure it’s clear in your invite that you want to learn from them, and that they’re the one that impresses you. And this has nothing to do with your, your stuff. Don’t pitch, don’t sell, don’t anything about yourself. You’re just literally trying to honor them. Ask three, ask four. See what responses you get from people. And you’ll be surprised. And that will typically give you that, that courage to say actually, this is pretty interesting. And you know, and record it on Zoom, don’t worry about the technology. That’ll eventually catch up to. Don’t worry about super crazy microphones. There’s just a couple of good ones you need to get. Right. But just to start, and I have a good friend named Chris Krimitsos. And he has this thing called Podfest, which is all about podcasting. But one of the things he has is a book that says Start Ugly, is his book Start Ugly. So it’s like, don’t worry about it, just have a conversation. It doesn’t matter, all the trappings, if you have a red curtain behind you. The fact is, is you’re giving someone attention, remember, that’s the game with no competition, no one else is giving them attention. You’re giving them attention all about them. And they’ll be so thankful for it.

Christian Klepp  41:34

Man, that was such solid advice. But let me just go back to something that you said earlier about inviting your ideal customers onto the show, and making it about them and not you. It’s amazing to see how many podcasts that are out there that is just all about the host. And…

Christian Klepp  41:51

Yeah there are some of those Yeah.

Christian Klepp  41:52

About the host, right. And, but if you turn that around, like what you were saying, right, and just give the give the guests the airtime that they rightfully deserve. I mean, like, look at our conversation, right? I am asking you for 40 to 45 minutes of your time, I better make it worth your while. Right? And ask you questions about your area of expertise that will, you know, let other people know that you are the expert in this respective field. I mean, that for me is the way to go. 

Casey Cheshire  42:23

Yeah, yeah, in the opposite approach would be I’m selling Facebook retargeting tech, I’m going to ask Casey about that. And it’s like, I have a broad, somewhat vague, working definition of that. And I will probably hire a vendor to help me fix that. So asking me about that does not feel good, and really want them leaving the podcast feeling like, Hey, I am pretty special. I kind of knocked that out of the park, I answered some great questions. And they actually cared about the answer. And that’s the other thing. You know, you’re doing it right, as if as the host, you care about the answer. And if you don’t, you need to stop, you know, and ask a different question. But it’s not about placating your audience. It’s about really genuinely learning from them.

Christian Klepp  43:05

Absolutely. Absolutely. You brought up some of these things, you know, at the beginning of the conversation, but what do you think is a major challenge that B2B podcasting is facing right now?

Casey Cheshire  43:16

We kind of just address it. But the big one that I thought about beforehand for this is, I mean, it’s not, it’s not the numbers, it’s not the tech, it literally is not making about ourselves. And I have worked with a couple people, we always ask them their goal at the beginning. And it’s okay, if you’re not sure, and we’ll help you figure it out. But really, the goal should be ROI and direct revenue from my guests. Number one, and then content can be a great one. Brand can be a great one. But we once had someone who said I want to be more famous. And we didn’t know any better. So we took them on. But we found out that that’s actually not a good goal. If you imagine that. Not a good goal for your podcast is to be more famous. Because that’s, that’s relative speaking. And then also, it kind of, you can’t help but convey that it’s actually about you. When I mean, okay, the show’s about you, then you want to be famous. And it doesn’t work. And so just like… like modern SEO, it’s got to the point where you just write good content, you just make good content. Yeah, there’s a few things you do to make sure you’re not blocking spiders on your website. But by and large, you know, it’s just good… write good content that gets shared socially. And you don’t have to worry about it too much, right. There’s some extra levels, you can get to you in the B2C front. But like, you don’t have to stress over and try to cheat the system. You just do good. I mean, that’s what they wanted anyways. Same thing happens here. You don’t stress about if you just genuinely make it about them. You’re good. So that’s the that’s the real challenge, I think is that tied to also just understanding that it’s all about the guests. And that’s where the ROI comes from. And people don’t quite know how to put this I just did a webinar on ROI from podcasting. And, and I had to like, label it out and put it into columns and categories that you would expect in any marketing automation software so you can understand, okay, you invested this that turned into this. And it’s totally possible. It’s just it’s just not what you think. It’s not the content. It’s not… it’s the conversations and then you mentioned earlier actually, about the audience. And I used to joke it’s like icing on the cake, because icing is good. But honestly, icing is usually better than cake. So I don’t know if that metaphor really holds up. (laugh) But what I found is initially, it’s not about the audience, you’re always thinking about the audience because you care as a host and also as a show, but initially, even if no one listened, right, we talked about how that relationship with a guest is fantastic. I once had a guest mentioned next time she was up in New Hampshire, she was, she was gonna come hiking with her friends. And she’s like, Hey, Nick, some of my friends. We go hiking, come with us. I was like, that sounds great. Let’s have adventure. Let’s do this. So like, that’s fantastic. But what what’s interesting is, eventually the audience grows. And it’s very organic, because who shares it? The guest shares, if you put the guests in the best light, and they look like an expert, it makes them look good. On my show, one of the most popular episodes is not the famous book authors, they’re kind of full of themselves sometimes, you know, the famous people, not none of those people, none of the super social media influencers. It’s a VP of sales from Texas, who found that he felt like he rocked his interview so well. And it put them in such a good light. I had a good time talking to him. He’s a really good guy, you can tell he cares about his, his customers. And that came through on the interview. So now every time he sells a deal, he says, Before you buy from me, I need you to go listen to this. And if you like what you hear, and you agree that’s the kind of person you want to work with. Let’s work together. Right? So he’s doing that to everyone. Imagine the brand exposure and the exposure to my brand. And I get from this person saying, check out this podcast, right? Know the episodes can touch him, I always tease everyone else saying oh, a little bit more, you can beat him. But they can’t beat him because he puts it out there. Because it puts him in a good light, right? So eventually, people like this, bring in an audience. And then every, every guest brings along they’re their tribe, big and small. And then some of those people will stay. So over time. And I know that your years has grown, I’m sure from this way as well. Over time, you just you have a large following, and then eventually get these amazing messages that are so amazing. On LinkedIn. Christian, I’m sure you’ve gotten these too, where people like I’ve listened to your podcast. And I love it. Keep going.

Christian Klepp  47:40

Yeah, yeah, I have. I have. It’s, um, it’s extremely encouraging. And I think another thing, which I think is really great as if somebody reaches out to you, and I’m sure you’ve gotten this as well, Casey, when they say, I’ve listened to your podcast, and that one episode was great, because I was actually looking for the answer to that question. 

Casey Cheshire  47:58

Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  47:59

I was thinking about how to address that challenge. And the guy, the guests that you interviewed last week, he answered it for me. So thank you. Right. And that means, that means more to me than you know, all the downloads and the subscriptions.

Casey Cheshire  48:14

Yeah, you know, and that’s a great point. I would encourage everyone listening right now, to pull up LinkedIn, send Christian a message because I can’t tell you how amazing that feels. And also rate the podcast. Definitely go and do that, too. It’s just, it’s just those things. You don’t need to pay for this. He’s not asking for any money or anything. He’s just doing this because he wants to learn and learn with you. So if you could all just send him a note. That would I know that’d be in the world, Tim?

Christian Klepp  48:39

Yeah, no, that’d be much appreciated. Of course. 

Casey Cheshire  48:41

Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  48:43

Casey, as expected, man, this was an awesome conversation.

Casey Cheshire  48:43

I agree. 

Christian Klepp  48:47

Thanks so much for your time. Um, quick. Introduce yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.

Casey Cheshire  48:52

Sure, sure. Casey Cheshire. Nice to meet you all. This whole chat by email is casey@ringmaster.com ringmaster.com is our address. We launch podcasts for B2B companies, we have a lot of fun doing it, we geek out on it, but it’s all about driving revenue. So we’re very focused on that. You can definitely check out my podcast. I’ve mentioned this a few times. In fact, there is one it’s called the Hard Corps Marketing Show. And the chorus spelled like the Marine Corps, not like the earth core. Yeah, exactly. I’m sure there’ll be a link in the notes or whatnot. So yeah, check that out. And of course, Adele Revella is beautiful, fantastic person. The check her out. And that book I mentioned on Amazon is marketing automation unleashed.

Christian Klepp  49:34

Hmm. Fantastic. Fantastic. Casey, it was an absolute pleasure, sir.

Casey Cheshire  49:40

Likewise, my friend. You’re really good at this. I can tell. There’s podcasting. And there’s Podcasting. I mean, I think anyone listening to you, and this podcast already has a good example, a great example of how they should do their podcast, right? You learn from hearing it. And this is a perfect example of what someone else’s podcast could be in their particular niche or industry.

Christian Klepp  50:05

Thank you. Once again, it was great having you on the show and take care. Stay safe and I’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast. To learn more about what we do here at EINBLICK, please visit our website at www.einblick.co and be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast player.