The B2B podcast strategy used by Gong, Salesforce, and IBM
The B2B podcast strategy used by Gong, Salesforce, and IBM
Marketing Powerup #37: Kate DeGroot, Director of Demand Gen at Casted, breaks down the 5 stages to the B2B Podcast Maturity Curve.
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Powerups! ⭐️
Today's powerups include:
How to prepare your brand for AI search.
Why creator-led content marketing is the future.
Casted’s B2B podcast maturity curve.
Ready? Let's go! ⭐️
🎖 Sponsored powerup
Thank you to our sponsor, 42/Agency, who keeps the Marketing Powerups newsletter and show free for all of you!
Founded by my good friend, Kamil Rextin, 42/Agency is my #1 recommended marketing growth agency for SaaS to help you drive demos and signups.
They've worked with fast-growing B2B SaaS companies like ProfitWell, Teamwork, Sprout Social, and Hubdoc.
Read some insightful reads in their newsletter 42 Slash, like “Why brand is not a logo, ad, and typeface.”
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⭐️ The B2B podcast maturity curve
More B2B brands are launching podcast shows, including Gong, IBM, Salesforce, and Drift.
With a weekly podcast show costing anywhere between $6k (for an audio-only show) to up to $20k (for a video podcast show), what's the ROI on podcasts?
That's where Casted's B2B Podcast Maturity Curve can help. It's a five-step framework to help you amplify your podcast show and measure its impact as a sales enablement tool.
Today' Kate DeGroot, Director of Demand Gen at Casted, discusses their B2B Podcast Maturity Curve in detail.
The B2B Podcast Maturity Curve explains the five stages a brand navigates as it experiments with audio and video content, creates a show, builds an audience, amplifies that content, and delivers clear, measurable business value (i.e., actual revenue):
Channel experimentation
Show creation
Audience growth
Multichannel expansion
Marketing amplification
Stage 1 — Channel experimentation 🔬
This stage is about exploring the idea of podcasting. As Kate puts it:
"It's really just having this idea. We are going to play with this. See what it's like? It's not necessarily having the tools quite yet."
At this stage, you’re maybe listening to general consumer or B2B podcasts or watching webinars or virtual event content on demand. At some point, you take the leap to start testing podcasting and video content.
Stage 2 — Show creation 🎙️
This stage involves investing in quality equipment and transitioning from basic recording tools to more professional ones. Your company is starting to seriously invest in using podcasting and video content as a core component of your marketing strategy.
Kate explains, “That's where you start investing in a good microphone...you go from possibly recording on Zoom to using Riverside or another tool.”
Stage 3 — Audience growth 📣
This stage is often the bottleneck of the entire maturity curve. It's about understanding and growing your audience. To do that, marketing gets more intentional and strategic about promoting every episode — typically through email and social media.
“This is where rigorously analyzing your data becomes really really important...You have to have the data and you have to know what attracts them, what episodes, what part of the episodes they're listening to and going back to.”
Stage 4 — Multichannel expansion 📊
While Stage 3 is focused on building an audience for the podcast, Stage 4 is all about using the show to build the brand. At this stage, your company is repurposing each episode and distributing it across multiple channels.
“This is where you absolutely just blow up. This is also where your podcast is no longer just a podcast. It's part of your brand.”
Stage 5 — Marketing amplification 🔊
The hallmark of Stage 5 is clear, measurable business value. At this level, podcast and video content are central to a brand’s overall marketing strategy. Marketing amplifies all content to maximize its value and can prove its impact on business goals and revenue.
“At this stage, people come to you as the industry leader...This is where those hot leads will come from, and you're driving revenue with your podcast."
Free powerups cheatsheet
I’ve created a powerups cheatsheet exclusively for Marketing Powerups subscribers to apply Casted’s B2B Podcast Maturity Curve.
You can download and make a copy of it here (a direct link with no email required).
In the latest Marketing Powerups episode, Kate further explains Casted’s B2B Podcast Maturity Curve.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify now, or watch it on YouTube.
✨ Mini powerups
Fun-sized blurbs and links to help boost your marketing.
✨ How to prepare your brand for AI search
Lily Ray, Senior Director of SEO at Amsive Digital, provides some hypotheses on how you can optimize your content for Google and Bing’s AI search function. One insight she shares is that third-party mentions, interviews, and corroborations will become even more important in this new world.
✨ Why creator-led content marketing is the future of search
Trust is going to be even more important as more people use AI to help them create and distribute content. That’s why Ashley Liddell, SEO Content Strategist at Reprise Digital, argues that brands should tap into the audience of trusted experts, influencers, and creators. It’s what he calls “creator-led content marketing.”
✨How SurveyMonkey grew to 60M users and 600K paying customers
Elena Verna grew SurveyMonkey to 60 million users with 600K paying customers. She flexed her PLG muscles at Miro, Veed.io, and Amplitude. Nikolas Chapoupis shares 5 takeaways he learned from her. My favorite is that funnels are dead and build habitual loops.
🧰 Tool powerups
Tools to supercharge your marketing.
👔 TalkBerry: If you’re looking for a new job and want to practice for job interviews, this AI tool can help you!
🌅 BeforeSunset: This AI tool can help you turn your to-dos into the perfect schedule in your calendar. If you’re like me, where if it’s not on my calendar, then it doesn’t happen, you’ll love this tool.
🌅 Casted (sponsored): This is the only podcast and video platform created specifically for B2B brands. You can match your audience to known contacts in your CRM and uncover the brands interested in your content.
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Have a powered-up day,
Ramli John
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