How to launch a successful podcast for your company

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to another week. Great installment of B2B weekly I'm your host, Tim Maitland. And today we're coming back with another powerful community building experience. That's right. This week we have an amazing guest, Katie Steinberg. She's market skills director of client services. And she is going to be teaching all of us here in the community today how you individually and your company can build your own podcast channel to ultimately phase out traditional marketing and go to market in a more creative way. Part of market scale on the show is we do this every single week. So every Thursday, 10:00 Central without fail, rain, snow, sunshine. I think it's actually the tornado today in Texas. So even tornadoes we come live. And the purpose of it is really bringing like minded people, folks who want to break out of the norm of B2B change, a lot of the traditional technical side of B2B and really focus on building more community. So that's what we talk about today. That's what we talk about every week. So be excited in the comments and chat. If you hear something, and you have a question, ask it. If the answer, answer it. But let's let the next 30 minutes be a form of community that we get today, this Thursday. So let's go ahead and jump right in. We're going to go and jump in and start talking about something relevant in the news right now, actually, about podcasting. We're going to talk about Tom Brady. Disclaimer the GOAT. I know that can be a little bit of a hairy subject, but Tom Brady, you know, obviously there's a lot going on with him. He retires. That's the big news story. But what I'm excited about is now that he's retired, he's really focusing his time and energy on media. We obviously know the huge deal that he has with Fox Sports or think he's actually going to make more broadcasting with Fox than he did in his 22 year career. But the news story that I'm following is his podcast, let's go. He has this with the former football player, a player Larry Fitzgerald and journalist Jim Gray. And this year, Sirius XM decided to sign the line for a multiyear renewal agreement. So what that means is we're going to have many more years of Tom Brady's podcast where he can take his direct thoughts and ideas and interests around the game of football and the game of life and bring it to his community. Now, I'm a former athlete, and what I find very interesting with athletes is you see these mega stars like Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, Derek Jeter. Something that's all interesting about them is when they retire, they all go into the business of owned media. Right? Derek Jeter started players tribune, Kobe Bryant started it, started a content creation company. And then Tom Brady owns this podcast with SiriusXM and other individuals. And it's because at the core of people, we want to be connected. We want to have that community, we want to hear direct. And it's just a fascinating story and it's also a great podcast, so I highly recommend checking it out on Sirius XM or anywhere that you listen to your podcast. So when you look at what's happening in the world of b2b, we really find that traditional marketing isn't what it used to be. If you think about it, advertising is not as impactful as it used to be, right? It's gotten way too expensive, way too commoditized. Sometimes with big tech, we wonder what they're doing with our data. And it's just not a scalable way, right? We pay all this money for impressions and click through, but in the end, we're just persuading our customers to buy. We're not actually educating them. And that's not the community that a company wants to build. We want to meet their customers' where they are. You know, another form of tradition marking the start, as impactful as it once was, is the idea of trade shows and events. You know, if you think about it, events are community building. You know, I'd be an idiot to not realize that. But what's the problem with events is it's just not scalable, right? You spend $50,000, $100,000, $1,000,000, whatever it might be, and you have exposure in front of your community for three or four days if you're lucky. Well, you can't play station to station. In today's B2B world, you have to realize that you have the channels that you can communicate 24/7 and you can excite and you can inspire that community without having to spend, you know, $1,000,000 on that show or having to play station to station. And there's other areas too, with the traditional marketing, right? We look at our buyers and the market. The market's more uncertain than ever. And our buyers, their behavior has changed more than ever. Right people, as consumers, we want more short snippet, authentic content. We don't want drawn out technical big to do content like a case study or technical white paper. So as marketers, we have to ask ourselves, who are my customers, who are my community, and how can I reach them? So market scale, we realize that the best company. It doesn't matter if you are literally a startup company out of Silicon Valley or if you're the most industrial B2B manufacturer in Mendon, Louisiana. It's all the same. You have a community that makes up your business, and your business is only as strong as your community. Now you might say, well, Tim, what do you mean by community? Right you keep saying community, community, community. We believe community is audience, except audience is a very cold word. Right? audience is who you're talking to, who are directing community are the people that make up your business. So in a B2B sense, it's your customers that are fans of your product and you need to continue to engage. It's your prospects, the folks who you want to bring into your community, it's your dealers channels and distributor channels. Any sort of sales channels of people outside the walls of your company, your association, so that your members and exhibitors of talk about a huge community. And then of course probably the biggest your employees, right? The people who are building your product, who are selling your product or servicing your product. Now, what a thriving company will do is they'll say, OK, we've got these different buckets of experts. We need to turn them all into content creators and we need to let them all share their voice and their thought leadership to ultimately fuel and inspire one another. Because that's what a community is, right? It's built up of a group of people with a similar interest who want to fuel and inspire and pour into one another. And we see this in our everyday life. It's almost ridiculous how much you see this. And I'll bring up one of my favorite examples. Today we're going to talk about Yeti. You know, Yeti is so interesting to me and I think everybody, because in the end, if you think about exactly what they are, they're a $500 cooler, they're a $100 cup of coffee or I guess cup that holds your coffee. And it's the craziest thing. A $70,000 Tahoe or escalade, they'll take that Yeti cow, they'll slap it on their bumper, their window, and they will literally put Yeti on one of the most expensive things that they own. It's because they want to show everybody this around them that they are a part of the Yeti family. Now, if you think about it, it's kind of genius because where are some of the best community building happening? Well, it happens around a cooler, right? It happens at tailgates, it happens at barbecues, it happens at graduation parties. And Yeti helps people throwing those parties. And those get togethers be the hero because their beer stays cold because it's a meeting place. So yeti, it's really more than just a cooler. It's a community builder. And that's why somebody like me will spend that money on a cooler and I'll show up to University of Texas football game with it, and I'll get slaps on the back and I'll get high 5 because I'm bringing the Yeti to the party and the good times are going to happen around the Yeti. You know, something else that Yeti does that's absolutely amazing is they believe in the idea of user generated content at market scale. Recall that community generated content. They will have this video series called success survival stories where somebody is out on the lake or somebody is out camping and something ridiculous happened to their cooler, but the party lives on. So let's go ahead and jump in to a fun video clip right now of one of the Yeti survival stories. All right, so we rescue this off a boat fire. Oh, Yeah. And still has the ice. Has he had a. Isn't that amazing? Here you have some good old boys somewhere in Texas having one heck of a party. Huge day. Literally a blowout. His boat burns down in the lake. Sounds like everybody was safe. But what survives? The Yeti. Right the boat is gone. But the party lives on because of Yeti. The beer is still cold. And that's the power of this, right? The idea of user community generated content. That gentleman, Richard, who makes that video, they share it. That is better than any $50,000 ad campaign that they can make. That's better than any Super Bowl commercial they can make because it's somebody literally showcasing Yeti in its natural environment and allowing it to show its strengths of being this durable party builder and party sustainer in this case. And the point of that is, every company can do this. You can do it. All right. We all have the people that make up our business. We just need the right technology, right? We need to use technology as our friend to enable everybody to be content creators. And that's one of the reasons why a market scale is around why we exist. We want to be a platform for B2B community engagement, where you can unlock the voices of experts in your community and allow them to make video soundbites like that gentleman did for yeti, or allow them to hop on a company podcast and now their voice lives on forever. And that's we're going to learn about today. We're going to learn it specifically how you as again an individual and thought leader and now is your company can do this. And I can't think of a better person to talk about this than our guest today. I mentioned at the start of the show. She's our director of client services and she has an amazing show called game changers. It's focused on the sports and entertainment world, as well as hospitality. And she's used it in a variety of ways to boost market sales presence, to boost her own and to form community, of course, in the markets, that's for sure. So let's go ahead and bring in Katie Steinberg. Katie, Thanks for joining me today. How are you? Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thrilled to be here. When I was talking about podcasting, I wanted to obviously bring you on because you've done such an amazing job building your own community and you've done it in a unique way where you have got guests of all types, which I'm going to ask you about. So as an icebreaker, a little point, you know, we obviously love podcasts and every kind of form of life, personal and professional. In your personal life, what are some of your favorite podcasts that you tune into or maybe get inspiration from? Oh man. Well, I am a sports girlfriend, so I will say I've been listening since college, but barstool sports, huge fan of big cat and then also how I built this where I love just learning a little bit about the entrepreneurs and how they truly came up with. The idea is to build some of the best companies in the world in America, honor percent, 100% And I had a plug actually one of my favorite podcasts is the let's go with Tom Brady. You know, a big of a Tom Brady fan. I am. So I already plugged in my favorite. But no, if you look at the landscape today, right, you see B2B companies left and right. I mean, you can't really log into LinkedIn right now without seeing a company post their new podcast or a new episode. Why is it that these B2B companies of all types are replacing some of their traditional marketing, like blogs and case studies with a podcast channel? Well, first off, I mean, who wants to read a blog nowadays? Let's be honest here. Our attention spans are unfortunately shrinking, so we want that quick content. Podcasts are one of the best ways to educate your communities and then also form connections as well. So instead of as a salesperson, especially instead of having a cold call all the time, why not be able to invite someone on as a guest? That exact that you've been waiting to get a hold of, invite them on as a guest, build that relationship and use the podcast truly to educate your communities and then form those connections as well. I mean, to your point on reading, you know, the way I look at it is, sure, I could read that technical white paper from that engineer, right? If I'm interested in broadcast equipment, I could read it or I could tune into somebody who runs broadcasts. I could tune into the person Hillary built the broadcast equipment, and I could hear from that authentic thought leader. And I believe that if that's happening, I'm probably becoming a bigger fan of that company because they've elevated that educational experience. Absolutely and then associating that company, of course, with every guest that they have on and again, just providing that true education, that's a lot more engaging than just reading a, you know, traditional blog or white paper or something along those lines. Plus, it's scalable, right? One of the problems with the more traditional marketing is it's not a scalable resource. You know, oftentimes if you have a blog portal that's thriving, you might have just yourself as a marketer and maybe you have a little writing team or you're ghostwriting, which probably isn't the most accurate or healthiest, and it's just not scalable. Right? you have to have time for edit, you have to have time for proof. Then you post. And then the engagement is not what it is when you have a thing like a podcast. There's really nothing stopping you from having literally dozens of episodes in a month because how many different people can be the guest, right? The harder job and being a podcast is the guest because you're answering the questions. The is your job is just hosting because you're asking them. So it's very scalable. No, it's truly you're not only is it quite easy to find the guys because it doesn't always need to even be external. Please have on. I always recommend having on internal guys as well. Getting the voices of your internal community heard from your company, but then having external guys on is always very helpful as well. It is now obviously the examples we mentioned, are there fun, right? Barstool sports and Tom Brady and how I built this. Now a comment, a question that I hear a lot in B2B is they'll say, well, hey, Tim, I love podcasting and personal life, but. Look, we manufacture widgets. We manufacture components for space ships. We have a very niche, niche, niche B2B audience. I'm not going to get people to tune into podcasts because I have a small audience. And because my product is an exciting. So what are your thoughts going to be in a B2B podcast expert? I would say one of the most important things to do when starting a podcast is defining your audience and communities that you're trying to reach. So with these niche communities, they're actually they have an advantage because they have the true, proper understanding of what their communities want to hear about what they like, what they're interested in. And then they're able to provide that content and truly have every member of the community be a fan of their company and their brand as well. And as well as that, I guess paying respect to the community might be small, but it's mighty, right? It's like mighty mouse, because you have these people who've made amazing careers as engineers in these specific, specific industries and fields, and they have to make a huge purchasing decision. Absolutely right. Whether you manufacture components or whatever it is, these people are making million dollar decisions. So their missiles, their rocket ships, their generators are able to operate as this heavy machinery and the better educational experience you can give them, more trust that they're going to have in purchasing you over that other person, and you're going to actually elevate yourself not being that commodity anymore. You might have a commoditized product, but you elevate beyond that because now you are a publisher, you're an educator, you're a voice of the community, and that can make the biggest impact. Yeah, people want to trust and know the people that they are or the companies that they're buying from. So by having a podcast and constantly feeding them with that episodic content and also educating them and building that trust and having them truly just get to know you and know your company's personality and you as a person. Then they feel that trust and they are much more likely to want to buy. And that's a good point. Right the personality. You know, I know I speak from experience talking with a lot of you marketers that you have these amazing engineers. But these marketers are a little bit sometimes afraid to put them in front of a camera or give a microphone because, yeah, they might not be the most polished or they might be a little bit shy. But what I say is embrace that right when you have that literally that genius in your industry has had a 40 year career of manufacturing those fuel pumps or those valves. What an amazing thought, leader. Let him or her. Be their authentic self and let that knowledge be what drives value the content, not necessarily any sort of, you know, awkward energy, if you will. Absolutely if you have someone who, you know, they might be a little bit more shy, but they absolutely light up when they talk about widgets. Amazing that is your perfect podcast guest when they are lighting up, talking about something involving your company or, you know, something a little bit more technical, that's exactly what you need. And they're also built a lot of credibility because they're a true subject matter expert on that and a thought leader. As well. Absolutely now, obviously, podcasts are popping up and people are more interested than ever in launching them. One of the things we'll hear marketers say sometimes is, well, hey, Tim, look, there's so many podcasts out there like the world doesn't need one more podcast. It's a noisy world, right? It comes in all different formats. But what are your thoughts on that as folks kind of take that mindset of why they might not watch podcast. Yeah if they're saying it's too loud, well, you know, B2B is loud. That's like saying you're not going to go to a trade show because there's too many companies that are going well. If you're not going to that trade shows as a dairy industry, then you're missing out and you're missing out on podcasting as well. I mean, my show is in sports entertainment, and there are countless podcasts and just all episodic content all throughout the industry. And I so made it work. You got to make it work. And with if it's a popular industry already, great people want to hear what others say in the industry. So if you don't already have a podcast, then you should be joining them. And you know your point on the trade show, right? If you're not there, then it's weird, right? It's like a company website. How many websites are in your industry? Or if you don't have a website, you basically can't go to business. Podcast is essentially just another website because it's a channel that you can reach a customer in another way. It's free, it's scalable, and yeah, you're playing with one arm behind your back if you don't have it. And sure, you might have a small audience and sure there might be a dozen other shows in your industry will make you a little bit different, right? Get more of the voices of the community outside your business on and they'll start doing the marketing for you. That's another tip as well. And it's a way to break the silo of B2B being more serious and always just buttoned up. It's show who your true company is and your true personality of your brand through the podcast. How people get to know you and get to all the different people within your company and the guest that you choose to have on is true. Now, you know, kind of one point. Let's pivot a little bit. Your show. You've got an amazing show, right? Game changers. And it covers multiple verticals. Now, when you're looking for guests because you've had a variety of guests and we'll talk I'll ask you about that in a minute. But when you're looking for a guess for a podcast, what is it that you're exactly looking for of who's going to make a good guest, both on the topic and how they're going to increase the exposure on your show? Yeah, I would say first and foremost, a true subject matter expert, someone who really knows the industry and when they talk, people listen and that they are it's providing true thought, leadership and knowledge there. Then also, of course, getting on someone who has a great following so that when they are able to share out that episode, then it's a domino effect and they're sharing that with their communities and then their communities are sharing out as well. And it's not only a win for you, but it's also a win for the guest because they're provided that, you know, owned media and earned media in that sense as well. It's so spot on that makes me think of a story. You know, we have a company, I'll spare names, but they're a younger company out of silicon valley, got some great funding. They're great business. They launched a podcast and one of their first guest is they bring on Mitsubishi. And that's pretty amazing, right? You're a small company. You bring on literally a multibillion dollar international business on to your show. What's going to happen now? Right Mitsubishi is going to take that feature. They're probably going to tweet it out, probably share it on LinkedIn. That individual from Mitsubishi is for sure going to share it out to his community. And now what happens? Mitsubishi does the marketing for you. And you're not paying for ads, you're not paying for impressions. It's reverse pr, right? It's the idea. Instead of saying, all right, I'm going to pay to get my name and voice and brand and all these other channels with audiences they own. I'm going to build a channel I own. I'm going to allow my thought leadership. But also these bigger companies thought leadership and then they're going to share it out. And I all that are in media and that is the healthiest form of marketing is when you build own media and let irn media then really create the flywheel with it. Absolutely I, I invited on Catherine crone shout out to you cake. But I invited her onto my show and she shared it with her different communities as well. And then I can't tell you the amount of countless doors that open just from that one share of inviting her on my podcast. It's so spot on. And what's interesting about your show is literally 1 minute you'll have Lauren moon, you'll have Eric Dickerson on. I know you've got some other big names coming on in the works. And yes, they're big and they're flashy and they carry a lot of weight. However, your show is focused on B2B and you'll bring on somebody like Catherine and we actually have a clip of that show with Catherine. So let's go ahead and cut over to that so you can kind of see what a good traditional B2B podcast episode can look like. Why is having a template for venue technology so important? Yeah, I mean, that's it's kind of my life's work, right? Some people are, you know, saving the world. And I'm trying to make technology templates. We you know, I my partnership and relationship started with ASM global on actually on the client vendor side. And part of our goal there was to help them develop this template for technology, right? RSM Global's on the cutting edge on the leading of a lot of proprietary things. Nobody knows life events and production better than they do. And so technology is a huge piece of that. And when you have a portfolio of over 300 venues worldwide, being able to approach that in a structured and seamless manner is key. It also helps that you get to leverage, you know, a smaller arena, I guess, to leverage what the T-Mobile arena is are doing today. And it's and it's great on the partnership type side, right? We have great technology partners and they're helping us create that roadmap. We have great experts and resources inside the company as well to drive that. And then and then, you know, as a fan, when you go to any at some global venue that you're getting a similar experience that's state of the art and engaged. That was awesome. It's just so v to be 100% Catherine. Catherine's incredible. I she. She yeah, she is. She's the boss of all. Sure so, you know, obviously a podcast as a professional in the art of sales, a podcast channel is a way for you to essentially conduct business, right? If you think about it, you read all these books or you hear all these posts about cold calling, oh, it's not as impactful as it was. Maybe it's not. But what's the easiest way to get a meeting with somebody is give somebody an experience. And when you have somebody like Catherine on or anybody else, fill in the blank salesperson and you ask somebody to be on your podcast. You create such an experience together. And before you ever asking for a meeting or for something, you're giving somebody a tangible asset that they can use to help their own career, their own professional thought leadership. That's what's so powerful about when you have somebody like Catherine compared to, you know, some of these sports celebrities that you've had on. Absolutely and again, I know I'd mentioned this before, but what better way to build a relationship instead of cold calling the same person over and over, invite them on your podcast. Have them share their wealth of knowledge and thought. Leadership with your community is as well. Show them that you value them enough and what they have to say that you want them on your podcast. And then also it's a total hack of learning more about their company and how you'll be able to help them as well. Yeah, that's almost like, you know, be interested, not be interesting play off that. So if I'm a marketer and I'm listening to this, maybe it sounds great, but I'm thinking, well, how do I do this? I'm not really sure how ever done it before. So you've launch your own show. Give some marketers advice right now or sales team members advice on how they can do exactly what you've done. Truly, nowadays, it's quite easy with it being 2023 and us all having four cameras and then webcam. So truly all you really have to do is, you know, build out apple, spotify, get all your questions in line, decide what you really want the podcast to be on. Super simple, super easy, and then start reaching out to guys. You just have to get started the amount of time that you're going to waste, just thinking about it over and over. If you just get started, I promise you, you will be thankful. Yeah, it's one of those things where it can, you know, be done essentially homegrown, right? You can build that video player for your website or you could build that Apple and Spotify channel and then, yeah, just go out and get that first guess. Go get that hero. Guess who's going to be excited, who lights up when they talk about that topic, who's going to share it? And then I think you be pretty surprised right from there. You can get other guests from people who like the show people who reshare the show. You can just keep asking and you start to create that flywheel effect from there. Absolutely and contact your heroes. You know, there have been so many countless guys on my show that I never even thought I'd be able to speak to, let alone have on my own podcast. Dr. Jen Walter, shout out to you as well. But first, NFL coach, that was a female ever and never. I didn't even know if I'd ever be able to speak to her. And she is like 40,000 followers on LinkedIn and she said Yes and was thrilled about it. And wanted to share a story. And that's just kind of how it works. You just got to get started and you got to dream big. Absolutely well, that's the best advice you could ever give. Well, Thank you so much, Katie, for joining today and sharing your thought leadership with everybody and how to do it. Thank you, Tim. This has been great. Yeah and for those out there listening, if you want a great show on sports or sports, entertainment or hospitality, flip over to Game Changers. You can find it literally anywhere you listen to your podcast or market scale. But in the meantime, I want to just Thank everybody for tuning in for another installment of B2B weekly. Say it every week. I'll say it again. This show is about community building. So I want everybody here as you're watching, leave this show. Go build actual community. Go Pat your coworker on the back. Go volunteer at that church or local group. Pour into your city, pour into your family. Let's be community builders. In everything that we do, we can assure that in times are good and times are bad. Everything's all right. Well, until next week. We appreciate everybody coming back. And we will see you here live from Dallas, Texas, next Thursday at 10:00 AM Central. Take care, everybody.