← B2B Podcasting Insights - business strategy podcast for founders and brands
B2B Podcasting Insights - business strategy podcast for founders and brands
10,000 Followers? 100 Downloads! Why B2B Sales Podcasts Struggle!
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I want to tell you about a conversation that I've had more times than I care to count. A founder, big LinkedIn following. We're talking tens of thousands of followers. They're posting consistently, getting decent engagement. People are commenting, sharing, tagging their mates. So they of course decide to launch a podcast. I mean, logical next step, right? Six months later, they're getting 100 downloads per episode, maybe 150 on a good week. And they genuinely cannot work out why I should be massive. They think to themselves. I'll tell you why. It's because your social media following and your podcast audience have almost nothing in common. And until you understand that properly, you'll keep making the same impression. Expensive mistake. Welcome to B2B Podcasting Insights with Neil Velio, founder of PodKnows. Right, let's get into this properly, because I think this is one of the most damaging assumptions in B2B podcasting right now. The idea that because you've built an audience on LinkedIn or Instagram or YouTube or wherever else for that matter, that audience is automatically going to be following you onto your podcast. It's not. And here's why. On social media, the barrier to someone becoming part of your universe is almost non existent. They see a post, they hit like on it, they might follow. And if they do follow, it's job done. Here's the thing though, if they go off you or they get bored of you, or your content just stops being relevant to them, most of the time they don't even unfollow you, they just stop engaging. You keep that number, you get the vanity metric, you just don't keep the attention. Podcast audiences work completely differently. To get someone onto your podcast, they've got to actively go and find it, they've got to subscribe or follow it in an app. Then they've got to choose to press play on an episode, and this is the part that really matters. They've then got to stick around long enough to actually hear what you're saying. We're talking 60% of the episode minimum. If you've got any ambitions around monetization, do you see the difference in commitment level that's required there? It's not even the same sport, it's barely even the same planet. Now, I'm not saying don't promote your podcast on social media. Of course you should. Everywhere. You can talk about your podcast as much and as often as feels natural, mention it, link to it, talk about what's in it. But and this is the bit most people miss your social Media Call to action accounts for less than 1% of your episode's traffic. Less than 1%. I've got the data to back that up. I've worked with podcasters who've gone hard on LinkedIn promotion, proper push, daily posting, stories, newsletters, the lot. And the needle on their download numbers barely twitches. Because the platforms don't want you leaving LinkedIn, they don't want you leaving Instagram. Their algorithm is specifically designed to keep people exactly where they are. So when you share a podcast link, the platform sort of suppresses it. It rewards you for staying on the platform. And you wonder why your social media strategy isn't driving podcast growth. I mean, LinkedIn are particularly brazen about this, by the way. They're gonna tell you that their whole pitch is about professional networking and business growth, and then they'll just bury any post that has an external link in it and that's the link to your podcast. So if social media isn't going to save your podcast, what will? Let me give you the honest answer, because it's not a particularly sexy one, but it is a necessary one. Podcast audiences grow through podcast discovery. That means things like your show appearing in search results, inside Apple podcasts, Spotify, and even in Google searches. It means your episode titles and descriptions being properly optimized so that when your ideal listener types in a phrase, not a topic, a pain point, a buying trigger, your show comes up. It means getting on other people's podcasts as a guest so their audience finds you. It means being genuinely, undeniably good enough that your current listeners tell other people about you without even being asked. None of that's living on social media. All of that is inside the podcast ecosystem itself. And if you've been spending all your time and energy promoting on platforms with self serving algorithms, you've been investing your time and energy in the wrong place. Here's the thing I find genuinely baffling, and I want to say this with as much kindness as I'm capable of mustering. I've spoken to podcasters who've been going on for about two years, posting consistently on LinkedIn about their show, getting decent engagement on those posts. Lovely comments, people saying how much they loved the episode. And they've been averaging under 200 downloads per episode. After all of that effort, two years, consistently under 200 downloads. When I point out that their podcast SEO is essentially non existent, their episode titles are too generic, their descriptions are a mess, they're nowhere in search, it's kind of like a light goes on and Then an even bigger, large light goes off because they realize they've been shouting into social media's void for 24 months when there was a whole other world of podcast listeners who simply couldn't find them. That's not a content problem. That's an audience problem. That's a problem with your discoverability, and social media is never going to solve it. Here's where I want to be really clear about something, because I can already hear the objections. Some people are going to tell you the answer is YouTube. Get your podcast on YouTube, they'll say. That's where the discovery's happening. And look, I'm not gonna tell you that YouTube is useless, because it isn't. I've been working on YouTube for clients and trying to develop some strategies, and we're seeing some decent results. But I'm gonna be straight with you. YouTube is not a magic fix. And if you think you're gonna cross pollinate your LinkedIn audience straight into your YouTube channel and then onto your podcast, you're gonna be disappointed in all three places. YouTube is a different beast entirely. It needs a different edit, a different optimization strategy, and a significant amount of patience before it even starts working in your favor. It's a bolt on. It's not a replacement for building real podcast discoverability the right way. Now, you're going to want a practical takeaway from this episode. I know you are. So let me give you three things to think about now. First, stop measuring your podcast marketing success by how many likes your promotional posts get. That number tells you nothing useful about whether your podcast is reaching the right people. Second, start investing in how discoverable your podcast actually is inside the podcast apps themselves. Look at your episode titles. Are they answering the questions that your ideal listener is already asking other people, or are they just topics that you feel like talking about? There is a massive difference, and it directly affects whether or not you appear in search. Thirdly, think about your current listeners as your most valuable marketing asset. If someone's listening to 60% or more of your episode, they're a fan, and fans talk amongst themselves. But they'll only talk if you give them something worth talking about. And if you make it easy for them to share it. That means simple episode links, clear show names, memorable titles of episodes. The basics. Nail those. Reap the rewards. Your social media presence is brilliant for building your personal brand, for staying visible with people who already know you, for starting conversations that might eventually lead somewhere good. But it's not a podcast growth strategy. And the sooner you stop treating it like one, the sooner you can start putting your energy into things that actually move the needle for you. And speaking of things that actually move numbers northwards, I've put together a free guide specifically for B2B founders who are want to stop relying on social media to grow their podcast and start doing the things that genuinely work. It covers the five areas that most branded podcasts completely ignore when it comes to discoverability, and it takes about 15 minutes to read. You can grab it@podnos.co.uk free guide spelled out for you. That's P O D K N O W s free guide. And of course the link is right there in the episode description and now founder FAQs so each episode I answer a question from somebody out in the wild who's been brave enough to email me at neilodnows.co.uk. that's N E A L at P O-kn O-W-S.co.uk this week's founder FAQs comes from Rachel, who heads up marketing at a professional services firm. Very vague. She asks again, paraphrasing We've been doing a weekly episode for eight months, but our host is starting to run out of things to say. How do we keep the content fresh without it just becoming repetitive? Well, Rachel, this is actually a really common one, and I'd argue it's actually a strategy problem dressed up as a content problem. If your host is running out of things to say after eight months, it's usually because the show was built around a topic rather than a specific ongoing business problem that your ideal buyers are living with every single day. Topics run dry problems don't. Your clients are not running out of things to struggle with, so if the content feels a bit thin, go back to your brief who's the show actually for and what are they fighting with right now that they weren't fighting with six months ago? That's probably your next batch of episodes. And if the host genuinely needs a bit of fresh energy, I'd look at the format before I look at the content. Sometimes a slight structural tweak, a new segment, a different way of opening episodes, maybe a listener question dropped in just kind of like this could can do more for momentum of a show than any amount of new topic brainstorming every episode. I'm going to endeavor to offer a quick tip for B2B founders and this week it's a really simple one. Go look at your most recent five episode titles and now ask yourself honestly, could any of those titles double as a LinkedIn post headline. If the answer is yes, they're probably too broad and too social media brained to do any real work inside a podcast feed. Podcast episode titles are not posts, they're search queries answered. And they need to reflect the specific frustration that your ideal listener is typing into a search bar at 11 o' clock at night when they're trying to figure out why something isn't working. Leadership in 2025 is a LinkedIn post. Why your senior hire keeps undermining your sales process is a podcast episode. One gets a like the other gets a play, and it's worth knowing the difference. Well, that's it for this episode. Don't forget the free guide is@podnos.co.uk free guide. Go grab it, read it and then come back and tell me which of the five things maybe you want to throw your laptop out of a window. Only joking. Until next time, best of luck with your B2B podcasting.