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B2B Podcasting Insights - business strategy podcast for founders and brands
B2B Podcast Growth Timeline - are you measuring wrongly?
00:20:22
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- [00:02]
A
All right, 10 months, 40 episodes. Let's see what we're doing this week. Stat wise. Is that it? Is that genuinely it? I've been doing this for the best part of a year. A year. I interviewed a bloke who invented a SATS platform that I still don't even understand. I recorded an episode in my wardrobe. I bought a pop filter from Amazon. I named it Derek. That's it. I'm telling Janet on Monday. Podcasting is a load of bum sponge. I'm done.
- [00:40]
B
Hi, Neil. Here, slide the laptop away. Put Derek down. Because you're not failing. You're measuring against the wrong clock. And by the end of the next few minutes, you're either gonna feel enormously relieved or mildly devastated. And I genuinely can't tell you which yet. Cause that bit's on you. We'll figure it out together, though. Hold that thought. Welcome to B2B Podcasting Insights with me, Neil Velio. I am the founder and operator of Podnos Podcasting. We're a podcast agency that helps people like you get results from your podcast, whether that be help you launch one, manage it for you, or just help you along the way with coaching and consulting. Right, the ten month panic. Let's dig into this, shall we? Because every B2B podcast that I have audited has the same issue. It's Sunday night, The founder is 10 months in, roughly 40 episodes or so deep, and they're staring at their download stats like they owe them money. The line's not flat, exactly, but it's not hockey stick growth either. Is not even bowling ball growth, to be fair, it's definitely not the absolute flange that some podcasting guru on LinkedIn has peddled to them constantly for months. And now the CFO is doing their usual annual review, looking at all the line items and thinking, hmm, podcasting. What are we getting from this? In fact, the mere mention of the word podcast leads to facial expressions that haven't been seen since people started noticing that pongy whiff from the office plant that nobody seemed to like just before it died. So the founder panics. They Google, how long should a B2B podcast take to work while they're sat down on the toilet pan on a Sunday night at 11pm? And I'm going to level with you. That's not how functional human beings should be making strategic decisions. Certainly not when it comes to business. It's how you end up joining an engagement pod on Monday morning and wondering why your engagement looks great, but your results are tanking. Stop it. All Right. Just stop it. Here's what nobody bothered to tell you. Almost certainly because those people claim to be podcasting experts on LinkedIn have launched precisely one podcast their own, and it's probably called something like Leadership unlocked. You're not 10 months into your podcast, you're closer to six, probably five, possibly four if it took you a while to figure out how to send MP3s to your RSS hosting dashboard. Anyway, you're definitely not 10 months into your podcast, even though you think you are. And there's no shame in that at all. Let me explain. The clock that most founders who are podcasting judge time by is the day they publish their first episode. And that is the wrong time to start the clock ticking. I mean, it makes sense on paper. Podcast published, start timing, results. The podcast exists, it's live. It's listed in Apple Podcasts and Spotify, maybe on YouTube. So TikTok, TikTok. Fine, I get it. Except that's not the clock that matters in business when it comes to podcasts. Cue inspirational Gary Vaynerchuk line here. Just keep showing up. Consistency is the cheat code document. Don't create. Thanks, Gary. Mate, go on your little whiteboard for a while while you, the grown ups, are talking over here. The clock that actually matters and is applicable to what you're doing probably should have started ticking at episode 15. And yes, that number is deliberate. I've come up with that intentionally. And that's because every B2B branded podcast that I've ever audited sounds very different from episode 15. And that's because every B2B branded podcast that I've audited, and trust me, that's hundreds, if not more, they sounded very different from episode one than they did at episode 15 and different again at episode 30. Episode one, you're still figuring out where to put your microphone. Episode three, you're apologizing cause the intro music is still too loud over your voice. Episode six, you tried something weird, didn't work. Episode seven, you're starting to pretend the podcast didn't exist in the first place. Episode 11, you're restructuring your entire format because you're pretending that episode six never happened. Episode 13, you're finally starting to figure out who this show is for. And spoiler alert, it's not business leaders because that's not an audience. That's a LinkedIn category. So episode 15 is probably the first episode where the show starts to sound like what the show is. Everything before that is a full dress rehearsal. It just happened to be published, which is great. You've got a reference to look back on and compare what you're putting out now with what you're putting out then. And I guarantee it's improved. And your audience doesn't build a relationship with your dress rehearsals. It builds a relationship with you showing up as you are in the current form. They build a relationship with a show that has stabilized into the thing it is now, the one that sounds the same pretty much week after week after week. Not boring, just reliable. So if you're at month 10 with around 40 episodes done published, the real clock, the one that your audience is actually timing you by, that started 15 episodes ago. So you're six months in, not 10. Six. Which may well end up being the most relieving sentence you've heard this week relating to your podcast. Especially if that CFO is still looking at you and the whole podcasting team. Just like you killed that plant in the corner of the office, suddenly your stats aren't a disaster. And you can present that to your cfo. You can say, these are not the stats of a 10 month podcast. These are the stats of a six month podcast. And they're doing pretty much what a six month in podcast will do. A good one. So congratulations, you're normal. Go put the kettle on. Don't go pouring the water into any plants. Now, before you go making the beast for two bucks with your download stats. I can't believe I just said that. Wow. Let me restate that before you go celebrating your podcast stats with this new reframe in mind. Just pump the brakes a second. All of this is not a permission slip. It's a diagnostic. I'm not letting you off the hook on progress here, and I'm not letting you off the hook on learning from your mistakes. There are probably two founders, two types of founders that are listening to this right now, okay? And only one of them gets to take all this as good news. The other one is straight their pants, and they're about to have a rough few minutes. Sorry in advance. Go grab your favorite comfort biscuit and then click play to continue. Founder number one. Your show's been developing. Your voice is sharpened. The format has settled into something relatively recognizable. Now you're starting to become a little bit more predictable in terms of giving the listener what they want. You can probably describe who the show is in one sentence without taking a breath, without saying the word leaders, and without resorting to talking about thought leadership. Because nobody wants to hear that someone on your sales team might have actually sent a prospect that they're talking to a link to an episode of your podcast recently, and you didn't even prompt them to do it. They took it on themselves because they liked what you were putting out and they felt to themselves, wow, this can really help me close with this client. The show at episode 30 sounds way more confident than the show did at episode three when they were just nodding along in agreement that what you were doing was great, but they would never in a million years share it with any prospects. That's progress. So if that's you, you're at month six of real work. Well done. Stop panicking and start compounding. Take the congratulations from me. You've earned it. Found a number two, right? Brace yourself. Your show is lost. The format changes depending on who you've managed to cajole into being a guest that week. You still describe the show with a list of topics, and you're probably including leadership, strategy, innovation, synergy, disruption, usually in that order, with culture occasionally sneaking in somewhere as well. Nobody inside your business has ever forwarded an episode of your show to any of their prospects and probably never will. As it stands right now, they're probably a bit embarrassed, to be honest. Even your mum only listens now and again so that you don't feel bad when you ask her, what do you like about my podcast, mum? And she goes, that thing where you did the thing in your case, episode 30 sounds pretty much the same as episode three. You've just learned how to talk into the mic slightly better. If that's you, I'm sorry, because this reframe that I'm sharing in this episode, it doesn't save you. You got more work to. You're not at month six of real work. You're at month ten of no work. Sorry. It is true. The clock hasn't started at all yet because you're not in the position where it can start to compound and grow. The show's never stabilized into anything meaningful, so there's nothing to start timing against. And no amount of patient, consistent showing up publishing on a Tuesday is gonna change that. Not the way it is right now. So you need to make a decision about your show. You don't need to wait it out. Waiting it out is what is killing your podcast. So how do you work out which founder you are? Okay, well, here's the deal. Monday, you've got two jobs, 10 minutes. Job one, pull your three most recent episodes. Listen to the opening 90 seconds of each, back to back. Do they sound like the same show as in they got the same energy, the Same structure, the same what's in it for me, for the listener? If yes, great. Well done. Your format has settled. You've got a show that's stable and ready to grow. The clock started ticking and you're fine, you're golden. If each one sounds like a completely different podcast that's just hosted by three different people in three slightly different ways, then your clock hasn't started. And I got news for you. You're going to have to make a real decision now. Job two. Find somebody that's responsible for growing your business with sales, business development, whatever you want to call it, and ask them exactly this. In the last month, have you sent a single prospect, a link to an episode of our podcast that addresses a real concern that they've raised with you during a discovery call? If the answer's yes, brilliant. The show's doing what it's there to do. If the answer's no, I didn't really think about the podcast like that. I didn't know that was a thing. Well, there you go. You've just been told your sales team don't even have any value held in your podcast whatsoever, and that is why you're doing it for them. Your show's not embedded into the sales process in any way, shape or form. And until it is, the clock doesn't start for you. So Here you go. Two checks, 10 minutes total. Considerably more useful than another Sunday night. Sat on the pan. Considering joining engagement pods, Panic scrolling Spotify for podcasters while your partner's in the other room watching something great on the telly without you. Cause you're not in the mood for fun. Hey, stop working for a minute and come join me. We have to watch this. And you might be asking yourself, why does any of this matter? I mean, you know, I just want to do the podcast and. And you know, it's for vanity reasons anyway. Not particularly looking to get sales from it. That's excuses. Excuse after excuse after excuse. This matters because both failure modes come from the wrong clock. This matters because your show has a job to do. And if you need to know more about shows doing jobs, we had an episode about this. Go to podnos.co.uk, click B2B podcasting insights and you will see all the episodes listed and look for the episode that mentions what job is your podcast doing. You need to know which clock you're on and then you need to act. So get to it and make a decision. If you're founder too, you need to make that decision. So get to it. Do the exercise. And if you are founder too, you need to make a decision. And you know where I am if you want me to help you with it, right? Okay. Each week I answer a question from a founder, someone that is in my universe and has contacted me either through the website or via email@neilpodnows.co.uk that's n e a l o d k n o w s.co.uk and this one's from Sara, who's head of content at a B2B fintech somewhere in the south of England. Sara wants to know should she name her podcast after herself or after the company? Sara. Gorgeous question. Trips up more founders than any other, and the reason it trips them up is because most of the advice floating around about it is written by people who have never had to live with their own naming decision for longer than about one. Q. Here's the rule. Don't name the thing after yourself unless you genuinely plan to still be recording it in 15 years or so. I'm going to gently suggest that you probably won't be. Most people don't. The podcast will either get sold and be hosted by somebody else, or get passed down to another member of your team and be hosted by somebody else. Also, don't name it after a topic, because the topic may well be out of date within 18 months. All industries shift and grow and change and iterate, so don't do that. Otherwise you might end up with a show called the Web3 Leadership Hour, which would have been great in, what, 2019? That would have aged about as well as a prawn sandwich in a glove box on a sunny day. Name it after the transformation it offers to your ideal listener. So if your show helps procurement leads stop getting absolutely mugged off, you know, on contract renewals, the name should probably gesture towards that and have that suggested within the title. Not the fintech Lounge. No, none of that. No, no. Sara Talks Money. And definitely not the Sara podcast, which is, against all available evidence, still the most common and most disappointing naming choice in B2B podcasting. You want a name that survives the brand and your industry. It's as simple as that. And the only thing that survives all of that is the promise that your show makes. It's as simple as that. Start there. All right, this week's quick tip. The first two lines of your episode description are doing a lot more work than you probably think they are, and what you've been told they're doing by a Know Nothing podcast editor. Most people absolutely waste them gigantically, criminally here's what's actually happening when you're putting in your description for your episode. Apple Podcast and Spotify both truncate your episode description in the previews in various places, whether that be on the website version or in certain devices. You will have to click see more after a certain amount of time. And I'm gonna save you the suspense on this one. Nobody's gonna be doing that. Nobody. Only psychopaths. And yet 90% of the B2B podcast episode descriptions that I see through audits, they tend to open with either in this episode I'm joined by or join me for a chat with, which is the written equivalent of walking into a pub, climbing onto a chair and then yelling out to the room. I'm about to start talking to people now. Yeah, cheers for the heads up. Kevin. Sit down. The first two lines need to behave like a cold open. They need to present to the ideal listener the tension that this particular episode will be resolving. So don't summarize, don't introduce the whole episode in an almost pseudo transcript form. Tension. Rewrite your episode description right now. If you're publishing in the next few days and you've already got the episode recorded, this is a priority. Your click through rate will shift and you'll wonder why nobody told you this sooner. And the answer to that is probably because the person who set your show up read half an article in 2019 called Here Are 10 Podcast Growth Hacks and they've been winging it ever since. So don't be like Kevin, all right? If anything I've described in this episode has resonated with you, landed a bit close to home. If you're a founder, that does tend to sit there on a Sunday night on the pan, staring at your dashboard, wondering where the hell your listeners are. And you know that you need to make a big decision. Don't make that decision on your own. Get in touch with me. That's literally what my diagnostic is designed for, to help founders like you figure their shit out and get it sorted. We'll go through your show together in all the detail and understand what your show's doing right now and where it's falling short. By the end of it, you'll know whether you're developing or drifting, whether the show should genuinely be retired or whether you're onto something. And you need to keep going with some strategy. You can book that diagnostic right now. You don't even need to talk to me. It's@podnos.co.uk. that's P O D knows.co.uk diagnostic I'm sure I don't need to spell that to you. You're an intelligent human being. Either way, the link is in the episode description Just for Kevin. Until next time, check which clock you're on and I hope you'll join me for the next episode of B2B podcasting insights.