Data Center Sales & Marketing Institute (DCSMI) Blog

Should B2B Technology Marketing Include Podcasting?

Written by Joshua Feinberg | May 13, 2014 6:33:00 PM

With 57% of the modern B2B sales cycle now over before most prospects reach out to any vendor, your company needs a variety of ways to get in front of the right decision-makers, in the right places and at the right time.

Should most B2B technology marketing plans include podcasting? The answer really depends on whether your buyer persona research indicates that your best prospects and clients are podcast listeners.

Now podcast production is a relatively new area for us, but we see it as pretty essential to an Inbound marketing campaign. For starters, it can be collaborative in nature with other industry thought leaders. And second, it’s very conducive to re-purposing across multiple content channels.

Be a Talk Radio Host

Now, you don’t have to be controversial like Howard Stern. For a growing B2B technology company, be helpful. A podcast is usually about delivering valuable content to a targeted audience, establishing thought leadership, and building a following.

Like many of the tools in an Inbound marketing campaign that is designed to drive the right visitors to your website, think about re-purposing right from the outset – to get more mileage out of your content creation. To do so, consider a multi-pronged strategy to maximize the reach of your podcast.

Post Podcast Recordings to YouTube, iTunes, and Your Blog

What does this mean in practice? 

  1. Record the podcast episode as an .MP4 video (destined for YouTube, Vimeo Pro, Wistia, or another similar video hosting platform). Many swear by YouTube because social tools are baked into the live event, and the recording goes right to YouTube.
  2. Export .MP3 audio (basically for iTunes). Once you have a video, it’s easy to export an .MP3 audio file for iTunes. We’re using the Libsyn service to host and make this happen.
  3. Write a blog post and embed both video and audio formats. Google will be able to read the Title, Description, and tags that accompany the video and audio files. But it won’t know much about the content unless you write a blog post. Your blog post with embedded video and audio formats gets search engines more text to index about each episode.

For now, we’re just using bullet point benefits-focused notes. We’ll be adding full-text transcripts at some point to help provide more valuable, indexable content. A transcript can be useful for the blog post, the YouTube Description field, and the CC (Closed Captioning) feature.

Also, see

 

Are you podcasting as part of your B2B technology marketing plans? What benefits have you found so far? Let us know in the comments below.