How a podcast becomes your best business development tool

Do your prospects and customers really understand what you do and why you do it?

Are you reaching the right people whose problems you can solve? Do you have enough high-value, expertise-rich content to keep your team visible and your marketing active?

If the answer to any of those questions is "no", then a podcast will help grow your business.

In this session, Stephen Morris covers the why, what and how of podcasting for businesses and helps you understand if it's right for you and your team.

A podcast isn't an advert, but an invitation to engage. Prospects and customers choose to spend 20, 30, even 60 minutes listening to what you're about.

But earning that attention requires more than showing up with a microphone. You need to inform, intrigue and entertain. You need to sound like humans talking to humans, not a brand talking at an audience.

Get it right, and something remarkable happens – listeners start to understand not just what you sell, but why you exist, how you think and how you can help.

Topics covered in this session

• Why podcasts boost your sales pipeline and create opportunities

• How to plan, produce and promote a podcast

• The golden rule for creating podcasts that boosts lead generation

• How to know if it's a marketing method that's right for you and your business

About the speaker

Stephen has been helping businesses focus, get found and grow for over 25 years.

For him, the secret for founders is understanding their prospects and customers, then building a bridge between what the business does and the pains, problems and aspirations the business has.

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Ryan: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Ryan, and I will be your host today.

For those of you attending Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.

Today, I'm really pleased to introduce Stephen Morris, founder of Why Digital. In this session, Stephen will cover the why, what and how of podcasting for businesses, and help you understand whether it's right for you and your team.

As always, if you've got any questions about the webinar, post them in the chat and we will do our best to answer them at the end. The webinar is being recorded, and we will send out a follow-up email later today with the recording and any further resources.

So, over to you, Stephen.

Stephen Morris: Brilliant. Thanks, Ryan. Much appreciated. Thanks, everyone, for joining.

I'm going to cover three main topics, and hopefully there'll be a little bit of time left for questions as well, so drop anything you want to ask in the chat and Ryan will pick that up.

The three key things to take away from today's presentation are: what is a podcast good at, how should you approach them, and how do they pay back?

And how to move your slides forward.

A quick one about me: I've got twenty-odd years of experience in direct marketing, advertising, digital strategy and content. I've been operating as Y Digital for ten years, helping expertise-led businesses grow and exit.

My focus is on bridging the gap between what they do and what prospects and customers need, what they want, and what's going to drive their business forward. So that's about the pains, the challenges and the aspirations that resonate with prospects.

I also run the Curious Business Podcast, which you can find at podcast.curiousbusiness.co.uk, where I interview founders and leaders about their business journey, their business models and how they got where they are.

Firstly, what is a podcast? I won't ask for a show of hands as to who's listened to a podcast, as I'm guessing most of you have. However, I won't pass up the opportunity to do a little bit of research, so please drop into the chat where you listen to podcasts most. That would be really helpful.

What is a podcast? Younger people amongst us might think a podcast is something they have open in YouTube in another tab while they're doing something else or looking at another screen.

Some people might see it as a bit like a radio programme or an audiobook. A business owner might use podcasts like audiobooks to give themselves knowledge, to scale up, or to learn how other people are doing things. It can be an educational product.

Marketers might see it as a content marketing channel.

A pedantic person might define it as audio content distributed by RSS. But increasingly, video is playing a big part in the podcast world as well.

You can see lots of examples where it's effectively like a chat show that you watch online, and people in television might see it as a cheaper way to produce TV. That's why there's a lot of investment going into video podcast production.

It depends who you ask, and it depends what you want. I think the bigger question is: what is a successful podcast?

On the one hand, you might start a podcast and find that it makes you famous, you can quit your job and do it full-time, it generates income, becomes a revenue stream through advertising or sponsorship, attracts fans, and makes you an influencer.

Perhaps that means you'll get the chance to sell other people's products and make money on that.

I still can't get over hearing Alastair Campbell reading out adverts in his podcast for Octopus Energy, or hearing Louis Theroux reading out adverts in his podcast as well. I find that very strange, but that's where we are.

All of those things are possible outcomes when you start a podcast. But I think the real opportunity for businesses, especially initially, is to see how it works as a new business tool.

A podcast is a way to get prospects and customers to spend time with your business's expertise, your passion, your mindset, your approach, and how you help. Ultimately, it's an opportunity to show how you think and what you do, rather than just tell.

It's about showing prospects and customers how you help. People see hundreds, if not thousands, of adverts and marketing messages every day. Spending twenty minutes, thirty minutes or an hour with your podcast means a lot. In the scheme of things, that's a lot of attention.

That's one good reason to start a podcast: to build that kind of attention.

Building on that, the real benefit of a podcast is that it makes us think about how powerful marketing is when you create something that prospects and customers actually want to engage with.

If you're selling expertise, you need to show people what you do and how you can help. You need to talk about what matters to them.

Don't talk about your products and services. Talk about why they might need them, how they become successful, and what they need to do. Those are the things that attract people into your world, and those are the reasons people need your business.

So you might be Steven Bartlett one day, but the real power is making the podcast part of your business development process.

Use it to create fresh content that builds authority and trust, and importantly, moves people towards your sales process. That could be through the podcast itself and its calls to action, by posting about it on social media, by writing articles about the content, and by using transcripts to get found in search and in AI-based search.

Use it in your email marketing to expose people to it, drive them towards your calls to action, and bring them into your sales process. That's where it fits best, in my opinion.

Before you start, you need to be clear about who it's for, what problems it solves for them, what those people care about, what keeps them awake, what gets their attention, what they want to know, and also how they'll convert.

How can you get them from the podcast into your sales process by offering some kind of value? That could be a discovery call, joining the mailing list, downloading webinars or guides, and so on.

Focus on embedding those things subtly, not overwhelmingly, in the podcast. Doing that gives you the starting point: how do you work, and what do you want to get from it?

If you embed those things in the podcast, you can then find the themes, topics and formats that allow you to demonstrate how you help address those things for people.

Then you need to park that and focus on the listener and what will be interesting to them. Like a lot of marketing, it's about holding those two ideas in your head at the same time: what do you want, and what do the people you want to sell to want?

I always say that people don't buy what you do, they buy what they need. Even if they don't know what that need is yet, they buy the thing that helps them move their business forward, helps them grow, helps them fix something, or helps them meet their aspirations.

That's what you need to address, and that's what people ultimately buy.

So what do you need to get started?

Not a lot, actually. The beauty of podcasting is that you don't need much kit. The cost of finding out if it works, how it works, and what works is actually very low.

You don't need access to a plush West End podcast studio. You don't need to build your own podcast studio. You just need somewhere quiet, a microphone, Zoom, maybe a guest, and some editing software.

Don't underestimate the need to edit. Again, think about the listener. Do they want to wade through three or four minutes of intro that doesn't tell them anything? Value their time and cut the meandering or nice but ultimately not very interesting sections.

Take out the pauses, the ums and the uhs. There you go – I've already done it.

There are AI tools that can do that, but it's really important. It's about respecting their time and getting to the point.

Once you start listening back to conversations, you'll see that they're not always that linear. They feel natural, but they're not always linear. Sometimes you take a detour into something that's interesting but not actually that valuable. So editing is really important.

Why do I suggest using Zoom?

There are other options like Riverside that are built for podcasting, but Zoom is something lots of people use and already have. The key thing is that it gives you the ability to capture the audio and video streams for each guest separately, which is really important, and I'll tell you why in a minute.

The key point is that it doesn't cost much to find out if it works, to get comfortable with the process and to get going.

Then it's about thinking what formats work. I listen to all kinds of different formats. You maybe don't think about the formats, and I don't always think about them either, but when you take a step back there are different approaches, and they do different jobs.

What works for you will depend on your goals, who's presenting, the talent you have in your business, and the audience, of course.

It depends very much on execution. Sometimes, having multiple hosts can come across as a bit indulgent or too in-jokey. But there are plenty of examples where it works really well.

Again, it's case by case. If you've got a strong moderator and the topics you deal with have different perspectives, or maybe they're emerging and new, having a panel of people talking about a topic can be really powerful.

It can also be like herding cats and require a lot of editing and management, but with a strong moderator, it can work very well.

Other podcasts analyse news and trends in the sector, which again can be helpful to listeners. But there isn't always enough news to sustain a regular podcast in that way.

Again, it's case by case, but there are plenty where people start doing that and then it peters out.

Interviews tend to work really well because people like to hear what others have done, how they did it, how they tackled challenges, and what made them successful.

We like stories. We like to hear how people have tackled the same challenges we might be facing.

You can use all kinds of formats. You can mix them through the rotation of the podcast. One week, fortnight or month, you can have one type of episode, then a panel, then an analysis, and so on.

If you want to delve into more detail about those different formats, there's an article that goes through the pros and cons of each one at curiousbusiness.co.uk/formats.

So how do you do it? What's the process, and where should you focus?

I've used this to show roughly the amount of attention, focus and effort that goes into each section. Planning, the first step, is really something you do not every time or every episode. You do it at the start, and then maybe revisit it every quarter, six months or year.

Who's the podcast for? What's it about? What problems, challenges and aspirations does it address? How is it going to engage listeners? What are the goals?

Aside from business development, there may be opportunities to get sponsorship, vendor funding, or marketing funds from a vendor to support it. It could be ad-funded, depending on the reach of the sector and so on.

A quick tip: write the podcast intro. If you go onto any of the podcast platforms and look at a few podcasts, there's always a description of what the podcast is about.

Write that now. It makes it feel real for you.

Does it sound interesting? What will listeners learn? Why should they tune in? That's what you need to write until you can clearly describe and position the podcast.

Step two is about preparing. Identify the ideal guests who have either killer experience, killer content, a significant following, or all three, and pitch the benefits of joining.

Recruit clients and partners. They're a good way to start, and they demonstrate what you've done for a real business.

For each episode, do the research and identify the topics you want to talk about. Prepare a question list or running order that makes the guest comfortable.

I always send a list of questions to guests beforehand, even people who say, “Oh, I don't need questions. I can handle this off the cuff,” because it gives some structure.

Even if someone just answers the questions, you've got a podcast. The skill then is to navigate the conversation and drill into what they tell you.

So if someone answers the question, follow up with: why was that? What did you learn? What did you try that didn't work? People are usually more than happy to share that information.

That's often where the hooks come from when you're promoting the podcast.

That preparation also gives you the best chance of landing on compelling themes and generating soundbites and snippets to use when marketing the podcast and getting attention from social media.

Then think about how it ties back to your expertise, and also what conversion assets – guides, webinars and other content – might relate to that topic.

The tighter the call to action is to the content of the podcast, the better. You're engaging with the things people care about, and then offering them a route to find out more through your content.

One last technical thing: if you're doing an interview, find out what the guest's setup is. Make sure they've got somewhere quiet for recording and make sure it's going to work.

The next step is probably one of the smallest ones: the technical part. That's probably the lowest area of focus, apart from editing, which I'll come back to.

Make sure you record in a way that gives you separate audio and video files. You'll thank me later when someone says something brilliant but you talk over it, which I've done. If you record the audio and video separately, that's not a problem. You can unpick it and you don't lose any great content.

Think about whether you're doing it face to face or remotely. It does matter a bit. Face to face involves more logistics, probably costs more, and the editing takes more, but either can work.

Make sure you write the episode intro after you know what the topics are and what the best quotes are in the interview, if you're doing an interview.

Another tip: spend a lot of time on the title and the intro. You want to hook the listener and make clear why they should listen. Why should they give their twenty minutes or half hour to your podcast?

Another tip: get to the meat of the interview quickly. I always target under sixty seconds. In that sixty seconds, I'm using cliffhangers from the interviewee and summarising in my own voice to tell people why they should stick around and listen.

What are they going to learn? What are the surprising things the guest had to deal with? Then get to the point. Edit for pace. Keep it concise.

Think about the listener's time. You need to provide context. It can't just be a series of snippets. You need to build it and give it some narrative flow, but keep it lean and rich in value.

Also make sure to drop in calls to action and adverts for your business if you like. Short, brief snippets that position you and signpost people to relevant next steps.

Put something at the start, maybe a sign-up to the email list so they don't miss future episodes, something a third of the way through or at the end of a section that has some relevance, and then something at the end as well.

So it's: you've listened to this, it taught you these things, and if you want to know more, this is a good way to carry on.

Then finally, the promotion stage. You can't overpromote your podcast. Each episode will generate loads of content and can keep working for a long time.

Use social media posts, primarily LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn posts, video clips, quotes, quote graphics, teasers about who you've got coming up before the episode drops.

Use it in your email marketing. Write blogs and articles about it. Get the transcripts online so they can be indexed for SEO and AI search, and put the calls to action in there as well.

Get people signed up for the email list, encourage people to follow, like and review, and get those conversion assets in front of them, especially if they're relevant to the topic.

One final area is what I call comment jacking. I don't know if that's what anyone else calls it, but find relevant discussions on LinkedIn and maybe elsewhere where someone is talking about the guest's company, the guest themselves, or the topics in the podcast.

Add some nuggets of information from the podcast into a comment and say, “If you want to know more, listen to the full episode here.” That brings more people in and increases your reach.

Then get feedback and improve. Think about how it went. What worked? What did you enjoy about the format? How did it work? Did it generate interesting responses?

Think about how you can improve the questions and get more value.

So how do podcasts pay back?

They pay back by getting found by people interested in the problem areas you cover, by offering insight into their challenges, pains and aspirations, and by getting them into your sales process.

When you discuss and explore the topics that matter to listeners and prospects, you build your reputation by sharing your expertise.

It won't be long before you're being invited onto other podcasts, and your visibility online is boosted as well.

They also pay back when you create content that offers help and insight rather than selling. You don't tell people what you do – you show them what you do and how you think.

You're selling why they need you, which naturally leads into the sales process.

I think it's a Daniel Priestley quote about people needing to meet someone seven times in three different places before they trust them. This is a really rich way of them meeting you.

Then by using the quotes and assets on social media, it becomes another place and another time they're meeting you and building that trust.

So the podcast is rich, deep engagement with the audience you want to talk to. It moves people along the sales process from cold to warm, and it makes them want to keep in touch because you're offering insight, tips and value.

It should also be building your contacts in email and social media.

And it pays back by creating fuel for all those different channels: social media, email marketing, online marketing and so on.

You publish one episode, and it becomes a stream of content. You tease it before it goes live, post about it with a nice image, then create video clips and quotes.

It goes through your LinkedIn page for the podcast, your personal LinkedIn page, maybe your team's LinkedIn pages as well.

It becomes part of your email marketing, so you alert people to the new episode, tell them why they should listen, what they're going to learn, and plug what you do and how they can find out more about the relevant topics at the bottom of the email.

You build the podcast website, so that gets found in search and by LLMs as well. You build presence on podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, so you begin to get found on those platforms too.

It can also become a PR source. Here's an idea: if you're running an interview podcast, ask a couple of standard questions to all your guests. Then you can begin comparing the answers and use that as articles within your marketing, or maybe even for PR, depending on who the guests are.

Ultimately, podcasts pay back by reaching and attracting the people you can help, demonstrating your expertise, and directing them to engage with your conversion content. That's how you create opportunities.

But you also need to do the asking and the nudging occasionally. Not all the time, but enough to remind people that if they have this problem, they can find out more, discuss it with your team, read a guide or watch a webinar.

Podcasts are great fuel, but you still need to do the work of turning interest into opportunity.

How do you measure success?

On one level, there are podcast metrics: downloads, repeat listeners, followers and subscribers.

Then there are marketing metrics, which are all about engagement with the content, email sign-ups and, most importantly, traffic to your offer, enquiries, pipeline and revenue.

That's the outcome you want from this: moving the needle on new business opportunities.

Also, and I don't know how this fits with KPIs, you might actually enjoy the process. You might enjoy speaking with guests and learning about your business, their business, and yourself at the same time.

So, is this right for your business?

Podcasts are a chance to go deep if you sell expertise. It can take people time to understand your mindset, your approach, how you operate, and the value and experience you and your business bring.

Is it important that prospects and customers trust you? If it is, extended exposure to you and your business through the podcast and the content around it builds that trust.

The reputation of your guests can confer some of that trust on you as well.

Do you have an email list? It's the simplest way to capture interest and encourage people to sign up.

If you don't have one, firstly, why? But if you don't, create one and plug it in your podcast.

Do you have assets such as case studies, guides or research? Like email, you need to harvest the interest the podcast creates with relevant next steps. That's really important.

Do you have a bit of budget? It doesn't have to be a fortune, but social media is pay to play, especially when you're trying to take traffic away to your podcast.

Promoting podcasts and paying to promote them helps overcome that and gets relevant people, their roles and their profiles, looking at your podcast and your posts.

Is it important to build a relationship? Podcasts can still be useful for one-off sales, but there's real value in how good marketing compounds and builds over time.

So if you are a relationship-based business, it really fits.

And do you want to know people before they're in a sales process? For expertise-led businesses, in my experience, it's better to get to know a prospect ahead of the RFP, get known, and build your reputation.

If the answer to most of those questions is yes, then perhaps you should explore podcasts. And, of course, I'm more than happy to talk to you about that.

If it sounds right for you, get in touch via the QR code or go to curiousbusiness.co.uk/en-contact. I'd be more than happy to have a chat. Thank you very much.

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