Published 29 September 2021

Major Companies Winning With B2B SaaS Podcasts

B2B SaaS companies are turning to podcasts as a new and effective marketing strategy. Podcasts offer a less saturated channel to reach a larger audience, at a lower cost compared to videos or written content. They allow for repurposing content and creating a personal connection with listeners. Podcast collaborations with other brands are easy and fruitful, and they provide an opportunity to create engaging long-form content. B2B SaaS podcasts are becoming a significant trend in digital marketing, offering companies a competitive edge in the industry.

How Major Companies Are Winning With B2B SaaS podcasts

Introduction

The B2B SaaS companies are exploding right now. In 2020, the global Software as a Service market size was $158.2 billion, which is projected to reach $307.3 billion by 2026.

This propelling SaaS growth shows that B2B SaaS companies need to try new and innovative ways to expand their businesses in the future. They have to restructure their marketing funnel and find a better way to connect with their audience.

Many SaaS marketing teams are already exploring new marketing methods and lately, B2B SaaS podcasts are turning out to be the new favourite way for many marketers to promote SaaS products.

Podcasting isn’t a new market strategy. In fact, the podcast market size in 2020 was $11.46 billion, expected to grow at a CAGR of 31.1% by 2026. However, in the SaaS industry, podcasts are a relatively new and positive way to promote products or services.

To grow in the competitive SaaS industry, sales podcasts are already helping out many companies.. Today, even the leading SaaS companies like Salesforce, Dropbox and Spotify are aggressively investing in B2B SaaS podcasts.

Here if you aren’t yet using podcasts for marketing your SaaS brand, you need to start using it asap. This post will help you understand why and how major SaaS companies are leveraging podcasts today. So, let’s learn and grow your business.

Why Major Companies Use B2B SaaS Podcasts to Grow their Business

Today, a plethora of different marketing techniques are available for B2B marketers to generate leads including social media, content marketing, etc. However, all these marketing techniques are quite common and have been used a lot over the years.

Therefore, B2B SaaS podcasts are the perfect option for B2B SaaS companies to adopt today as it’s yet less exploited marketing stream. Additionally, podcasting can help you promote your B2B SaaS brand in numerous ways, such as:

Target a Larger Audience Base

Producing podcasts can help you reach a larger and new audience base. As of 2021, 40% of Americans older than 12 years listen to podcasts every month. Even the podcast listener number has three times increased from 2008.

Source: Pewresearch

So, if you produce podcasts along with your content marketing and video marketing campaigns, it will expose your products to a larger audience. Plus, listening to podcasts is a more convenient option for users than reading blogs or watching videos. People can listen to podcasts while driving, cooking, working out, etc.

Podcasting is Less Expensive

According to an Insivia Marketing report, software companies spend 15% of their annual budget on marketing. Now, this is a quite big portion of money, which can’t be afforded by every company.

Luckily, podcasts are less expensive to produce compared to B2B videos and written content. In videos, you have to harmonise both video and audio elements to create a graphic-rich video, which requires professional assistance. Further, for shooting, editing, and distributing marketing videos, you might have to spend around $1,500-$50,000.

Similarly, B2B content marketing isn’t less expensive. In fact, it is highly complex and expensive to write a convertible B2B blog, ebook or any other type of written content. For a good B2B content marketing plan, you need to hire a professional copywriter, SEO expert, editor or even graphic designer if you plan to add original pictures to adorn your content with the free nature backgrounds or graphic enhancing templets.

On the contrary, podcasting takes less time and money. You simply need a mic, computer and you can easily create your podcasts. Plus, platforms like Anchor, Buzzsprout, Podbean and Spreaker allow users to publish podcasts for free.

Podcast Content Can Be Used Multiple Ways

B2B SaaS podcasts don’t only save your money, but can also save your time. You can syndicate your one podcast content in multiple ways like you can create videos, infographics, blogs and so much more.

For example, Justin M. Nassiri, Founder and CEO, Captivate.ai states that one podcast can produce 3 months worth of content.

Source: captivatecontent

He even claimed that his one podcast helped him produce — 3-5 blogs, 5-10 LinkedIn videos, 3-5 YouTube clips, 3-5 Instagram reels and 10-12 infographics. So, by producing one B2B SaaS podcast, you will get the entire month of marketing material.

Adopt More Personal Approach

Today, B2B customers aren’t looking for salesy content from their brands. They want to establish personal connections with the brand before making a purchase decision. As per Epsilon and GBH Insights survey among 1,000 US adults, 80% of respondents want personalised marketing experience from their retailers.

Here podcasts are the best way to bond with your customers by sharing personal experience and stories. Plus, written content can always be misinterpreted by the readers. In contrast, the distinctive voice and tone of podcasts can better convey your message to the audience.

Also, B2B SaaS podcasts can give a personal identity to a brand. Companies can use sarcastic, empathetic or humorous tone in podcasts to establish a one on one connection with their listeners.

Noah Kagan’s podcast is the perfect example to know how to personalize your brand via podcasts. He always starts his podcasts with a personal story to establish connection with his audience. Look at the introduction of his “Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss” podcast.

Source: okdork

He shared a story when he met his college girlfriend’s father to connect listeners with Alan Weiss’ book Million Dollar Consulting. This short story helped Noah to spike audience interest as well as personalize his podcast.

Collaborate With Other Brands

B2B SaaS podcasts can be easily used to collaborate with other brands and professionals. Audio format is perfect for hosting guests and having meaningful conversations with the other experts.

Compared to co-authoring a blog or video, podcast collaborations are more effective and easy. Here SaaS brands simply need to find the right guests and they can easily expose their brand to new audiences and generate more leads.

To find the right partner to co-host blog, consider a few things:

Never host your direct competitors.
Your targeted audience and co-hosts audience has to be somehow connected.
Your brand voice should match with the other brands ideology and tone.

For example, The Marketing Microscope hosted Brian Dean on a podcast to talk about link building. Here both parties have the same targeted audience but they aren’t direct competitors.

Source: e2msolutions

Easy Way to Create Long Form Content

Podcasts have the upper hand over blogs and video content when you plan to publish long form content. Since search engines prefer long content; thus, it is a good idea to publish long form pieces to rank better on the search engines.

But unfortunately, it is hard to keep users engaged with long video or blog content. In fact, 30 minutes long videos retention rate is 25%. Out of which 45% of viewers abandon the video after the first 5 minutes.

Luckily, podcasts have no such problem. You can easily publish 30 to 60 minutes long podcasts without affecting the retention rate. Of course, here you need to keep your listeners engaged and entertained throughout the podcast episode. Though, it is easier when you are having a conversation with the audience.

The SaaS Club podcast hosted by Omer Khan always has podcast episodes around 48 minutes. He interviews Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs on his podcasts, which keep users engaged for almost an hour.

Source: Saasclub

How to Create B2B SaaS Podcasts

To leverage podcasts like big SaaS companies, you have to create your B2B SaaS podcasts marketing strategy very clearly. You need to streamline podcasts with your marketing funnel so you can maximise your lead generation rate.

For producing a result-driven B2B SaaS podcasts, you have to consider the following things:

Define a Purpose

Foremost, ask yourself why you want to produce podcasts and what do you want to achieve with it. Take time to run complete research to understand what marketing goals you can accomplish with podcasts. Just like other marketing channels, you can generate leads, revenue and retention customers using podcasts. So, define a clear podcasting purpose before producing audio content.

Build An Audio Brand Identity

Similar to your brand’s visual or written identity, you have to work on building a unique audio image of your brand. Mostly, podcasters use conversational and storytelling tone to communicate with their audience. But you shouldn’t follow other podcasts and based on your brand value, try to come up with a different audio tone.

Focus On Quality

Today, B2B SaaS podcasts number might be less, but it is not for very long. As companies like McKinsey are now producing podcasts, the competition is picking up pace here too. Therefore, you have to pay special attention to the audio quality of your podcasts to stay ahead of the competition. Always make sure podcasts are informative, engaging and have zero glitch.

Select the Right Distribution Channel

Today, you can select the both paid and free channels to broadcast your podcasts. However, you should first analyse all the available podcast distribution channels and then select the portal which can help you better target your audience.

In 2020, the most popular podcast app was Spotify with 25% of podcast listeners. Meanwhile, Apple Podcasts holds 20% of the market share.

Are B2B SaaS Podcasts the Next Big Thing?

Definitely. The way B2B SaaS companies are producing podcasts and number of podcast listeners are increasing day by day — B2B SaaS podcasts are the next big wave in the digital marketing realms.

So, here if you haven’t yet thought of producing podcasts, do it right away. That’s because once all the major SaaS companies get hold of podcasting, it will become harder for small businesses to leverage podcast marketing.

In this post, we have disclosed almost everything about B2B SaaS podcasts and how major companies are using it. So, let’s not wait anymore and start podcasting today.