Maximize your business's reach and engagement through the power of podcasting. Join us in this episode as we chat with Shaun Raines, CEO & Founder of Hired Guns Agency, who reveals why the relatively unsaturated world of podcasts presents a golden opportunity. Learn how to reap the economic benefits of podcasts, which are cheaper yet yield higher-quality content than traditional marketing methods. Discover how one podcast episode can be transformed into a treasure trove of content, including video clips, blog articles, and social media posts, to extend your reach and cut costs.
We get into the nitty-gritty of targeting your ideal customer, especially within the automotive industry. Shaun walks us through tailoring informative content for specific segments, such as non-luxury and luxury car dealerships, and integrating it seamlessly with existing systems. Plus, get insider tips on boosting conversion rates through simplified contact and lead forms, and understand the value of guest appearances on other podcasts. Our discussion also covers various podcast monetization models and why having your own podcast can make the ultimate impact. Tune in to discover strategies that will transform your business marketing approach.
Maximize your business's reach and engagement through the power of podcasting. Join us in this episode as we chat with Shaun Raines, CEO & Founder of Hired Guns Agency, who reveals why the relatively unsaturated world of podcasts presents a golden opportunity. Learn how to reap the economic benefits of podcasts, which are cheaper yet yield higher-quality content than traditional marketing methods. Discover how one podcast episode can be transformed into a treasure trove of content, including video clips, blog articles, and social media posts, to extend your reach and cut costs.
We get into the nitty-gritty of targeting your ideal customer, especially within the automotive industry. Shaun walks us through tailoring informative content for specific segments, such as non-luxury and luxury car dealerships, and integrating it seamlessly with existing systems. Plus, get insider tips on boosting conversion rates through simplified contact and lead forms, and understand the value of guest appearances on other podcasts. Our discussion also covers various podcast monetization models and why having your own podcast can make the ultimate impact. Tune in to discover strategies that will transform your business marketing approach.
Welcome back to Trigger Points. I'm your host, crystal, ready to stir the pot and get you thinking about the power of podcasts for your business. Today, we're tackling a big question Should your business have a podcast Spoiler alert? The answer is yes, and here's why. In a hyper-competitive business world, podcasts present a golden business opportunity that's often overlooked. With only a couple million podcasts out there, the landscape is ripe for your business to jump in and make a splash.
Speaker 1:
Think of a podcast as your content creation powerhouse. A single 30 or 60 minute episode can be repurposed into countless pieces of micro content video clips, blog articles, social media posts, ad creatives and so much more. This cascade of content not only educates and entertains your target audience, but also drives them deeper into your brand's ecosystem. It's all about depth and reach, and let's not forget the boost in brand awareness critical if your ideal customers don't even know you exist. So once again, today we are joined by Hired Guns Agency's owner and founder, sean Raines, who knows the ins and outs of leveraging podcasts to build a robust marketing strategy. Sean is at the forefront of B2B marketing innovation, transforming how businesses connect with their audience through engaging content and thought leadership. Welcome back, sean.
Speaker 2:
Thanks, Crystal.
Speaker 1:
How are you I'm doing?
Speaker 2:
well, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:
I'm good. Well, let's just jump right in. So can you share your thoughts on why now is the prime time for businesses to start their own podcasts?
Speaker 2:
Sure, there's a lot of good reasons actually to start a business podcast. I wish I would have done it a long time, several years ago, when I was just kind of playing around with podcasts before the light bulb went off. But let me share a few One. I don't know if these are in particular order, but opportunity. Let's use LinkedIn as an example, but these are true statistics. Look them up if you'd like. There are over 67 million companies on LinkedIn, and that's as of January of 2024. There are over 200 million businesses on Facebook. There are more than 114 million YouTube channels. There's only around 2 million podcasts, depending on who you look for for. You know your statistics there, but in terms of just regular active podcasts, this means that there's a huge opportunity. So one, yeah, I mean that why is it a good time? Or for a business opportunity is huge.
Speaker 2:
Two is like economic pressure. The economy sucks. I'm not trying to be political here, but it just seems to have gotten worse over the last handful of years. So just telling the truth, and we all know that the cost of everything is way up and of course that means the cost for businesses doing business has gone way up and a business podcast costs significantly less than the amount that most companies are spending on paid ads in Google and social ads and trade shows and sponsorships and all kinds of lead generation, giveaways and so on. So I would just say, from an economic pressure standpoint, to make better business decisions with your budget. There's never been I don't know all the time when there's been something that a lot of businesses have missed or they're reluctant about podcasting as a business, as a marketing tool within your business. It is significantly cheaper than all of these other things that typically cost a lot of money but are difficult to actually prove value from. So that's another one.
Speaker 2:
Number two would be the economic pressure and then the last one I would say is just better content. For a long time I used to struggle with, like how are we going to come up with really great, high quality marketing strategies, marketing tactics, whether it's messaging, marketing strategies, marketing tactics, whether it's messaging, whether it's visual aesthetics there's a whole lot of different moving pieces to marketing. But around the content side of marketing, I don't think there's a better place to start than using a podcast as a wellspring, I like to call it. It will create higher quality content than probably anything else in your marketing department, especially when you're utilizing your subject matter experts. They're talking about the things that, literally, you're best at and where your solution meets the problem of your target customers. So what company doesn't want to improve their marketing content and cut costs at the same time? I would say those are probably the three at least off the top of my head biggest reasons why, yes, your business should be utilizing its own podcast.
Speaker 1:
Well, and I mentioned in the opener that podcast episodes are. You used the word wellspring, which is perfect, but they can be turned into multiple pieces of content across and to be used across different channels. So how does that work? Can you explain how a single podcast episode can be transformed like that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I, I. I think what would help probably most people that are listening and or watching is just to tell them it's what we're doing right now. The conversation that we're having right now is about a specific topic, a specific topic that an audience happens to find interesting. Listen and tune in that. Some of the audience will find this information educational, helpful, sometimes a little entertaining, especially if I'm making fun of myself or maybe calling out things that everyone knows is a joke in a particular industry or something.
Speaker 2:
But when this episode is recorded, we will carefully extract all of the gold out of the ground, as I like to say, in the form of short and long form videos, articles, email newsletter content, new messaging ideas, perhaps inspiration for eBooks, white papers, case studies, partnerships with other businesses, guesting on other podcasts to extend your reach and brand awareness, and maybe theirs as well. So we do this for Hired Guns Agency. We do this for our own business, and it just so happens to be the business that we are in to help other businesses do the same thing. But that's probably the best answer to that question is how can a single podcast episode be transformed into all this other content? Well, we're doing it right now. What we're doing right now is going to turn into all kinds of other pieces of content that get utilized, and then you can use, for example, the micro content that you might be seeing right now on LinkedIn might be the door that unlocks to.
Speaker 2:
I want to go and see where that whole episode is. What else did they talk about? How deep did they go on that topic? I'm really interested. That's how you do it. That's why it's important too.
Speaker 1:
Well, what are the key elements that make a podcast content both informative and entertaining for a B2B audience?
Speaker 2:
That's a very important question. It starts with knowing your audience. I'm a broken record on a lot of these things in B2B marketing, but unfortunately in the automotive industry I see a lot of terrible marketing where the miss is they just don't really know their audience. They think they do, but they're basically casting a net for all of the fish in the ocean and really all they're trying to get is sea bass, or that's the only thing that's the best analogy I can think of. But as far as informative and entertaining, once you know your audience, if you know your audience, then the company will have a lot more chance that they aren't going to fail in creating information and content that's informative. So if you don't know exactly who your customer is and I use this example in the automotive industry a lot but if your primary customer is new car or franchise car dealers, okay, then my question is going to be well, customer at the same value as a Ford dealership, exotic cars, luxury cars? So is a Mercedes dealership, a Lexus dealership, a BMW dealership the same value to you as a Toyota dealership or a Ford dealership or a Chevrolet dealership? So right, that's just the quick exercise of getting down to an example of like who really is your target customer, because oftentimes it's not every single franchise, new car dealership. It's a segment within which is a niche. I talk about niches a lot. It's so critically important to know that, though, because once you know exactly who your audience is critically important to know that, though, because once you know exactly who your audience is, then the information that you're going to create for them, the content to make it informative um, it's going to be important that you know that your content is ideally going to be most on target for that Toyota, ford, kia, hyundai, chevrolet dealership, and knowing what content would have absolutely no interest and not be informative at all to somebody who's selling Ferraris or Lamborghinis, so that's really important.
Speaker 2:
So, if my ideal customer is non-luxury and, like I said, ford, toyota and I sell a vehicle trade-in evaluation software that easily integrates with their existing website, well, in that example, informative content would be information like my trade-in tool integrates with their existing website. Well, in that example, informative content would be information like my trade-in tool integrates with your Google business profile, and here's how you set it up. That would be content I'd be making for that audience. Here's how you direct the traffic to that tool from the Google business profile. Here's how you set up the tracking beyond Google business profile. I'd also make them aware of the terms and conditions and the privacy policies on most of the well, the more popular trade-in tools, so that they know that if they make that choice, it may not be worth the consequences because there may be some conveniences built in. I would direct them to compare the cost of their favorite lead provider to the cost of a lead generated through my trade-in tool that's sitting on their own website, which, by the way, is staggering in real life, but I'd want them to know that because that's all informative.
Speaker 2:
Within all of that informative information, I think, especially if you're a more outgoing personality, you can be entertaining in several ways, though, and that is, your delivery can just be humorous. You can share metaphors and analogies relative to the industry that you're in. You can mix in your pop culture acumen if you really want to, and I'm sure that your audience might be entertained by your love for Post Malone and Morgan Wallen and all the topics that are covered on the View Not really, but anyway, but you get the point. If none of that works, self-deprecating humor always wins, and so it's really important to think about one being informative, and that's going to be tied to how well you know your customer. And when you're informative, you just layer in those other things that make you entertaining, which is oftentimes stories, analogies, delivering in a humorous way and I'm not kidding Sometimes just pop culture, just kind of knowing what's going on in the world. Those are sometimes really easy ways to to make your delivery and the content, your informative content, a little bit more humorous and entertaining as well.
Speaker 1:
Well, I know the answer to this, but I wanted you to talk a little bit about people who are concerned about views or downloads. People think no one's going to listen to my little podcast. I'm a little fish in a big pond and I know that's not kind of the point of the content creation, but that's often an objection or a concern of people. So could you just real briefly mention why that's not important?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we get that question, objection. That topic comes up a lot with people. I've said it a bunch of times. It's one you have to really make sure that you know the difference between a podcast that's really strictly meant to entertain people. I give examples like the Joe Rogan experience. Yes, joe Rogan talks to a lot of interesting guests and he certainly has a massive following.
Speaker 2:
His podcast is not a marketing podcast set up for the purpose of trying to educate a specific target like audience, I would say. In some ways he is, but his target audience is pretty much everyone and from a business perspective you have to think, well, what's our purpose? And just using that example of you know, if I was trying to make informative content and the thing that I sold to franchise car dealers was a trade-in tool, software, my audience, my target audience, isn't everyone. Right, again, it's franchise car dealers, but in a lot of cases it's probably not exotic dealerships and maybe even luck, maybe some luxury dealerships. But I'm going to whittle that down so that I'm really really on target in terms of the purpose of podcasting and as far as views and downloads. If you start a business podcast, especially for the full episode, and you put a tremendous amount of weight on how many people are viewing or downloading my podcast, the full episode of the podcast, you're just going to be disappointed. One that's not the full purpose. There are some people that lean into podcasting for their business that do have really impressive growth success. We're almost surprising, like wow've. We've built up a great little following, but that's the exception, not the rule, and so the point I would say is, when people are fixating on like one because what this question also really is, it holds hands with people who are like how did this one video perform, how did this one clip from the podcast perform? Where people will fixate on just one single piece of content or one single episode of your podcast, and that's the absolute wrong way to be thinking about doing this.
Speaker 2:
Once you start a podcast for your business and you get enough repetition down and you get really comfortable with it one your delivery gets better, so you get more informative and you get more entertaining as you. One your delivery gets better, so you get more informative and you get more entertaining as you go because you just have done it more often. But you also start to find that it creates all of this feedback that allows you to continue to get better and get better and better and over time, what ends up happening is those smaller pieces of content. If you're doing it right, you're driving people to the full episode. So the people that really want to listen to the full episode are actually very, very serious and probably that's a signal that means that person's closer to wanting to demo or potentially becoming your customer than the people that are just consuming the bite-sized content. But most of the bite-sized content is really where it starts.
Speaker 2:
So I tell people never to over-index on views and downloads. Some of the people that I follow closest in the B2B marketing world, who do a lot of what we do in putting content out, will tell you all the time that sometimes their business outcomes meaning more people said, hey, we want a demo or we're interested in being a customer of yours that you get more of that as a business outcome from posts that had fewer likes, fewer, less engagement than others. So you can't always default on we need all the views and downloads because it's not always a good signal or indicator of whether or not you're doing the right thing. I don't know if that's helpful, but I think those are some things that I would, if you know, just in answering that question, I would tell people don't over index on views and downloads because in a lot of cases it's fool's gold.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's super helpful. In what ways does having a podcast help in increasing brand awareness and tracking self-reported attribution?
Speaker 2:
Well, brand awareness and self-reported attribution are two separate things, but kind of relative to each other. A podcast will easily increase brand awareness as long as you're just not totally doing it wrong with a great product, a great service that no one knows or not enough people know about, is exactly the company that needs a megaphone, aka podcast, but needs a megaphone to kind of broadcast their value into their target audience or into the marketplace and the podcast becomes the megaphone. It's pretty self-explanatory. As far as brand awareness, I mean countless examples and we're seeing it more and more as our little agency grows, where that very thing is happening for people who have great products and services, but it's been difficult for them to increase their brand awareness and for people to know them and for them to start to get to a place where they could maybe dominate their category. Podcast is great for brand recognition, for sure. Regarding self-reported attribution, I was just reading some posts about this today that you know people there a couple of different schools have thought on it when the podcast begins to reach people and typically that starts first and foremost by micro pieces of content and it's usually video clips. Well, the video clip, the inspired LinkedIn posts from the podcast, topic, articles for your blog, youtube videos, instagram posts, all of it. Your content machine is going to be driving people to your website or your other online properties, and this is where you want to capture self-reported attribution. Why it's because when I talk about dark social, that's the area of conversation and sharing between people that isn't trackable. There are no tools that track that. So when you know that your podcast and the content you make from your podcast is going to lead people to these places, where that's going on, and ultimately they're going to land on a property in most cases your website uh, you want to capture that.
Speaker 2:
And the way to do it? Right, it's easy simplify your contact, your lead, your book, a demo form, but make sure and when I say simplify, meaning don't it doesn't need to be long, and if there's too many fields and they're all required, that alone is going to kill your conversion rates. So, simplify your contact, slash lead, slash book, a demo forms, but make sure they include this question, and it's a simple one how did you hear about us? And my preference is have an open field that you make it required so people have to type something in there. If you're not comfortable with that, then create the list where people can just hit the radio button and you've already pre-populated or Google, podcast, social media, facebook, friend, you know whatever and they can just click on the one that you know is theirs. But if you do that, make sure that you include podcast.
Speaker 2:
If you have a newsletter, if you're doing any of these things that are around content creation strategies, make sure to capture that. For people that are really into A-B testing, run both versions of that form, both of which are going to help you capture self-reported attribution and see if one outperforms the other. Smart companies are going to test both versions, but not everybody is set up to and they don't have enough people on the team or people that know how to do. You know, true, multivariant or AB tests, but that would be one thing I would tell people that are a bit leery about. Should we even do it? Like, yeah, you should do it, and maybe if you have people that can set it up as a test, then run it, for you can. If you're really that advanced, you could run them in parallel, where 50% of the traffic is going to one form and one version of it and 50% is going to another, and then figure out if one is performing better than the other.
Speaker 1:
And we hear this a little bit. I'm going to switch gears a little bit. We've heard this from some clients where they want to just guest on other podcasts, and so if people want to do that, what should businesses keep in mind when they are guesting?
Speaker 2:
on other podcasts to maximize value. I'm going to try to answer this one as delicately as possible in the automotive industry, especially because there's lots of people that are podcasting and they're great, it's all fantastic. But I might have a few thoughts that you know, I don't know, I'm not trying to ruffle feathers for the sake of it, but first, I have no problem with people that guest on other podcasts. For the most part, if you haven't started a podcast for your business, sometimes that's the best place is go guest on a few podcasts because you get a feel for it Right, and most of the people that are podcasting in the auto industry they make it pretty easy and they want you they need you actually to to be on their podcast.
Speaker 2:
So if you're going to guest on a podcast, there's a few things that I would say you want to keep in mind. One is it's not yours, that's not your podcast, it's not your brand. All the ones in the car business, they all have brands attached to them with people who have been building those brands, some of them over several years. So it's not your podcast and it's not your audience, although the audiences may overlap because it's, in this case, the car business or an automotive. But in the automotive industry, for example, all these podcasts many of them, like I said, are really good you have to remember that it's not your brand and the people who are building that audience and that brand are doing it for their purpose first and foremost, which is there's nothing wrong with that. Right, we have Trigger Points right here. Trigger Points is our agency's podcast where we can talk about all of these things. In the future, we will probably bring on guests onto this very podcast and it will be people who are relative to the industries that we serve. So nothing wrong with that, again, right, but some of the podcasts out there that you might be asked on to, some of them are actually selling that podcast as an advertising service, right, so you might be able to get a guest appearance, right, and some of that's paid. So some of the podcasts you're never going to be honored unless you're going to write a check some of them you don't have to be on, but you can write a check to sponsor them because you just like the content that they put out there and you feel like, if, uh, they'll slap your logo on their stuff, that there's some value to that. Uh, would wouldn't really think that that would be provable, but uh, okay, um.
Speaker 2:
But there are also shows within um, their own like ecosystem, like there are people that have, um, you know, more than one podcast within their ecosystem. Again, and these are not bad things. It's just you need to kind of know that landscape. So having your own podcast that focuses on your target audience, right, which just might be a sliver or a portion of the whole audience, is far more valuable and it's a lot more affordable too than what people realize. I mean, the reality is for what it costs to sponsor one month of some of the automotive podcasts out there. Our team creates multiple episodes and a hell of a lot more content videos, articles, social copy, et cetera for less than you could write a check for to. You know, slap your logo on somebody else's podcast, so you know.
Speaker 2:
But all that aside, guesting on podcast is usually a great idea. Just make sure a couple of things that you also can have a copy of the podcast, with permission to repurpose it however you want. Um, and the reason that that would be uh important is even if you're not going to start your own podcast where you could repurpose it and just say, hey, here's a on the next episode of our company's podcast. We're replaying our guest appearance on the trigger points podcast. You know that kind of thing. But in addition, so repurposing, you want the permission to be able to do that chop it up into content, because oftentimes there's a whole lot of stuff that gets left out that's just not utilized when you guest on those other podcasts. And again, that's not taking a shot at those podcasts. It is literally because their purpose and what they're trying to do is just slightly different, and if you have your own, it just changes the game, and that's why you should do both really.
Speaker 2:
The other part is if these and most of these podcasts that have been in the auto industry for a while, they're going to have some domain authority, so there could be value in getting a backlink, meaning that episode is going to go on a website somewhere, and if they've been doing this for a long time. An example of that would be for anybody that saw the Refresh Friday episode that I did. I don't know a month or so ago, depending on when people might see some of this content. I don't know a month or so ago, depending on when people might see some of this content, but earlier in 2024, when I was on Refresh Friday. One of the things that they provide is a backlink right to our business, which is helpful because Dealer Refresh and their brand they've been around for a long time, they have a lot of domain authority, and so that's. I want a link from them back to us. That's helpful. So those are two things I would say also to make sure that you have access to if you start doing some guesting on podcasts.
Speaker 1:
Well, thank you so much, Sean, for sharing such great information about podcasts and how B2B businesses can use them. Do you have any closing thoughts for businesses who are considering starting a podcast?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I would definitely just reiterate that the opportunity is huge, and I think about it as if you had started a YouTube channel in 2009, where that might be so for people that were playing the YouTube game. They would have much rather had all that time as it exploded. And that type of opportunity exists within podcasting. But it's also such a perfect platform it's a perfect foundational piece to be that wellspring of content, subject matter, expertise driven, so that you can establish thought leadership, so that you can own the category in your vertical. You're not going to find anything else in your marketing department or in your marketing strategies and tactics that will do a better job than a business podcast. So I would just say don't be afraid to do that. It's very cost effective. You will 100% begin to create higher quality content, better content that's going to connect with your target audience. And I think the final thing I would say is, if you're on the fence or you have questions like why would we do this or should we do this, you just don't quite get it, but you think there's something to it.
Speaker 2:
We love talking to people. It's free to have a conversation. We don't bite. We love to talk to people and answer questions and try to help them figure out if this is right for them. Of course we're going to say we think it's right for just about everybody, but there are some cases where we would say now's not the right time and you might not know what those things are and you might not have seen us answer some of those questions. So if it's interesting to you and you think it might work but you just need to have a conversation to talk through this in depth or ask more questions, please reach out to us. We'd love to talk to you.
Speaker 1:
Well, excellent. Today we explored the vast opportunities that business podcasts present. From content creation to brand awareness and strategic guest appearances, podcasts can be a game changer in your marketing arsenal. Sean gave us some gold nuggets of wisdom on leveraging this medium to its fullest. So thanks for tuning in to Trigger Points. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to connect with us on LinkedIn and visit hiredgunsagencycom for more insights and resources. Remember, in the world of B2B marketing, it's all about staying ahead of the curve and making your mark. See you next time, see ya, thanks for tuning in.
