The podcast space has grown exponentially over recent years, particularly within B2B audiences. A survey by production company Lower Street revealed 51% of 511 senior-level professionals listen to podcasts daily. This rise in popularity presents an opportunity for businesses to leverage podcasts as a powerful tool for lead generation.
At EM360Tech, we produce expert-led podcasts in collaboration with industry analysts and IT thought leaders. These podcasts form a crucial element in B2B lead generation strategies, maximising ROI and driving conversions faster than traditional methods of marketing — such as social media, cold calling, and email campaigns.
There’s plenty to consider when producing a B2B podcast but, with the right tools and resources, it can be a revolutionary addition to your toolkit. Here’s what you need to make a podcast in the B2B landscape.
Why Your Business Needs A Podcast
Creating an insightful podcast for your business is beneficial for many reasons, including:
- Enhancing brand awareness and authority: By sharing industry insights, experiences and personal anecdotes, you can position your brand as an expert thought leader in your field. Developing this credibility helps build trust and turn potential leads into returning customers.
- Greater networking opportunities: Invite guest speakers — such as industry leaders, executives, and other business owners. This allows you to grow your professional network at the same time as delivering valuable perspectives and expertise to your target audience.
- Community building: Podcasts enable businesses to engage with their audience more personally, fostering a sense of community through conversation — and increasing brand loyalty. When you accompany your podcast with other content types, such as blog posts and social media snippets, you can drive greater engagement levels.
Expert Tips for B2B Podcasting
Podcasting is an exciting lead generation activity for your business, but your success is determined by how much you invest in the project. High-quality content that resonates with your target audience requires a strategic approach to provide advice and solutions to listeners.
Below are some podcast best practices to consider when creating a B2B podcast. By getting these components right, you can ensure you publish great, informative, and useful content.
1. Produce high-quality audio
Podcasting is predominantly an audio-based media form, making audio quality of utmost importance. Investing in quality audio equipment and recording in the right environment enables you to produce a professional podcast you’ll be proud to upload online.
Equipment
A good quality microphone is imperative for clear professional audio files. USB microphones are a great starting point, whereas XLR microphones offer better features. You can accompany the microphone with a pop filter to improve audio clarity. This is a tool to reduce harsh ‘plosive’ sounds made during speech.
You also need the right podcast recording and editing software to ensure your finished product is free of unwanted noises. Audacity is a cost-effective solution for beginners, while Adobe Audition offers advanced editing functionality for more seasoned podcast creators.
Choosing the right software for your podcast is key to refining the recording and ensuring listeners get the very best quality.
The location
Where you record your B2B podcast is just as important as the audio equipment. High-quality microphones are likely to pick up unwanted noises, such as traffic or office hustle and bustle, meaning the overall sound quality may be reduced.
Our best practice for podcasts: Choose a quiet space with minimal background noise to ensure your audio is clear and crisp without other noises.
A studio space may be suitable, as these often have soundproofing integrated, such as foam panels and soft furnishings to reduce echoes and other external noise. Whenever you choose to record, ensure it’s consistent each time. This consistency helps ensure all of your podcast episodes are uniform in audio quality.
2. Invest in camera quality
Many leading B2B podcasts record audio and film the episodes too. On Spotify alone, there are over 250,000 video podcasts available. Publishing your episodes in multiple formats can help reach a wider audience, since it supports various consumption preferences.
To keep your audience engaged, a high-quality camera setup is a no-brainer. It’s not only about the expertise shared in conversation, maintaining engagement is also about how the product looks, sounds, and ultimately performs as a lead generating activity.
One of our best practices for podcasts includes putting money into camera equipment that suits your needs and produces clear, steady videos. Otherwise, you may find engagement levels drop before they’ve been given the chance to flourish.
Remember, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. So, it’s important to research podcasting cameras to find the right one for you. Though, the right one depends on factors, such as whether you’re pre-recording or live streaming, your budget, and your desired video quality.
Key camera features to look for:
- High resolution for clear, crisp video (1080p Full HD is the standard).
- Smooth frame rate for a natural look (24-30 FPS).
- Good low-light performance.
- Good audio input.
- Autofocus functionality to keep the subject in sharp focus.
- Sufficient storage capabilities to ensure seamless recording.
The right camera will provide more flexibility post-production by allowing you to crop, zoom, or pan the video frame without lowering video quality.
3. Develop a content plan
You can’t rush good-quality content, so a content plan is essential to ensure your podcasts are engaging, well-produced, and high-quality. A well-structured content plan ensures your podcast remains engaging and relevant.
The first step? Brainstorming industry-related topics to cover several episodes. What subjects are your target audience interested in? Do these have enough talking points to sustain a full episode?
With your list of exciting ideas, plan a structured outline for each episode. Having a rough idea of what you’re going to talk about is vital, as it enhances the quality of your podcast. Having a clear framework and concise show notes to refer to during recording helps conversation flow naturally and avoids awkward pauses.
In a sea of great podcasts, your content needs to offer something unique to listeners. There are thousands of podcasts to compete with, but with a content plan, you can dive deeper into your subjects and find niche angles.
Our best practice for B2B podcasts: Heading into the recording booth with an outline reduces the need for extensive edits post-production. It creates a smoother process overall.
4. Write a script
Like your content plan, scripts are great for ensuring episodes follow a structure, avoid repetition, and flow coherently. That said, following a script line for line is likely to lead to unnatural speech and make dialogue seem forced. After all, successful podcasts thrive on genuine conversation and spontaneity.
To get started, highlight any talking points, case studies, and statistics you want to refer to. As long as you’ve got the basics, you can go with the flow when recording. A script will improve podcast quality and limit speakers from going down rabbit holes and steering off topic.
One of our top tips for writing a script is to avoid over-rehearsing. Podcasts are supposed to take a conversational tone, so natural discussions are more organic and engaging.
Most podcasts use an attention-grabbing, memorable intro and outro (sometimes this is a jingle used consistently across episodes) to help establish branding. It’s a good idea to plan for this and be consistent with it — it could even be a short intro and outro speech which follows the same structure in each episode.
5. Be mindful of time
The ideal length of a B2B podcast depends on your audience and content type. On average, most episodes range from 30 to 45 minutes, but having flexibility is key.
What to consider:
- The nature of your content (e.g., interviews may naturally run longer than solo recordings).
- How your target audience consumes content.
- Breaking lengthy episodes into multiple parts for better engagement.
Research other podcasts in your field to determine what might work best for your own content. For instance, the ‘How I Built This’ podcast features interview episodes of around an hour and 20 minutes. Meanwhile, other more advice-based episodes run for 45 minutes.
Being mindful of timings is important for audience expectations and loyalty, as well as brand development. Most B2B podcasts have a schedule, with average episode timings and regular scheduling, such as a new episode on a set day each week. Being consistent is essential when promoting your podcast series.
6. Ensure your podcast is shareable
The shareability of your podcast is crucial for encouraging organic growth, improving engagement levels, and building a dedicated community. An easily shareable podcast not only boosts brand awareness but also plays a part in lead generation by reaching wider audiences through different platforms and content formats.
Effective content distribution strategies:
- Create short teaser clips: Share on social media platforms to attract engagement.
- Repurpose content: Turn podcast insights into blog posts, social media infographics, and short-form videos.
- Embed content into other marketing: Include links in email newsletters and landing pages to drive traffic.
- Cross-promotion collaboration: Invite guest speakers and benefit from cross-promotion marketing with their audience.
You also want to ensure that search engines are able to pick up on your podcast. This helps the SEO of your website, especially if the main podcast topic is a main keyword for your brand. Optimising your podcast enhances your visibility on search engines, which can increase organic podcast listeners.
We also highly recommend keeping a close eye on your podcast analytics. This allows you to spot any listener trends — for example, a specific topic might be more popular than others, allowing you to focus on creating that kind of content. By tracking the data behind your podcast, you’ll be able to create a strategy that’s focused on driving listenership and ensure relevancy, making your series even more successful.
At EM360Tech, we specialise in content distribution strategies that maximise reach and engagement for the expert-led podcasts we produce. We promote our podcasts to our email lists as well as creating optimised landing pages that target specific keywords and audiences, to generate organic traffic and listeners to each episode produced.
Create a Podcast With EM360Tech
Starting a successful B2B podcast requires more than recording insightful discussion with notable leaders in your industry. It demands strategic planning, high-quality production, and an effective content marketing strategy.
At EM360Tech, our specialism lies in creating expert-led podcasts that showcase industry thought leadership and support your lead generation activities. We collaborate with the best in business to ensure podcasts are informative, engaging and resonate with your target audience by partnering each guest with a suitable podcast host.
Our industry leaders are experts in their respective fields, and often join our podcast series to share their insights and experiences. You can read some of our other EM360Tech blogs to get an idea of our experience and expertise.
So, whether you’re looking to expand your audience, establish yourself as an expert, or improve brand visibility, a professional podcast can help turn potential leads into converting customers. Get in touch with our team to talk about creating a podcast for your business.