How To Launch An Effective Podcast Advertising Campaign

Eric Melchor shares how to launch an effective podcast advertising campaign based on executing campaigns for clients like Dealfront, Nasuni, Cocoon, Landbot and other SaaS companies.

In this episode we cover:

• how to measure podcast advertising campaigns
• how targeting specific regions can enhance the effectiveness of a campaign
• how Eric's podcast media network is community focused

This conversation with Nemanja Zivkovic was initially aired on the Funky Marketing podcast.

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Connect with Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericmelchor/


Previous guests include: Arvid Kahl of FeedbackPanda, Andrei Zinkevich of FullFunnel, Scott Van den Berg of Influencer Capital, Buster Franken of Fruitpunch AI, Valentin Radu of Omniconvert, Evelina Necula of Kinderpedia, Ionut Vlad of Tokinomo, Diana Florescu of MediaforGrowth, Irina Obushtarova of Recursive, Monika Paule of Caszyme, Yannick Veys of Hypefury, Laura Erdem of Dreamdata, and Pija Indriunaite of CityBee.

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Transcript

Eric (00:01.048)
Hey, this is actually a conversation I had on the Funky Marketing Podcast with host Nemanja Zikovic. In this conversation, I talk about the different ways that you can measure the impact of a podcast advertising campaign. I also discussed what it was like building a community of B2B podcasters, what I'm doing to try to nurture that community and grow it. And then also why brands should send assets to podcasters because it makes it super easy.

to create additional content instead of just audio host read ads. We could also create video ads for YouTube and other things. Anyway, I think you'll like this conversation, especially if you're interested in podcast marketing. Enjoy. Yeah, I like to say I B2B brands, specifically SaaS brands build trust at scale through B2B podcasters. And so, you know, how do do that? Basically, podcasting is not really considered a growth channel.

But yet more and more people are tuning in to listen to podcasts. It's not just Americans tuning in, but Europeans, Australians, people all over the world. And they tune in because it's an easy way to learn something while they're doing a habit. Maybe they're ironing their clothes. Maybe they're out for a jog. Maybe they're at the gym. But it's becoming a habit for many of us, either listening to audio or going to YouTube and listening to two different podcasts. And so in the B2B space, there's

I would say there's probably maybe a hundred or so B2B podcasts out there. Unfortunately, if those podcasts want to monetize their podcasts, they really can't work with a large networks like Spotify or some of the other big networks because those networks just want podcasts that have 10 ,000 downloads or more a month. And so this is where I come in. I'm the bridge between SaaS brands and B2B podcasters. And I basically take care of the entire campaign management. take care of creating the bridge.

the pitch, closing the deal, doing the entire campaign management, including performance and monitoring and tracking and optimization. And I just started that a little bit less than a year ago, but we have more than 30 podcasters in the community, including yourself now. And I operate not just in Europe, but also across the pond in North America. So pretty excited about it. We've been able to help a few different brands like Dealfront, Landbot, Sessions, and a lot more brands are coming to us because they're very interested.

Eric (02:21.664)
Influencer marketing has been on the rise, but it's mostly been seen as do a LinkedIn post or do something on Instagram or do something on TikTok and a lot of people forget that there's a lot of BnB podcasters out there that are very credible. They're professional and they have an audience. And so that's where B2B pod pros my company comes in. Exactly. And, you know, I've been just thinking about that. I wrote a newsletter a couple of weeks ago and I think

Maya Voje, who is also our friend and part of the community, wrote a great newsletter on Stubb's Tech about the influencer marketing, what can you do to leverage all those things. And what you said resonated, as I'm seeing, know, people reach out to me, not only for the podcast, but, you know, for me as an influencer. And, you know, I would like to say not an influencer, but subject matter expert in the field because it's more trustful.

That's actually how I look at myself. And, you know, usually they come, you know, we want a couple of posts, we want something and I need to, you know, respond from the other side and say, let's do it differently. You know, I've been doing a couple of strategies that worked. So let's try some of those instead of just going one post because LinkedIn is something which is, you know, not very reliable, especially with the algorithm, with all those things, you know,

I even ended up in an empty feed for two weeks, I think a year and a half ago. So nobody saw my posts and LinkedIn confirmed that and they were like, keep steady. We are working on fixing that. And I'm like, what the fuck is happening? So I don't think many companies realize the nuances of the algorithm and how things work. And the LinkedIn is very slow platform that takes time. On the other hand, you did something.

nicely talk about one of the companies that you are working with, they realize it's a great boss, they're getting the engagement, so you got further engagement from that. So that's also a good example. Yeah, that's one of the new things that we're going to start doing is allowing some brands to leverage the user generated content that we create on their behalf if they want to. So if one of our podcasters, in addition to doing host rate ads on their podcast, also decides that they like the product,

Eric (04:45.111)
They use the product. think it's going to be beneficial for their audience. And they decide to create a LinkedIn organic posts and either write about it or do a video about it. And the brand says, Hey, we really like that post. Let's leverage it and maximize it. And let's put some paid media dollars behind it. That's something that we're starting to allow brands to do. Obviously, the creators get compensated for it, but I think it's a great way to just really experiment and find.

the kind of content that your target audience likes and just have creators that are very, that are subject matter experts in their field and talk about your brand in such an authentic and genuine way. Yeah. And especially now that we have like thought leadership ads that I look at them, not from a standpoint of an influencer or somebody else, but from the standpoint of the company, they can make sure that their investment really brings back, you know, the goals they are going after.

Yeah. Yeah. Dealfront just did that on one of my posts. I think I wrote this post at least three weeks ago and they saw that it performed really well just in my feed and my audience. so recently, I think it's only been about four or five days, but it's already got in maybe 15 ,000 additional impressions and it's probably reaching a large of the target audience that they're trying to reach. And I give a really good visual of a couple of different tools or methods that I use for podcast tracking.

And Dealfriend happens to be one of them. It's great. I mean, it's coming not from a promotional standpoint, but for me telling my audience, you know, this is one of the ways that we track podcasts campaigns. Exactly. we have Erit Levy here. She was one of the guests in the podcast. So good to have, you know, previous guests coming back and listen to this and joining us. But tell me one thing. So we're going to talk about advertising on the podcast.

bringing, building a community and all those things, but tell me, what does the podcast host need to do to get, you know, to the point when they can actually bring on the sponsorships and brands to kind of advertise on their, know, podcast. That's a great question. lot of podcasters in my community didn't create a podcast with the intention of monetizing it. They just didn't.

Eric (07:09.931)
because their company owners, agency owners like yourself, tech founders, they just don't have the time or bandwidth. The podcast is mostly about them building themselves as a subject matter expert. so brands sometimes reach out to them and they just don't have the capacity to deal with different sponsors and go back and forth and try to negotiate a deal. And this is where I come from. I, I come in, I saved them a lot of time by doing that, all that back and forth work for them.

by only bringing them sponsors that have a good product audience fit, make sure that we're bringing long -term deals and it's not just a one -time sponsorship for like one week. They don't have the time to do that, right? And so that's where My Service comes in. But to answer your question, what do they need to do beforehand? Well, there are some requirements before joining my community. For example, you've had to at least publish 30 episodes. And that tells me you're consistent, you're committed.

podcasting is a long -term game. There's so many podcasts that didn't even reach episode 20. So I want to make sure that you're in it for the long -term game. You publish at least 30 episodes. Ideally, you have a global podcast ranking of 10 % or higher as measured by listen notes. This is a podcast search engine and, that ranking score, combines a little bit of, the audience listening time on average, and then also the reach.

so if you're at least a 10 % or higher, that's really, really good. And then the third thing that I really look forward to is how do you promote your podcast? Right? Because if you're just doing a podcast and not really promoting it, then you're not really going to grow. want to see that you're doing posts about it on LinkedIn. I want to see that maybe you've got a newsletter and you publish it there that maybe you've got a YouTube channel and you're trying to generate, you know, acquire new listeners there. So those are like the three big things that I look for in order for you to be a part of my community. Now.

My ultimate goal is that all of my podcasters that in the future, they can stand alone and get their own sponsorship deals with or without me. Right. And that's something I started to work on right now is like, how do you get to that point? And so there's, there's a lot of things that I've learned in the past year. you've got, for example, you've got to have a great sponsorship deck. Right. And a lot of our podcasters don't have that. So, that's one example too. You've got to a great description about your podcast.

Eric (09:30.561)
When somebody reads it, they need to know exactly who your target audience is, who your listener avatar is. That's something that I personally felt that, but I saw this in another podcast that I was talking to last week and I thought, my God, there, you know exactly who that listener avatar is. And that's something that I want to make sure all my podcasters are learning about. And so I'm putting together, it's not necessarily a course, but basically it's like a guide, like, Hey,

Like a checklist, make sure you have this done. Make sure you've got your slides done. You know, make sure you've got, another means to promote your podcast, whether it's through a newsletter or maybe it's through a LinkedIn company page or some other means. But I want to make sure all the podcasts have this because once you have all these things met, then it's going to be much, much easier for you to get a sponsorship on your own. Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's the biggest struggle, right? How can not just record the episode, but actually build the audience? that's kind of the.

Biggest struggles and I struggle with that, even though I do the distribution, a lot of all the stuff, but it's kind of like interesting because people here in Serbia, in the Balkans, they basically consume podcasts on YouTube. So only like the video and then, you know, in the U S or in all the places where people actually drive, longer, they, they consume it on the audio platforms. And it's.

Kind of interesting, you build in a different way on all those platforms. So you need to find a way how to actually attract people to find your podcast, not to click on a link and go, but to actually make them interested to go to Google to find it, to type in the name of your podcast or you as a host or whoever it is and find this episode or this exact podcast that they wanna listen to. Yeah, I mean, there's some foundations that

that you should try to do in the very beginning. Like what is the title of the podcast? And Apple Podcasts, the search capability is very similar to what Google search was about 15 years ago. So if you've got the keywords that people are looking for in your title, that helps a lot, but that's only in the very beginning when you launch your podcast, right? Second thing is having a lot of those keywords in various title episodes of your podcast too, that helps a lot. But the cornerstone activities that I do on a consistent basis,

Eric (11:54.443)
Is I make it very easy for my guests to share the podcast with their audience. You know, I provide them like one image, one clip. give them instructions on how to do that. I even send them a calendar invite beforehand, like maybe three or four weeks away, just like a calendar spot that just says, our podcast episode is going to go live on this day. You can access, you know, images or clips here in this folder. Here's something that you can say if you want to promote it, but that helps a lot. And there's other different growth tactics that I've tried in the past.

A lot of them, for the most case, don't work as good as some of these cornerstone activities, but we're still learning. I mean, I'm bringing in YouTube experts to talk to our community on a monthly basis because I want everybody to really generate and be good at YouTube and growing an audience on YouTube. mean, a lot of new people who have found my podcast did so through YouTube and they just never heard about me elsewhere, anywhere else. So I think it's a great platform to get discovered by new audiences. Definitely. It's a great platform for building.

building a brand and also like you need just one video, right? To go off and then you are already, you know, getting the traction and getting there. I remember interviewing, I don't know who it was, but he said he got banned from LinkedIn, from different stuff, couple of times. And, you know, I asked him, what do you do for a living? He said the same thing and only two videos that I...

got traction from LinkedIn, they are getting me returned that I don't need to go to LinkedIn again. And it's kind of interesting. We had a question from Mohammed, but we'll answer it at the end. Before we get into how do you prepare your hosts to create the right ads and to get there, let's dive a little bit into how do you find the right fit for the brands.

or for the podcast host on the other side? Yeah. mean, the first thing that I do is I have like a wait list on the website and it's for brands because there's not an infinite amount of inventory for everybody. There just isn't. mean, the average podcast host in my community runs one ad on their episode. That's it. And if we're doing four week minimum campaign, well, they're booked out for an entire four weeks, right? So I just don't have a lot of inventory available.

Eric (14:20.321)
Therefore I've got a wait list for brands to fill out. tell me who their target audience is, know, what regions are they really active in and trying to, to reach. Because in my network, I can see which podcasts have, you know, a bigger audience in Europe versus North America, who their target audience, who the listeners are. So I kind of match them that way. And then once I have a phone call, the initial kickoff with the, the brand, I asked them, okay, I kind of know who your target audience is.

I went to your LinkedIn page. looked at previous posts that you guys did. I researched more about you. I think this is your target audience. For example, let's say it's human resources professionals. But tell me, are there other use cases? Are there other customer avatars that you guys want to promote as well? And that actually happened yesterday. It was a company called GiftBet, and it may be a new client of ours.

And I thought HR professionals were the only target audience they're trying to reach. But she actually said, no, a lot of B2B marketers utilize us because they want to incentivize people who take their surveys. And I thought, my God, well, that opens up a whole new opportunity for us because I've got a lot of B2B marketers in my community. So I want to hear about use cases as well, in addition to what that person tells me their target audience is. And that's how I kind of match them up by going through my

my platform and just saying, okay, you know, I got this, I got seven podcasts here that are great for HR. And I know this person wants an HR related podcast. And so now I know who to present to them. Yeah. I mean, it comes down to you actually, knowing, you know, your community and who you are actually pitching to the, to the, to the brands. Yeah. And I've listened to every episode, of, you know, every podcast or my community. So I've got a really good idea.

of who their audience is and what their content is about. And so I'm never going to bring a podcast or my community, a potential sponsor where it just doesn't make sense. mean, I would never talk about Salesforce because I would never use Salesforce. And I think my audience knows that. So it's the same thing for each of my podcasters too. Yeah, I totally agree. And I can see, you know, having looked at the brands that, you know, you are bringing in and you are working with.

Eric (16:38.805)
It's kind of, you know your niche and you know where you're going, you know, getting looking at the size of the company and the right fit when it comes to the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So tell me now from the, from the standpoint of somebody who is, you know, owning a podcast and, you know, you got them a deal. How do you get them to, to do the advertising?

the right way inside the episodes. That's always something, you know, I know some hosts, say, I don't want to sound super, you know, promotional. On the other hand, I'm working with a lot of companies and they say, we don't want to promote ourselves directly. We want to be there, but not, you know, be, you know, in front of everybody's eyes. Yeah.

We'll always tell our sponsors like, give all of us that are going to be a part of the campaign, a free trial, right? Let us try the product and then let me craft the ad. You can send me talking points if you want, but here's, here's my process. I go and I try the product on the website. I write down one or two things that I really liked about it, like one or two features. And then I go to G2 and I looked at customer reviews about the product and I'm specifically looking for reviews of people who like the same features that I did.

And I want to see what they said, what they said about those features because, and most times, most times the best copy is actually coming from a real customer. Right. And so I kind of blended G2 review with my, with my, with my preferences and my copywriting style. And that's how I kind of craft the ad. And then I sent it to the client for them to approve. They can give me a little bit of feedback. They can make a little bit of changes. We'll discuss what's the call to action.

Some clients will create a specific landing page for us or maybe a specific promotion. Once I have the ad script approved, I then share it with the podcasters who are part of the campaign and they record their own version of it. And so they can actually tweak it or modify it a little bit to make it sound more like their personality, their style. I want them to do that. I want it to sound as authentic as possible. And then once they craft the ads, they upload that to a Google folder.

Eric (18:58.667)
The client can listen to them and provide feedback if wanted, but that's really the first step in the process of when we get a campaign going. And, we haven't, we haven't yet to actually launch a campaign together, although I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that happens in the next two weeks, but you'll see that I've got a process. It's basically a little onboarding training for how to do this. Right. I've got like different loom videos and I got visual examples, like, okay, when you put your call to action.

This is what it should look like. This is where you should be put. This is the link that you're going to use for that. Right. When you, when you add your, your ad into your podcast, you know, there are some things that you don't say, don't say like, okay, now it's time for our advertiser. No, no, no, don't say that, you know, instead, this is how you transition into the ad. So there's all these little things that I've learned over the past year that I share with the people in my community so that we make it a, a really, a really successful campaign for the client.

Love that it needs to come naturally inside the, the, how, we're running our podcasts. Right. So to, fit naturally and then basically it gives additional value to the listener. yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sometimes I'll create two or three versions of, of the, of the ad script and I'll tell the podcasters, all of these have been approved, but you pick which one that you like more and you think resonates with you and your audience more and go with that one. So.

We're all about authenticity here. So, I have a question that usually companies say when they want to invest in a podcast or they want to invest in, I don't know, influencer campaign or something like that. They always say like, we want to create the awareness. Right. And usually that comes from the, from the marketing team, but then the, you know, executives and, you know, and the board and everybody else says,

Fuck awareness, we want to see the revenue. So, I'm interested in how you are actually measuring the effectiveness of the podcast, having all that in mind. We did a recent campaign for Landbot and we loved working with them because some of the things they did to help us with tracking, they created a specific landing page that only our podcasters knew about and that we mentioned, right? So instead of landbot .io, was landbot .io forward slash try.

Eric (21:25.121)
And we mentioned that in the podcast, right? So they were able to see landing page views and the number of traffic that was going specifically to that page. And the other thing that they did is that they looked at a direct traffic and indirect traffic week by week to see what kind of lifts they were getting. And although that's not like a direct measure, you know, with the podcast, but if I think we were the only campaign, big campaign that were, that was running during that time. So they were able to see the fluctuations in traffic.

And then the other thing they did, because we recommended it, is we recommend this to all clients no matter what. On your sign up flow, on your onboarding flow, have the question, how did you hear about us? You can keep it optional, but have that question because a lot of people will say through a podcast or through a podcast ad. And they did that too. And sure enough, I think from a four week campaign, just across three podcasters, they had something like 60 people indicate.

on that question that they heard about them through a podcast ad. And so those are like the basic things that we always recommend our clients to do. And it makes it much easier for us to, see how the campaign performed as well. So there you go. Yeah. I love that. mean, I'm not looking from a, from a brand standpoint, basically, you know, you are offering them a package to advertise on a couple of different podcasts.

And basically working all together, it creates kind of like an avalanche. And that's exactly what I would look for if I want to do that sort of a campaign, right? Not one person doing it or one podcast. Okay. If it's a big one that can work. But if those are like couple of smaller or mid -size podcasts, then I want to have, you know, see if I can create an avalanche of people coming from different places. And that

All grows together into, into the results that we are aiming for. Yeah. No, Manja, the worst thing that assess marketer can do if they're doing podcasts, advertising is just advertise on one podcast. Even if it's a big one, I'll give you an example. I'm not going to say the brand's name, but a pretty big brand, a big CRM in the, SAS space. They did a big podcast campaign with, with a major podcast that's out there. That's pretty, pretty well known across founders and VCs and the return.

Eric (23:43.437)
was really below expectations. And so what, what, as a result, what happened? It left a bad taste in the senior management's mouth and they don't want to try podcast advertising again, because from their, from their memory, it's like, well, we tried that already and it didn't work, but that's the worst way to go about it is by advertising on one podcast. Our approach is different. We recommend five to 10 different podcasts, minimum five advertise on those five. Let's see which ones work and whichever one's work.

then let's see how we can expand that partnership with those podcasters because many of them do LinkedIn live events. Many of them have newsletters. Many of them are willing to do an organic posts on LinkedIn on behalf of the sponsors, right? How can we expand that relationship and collaboration ship even more? And you're not going to get that if you're just doing one podcast at a time. Yeah, I totally agree. And I look at it myself, you know, I'm building a consultancy on one hand, but on the other hand, I'm building

my media presence, right? Because, you know, it's always been there, but you're thinking, we should go to other levels. And, you know, as we are all becoming older, more experienced with bigger audiences, then it's kind of normal to get and to develop different kinds of media sets that allows you more flexibility in working with brands and with companies, you know, in a different way. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. mean,

We don't even consider ourselves like an agency. mean, I'm all about being a growth partner for whatever brand that we work with. I want this to be a win -win relationship, a long -term relationship. the most of the brands that we worked with, they renewed. You know, they want to continue working with us because it's going above and beyond. It's not just the advertising spots on the podcast. It's also, hey,

Here are other ideas on how we can leverage this. Here are other ideas on, you know, we can actually get more reach. I noticed that you're interested in this. know somebody who's really great at that. I'd be happy to make an introduction because the merger you've got a wealth of experience, but not just experience. You got a wealth of connections of people who are really good at doing certain things. And that's where the, the introductions and the referrals come in. And if they're interested in creating their own podcasts, for example, I recommend them to.

Eric (26:05.389)
My buddy, Tom Hunt, his agency, Bain. If they're interested in actually guest podcasting, because that's another way to grow your brand by being on guests and multiple guests. There's another company I work with that does it really, really well, and they've been doing it for over 10 years and I trust them. And so I'm willing to make those introductions as well, because I consider every client we work with to be a partner and not just a one -off deal, but let's see how we can work together for the long -term. Yeah, I love that. I love that.

That's basically what I've been doing since 2019 when I started just in a different way. develop your relationship with companies, develops your relationship with other people, develops. But at the end, it comes down to, you willing to go the extra mile and where you see the opportunity to bring additional value, help. That's what you do. And it brings us to one other topic that I wanted us to talk about. It's the community.

Right. Because, basically what you are actually doing, you're building a community of people that can help the brands in a different way. At least that's how I see it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, this has been a lot of fun and I, I, I'm learning how to be a community nurture and the community builder. I didn't know I was going to be doing this at the same time, but really that's what makes us different is that.

You know, I don't have like a database of hundreds of different podcasts, right? I'm bringing on one podcaster at a time. And when they, when they come on, it's also asking them what value can you add to the community? Right? What are your goals? Right? Because, you know, in addition to our Slack channel, every month we meet up, we try to learn something new. I'm also going to start allowing some of the podcasters to present, something that they're working on. Maybe it's a project or maybe it's something that they.

They think the, community will find valuable, but a lot of the podcasters have gotten to know one at one another. They've gotten to work with each other in some capacity. And so that's, you know, develop friendships and that's what I really, you know, I'm going for and to keep us strong because that definitely differentiates me from any other network out there is that, Hey, for many of us, we've got to know each other. We all know each other. work with each other and we're here to support one another.

Eric (28:28.193)
And whether it's growing your podcast, growing your business or whatever capacity or make introductions, that's what the community is all about. So I've gotten a little bit better at doing this over the past year or so. I'm still learning a lot. There's going to be a great podcast episode with Claudia cafe. she's, she's built the no -codes community to over a thousand members and she's fantastic at doing this. was a real recently a guest on my podcast. So I learned a lot. So there's going to be a lot of new things that are happening within my community and to make it better. But honestly.

It's getting people like you, good quality people like you to join that makes it much easier. Yeah. So tell the people what's the name of the community. That's also a good story. Yeah. Well, I mean, the community is the, it's called the innovators can laugh podcaster community. the name of the business is B2B pod pros, but it's called innovators can laugh because that's the name of my podcast. Innovators can laugh. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that made me think, you know, cause.

always when we think about innovation, about these kinds of things. And I've been thinking these days because there are a couple of people building another association of IT companies here in Serbia. And I'm like, you know, it's always like, we're serious. We want to talk about taxes. We want to talk about different stuff. And I'm like, where's fun in all that? I'm missing that part. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, and that, and that goes back to like, who's in my avatar, my listener avatar for my own podcast, because

over the time, so many people would tell me like, people listen to podcasts because they want to learn. It's very true. But so there are some podcasts that I listened to where I'm not really interested in learning something new. It's because I feel like I'm hanging out with the podcast hosts and I like their personality. And so that's what I aim for my podcast to be is for just to have really, really good camaraderie and conversation, with, you know, with the guests that I bring on.

And hoping that the listeners can relate in some way because they are B2B marketers or they are startup founders in their own world. Yeah, exactly. Now listening to you, what comes to my mind is Scott Galloway and his network of podcasts. Basically, when I found myself, I listened to that to relax and chill while I travel. So the way, you know, they talk about the news, they talk about the things, the way he compares stuff.

Eric (30:51.089)
It's out of this world. And I'm like, okay, I want to hear this man talk about anything serious because he brings in comparison that I would never think of. Yeah. Right. And so that's, you know, something that, I mean, it's obvious that he got so, bigger followers, least as a podcast, but also as a personal brand and all those other stuff. Cause you know, he brings in his personality with experience and all those, and all those other stuff.

And, you know, I think that's what separates actually each podcast and each brand. It's, know, you cannot go over who you are. Right. Yeah. If you are knowledgeable, if you are fine, if you are both, or it's something else, you know, you need to bring in what separates you from the others. Yeah. I heard a quote one time and it says people will tune into a new podcast for the guests, but they'll come back for the host.

And so it's really about being true to yourself and being, you can't fake being somebody else on a podcast if you're a host. So you really got to go back to being yourself. And if that comes out, then you'll find the audience that's right for you instead of trying to attract an audience. That's not really who you really don't connect with and can't connect with you. Exactly. mean, listen, I want to tell it the people. nobody sends email like you do, to the members of the community.

So it's not like, you know, something that's, that's like business -wise professional. Okay. It is, but it's not boring. It's just an email that I would send to my team, right? It's a team working together and that's what I like. So this is what we're to do. If you have any, you know, additional things that you want to discuss or you want to do, let me know.

This is the suggestion. These are the action items that we will do. Let me know, you know, how many of you want to actually get into that. And I love that source of communication. wasn't the most active guy over there on the list, but I'm going to be. And I'm the one reading just so you know. And I appreciate that way of communication because I'm that kind of a guy, know, like direct, honest.

Eric (33:10.263)
but at the same time, I am being what I am. Yeah. Yeah. No, I try to keep it simple and short and I try to bring a smile. like, okay, that's why, you know, I have like the cartoons or whatever sometimes, but I want people when they open the email at the very least, they're going to get a kick out of it or a smile. Love that. Love that. So, there's a question that I think

we, we left to answer because Muhammad says I started a bit to be marketing agency this year. Our podcast, good way to generate leads for the agency. So I know my answer, but I want to hear yours first. You know what? If, if you're thinking about creating a podcast, Muhammad, I know another agency that recently did so they told me that after a couple of seasons, they didn't really generate leads, but they were able to generate a lot of, a lot of,

recruitment, a lot of talent, a lot of people who are interested in working at the agency. And so from that standpoint, it was really beneficial for them. if you're thinking about advertising on a podcast for your marketing agency, I don't know, we've never really, advertise another agency before. It's probably something that most of our podcasters wouldn't do. but if you're interested in doing that, then you could probably try doing a small buy and some of the larger networks.

and try to doing on the podcast that have an audience that you're trying to reach. Most of them are going to be very just business general related. But some of the networks out there allow you to specify what location you're trying to reach. So try to get as targeted as you can get when working with some of the larger networks. Yeah, what I can say from a different standpoint is being the one who was building the agency, you know,

Podcasts might be a nice thing to enter the larger market or to get the authority confirmed reputation and to build out those stuff, right? To build a relationship with your target audience, with the people who are subject matter expert getting, you know, your target group under their posts. And as their audience, that might be the good thing. Cause when I started funky marketing,

Eric (35:30.285)
I needed something to make us look bigger. Right. So I made a list of like 20, funky marketing top voices and I recorded an episode with each of them to kind of get their story, to bring on the reputation, but also to kind of, you know, see if I can talk on the same level with them about the things that we do.

And it helped a lot me, but also helped the visibility because people started to say, yeah, fucking marketing. are the big boys in the community. Right. And on the other hand, I had another podcast, which is kind of interesting. You said like 30 episodes is a kind of the borderline. and we recorded it in 34 or 38. me and Marty Sanchez, a friend of mine from Spain who is now, working in, I think boxing in the U S.

in Miami, but basically we got people on Zoom with the audience to kind of share weekly how are we building our agencies and how are we hiring, how are we actually firing people, how are we changing the strategies, the narratives. And I use that episode, those sets of episodes, not the episode, to kind of give each person that I employed inside the onboarding list.

listen to this and realize how my mindset was changing. It was in the scope of the year that we recorded it. So that might be also useful tool for you to kind of have a person to talk with and then you have questions, you can help others and it builds the momentum and it builds a small community around.

Eric (37:17.773)
So, yeah, hopefully we answered that. But tell me now one thing I want to know when it comes to the companies and how they see value in what you do and how you build the momentum with that. So I'm thinking, is their offer actually changing in time or do you tend to like...

keep, okay, this one, this ad is actually really working. We're going to keep that. Maybe some others who are not, we're going to change. And then if we have like new messaging or new offers, and then we're going to see how we introduce those things. I think we skip that part and it's a really interesting one. Yeah, some of it's by regional. So for example, Dealfront, they, we promoted a lead feeder, which is their brand in the U S but because of GDPR here in Europe,

For the European podcasters, we actually promoted Dealfront and talked about the GDPR and how meets those standards. So we had two different ads based on region. For other advertisers, it's been on product audience fit and talk about different use cases. And so, like for example, this new example, we'll have an ad that's really focused on HR podcasts, but then we'll have another ad that's really focused on B2B marketers and how they can get more people doing their surveys and

how to incentivize those people. So it's usually either by region or just by use cases. That's what we've been going about. Yeah, man. And I love that there's a thought behind it, actually. I don't hear that that much these days. So I like when I hear that somebody actually saw the big picture. And so we're not going to go all in the same messaging on everything, but we're going to take care of the demographics of the audience and of everything else.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's one of the things that in order to make this as effective as possible, it's what's going to relate most with the audience that's going to be listening to this podcast. so therefore that's, that's what happens with the kickoff meeting. You know, it's like, Hey, are there different use cases? What regions are you really trying to target here? And then that's where we go in and kind of handpick. All right. These are great for this region. And I think for this use case and these other podcasters.

Eric (39:42.209)
are really better for this other use case here. So we can create, we have two different campaigns going. Same clients, but actually two different campaigns essentially. Yeah, I love that. One of the things that I can recommend to the people is exactly what we are doing now, Pairing with a guest. And I've been talking to a company recently about it because, you know, okay, let's say I'm the subject matter expert or influencer and they hired me.

I have the specific audience. They like my expertise and how do I talk about specific things, but they want to maybe reach other markets as well. And they want to go to have me as a person or a podcast as a meme through which the messaging goes, right? So having a guest from, you know, I don't know, let's say from, from Dacha region, if they want to target that region or from the U S or maybe Turkey or other region.

And they can stream on their profiles as well. And that's additional thing that usually we don't consider that much, is what you can do with recording of the podcast, not only publish podcast as an episode, but use it as a mean to communicate with the community. Yeah. Totally agree. Totally agree, Nemanja. I mean, I think what you've done with your show,

think it's fantastic. I like how you've been expanding on YouTube. I like a lot of the guests that you bring on. Some of them are even members of my community. that was kind of interesting. thing that I saw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Mark Evans. and then obviously, you know, my have, Hey, and I've worked with her before. She's fantastic, to work with. And I think a few other people as well. So I think, I think over time, probably in the next 12 to 18 months, I think.

a good chunk of B2B podcasters are going to be in the community. We're all going to know who we are, what we do, and then how we can support one another as well. And I think that's going to be a great thing, Jasme. Yeah. I mean, it's good. mean, I'm looking at a couple of lists these days, you know, of the top B2B marketing podcasts and those kinds of things. And I've been going through the comments. It's kind of a nice topic to just chat before the end.

Eric (42:04.927)
somebody asked those people who created the list, how did you actually come up with the list? And they say, okay, we listened to some of the podcasts already, but then they type in B2B, right? And they went through it and that's how they found the podcast. And I'm like, okay, like for some things, name of the podcast matter, right? But on the other hand, does it really affect the search?

And those kinds of things, that's kind of an interesting and another topic to hear. Cause I'm going through the Spotify and how people are, you know, finding the podcast and impressions and those kinds of things. There's been tons of impressions, right? But not many people are actually coming through the Spotify to listen to the podcast. that's something also to think about how all these separate platforms work together.

But then on the other hand, you know, what is a relevant list of the, of the broadcast? Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of those lists, half the podcasts on those lists are not even active anymore. yeah. mean, the, same as list of top voices or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, wow, this, this hasn't ran an episode in over 12 months, but it's on their list. And it's like, you could probably remove this.

But yeah, I was looking for one list. think it was like top startup podcasts or something like that. I'm like, God have to podcast on here. They're not even running episodes anymore, but this is like coming, you know, number one or two and Google search results. And a lot of people are clicking on this and not having a good experience because they're listening to episodes. Okay. Maybe the episodes were fantastic, but it's not anything fresh, not anything current. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, you know, there are different ways.

different strategies that people can use to promote the podcast. And I'm seeing every day different things. And I'm glad that I'm in the community because we will probably see, you know, other hosts developing and doing different stuff. For example, what I saw like Y Combinator. So they had their podcasts and they had the first season. They're running the second season now. And only now, a lot later, they're coming up with posting those videos on YouTube.

Eric (44:28.789)
And this is where I discovered the podcast. Right. So, I said, okay, so that's the second time that guest is on the show. Let me find the first episode, which is in the first season. So, you know, different things and it's actually an evolving thing, the whole podcast space. And I think we'll get, we're going to get more and more inside the, you know, advertising part of it as it is constantly growing.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited about our next meetup. Cause Sean temper from payback time. He's grown as YouTube subscribers, like in two weeks from 2000 and 3000 followers. And he's like, Hey, I think we cracked the code on this. And so he's actually going to be presenting in our next meetup, in August, but actually there's going to be two different meetups, one for those in North America and one of those in Europe. But if it's, I'll definitely record it and share it with the, the European podcasters and.

and point out which timestamps I think will be useful for them because I want everybody in the community to learn from what he's learned. Yeah, definitely. Shawn is also my guest here. Actually, he was the only one talking about finance, which is kind of interesting. So we talked a little bit about his guitar, about rock and roll, about the finances, and he's generally a great guy. Eric, tell the people where they can find more information about you, about your podcast, about the community and everything that you do.

Yeah. Well, Hey, I'm on LinkedIn usually daily. So you can go to Eric Melcore. Find me on there. Send a connection request. You want to learn more about the community? Go to b2bpodpros .com. If you want to check out the podcast, I only interview European startup founders or marketers and just search for innovators can laugh. You can find it on YouTube, Apple or Spotify. Perfect. Guys. Now is the time that I'm telling you to go back to the beginning of the episode.

Listen to everything we share a lot of stuff So stop wherever you think that you need something to be more clear reach out to Eric reach out to me You're always here to help I'll add the links to to everything that Eric said in in the show notes and As I always say like keep it funky Eric. Thank you guys. See you in another episode