In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, titled "Podcasting for Business Growth: Leveraging Purpose-Driven Content to Boost Engagement and Drive Conversions," host Kerry Curran sits down with podcasting expert Benjamin Shapiro, CEO of I Hear Everything, to uncover how businesses can harness the power of purpose-driven content to grow their brand and drive revenue. They discuss the importance of understanding audience needs and creating content that educates, entertains, and adds real value. Benjamin shares insights on aligning podcast goals with different stages of the marketing funnel, from building brand awareness to nurturing leads, and explains why measuring success goes beyond download numbers.

Tune in to learn actionable strategies for using podcasts to engage audiences, establish trust, and fuel conversions.

Podcast transcript

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:00.657)

Great. And welcome Ben. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and experience.

Benjamin Shapiro (00:08.214)

Great to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm Benjamin Shapiro, the founder and CEO of I Hear Everything. We build media brands for industry influencers and organizational leaders. I am also the host and executive producer of the MarTech podcast and the creator of the I Hear Everything podcast network. So we've got a network of marketing shows that we produce and promote for all sorts of mostly B2B brands.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:37.073)

Excellent. Well, we're excited. Yeah, we're excited to have you here. And as you point out, a very meta episode, a podcast episode about podcasting. Yeah, so we want to talk a bit about podcasting and why it's a great kind of tool in your arsenal for businesses to connect more with their target audiences.

Benjamin Shapiro (00:37.888)

Thanks for having me.

Benjamin Shapiro (01:00.936)

Yeah. It's funny cause, I've kind of changed my tune here recently about podcasting and I've been a B2B podcaster for, think it's been like seven or eight years now. And I've been, you know, climbing to the top of the mountain top and shouting out that B2B podcasts don't work. Asterix. B2B podcasts alone don't work.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:23.729)

You

Benjamin Shapiro (01:29.494)

If you were thinking about it, I'm gonna do a podcast. I'm just gonna start shouting my brand message into a microphone Broadcasting it and then I'm gonna find that leads are coming in and have direct attribution. And I think often what happens is someone says, okay, we need a new marketing channel. Everybody's doing this podcast thing. Let's go tell everybody about our products. Put it on the podcasts not promote it …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:29.648)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (01:56.934)

… and then hope we build an audience and hope the audience comes and buys our stuff. And just like any other channel, yeah, it doesn't work that way. Like most content channels, you have to be educational, entertaining, you know, it's, there's a lot of interesting, there's another one. There's a lot that goes into creating content to build equity with the listener. So they are receptive …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:01.051)

Mm-hmm. It's just that simple. Yeah.Thank

Benjamin Shapiro (02:26.23)

… to your message. And then there are ways to extract value out of the podcast once you've built the audience. And I feel like a lot of the times brands go directly into the value extraction before they've built up the equity to have value to extract. And I think that, you know, that's kind of the common mistake where brands come in and they're like, this is just going to drive leads the second we start publishing crappy content that nobody cares about and then they're disappointed with the results. And there's kind of more of a methodology and an understanding of the timeframe and effort that goes into cultivating an organic growth channel that B2B brands kind of try to look past.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:08.527)

Yeah. so, mean, just right, like any other content strategy, you can't just do it. It has to be something that's valuable and interesting to your target audience. And to your point, like, it's a relationship-building tool. It's a, you know, your exchange of value with where you're going to warm up that presence and become more recognized by your target audience as someone or a company that can provide what they want and need. But just because you have a podcast doesn't mean they're going to call you tomorrow.

Benjamin Shapiro (03:41.994)

You know, what you put into it is what you get out of it. Like with anything else in life, I don't think that that's a controversial statement. And if you say, often what I hear is, we want to keep it simple, right? And what that means is we're not going to put in the requisite effort into thinking through why our podcast is going to be different, who we're talking to, what they need to hear, who's going to...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:51.407)

Right, right.

Benjamin Shapiro (04:10.474)

… be interesting to them. They just decide, hey, I can get a Riverside, a Squadcast, a Zoom account. I could record some conversations. We're gonna keep them authentic, which is a secret code for I'm not gonna prep. And then that's gonna be great. And our content is wonderful. Your content isn't wonderful, not you specifically, but like brands, your content isn't wonderful unless you make it wonderful. It's not interesting unless you think through what's gonna be interesting.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:20.657)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Benjamin Shapiro (04:40.142)

You know, you have to manufacture success instead of just assuming that what you're doing is going to be unique and interesting. And that's research and hard work and often it's experience, right? There's nothing wrong with hiring a producer to cut the line and skip some of the mistakes that most brands make. So yeah, there's a lot that goes into building a great podcast. There's not a lot that goes into building a podcast and the...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:49.286)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Benjamin Shapiro (05:09.428)

The word there is great. That is the difference between the two.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:13.187)

Right, right. Well, and to your point, it's not a captured audience. They can stop listening at any time if you start going on and on with something that's not valuable to them. So it's about making it something that they're learning. This is going to make them better at whatever the topic is, ideally for B2B. It's going to help them become smarter at their job. They're learning something they can go back and improve upon.

Definitely to your point needs to be something engaging and valuable. So talk a bit about where you see it kind of fitting into the customer journey. We talked a bit about different strategies of, is it awareness or kind of more mid-funnel.

Benjamin Shapiro (05:57.974)

Yeah, I think that, a great media brand and I'll broaden beyond just podcasts. And I kind of define podcasts as audio only, right? Spotify, Apple podcasts, and all the other podcatchers when I say podcast, mean the audio-only part. and to me, a media brand is the

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:11.248)

Okay. Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (06:24.7)

interview or the content that you're capturing, turning it into something that is useful for audio-only for video in places like YouTube. And then probably most importantly, your social shorts and your clips, because that's where you're able to tap into your existing professional network and audience. You know, I think that when you're trying to build a media brand, it can be applicable to the top …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:37.445)

Yeah.

Benjamin Shapiro (06:51.25)

… middle and bottom of your marketing funnel. But you have to think through what you're trying to accomplish and that can change over time. You know, if you are trying to reach a broader audience and build brand exposure and you create a podcast that speaks broadly to a larger audience, you can reach more people, right?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:14.929)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (07:15.678)

If you are very focused on demand gen and you're using your podcast as an ABM strategy to try to sell to the people that you're interviewing, then it's much closer to the bottom of the funnel, right? If you're emailing the podcast to your newsletter as a nurturing tool, well, now you're talking about the middle of the funnel and you can do all three at the same time. It really just depends on what your objectives are, what your strategy is in, and honestly like, the media that you capture, create, publish, and promote, it blends into all of the other activities you're doing in your marketing channel. We created a podcast, we use the clips out of it to create our social shorts and then we take those social shorts and we put them in our newsletter and then now all of sudden it's not just this like, have an audio podcast interview thing, it is an asset that you can use across your entire marketing strategy.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:15.087)

Yeah, definitely. And I love the example of using it for shorts and for written content as well, the newsletter. definitely can become a real hub and source of more content that you can definitely use to spread across different channels. Talk about kind of how you see the difference between B2B brands, podcasts, and more direct-to-consumer brands, how the approach and strategy would be different.

Benjamin Shapiro (08:43.808)

Yeah, I think that you know, there's a world where direct-to-consumer brands are creating interesting content and sort of owning their audience. and I'll use a CPG company as an example, right? If I'm creating razor blades, I'm not going to create the razor blade podcast. Cause guess what? No one wants to listen to that. Right? Nobody's that interested in the razor blades.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:04.453)

Right. Mmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (09:10.062)

Even if they spend a ton and they want the nicest ones and they buy them all the time, they don't want to listen to razor blade content. But the hypothetical razor blade company that's in my head, you know, targets males 18 to 55. What are some things that males 18 to 55 generally like? Probably like sports, not everybody, but a lot of them. Right. So sure. Harry's or whatever razor blade company can create a sports podcast and build …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:31.867)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (09:38.246)

… a media entity and own that content asset, probably easier and more efficient for them to be advertisers. And so on the D to C space, I think we get a lot of these 30 to 60-second ads that are being injected or host-read as well. Dynamically inserted is always better than in my opinion, sort of the prerecorded canned ads like the radio-style ads.

But I think that's where most of the D to C effort and money goes. On the B-to-B side, it's different, right? You wanna own thought leadership, build know, like, and trust, and start to cultivate a relationship with the host and the listener. And often it is the brand as well.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:04.664)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (10:28.158)

And so, you know, cultivating your own audience and being able to tap into that and repeat your message over time and to show that you are an expert. Nobody really cares if the razor blade brand is an expert in razor blade manufacturing. I do really care if my B2B revenue consultancy is an expert on driving B2B revenue and I want their tips and I want to hear their thoughts.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:42.959)

Right, right.

Benjamin Shapiro (10:55.668)

So I think it's much more common to see the B2B brands creating their content and building their audiences as opposed to the B2C and the D2C direct consumers. I feel like generally tends to be more advertorial and advertising.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:15.205)

Yeah, no, that's a good point. And it makes me think about, you know, you were equating earlier podcasts to blogs when blogs were new. And, now, years ago, when I worked with Pampers, they had all of this content on their website. You know, this, they were one of the first that was for mothers during pregnancy and, women during pregnancy and things to think about so they were using that content to engage their target audience so that when they read, did go to, were ready to go buy diapers, that they were the brand that's top of mind. It seems similar to the importance of, you know, making sure whatever content you're creating does kind of build that relationship so that they do eventually become buyers.

Benjamin Shapiro (12:06.282)

Yeah. fundamentally creating a, forget a podcast, being a great marketer, like, know, and I'm guessing a lot of people that are listening to this podcast might be rev ops or execs or salespeople and they, know, well, what is marketing? Does this stuff really work? Marketing is understanding who the customers are, their pain points, and where they're looking for information. So you can present it in a way that is, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:29.755)

Yeah.

Benjamin Shapiro (12:37.982)

… interesting, entertaining, and engaging to them. And that does have an impact on sales and how people think about you and when they're in the market, do they want to come to you? So marketing in general, you know, improves your conversion rates and the sales funnel lowers your cost per acquisition over time, mostly organic marketing. And that's where, you know, podcasting, I think of it as an organic growth channel, primarily. Those take time and effort to cultivate.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:56.177)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (13:07.926)

But over time they become less and less expensive and so just kind of going off on a marketing tangent here, but There's lots of different value that you can get out of building great content whether it is B2C, D2C, B2B But you have to understand who your audience is first You have to understand what they need to be able to create content that speaks to their problems

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:34.149)

Right, right, no, you're spot on. And I think I love your point of tying it to the sales cycle as well, because not only does it shorten the sales cycle, by the time you're, they're either, whether it's B2B or D2C when they're in the market and ready to buy, they're gonna have, they know your brand, they're familiar with you, they're gonna be more likely to sign up or purchase.

Benjamin Shapiro (13:58.922)

The hardest I know is the CEO of a company, but we're a small company. So I have to do a lot of the sales myself. I'm still in the phase where I'm like boots on the ground. Those are my boots. and the hardest thing for me to do on the sales side is think of that email, that is, right, I've already emailed you a couple of times over a couple of weeks. What else can I say to you?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:05.72)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (14:22.482)

That is not going to be like, hey, check in to see if you wanna buy something yet. Are you ready to buy something? Who's ready? Who wants a thing to buy? And it's the nurture problem. It's like, how do I stay top of mind? Because we had a good conversation. You seem to be interested in my products or services. You have a need. I have a solution for you, but it wasn't exactly the right time. Now, how do I stay in front of you? Content is incredible. And sometimes it's as simple as,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:26.671)

Yeah. Right, right. Yeah.

Benjamin Shapiro (14:51.122)

I created a podcast or a piece of content for you. I wrote a LinkedIn post yesterday and I sent it to one of my leads instantly. They scheduled a meeting and the message was, hey, I wrote my LinkedIn post specifically thinking of you. And the post was like, hey, you need to hire a producer, and here's why. You can go onto Riverside and record your content, publish it by yourself and promote it by yourself, but having a producer helps you.

Put up the mirror to understand whether what you're saying is what your audience needs and helps you through the creative journey, not just the technical journey. you know, like having content and being able to have something to share shows that you're thinking of somebody, it puts you at the top of mind. And then when they are ready for a conversation or the next step in their buying journey, you're already in the mix. And that's most of the time half the battle.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:24.433)

Right, and you've demonstrated that you're going to continue to provide advice and suggestions and kind of give them a glimpse into what your partnership will look like because you're going to be there helping them along the way.

Benjamin Shapiro (15:57.642)

Yeah, absolutely. And it's just continual ways to provide little bits of value. And a lot of the time, you know, if you're thinking about it as a nurture and a sales strategy, it is staying connected, staying present, showing them that you understand what their problems are and that you're trying to deliver something that will be useful. You don't want to be like, Hey, I got this case study. Do you want to see my case study? Hey, I got this white paper. Do you want to download it? Like nobody wants your white papers anymore.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:16.987)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Benjamin Shapiro (16:26.134)

The world has gone past the gated white paper and like here's more information you can read about me Who wants that? Here's something that I think solves one of your problems in different

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:35.73)

No, unless it's a good content strategy where you're in the white paper, you're providing valuable content that will then help them differentiate once they use it. But to your point, just when it's about you and it's a downloadable gated, yeah. And I'm only saying that because I...

Benjamin Shapiro (16:55.306)

Guess.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:59.579)

Well, I do believe in original research in a white paper to provide unique content. And I talk about that a lot. just creating that differentiation between them.

Benjamin Shapiro (17:09.238)

I'm more thinking of the generic ebook as I put together a PDF. Who wants one? Yeah, if you've got something to say and you did your homework and created research different than chat GPT wrote a story for me who do you is it? Do you want to download this? Nobody wants

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:19.535)

Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:28.43)

Right, right. No, definitely. One other thing too, we'd mentioned earlier was building awareness of your podcast by bringing on guests. One of the podcasts I used to do, used to bring on our biggest partners or vendors so that one, they could help educate our target audience about their services, which we were using or our clients were using them.

But two, then there's the benefit of sharing it with their network. They're sharing it in their newsletter. And it just helps with that even upper funnel to kind of remind us that we also should be in that consideration set. So I think that's another big benefit and feature, I think, for brands to have this content.

Benjamin Shapiro (18:17.962)

Yeah, I think that an ABM strategy, mostly for B2B brands, is the best way to do demand generation, right? If you think about who you want to reach and you can use the podcast or your media brand as a way to cut through the clutter, right? Offer value upfront, and start to build a relationship. And honestly, most of the time in the podcast, if you're using your podcast as the ABM strategy,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:22.779)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (18:46.57)

You can use the interview as a way to understand the pain points your prospects have, right? So if I'm interviewing somebody that is thinking about building a podcast or has a podcast that isn't studying, I'm gonna ask questions about it, tell me the purpose of the podcast for you. Who are you trying to reach? What are you trying to get out of this? How do you think about value extraction? What's the process and what are the signals you look at that are working or not working?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:51.973)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (19:15.136)

This is all the stuff that I'm doing in my prospecting calls. And then I could follow up with, hey, we had a great conversation. I published your podcast. I got you a thousand downloads and here are some social assets. By the way, you mentioned this thing on the podcast. I think I could probably help you with that. You wanna have a conversation? It's a much easier way to get into, you know, I'm having a chat with somebody I have a relationship with as opposed to your typical cold outreach.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:40.133)

Yeah, no, you're spot on. I think too, there's also, depending on who your guests are, the perception, if you are bringing on to the point brands that you want to hire you, then you're also giving your audience that perception that this relationship already exists. You don't want to miss out. want, if your competitor is working with us, you might want to call us too. So it creates that whole brand strengthening, the brand perception as well. So.

I know you've got a lot of tips for brands. Well, actually I should say, now at this point everyone listening is like, gosh, I got to go do a podcast and I'm going to call Benjamin to help me produce it. But what are your top tips for the brands that you've persuaded or think that they want to get started?

Benjamin Shapiro (20:29.727)

Yeah, I think that I'm biased, but I think that trying to do a podcast in-house and expecting to have traction in a short period of time is equivalent to putting money in a barrel with gasoline and a lit match. it's just, it's a recipe for failure, right? I think that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:39.504)

Mm-hmm. Thank

Benjamin Shapiro (20:59.142)

it is easy to say, well, we can technically record content and publish it. And if you don't have an understanding of your audience if you haven't done your market research, and by that, I don't mean with your products, I mean with what other podcasts and other content is out there. If you haven't thought about who's going to be interesting and compelling to your audience, and then if you don't have a distribution plan for your content, ..

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:09.456)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (21:26.91)

… All you're doing is an exercise in moving files around and that's no good for anyone. And I think that finding a producer that not just will help take the operational workload, podcasting is technically challenging. It's kind of death by a thousand cuts. Nothing is impossible, but everything is laborious. A producer will help you quickly get up and running and start to get traction.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:32.635)

Yeah. Right.

Benjamin Shapiro (21:54.922)

But more importantly, they should be helping you with the creative side. Understanding positioning, understanding what's going to be compelling content and thinking backward from, want to create social shorts, YouTube videos, and audio podcasts from an interview. Well, how do we format that interview? So we know we have segments that we can then break down into compelling, discrete pieces of content for other channels.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:13.179)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Shapiro (22:24.438)

And to me getting professional help is the easiest way to understand whether the channel is going to work. And if you're not willing to invest in building a channel, why do you have expectations that it's going to be something that's meaningful? You know, people try to do it themselves and just assume they'll fake it till they make it and that it's

You just have to have a ton of patience. Even with a good producer, you're looking at three, or six months to like to start to get that audience to be a big enough size. And without a producer, know what most of the time when people come to me, they're like, I've been doing a podcast for six months and we recorded 24 episodes and they're all an hour long and we've got a thousand downloads a month and nobody's bought anything.

We're gonna give up, can you point us in the right direction? And it's like, all right, know, come on, let's go, I'll help you. But there's a process and there's content formatting and a creative journey that you have to go on to make something truly unique and interesting. And I feel like getting some help to do that is honestly the first step. It's not, let's just start making it, putting it out there, and see what happens.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:41.797)

Right. Yeah, definitely. Well, and so real quick, how do people get in touch with you?

Benjamin Shapiro (23:48.554)

Yeah, I'm a pretty public person. You can find I hear everything.com, which is my company's domain. The podcast that I am the host of is called the Martech podcast. You could just search for Martech where the top results and podcast apps. I'm on LinkedIn a bunch. LinkedIn. My handle is Ben J. Schaap, B-E-N-J-S-H-A-P. Those are kind of the primary places and yeah, happy to chat with anybody who needs help or wants a couple of tips.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:19.056)

Great, excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining today. This was, what I learned from you. like, gonna now apply everything that you recommended today, but this was really valuable for me and hopefully for everyone else. So thank you.

Benjamin Shapiro (24:33.96)

I hope so. Thanks for having me as your guest.