Episode 6 - Podcast Panning

Context: Podcasts are packed full of personal prospecting gold. It's the best way to get to know buyers. Listening takes time but so does a meeting with you.

Effort: Medium

Where to look:

• Search for podcast appearances for each buyer.

Search "NAME" AND "podcast" OR "episode”, check their featured content on LinkedIn or use https://www.owltail.com/ / https://www.listennotes.com/ (not 100% accurate).

Recent data is always best - some big cheese buyers have dozens of podcast appearances.

• Mine popular podcasts in your space.

You should already be subscribed to the popular podcasts in your space. I’ve sold to Marketers for the last few years.

For B2B / SaaS (there’s 100s). CMO Diaries, The Marketers Journey and Demand Gen Visionaries.

For B2C (again 100s). The Consumer VC, Brand Innovators and The Empowered Marketer.

What to listen/look for:

• Create a mental filter to find nuggets of data. Like panning for gold!
• Often names, adjectives (describing words) and adverbs (modify adjectives) can lead you to gold.
• Generally, you can group podcast data into categories. Here’s notes for Kyle Lacy’s (ex SVP Marketing @ Seismic, now CMO @ Jellyfish) appearance on CMO Diaries. Everything in green is a nugget!

*I listened to the whole thing - so lot’s of data. You don’t need to. You only need 1-3 nuggets to stand out from the the auto 💩 buyers recieve all day every day.

Examples:

You’re an SDR at 6sense (Intent data) sending Kyle a connection request:

Your friend Katie Foote called us her “most reliable data source”. Might be interesting for a couple of headaches you mentioned on CMO Dairies. Ok if I share a short, well researched explainer Kyle?

Or an AE at Dreamdata (Attribution) emailing Kyle:

Subject: via CMO Diaries / Your Mom

Kyle, your “neutral country” comment on CMO Diaries made me smile.

You look at full-funnel weekly. Just in case attribution arguments arise - you’ll find Dreamdata delightful.

Here’s {RELEVANT SOCIAL PROOF}

PS -  I’m the second person to buy “Social CRM for Dummies”. Your Mom and I could start a book club…

Suppose you’re VP Sales at Wynter (Message Testing) emailing Kyle:

Subject: Surrender Experiment

Kyle, fingers crossed you're saying “yes” to everything life brings you. I'm struggling to "trust the flow" myself.

Could be wrong but on CMO Diaries you hinted that message testing and cohort analysis was a “tonne of work”. We fix that.

You’ll know which messaging resonates with which audience. Less opinions. Much more data for super fast feedback loops.

Yes?

Perhaps you're an SDR at Qualtrics  (Experience Management) calling Kyle. Here's an opener:

"Kyle? Luke here with Qualtrics. Just listened to your CMO Diaries episode. Have a quick question on what you said about win/loss analysis. Doyagotasec?"

The nugget doesn't have to relate to you and your business. You just need enough to interrupt the pattern:

Subject: You on CMO Diaries

Kyle, as the Chief Mario Officer... just kidding!

Full transparency this isn't legendary like your Golden Llama campaign but maybe interesting if {JOB TO BE DONE} sucks for you and team.

{RELEVANT SOCIAL PROOF}

I'll buy Social CRM for Dummies if you take a meeting ;-)

In the wild:
Lindsay Bayuk, CMO @ Pluralsight (tech training). Used a few nuggets. Each could have been a separate message. Email is too long (overkill) but it worked.

1. Lindsay was on the Sharebird Pod talking about {Achievements} - Pluralsight’s positioning pivot (say that fast). She says #wordsmatter to her team. That’s the nugget!
2. Lindsay tweets about Drift and their CEO, David Cancel. That’s {RELEVANT SOCIAL PROOF}
3. From a Medium article Lindsay wrote on managing her messy inbox. Challenge accepted - I even timed it to send ready for the 7am skimming.

Melton Littlepage, CMO @ Outreach (never heard of em). My superstar teammate Dylan (he prefers D bag) used a few nuggets:

1. Melton was on Demand Gen Visionaries sharing his {POV} about B2B websites being “crucial”. Like a “digital watering hole”. That’s the nugget!
2. Added personas from their website (seller, manager, leader).
3. Udi, CMO @ Gong is his peer and at the time of sending had just become a competitor (Kaia). That’s {RELEVANT SOCIAL PROOF}

This is already too long so I’ll stop. I’ve got dozens more. You get it. PODCASTS = GOLD.

Tips:

• Subscribe to every relevant podcast you find. You'll get promo emails for each guest. Proactively connect the guest before the episode.  Simple:

"Lisa Looking forward to your Brand Innovators chat next week"

• Join the podcast live if possible to ask your buyer a question. Here's me asking Katie Foote, CMO @ Drift about out-of-home on CMO Diaries. She explained the problem my former employer solved.

• Nuggets. You do not need to listen to a 45 min podcast to find 1-3 nuggets. Listen on 2x and/or skip to search faster. 5 mins for 45 min podcast.
• Transcripts. They'll make your life easier. If the episode doesn’t have a transcript you can make your own or if the episode is on YouTube download the subtitles.
• Keywords. Don’t waste real estate telling your buyer their own words. It's easy to fall into this trap. Ask a question or use a memorable keyword instead. "#wordsmatter" for example.
• Data lives forever. Save your podcast notes in your SEP and keep a copy for yourself - I wish I'd done this. The nuggets you find will help you stand out with that buyer forever.
• Outsource. I've always wanted to outsource podcast panning. If anyone has done this before - I'd love to hear from you.

*Removing the feedback button - no one uses it

See you soon for episode 7 - Visual Emails