Power Up Your Podcast Game with Lindsay Tjepkema & Katie Nehrenz | Enablement Session #2

Katie: Hi everybody and thank you for your patience while we were getting up and running. I am Katie Nehrenz. I am the Director of Customer Experience here at Casted and I'm so excited to be bringing you this enablement session today with Lindsay. So today we'll be covering how to power up your podcast game. And this is all going to be for the customers who, and non- customers, the folks out there that are podcasting that are stuck at measuring downloads. And you're there, you don't know where to go next, you don't know what to look for, and we're going to help you find what that next step looks like. So I'm so excited to invite Lindsay here today to talk to us a little bit more about how to mature, how to look at things from a little bit of a different angle, and we're going to show you some customer examples of whose applying some of these things today. And last but not least, we'll have lots of really great actionable things for you to consider as you walk away. So couple of administrative things. All questions please add to the chat as you think of them. We'll do a Q& A session at the very end. We will be drawing two random winners for Casted swag. So keep an eye on your email after this because we will be reaching out to you if you are a winner. And then we will have a poll at the very end so you can actually decide what kind of goodies you want to take away from this session. So without further ado, I'm going to stop yapping at you and invite the real reason why you're here, which is to hear from Lindsay. So I believe Lindsay is backstage. Let's invite her on here. And I am going to make sure that you can see our presentation here. Amazing. Okay. All right. Hey Lindsay.

Lindsay: Hello. Thanks everyone for your patience. It's my fault that we're late.

Katie: It's totally fine. Totally fine. So Lindsay, welcome. I'm so pumped to hear you talk about this today and to chat with you about what some of our customers are doing. If anyone else here has seen a session with me unfortunately hosting, they all know I love to ask weird icebreakers so we can kind of shake out every past meeting that we've had this morning and get into the vibe of this. So Lindsay, I have to know, and this is especially catered to you and I because I feel like we share very similar sense of humor, but I have to know what the most recent awkward moment you had that you just cannot stop thinking about and cringing.

Lindsay: Okay. Well I'm going to redeem myself for making everyone wait and gift you with a very cringey, awkward moment that I had. This wasn't that recent. I'm actually not going to say when it was'cause I don't want to even reveal who it could have been with, but I was leaving a meeting. It was a very important meeting with a very important person. And as we were walking out the door, it was an awkward door that was a swing door. It wasn't like a latch. And I went to walk out and he was awkward too'cause he went to open the door for me, but you know how if you open a door that kind of swings open, you have to really lean into it. So he leaned into it and I went to shake his hand and the way he was positioned, I thought he was hug goodbye. And so I was like, "Okay." And so I gave him a hug and he literally said, "Or you can hug me." And I was like, "Oh my gosh." And so I hugged this person when he was trying to just open the door for me and it was very awkward.

Katie: I'm sure it was a very cute moment though for him. Very affectionate. Probably all the feels.

Lindsay: It was very awkward. I phoned a friend immediately after I left and I was like, "I can't believe what I just did." It was a friendly awkward. It's not like I did something bad. It was just-

Katie: Yeah.

Lindsay: There you go. There's my cringey, awkward moment. I have many.

Katie: I've been there many times where you're like, you walk up to someone and they kind of do this and you kind of do this and you're like, "I don't really know." I feel like that's happened within the last week for me.

Lindsay: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah.

Lindsay: Yes. Absolutely. So what about yours? You have to give me one now.

Katie: So I had dinner with a girlfriend on Tuesday. Being moms, we like to get out and have what we call mommy dates and we like to go to nicer places where we can feel fancy and enjoy ourselves. And so we went to an Italian restaurant here in the Indy area and I am not as familiar with the process of the presenting and tasting of wine. I've been to wine tastings, but when you order a bottle and they bring it to your table-

Lindsay: Yeah and they give you a little taste and-

Katie: They present it and you taste it and I panicked. I was like, "What do I do?" So I picked up the glass and I kind of awkwardly sloshed it around because I was having the Sideways flashbacks and like, "What am I supposed to do with this?" And so I kind of splash it around in my glass and I take a sip and I didn't know what to say and I just looked at him and I went, "Approved." And he just kind of side eyed me and continued pouring it afterward. I was like, I said approved. I could've just said, "Yum," or, "Cool," or, "Let's go," or anything.

Lindsay: Maybe you should have brought an approved stamp and he could have stamped it.

Katie: I was picturing it in my head actually. I think I did the motion. I was like, "Approved." So, yeah.

Lindsay: I love it. Then you should have hugged him. It would've made it that much better.

Katie: Oh my God. I really should have. Maybe next time. Instead of approved I'll just hug.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: And level it up a little bit.

Lindsay: Let's normalize this. That's fine.

Katie: Awesome. Well, fantastic. Now that we both have egg on our face a little bit, let's talk about podcasting. So-

Lindsay: Lets.

Katie: Let's put ourselves in the shoes of people here and talk about, you've got a podcast. What's next?

Lindsay: Exactly. Exactly. So before we even get into what's next, we face this a lot, and Katie, I'm glad that you're here with me'cause you work with so many of our customers about just that, what's next and what's possible. And so first of all, if you're feeling this way, you are so not alone. In fact, more now than ever I think there's what's really great is we're seeing more people doing podcasts. When we first started Casted, the conversation was, "Should you do a podcast?" And that conversation has definitely shifted into, "I do have a podcast. Now what do I do with it?" And so if this is a question that you have, that's literally why we're here. You're not alone and what I hope to accomplish today together with you is focus. That let's identify where you are in the now what spectrum and then when where you are, you can focus on what you need to do next as opposed to all the things that are possible. So that's what we're going to do today. So if you want to go onto the next slide.

Katie: Of course.

Lindsay: Okay. So some die hard Casted peeps may have seen this before. If you haven't, we even have a whole assessment around this so you can figure out where you are. But basically with the four years that we've been around and all the customers that we've talked to and what we've learned from the market and the wonderful podcast agency partners we work with, we know now that there are several stages that a company goes through as they're adopting podcasts. And depending on where you are on the spectrum, you probably can relate. So you get started, you're experimenting with the channel, that's stage one. You don't have a show yet. It's like, "Could this be a thing?" Sometimes this looks like some recordings on your phone. You do a couple recordings, you're dabbling, that's stage one. Some people go directly through stage one right into stage two of show, "I'm going to do a show. We're going to commit to it. We're going to develop some processes." But that's stage two. If you have a commitment to a show, you have some processes in place, you have some assigned roles, even if it's literally just to yourself and you're like, "Yep. This is a thing we're doing over time. We're going to publish a show over and over." There's some consistency there. Stage three is when you've grown through that and you're like, "Okay. I have this show. It's got some legs. We've got some processes. We kind of know what we're doing as far as making the show and getting it out to the world." But now your focus shifts to, "Okay, what about the audience though? How do I take this show and actually grow a following? Is it just my mom that's listening or do we actually have some people listening? How do I know? Who the heck are they? And how do I grow that audience? How do I use all of these channels that I have to grow the show?" This often looks like publishing to social media, leveraging the network of your guests, doing a blog post that's related, and it's all about how do I use the resources that my brand already has to drive awareness of and listenership of my show? Cool. That's actually where we're going to focus a lot and start the conversation today. And a lot of people think that's where it ends and we're starting to see this shift, which is really cool, but for a while people have been like, "Yeah. I started a show. I got to grow the show." But you're missing out on 90% of the value if you end there. And Katie, I know you've worked with so many of our customers to move beyond stage three, which is so cool to see because there's this switch that flips. You literally turn the tables and instead of thinking, "How do I use all these resources to grow my show?" You mature beyond that to say, "And how do I use this show that I've started and that I've created to grow the brand? How do I use the show to," for example, "Grow my community on social media? How do I use the show to develop more, to grow my email marketing list? How do I use the show to generate more traffic to my blog or more attendees at my events?" So once the show kind of hits this space, hits that level, you can start to use it to really drive growth and awareness across other channels. And then, lest we not forget, the holy grail of stage five, which is all of these things come together to actually drive real measurable business results, which nine times out of 10 means revenue and how do you prove it? But it's so important to break these down, which is what we're going to do today, stage by stage because once you're starting with and experimenting with a show, if you expect to be able to turn around two weeks later and prove revenue, you're going to be disappointed. You're going to end up giving up on the show before it even gets started. So yeah. This is the maturity curve. We posted in the chat the assessment that you can take probably after this. Don't do it now'cause you're going to miss out on some of the great content, but you can take to figure out where you are and to get some really great resources following the show about where you can go from there.

Katie: Awesome. And before we move in, Lindsay mentioned the chat and I do want to encourage you all to please take advantage of the chat. Say hi to other people, share who you are, what you're here for, share your own insights, tell us what's resonating. We love seeing that engagement. We want you to feel like you're part of the conversation. So please, feel free. But yeah. I'm excited. Let's dive into stage three.

Lindsay: Let's do it.

Katie: Let's do it.

Lindsay: Okay. So I mentioned some of these things before, but looking a little closer at stage three, again, we're skipping over stages one and two because that's where you're getting started and there's a lot of resources there, both from Casted and otherwise, about how to start a show and how to get going. So really once you get to the place that you're thinking about your audience, you're saying, "How do I grow my audience?" That's usually when you're at stage three. And as you can see here, the goal is understanding your audience better. I always say,'cause it's fun when things rhyme, you have to know and grow your audience at stage three. Who are they? How can I grow them? And your strategy there is all about using the other resources you have. Using your social media, using your email, using blog, using your team, using events to drive awareness of and engagement with your show. It's all about growing your show. Quite often it can be really overwhelming at this stage because that's where you're starting to feel the pressure of maybe some of the limitations of your creative freedom where it's like maybe you were able to fly under the radar a little bit when you were experimenting or you got some buy- in with, "Hey, we're going to start a show." But once you start to get some traction, it's a kind of double- edged sword. You start to get traction, which is great. You're publishing the show, which is awesome, but it starts to get noticed a little bit more internally and it's like, "Cool. What's the value? What's happening?" I experienced this myself in a past life doing a podcast of you start to get attention and then people want to know what it's doing for the business, who is in the audience. And so it can start to be a little overwhelming, a little stressy, because this is when you start to be like, "What's my ROI?" Right? That's all at stage three. So, how to win? First by understanding who is in your audience and this is an enablement session so Casted can help there. There's ways to do it if you don't have Casted. Casted makes it a lot easier. And also understanding beyond who is in your audience, what content is resonating? What content do you have that's actually getting some traction and what are people going back and listening to and if you're doing clips and if you're using all of your other channels to grow your show, what's being most effective? What are people really honing on and how can you execute a promotional strategy for every single episode? How can you add to those processes that you developed in stage two that are all about getting your show out into the world? How can you add to that checklist of, "Okay. Now every time I publish an episode, how can I make sure that I'm really leveraging every avenue I have to drive traffic to it?" And Katie, I know you work with a lot of our customers. So can you tell us a little bit about a stage three customer that you know about?

Katie: I do. I know about some stage three customers and all the brands that we're going to feature today I just absolutely adore. And what I love about Trava is that they're taking a topic around cybersecurity that normally isn't very sexy and they're making it sexy and I love that. It's all about making it sexy. We like the word sexy, right? Do you like it? Do we like it? Okay. So Trava has a newer podcast. The great thing is is that they have easy accessibility to it. So they have, as soon as you go to the Trava website, if you go to their menu, the podcast is right there. You're able to easily get to that and they have a landing page identified for that podcast. So it's not just sending you to Apple Podcasts or to Spotify. It's sending you to a landing page. So you are going to be engaging with all of the content that they know you should have, that you want to have access to. So if you want to have access to a specific resource that they mention, whether it's a specific report or a certain checklist or whatever that looks like, being able to send their audience to those landing pages, that's key, right?

Lindsay: For sure.

Katie: So the other thing is that if you follow Trava themselves, but as well as the employees like I do, you see a lot of their content on social. They are promoting across all of their channels. So you see a lot of social cards and audiograms, videograms on social media, but then you're also, in every single newsletter, you're seeing all the latest episodes being mentioned, you are seeing their content embedded in their blog posts. So they're making sure that that podcast is being mentioned across all of their channels. So they're raising awareness, they're using their channels to grow their podcast,'cause again, that podcast is new. The other thing that's really cool is that they actually have themed playlists. So they had one specifically that was around I believe it was cyber risk and they built a playlist so people can engage with all of the content, all of the thought leadership around that specific subject. So they're also doing that to cater more to their audience, understanding who's in their audience, and making sure that they're giving them what they want. The coolest thing about Trava is that they're really setting a great foundation for moving into a stage four, which I know we'll cover here momentarily, but they've moved beyond podcasting. They actually, when they came to us, they were not actively podcasting yet. They were using Casted for their webinars and they were using them for other smaller videos and they're kind of building that foundation already to create that content carousel that we'll talk about in our next stage four slide, but really building that foundation so no matter where their audience hops on, they will get a consistent journey. They'll get a consistent message and feel throughout that entire journey, which is really cool.

Lindsay: It is very cool. And that's such a good segue because stage three does build such a strong foundation for stage four because you're amplifying. We talk a lot about amplified marketing at Casted and there's an amplified strategy to promoting every episode. It's like, " How do I use clips and pieces of this episode to promote this episode across multiple channels?" And then as we get into stage four, it's like same tactics, but with a kind of expanded mindset. You want to get into stage four? Yeah. So there we go. So, the goal of stage four is, as it says here, using your show that you've built to, and you've grown your show and you've worked at amplifying every single episode, it's saying, "Okay, cool. How do I use that to now grow the brand? How do I use every episode to not just focus on using the episodes to grow the episodes, using the show to grow the show, it's using the show to grow the brand." And so what this looks like is saying, "Okay. I'm going to use my new and existing content in ways that are timely and relevant to what's happening in each of my channels. How can I go back and use content in new blog posts to generate more organic search to hit on those topics? How can I leverage content that I already have to fuel conversations that are happening on social media? How can I use new content to fuel more engagement with my emails?" So it's saying, "How do I use this one thing that I'm doing in these conversations, these rich, relevant, authentic conversations that are happening on my podcast," or as you mentioned Katie, maybe your webinars and things like that, " To fuel all of my other channels and to really push engagement." And as we all know as marketers, that repetition is so important because it's viewed as consistency. When you hear the same message kind of in different places, it builds awareness, it builds trust, it builds recognition among your audience. And so the good thing here is that as we move into stage four, we find, as you see on how you're feeling, that a lot of customers, a lot of brands, a lot of marketers that are at stage four, there's kind of a newfound confidence because you feel like you've figured out, " Okay. I know how to get my show out into the world." Obviously that's always being improved and you're always tweaking it, but you have processes for how to make and produce the show. Then you also have some processes and some strategy in place for how to promote the show and you've seen some traction and you feel like you kind of get to know who your audience is. And then at stage four, there's this light bulb moment that's like, "I can start to use this to see success in other areas. So it's not just about what's the ROI of this podcast? It's how is this podcast generating ROI across other channels too," which is pretty cool. You start to get some notice from other areas too like sales and customer success as you start to say, "Hey. I have something that can help you." So how to win here? Collect and use listener data that can strategically recommend other content types. So as you're collecting data about who is listening to your content, you can use that same data to inform your content strategy, your engagement strategy, your social media strategy across other channels and you can start to align other formats and other content around your certain themes across different channels. So again, you have that omnichannel consistency, that omnichannel integrated approach to your content marketing. And then one of our customers, Meg Johnson over at OpenView talks a lot about a content carousel that kind of keeps people coming back around the same topics and keeps looping them in and providing more and more relevance across different channels. How about an example, Katie?

Katie: How about it? I love talking about these folks and it's so funny 'cause I was actually just talking to them before we jumped onto this and I'm just such a fan of their brand. They have such a fun brand. They've got great brand colors, but also I always like to say it feels like you're part of a group of friends interacting with their content. They like to get silly and I, as you know and I'm sure lots of us know, I like to get silly. So, I think what's very cool about Flip is that you can see, it might look at a surface that they're doing a lot of the same things that I pointed out in our stage three example with Trava, but the difference here is the intent because the podcast is the source of the content. They're not promoting their podcast, they are, but their podcast is the source of the content. So they're speaking with the experts, they're getting that kind of thought leadership quotes from the experts out there. And so what you're seeing is that they are creating blog posts, but they're not episode blogs. They are creating blogs around the theme or the topic of a specific podcast episode. And reading that blog, you would not be able to tell that this is a podcast episode, but there's that little mention at the end, " If you want to hear more about this, here's this." So it's fueling those blog posts, but it isn't an episode blog. So again, it's that intent there, it's that extra step. The other really cool thing is that while they are using things like short clips or videograms from the podcast itself, they are also creating other pieces of content to fuel their social channels. So you can see in the examples here, they're using LinkedIn carousels. You can see the active GIF or GIF depending on what team you're on there-

Lindsay: I'm on team GIF, just-

Katie: See, I'm a GIF girl. I guess we don't agree on everything.

Lindsay: Man.

Katie: The battle continues. But they have this carousel that you can interact with. You can see quotes that come from that podcast episode. You can see the takeaways, but again, it's not super evident that it's coming from a podcast episode.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: It's a lot of thought leadership. It's a lot of just sharing those rich takeaways from that piece of content. And then you also have the same thing with Twitter threads where it's a graphic so it's very engaging. It gets a lot of eyeballs, it catches a lot of eyeballs, but then as you start scrolling through it it's got, again, that rich takeaway content from those episodes. So it really is the fuel behind their social posts and their blog posts, which is really cool to see. Again, I was fangirling over them earlier.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a big difference here between those two stages.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: Anything you want to add here, Lindsay?

Lindsay: I think outside of obviously being able to realize ROI in which we're going to get to in stage five, other than that, which is huge, that's the holy grail, this might be my favorite stage because this is where you get to be really creative. You have resources and it's cool because you have resources that you've created or that your team's created or really large companies that we work with like IBM across multiple different teams. You have this whole repository of content that Casted makes it all searchable. And you can go back and say, "What could I create?" And knowing that it's not just about how do I promote the show, which you mentioned Katie, you're doing anyway, just you are doing it by using the content from the show and pointing back to it, but it's like when you go get your nails done and it's like this entire wall of nail polish and you just can pick from anyone you want, it's the same kind of thing. You just have all this content and it's like, "What could I do with it? How can I mix and match and put them all together and make some new things? How can I repurpose something that I have from before?" And as an audience member, especially as content consuming marketers or marketing minded people, we know that this is really fun content to consume too. When you see content carousels like this, when you see really rich creative content that all ties back to something and gives you the opportunity to dive deeper and say like, "Oh, I can go listen to this conversation," or, "I can go read this blog post and listen to what the person said as I'm reading it," it's so much more engaging, it's so much more fun to put together, and it's great because, again, you have all the ingredients, you have all the resources of what you need to create some really cool stuff. So this is a really, really fun stage and I think it's where we can see Casted shine in some really neat ways that nobody else does is giving the marketers this whole palette of tools to use as they really ring out that content and amplify it to do some pretty cool stuff.

Katie: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you were talking about repurposing and that's definitely something I forgot and want to point out about the Twitter thread example is that those are crave worthy quotes. Those are quotes from their entire catalog. So it's not just the most recent episode or one specific episode. They're pulling from that whole repository of rich, valuable insight from all these experts. So it's really cool to see that, again, repurposed and kind of repackaged in a different way to share that with the world.

Lindsay: Yeah. For sure.

Katie: All right. Let's do it. Let's talk about stage five.

Lindsay: Stage five. Again, we've pointed to this a few times. We've talked about it a few times and a lot of people, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this Katie too, a lot of people that we talk to want to jump here from day one, which is understandable. I've been there. Marketers are used to having to justify, "If I do this thing, I need to prove ROI. I need to prove ROI," which you can. You can do elements of that from day one, but what ROI means and what's possible and what kind of results you're going to see from it kind of changes over time. And once you've gone through all the other stages, you have a show, you're consistently publishing, you know what that means for you, you know who it's for, you know why you're doing it, you understand who your audience is, you understand how they're growing, you're using that content across other channels. Once you're doing all these things, that's when it has enough legs to really be one, serving sales and CX in a big way so that they're actually using it and they're seeing ROI. And also through integration with CRM and with the tools that we're able to provide in Casted, you can actually point to how is this impacting revenue? How is this tied to shortened sales cycles? How is this tied to accounts that are really important for us to see in our pipeline? And how did the show and how this content that we create impact that? So the goal truly is being able to prove that business impact and to draw a line that, really for the 20 years of my career, I've been trying to do, connect those dots between that really rich creative content and the impact it's making on the business, i. e, revenue. So what this looks like is integrating content into team processes on the revenue side. So how is CX using it? How is sales using it? And then being able to also point to metrics about how is this content actually impacting revenue? And this is a really great place to be as far as feelings. You're feeling confident. You can actually say, " Hey. This is what I, and content team, this is what we are creating and this is the impact it's making on the business. This is how it's actually driving real revenue," which is every marketer's dream.

Katie: So how do they win?

Lindsay: How do they win? So this is best done by integrating Casted, and therefore your content, with your CRM and your marketing automation platform. The reason being is that then you're able to flow all the data from Casted as far as who is engaging, how are they engaging, what deals are they tied to, how much revenue are they tied to, push that all into CRM and then also, through your marketing automation platform, it makes it usable. So it gets those clips, it gets those shows, it gets that content into the hands of marketing, CX, and sales in a way that it can be pulled apart and used in their content and their processes to therefore expand the reach and expand the impact. So that's one. And then thinking beyond podcasting into other formats like we talked about earlier as far as things like this, how can you use virtual events and webinars, recordings from live events, demos. That's something that there's a huge aha moment to a lot of people that we talk to. They're like, "Oh my gosh. I could use my demos and I could put them in Casted and I could share clips." And it's like, "Yeah. You could." But using that mindset of how do I capture something, ring it out, and use it across other channels in other departments and in other processes, that's a huge win as well. Again, once you've gotten to this point, you have enough maturity in your own content process to be able to pull other teams in and say, "This is how this works. This is how you use it. This is where you access these things that we're making and this is how you can use it in prospecting." So this is to the point where you can win because you have reached a level of maturity where you can bring other people in, you can really prove the value with the tech that you have that's supporting it all.

Katie: Love it. Let's talk about Zylo. We talk about Zylo-

Lindsay: A lot.

Katie: A lot. For those who are listening, if you have not read any of our stories or listened to any of our podcast episodes that feature Zylo, please, please add that to your reading or listening list because they just have an incredible story. They really skyrocketed through the maturity curve. It's something that we don't typically see, but they were ready to go, they had a vision, and they executed. So I think one of the themes that keeps coming up here is the beyond podcasting. So Trava's setting the stage right now for that content carousel. Flip has built their content carousel. Zylo has a ton of content right now. They are using Casted for their webinars. They are using Casted for their after party content when they have a live event. They are using it for FAQs, really short FAQs, which is really cool because if you have any common questions about their business or what they do, people can be sent there. They can reference that. They're using it for product marketing. So they're using it to deep dive into some of their solutions and things like that. So it's super cool to see. They've got so much content and then of course they have a podcast on top of it. So that is huge. The other piece that they talk about, and something that's been really amazing to see, is their organizational buy- in. So for me, I know just through happenstance, lots of people that work for Zylo because they are a local company here in Indianapolis.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: They are constantly sharing their content across their entire organization top down. It's-

Lindsay: Not just marketing.

Katie: Marketing. Yeah. It's not just marketing, it's not just sales, it's CX, it's everybody. And so they have a ton of buy- in from the organization, a ton of support from the organization to really lean into their content, which I think has really been key to their success because on top of all of that, when you have that organizational buy- in, they are able to get the cooperation and the buy- in from these sales and CX teams to use this content. And so they have their sales team using clips in their outreaches. They are using the FAQs and the product and services videos and things like that. So they've been able to get the buy- in from sales, the cooperation of sales, and they've been able to in turn enable sales to use this content in their outreach and in their prospect conversations.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Katie: Which is the hard part, right?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: That's the really hard part.

Lindsay: It's a super impactful part. Like-

Katie: It is.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: It is'cause that's the frontline stuff.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: That's where you're going to see a huge impact. And then I think the last component that's been so strong for them has been using a tandem solution of Casted insights and then their integration. So they integrate with their marketing automation platform. So they are able to see contact level insights to see who specifically, like Katie at Casted, has listened to this piece of content. So that's a huge component.

Lindsay: Huge.

Katie: But then they also have insights to catch that delta for the people that are unknown audience members who haven't completed a form fill, who are maybe tuning in on the listening platforms and that data's completely anonymized. So they're using a tandem of that and I know they are reviewing that regularly to be able to understand who they can reach out to whose been tuning in that's maybe in their pipeline. They've been able to map, " This customer listened to our content and then that deal closed." That's cool to see. So they've been able to really map true business impact and really be able to exceed their goals with this information and-

Lindsay: In a big way.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah and kind of creating a big machine. Yeah.

Lindsay: I love it.

Katie: Yeah. So amazing examples here. We promised the audience actionable things that they can do today to take that next step to work their way up the maturity curve. So I'd love for you to talk about some things they could do. I think we've got two pretty robust action items that they can take. So let's talk about those.

Lindsay: Yeah. So we talked about it at the very beginning. First step is understanding where you are on the maturity curve, not where the rest of the market is. We get asked about benchmarks all the time, which are important, but they're only as helpful as meeting you where you are. So make sure that you take that assessment, you read all of the related resources that are provided around, hey, you're a stage three, four, five, wherever you are, understand where you are, understand what that means, and then set goals accordingly. That's so important and that's where we actually see my co- founder. So Adam says all the time, " Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." It can feel like, " Yeah, but if I only set goals for this stage, if I only set goals around processes for how I'm publishing my content, how am I ever going to realize ROI?" Well, you set the goals, you communicate the goals, you knock out those goals, and you say, " Hey, we're at stage two and we just crushed it and now we're moving into stage three." The maturity curve is so great because it gives you a way to communicate with those around you what your process is, where you're at right now, and what's possible if they continue to fuel your project and understand where you are, understand the next stage, and what it takes to get there and maybe talk to some others that are podcasting and understand where they are and kind of compare notes. So that's step one, understand where you are and therefore what you need to focus on right now.

Katie: And it sounds really simple, but I feel like this is what we see a lot on our end from the customer experience standpoint is it's almost like when you take too big of a bite of something, you really dive into a burger and you take that bite and you're like, " Oh no. I'm going to choke," or, "I'm going to have to spit it out," or, " I'm really uncomfortable," and you're really-

Lindsay: Doesn't even taste good anymore.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay: Just chewing for a long time. Yeah.

Katie: Exactly. And that's what we see a lot. People are just starting a podcast and they want to do all the things. They want to be from two to five in a week and it gets really overwhelming. Everyone can agree that actually building a successful podcast takes a lot of time and a lot of work and you have to meter yourself. You have to get really good at the first steps and move on from there or it's just going to be too much and you're going to get fatigued and it doesn't become valuable to you or your organization or your audience anymore.

Lindsay: For sure. Yeah. And it's two part, it's understanding where you are and also fully understanding what's possible because if I just told you like, " Oh, you're at stage two. Just focus on producing a great show. Don't think about anything else, just focus on producing a great show." That's where people fall off because they're like, " This is a lot a big commitment and I don't even know what's possible. I can't prove ROI, I don't know where this is going," but if you know what's possible and you look at some of these case studies and these success stories and you know that it is possible and there is a map to how to get to that holy grail of we can actually prove real measurable results, we can actually prove how it's driving revenue, we can actually prove how it's driving brand growth, that is possible. I'm here to tell you it is and we have the path forward. You've got to focus on where you are right now and then communicate that, " This is where we're going."

Katie: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: So well said. So well said. What is step two? Tell us.

Lindsay: So step two is setting tangible goals and we started to get into this and tracking your progress. So it's, " I'm at stage three and these are my goals for stage three and I know it's possible onward from here, but these are my goals," and then being really consistent and accountable to tracking towards those goals. So it's like, " Okay. I'm going to do an episode amplification strategy and I'm going to have a checklist and every single time I publish an episode, I'm going to do every single thing until I feel like I've checked off every single item on the scorecard," and we can help you with that and that you know that you've really crushed stage three, otherwise you'll get stuck there. You'll start being lax on some of the things that you know are important because they kind of fall off your radar and before you know it, you actually start regressing. So track your progress, actually document it, and watch how you grow.

Katie: Absolutely. Absolutely. This was absolutely amazing. I love talking about this. I love talking about it with you'cause it's the first time things have just really made sense, especially like that right at being stuck at that downloads, " I'm measuring downloads. What's next? I'm growing, I'm growing, I'm growing, I'm sustaining." So I love talking about this with you.

Lindsay: Yeah. You too.

Katie: We do have time for questions. So those who have questions, I don't think I've seen any come through quite yet, but please send away if you have anything that you want to ask. In the meantime, I do want to remind you that the maturity curve assessment link has been dropped in the chat and it's been pinned. So for those who have not taken the maturity curve assessment, please do. Please understand where you are and please, for those who are customers, please reach out to your customer success team so we can talk more about what happens from there and what does it mean for you to be at the stage and how do we get you to the next. And if you're not a customer today, we have a sales team that can help. They can show you all around Casted and they can show you how we can help. So please take the maturity curve assessment, see where you are. I believe we also have a poll for attendees so you can determine what you take away from this. What kind of assets will you get after this'cause we love giving gifts. So I think we are having a poll dropped in. Yeah. Oh. Had a little thing pop up here. We might be experiencing technical difficulties.

Lindsay: In the meantime, if you have any questions, you can go ahead and put them in the Q&A-

Katie: Exactly.

Lindsay: As we figure out the poll.

Katie: Absolutely. I'm like looking at the chat and I'm like, " Am I looking at the right thing?" Okay. We'll give it just a couple minutes here. I think we are having some technical difficulties on the poll, but that's okay. We can get your feedback after this. We have a backup plan. So we will be-

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: Reaching out and giving you all the great things from this. We'll be letting you know where the recording is, where you can find, again, the maturity curve assessment, and then of course, we'll be getting your feedback on what assets are you interested in, what is helpful for you.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: So.

Lindsay: And I think too, I guess go ahead and if you can't see the poll, I have a question. Based on this and based on what you know so far about the maturity curve, does anybody know where you think you fall on the maturity curve? And just enter it in the chat, what number you think you're at.

Katie: Perfect.

Lindsay: I'm curious.

Katie: Okay. It looks like you can see the polls in your polls tab, but, I do not see the poll. I am so sorry for those in the audience. This is what I mean by awkward.

Lindsay: Yes. Well, I think in mine, I went to polls and then view and it says event polls. And the question here is what kind of content would be most helpful for you after the event? So if you had to choose between a worksheet of key takeaways, a guide to B2B podcasting, some of these scorecard templates that we talked about, or how to guide to grow your audience, which one would you want? It's a lot to remember.

Katie: It really is.

Lindsay: I have a feeling they're all forthcoming. Maybe you don't have to choose.

Katie: Awesome. All right. I am not seeing any questions. Lindsay, I don't know if I don't have the right view. Do you see any questions on your end?

Lindsay: I'm not getting any in either.

Katie: Okay.

Lindsay: But we might be running into some issues, so that's okay. But people know where to find us. They can reach out to us anytime on our socials.

Katie: Yes.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Katie: Fantastic. All right. Well, since I am not seeing any questions on our end, and again, could be technical difficulties. So if you did ask a question, we apologize and we will reach out to you directly, but yes. In the meantime, please follow us. We are on LinkedIn, we are on Twitter, we are on Instagram. Please follow us on social, feel free to ask any questions, and again, we will follow- up with a link to the recording of this. So you will have access to it on demand. But for those that attended, thank you so much and thanks for being patient with us through our technical issues. And yeah. Lindsay, anything else to add?

Lindsay: No. Thanks for joining. Take the assessment and let us know where you fall and how we can help.

Katie: Awesome. Everybody, have a fantastic Thursday.

Lindsay: All right.

Katie: Bye.

Lindsay: Bye.