What does a successful B2B podcast actually look like? | Carly Baker, HubSpot

Every B2B marketer wants to know the secret to a high-ROI podcast, but few actually know what success looks like before they hit record. When it comes to defining the return on investment for a B2B podcast, there is no one better to turn to than Carly Baker, Head of Media Partnerships at the HubSpot Media Network.

In this episode of Straight to Voicemail, Adam Sockel hears from Carly on how one of the biggest media networks in the business defines podcast success. Carly breaks down HubSpot’s "three buckets" approach, explaining why a successful show requires a blended strategy that balances top-of-funnel brand visibility with bottom-of-funnel business results.

You'll learn:

• How HubSpot categorizes and measures podcast network impact
• Building ultimate brand credibility through your own subject matter experts
• Transforming a single episode into a vehicle for multi-channel distribution
• Aligning your show, creative assets, and guest list with your ideal customer conversion

Jump into the conversation:

(00:00) Why we wanted to hear from Carly Baker

(01:27) The three buckets of B2B podcast success

(01:50) Elevating thought leadership, brand credibility, and internal talent

(02:10) Reverse-engineering for business impact & bottom-line results

Straight to Voicemail is for CMOs, CEOs, and Heads of Marketing in B2B tech who want insights from the people who've been there. Each episode centers on one big question answered like a voicemail you'll want to play again.

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Adam (00:10): Every single time I speak to a prospect or a new Share Your Genius client, one of the questions I ask them is, what does success look like for you for this podcast? Fast forward six months or 12 months from now and what would define success? And it's interesting that oftentimes people don't know what they want success to be for their podcast. So to get to the bottom of it and help people better understand what they should be thinking about in terms of return on investment for their B2B podcast. I went to one of the best sources available in the industry. Carly Baker is the head of media partnerships at the HubSpot Media Network. In short, she has a massive job. She is the person running the partnership program for HubSpot's Media Network, a network that produces so much exceptional content, specifically in the podcast space. Carly is genius, a wizard, an expert, and so many other wonderful adjectives. So when I reached out to her, I asked her one simple question. What does a successful B2B podcast look like?

Carly (01:27): Hi, Adam. Sorry, I missed your call. I know you are looking for an answer to one of the biggest questions in podcasting of all, which is How do we define success for a B2B podcast? There's a lot of ways that we can define success for a B2B podcast. And here at HubSpot, when we think about sort of the results that we want to see from our shows, we kind of think about it in three buckets. The first is just that like having a show and having all the derivative content from your show is a great vehicle for thought leadership. So we're able to build a narrative and build a brand around both our like employee subject matter experts or talent that we work with, and we create content to sort of distribute our own POVs as a business, and build up around the creator of the talent.
Thought leadership, of course, goes hand in hand just with sort of brand visibility and brand credibility in the market. We know that having sort of derivative media coming from brands is really important, and especially if those episodes that you're producing are driving value, it's really great for your brand to the one that's sort of presenting that and is helping the audience members. So those two kind of go hand in hand, but definitely a role and work

We really think about our shows from a blended approach, not only from, of course, those like top of funnel important activities and thought leadership, but also on the results that it's going to drive for us as a business. and when we're thinking about how we're building a show, the editorial, the types of guests that we're coming on, what creative looks like, like we're really thinking about, the type of people that we want to convert at the end and sort of reverse engineering everything from the start.