Isaac, welcome to Podcast in Progress.
Thanks, man. I love that theme. When I started my first podcast in 2013, I wanted to learn out loud. My friend T.K. Coleman always likes to tell people that they’re not being selfish enough when it comes to podcasting, blogging every day, or any of these disciplines around building a brand. He means that people think too much about other people and what your audience is going to think. Don’t treat it that way. Treat it selfishly.
C.S. Lewis had an atheist friend who told him, “Do you really think praying for your wife when she’s sick is going to change anything? If God created everything, praying won’t change his mind.”
Lewis replied, “I don’t pray because it changes God, I pray because it changes me.”
I started with daily blogging before starting a podcast. I don’t write because it changes the world, and I don’t podcast because it’s going to change my audience’s lives. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. I do it because it changes me.
When you ask yourself, “What’s the value to me of having these conversations?” suddenly the world opens up.
If you see a podcast as just another form of entertainment, advertising, or brand building, then you’ll come to the conclusion that too many people have podcasts, and the world doesn’t need another one.
However, a podcast can be an opportunity to talk with people who would never talk with you if you just emailed them and asked, “Can I have an hour of your time?”
Even if you have no audience, if you say, “Can I bring you on my podcast?” they will talk to you.
I have a friend who used to give this little presentation called, “A Podcast is Better Than a Degree from Harvard.”
In other words, it’s not just the things you can learn, but the networking and connection.
He spent a year just finding all of the people who were interested in all the things that he was interested in. He would go deep and interview nerdy scholars of mathematics and physics and other subjects. Sometimes he would even travel to where they lived, like Oxford, and ask, “Can I interview you on my podcast?”
These people never get asked that. They don’t ask how many audience members you have. Now he has the ability to email, text, or call all kinds of people all over the world.
This works in business and any field. You can have conversations with the best people in the world in that field. All you need is a podcast, and you can message them and ask them to come on your show to talk about their most recent book. It’s much easier than asking them to have lunch with you if you’ve never met before.
That’s what my first client cited as his reason for starting his radio show. When you say you have a radio show and you’re no longer a random dude asking for someone’s time. Now, having a radio show isn’t necessary. People are still willing to come on a podcast and talk. There are a staggering number of podcasts, but only a tiny percentage of people have actually been asked to be on a podcast.
Isaac, you’re in the B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) industry, which is huge. Just as everyone and their mother has a podcast, everyone has some sort of software that might solve a problem.
Partner Hacker is a media company, whose niche is explaining to businesses how to build trust en route to getting customers’ attention.
You guys say that “nearbound” is the future of Go-to-market strategy, as opposed to “inbound” or “outbound” leads. What are these strategies, and why focus on nearbound?
Our motto is “trust is the new data”. We have entered a new era in the digital world where you need to think of your buyers as being influenced by people rather than just information.
We’ve shifted from the “how” economy to the “who” economy.
In the “how” economy, if you were a business selling software, you would answer questions like:
- “How do I improve my bookkeeping?”
- “How do I track expenses easier?”
- “Is there something that works better than a spreadsheet to do this?”
If your stuff came up first on Google, and you had the best product review you would get the sale.
Nowadays, there is an overwhelming amount of information available. I call it the “Infocalypse.” On average, Americans are exposed to as many as 10,000 ad impressions per day. People are getting desensitized to advertising and ignoring it altogether. We know that every review has been gamed to have a 4.7-star rating, so it’s not perfect but still very good. The SEO gamification is so high that it’s hard to trust the results you get when you search for something.
In the “who economy” people are asking:
- “Who can I ask about solving this problem?”
- “Who has had this problem before and already solved it?”
- “Who do I trust that I can go to?”
We are reverting to smaller networks and nodes of trust. On Google, the fastest growing area of search is where people search Reddit using Google. They want to know what real people are saying, not what companies are telling them. When people are looking to make a big purchase, they want to find someone who has done it before and ask them.
Outbound is targeting likely customers, and reaching out to them.
Inbound is creating content about your customers’ problems and helps them land on your site.
Nearbound is the idea of surrounding all of those with nodes of trust. It is a systematic strategy of tapping into people your buyers already trust. It’s not just a guide or a podcast episode, it’s working with people and companies that your buyers already trust — everything from influencer marketing to tech integrations.
B2B software companies typically have sales, marketing, and partnership departments. The partnership department is responsible for managing integrations with other products. For example, if you are webflow company and you want to set up an integration with MailChimp, which is a website building and email platform, that’s one type of partnership.
Partnerships are treated as this off-to-the-side thing, but every department should have a partnership strategy.
Your marketing teams should identify the companies and individuals that your buyers already trust and partner with them: Collaborate on co-marketing and webinars, and discuss how your products can work together.
Your sales team should take advantage of the information that your partners have. If you’re trying to sell to your partner companies’ customers, ask their sales team for assistance in navigating the process. Perhaps you can even sell together or ask them to help influence the deal. This approach recognizes that business is still built on people and relationships, where trust is strongest.
You can have efficient sales and marketing processes driven by automated tasks, but that are still personal and connected to people that your buyers trust.
Partner Hacker, as a media company, is talking about ways to utilize the nearbound strategy. We recently merged with a company called Reveal, which provides software that helps people do this.
So “partner hacking” is an end run around these extremely saturated strategies of inbound or outbound.
My own experience as a customer bears this out. For example, I recently switched my website hosting provider to a competitor who has a Medium integration, allowing me to embed my Medium blog within my website. I also chose Riverside.fm as a recording tool because of their integration with Descript, my editing software. This is an example of software coming together to simplify people’s workflows, and Descript becomes a source of referrals for Riverside and vice versa.
There’s the big picture software ecosystem, with these different integrations and partnerships, but the same framework applies to the podcasting ecosystem.
There are thousands of niches based on common interests. It’s not just about trust and expertise, but also the community you can create. Podcasts serve as this discovery process, where like-minded creators meet and contribute to each others’ influence.
Partner Hacker started as the “Partner Up Podcast” and built a good following of people in this partnership space.
Usually you create a community through content. From there it’s easy to roll out other things. So we launched our newsletter and website. Next, if you have a community, everybody wants to be doing events.
Now we have an influential community in the partnerships space, and one of the big software companies in that space says, “Hey, our marketing isn’t that good. You guys have this media brand, we should join forces.”
Every company with a media strategy needs two prongs:
First is to build trust, influence and brand awareness with your audience through traditional methods such as a podcast, blog, newsletter, or YouTube channel.
A second and highly targeted approach for B2B sales is to leverage your newsletter or podcast partnership. Reach out to the CMO, and invite them to be a guest on your podcast. Tell them you admire what they’re doing and would love to learn more. You’re not asking them to talk to a salesperson or to try your solution. Instead, you’re building a relationship and giving them something of value.
Once you’ve established a relationship, you can suggest that they chat with one of your salespeople. Suddenly, you have another person in the company who has positive feelings about your brand and may be willing to help you close a deal. It just has to be genuine, and not pushy.
What are Partner Hacker’s tips for structuring these partnerships and identifying the right kinds of partners for your ecosystem?
Start where there’s already an informal partnership, or where it just feels like an easy win.
If you love working with someone, that’s a great sign. You can start with people you keep bumping into, who you think it would be cool to work with. Find ways to collaborate with them without seeking permission initially. Show them love in any way you can — commenting on their posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. That’s how you can “make them famous,” as we like to say. That’s how you can really get to that first date.
After that, you can begin to think more strategically. Ask, “What would be a win for them?” instead of like, “Okay, I want this company to send me leads.”
It is like dating. You don’t just walk up to someone at the bar and say, “Hey, will you have my kids?” That’s a pretty big ask. You have to first demonstrate that you’re bringing something to the table, and it has to be organic.
And show interest in them. You don’t offer “here’s 10 reasons I’m highly dateable.”
I used to tell jobseekers that the first thing you should say to the company you’re applying to is why you love them.
In podcast growth hacking, there’s a trend towards “guesting” on other shows — pitching them all the things you could talk about. You’re trying to deliver something of value to them. But sometimes that can come across as a little bit forward or self promotional.
You seem to be saying that you can do the same thing while hosting, by finding a way to make it a win for your guest. This builds an organic relationship with them. This, in turn, can lead to other opportunities, such as being invited to be a guest on their podcast. You don’t have to rush into things, it can be a gradual process.
Everyone these days is trying to get on Joe Rogan, but thriving within your niche can be just as important. Speak to that.
Right. You want to find an intersection of two things that you do well, but where you’re not the best at either. It’s much easier to be world-class at the intersection.
Here are two examples: there was some blacksmith dude who had a YouTube channel. He was probably not the best blacksmith in the world, and probably not the best YouTuber in the world, but he was the best YouTube blacksmith in the world.
There was another guy who did “paddleboard yoga.” He was probably not the best yoga instructor or paddleboard guy, but he was certainly the best paddleboard yoga guy. It takes off the pressure to be the best in the world at something. Instead, find those intersections that work for you. When you layer two or three intersections on top of each other, you can achieve huge compounding wins. This is when you are in your zone of genius.
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