How Hard Can It Be With Heike Young

So there you are getting ready to launch a podcast for your company. You've done your research. You've knocked out your strategy. You've planned your content you scheduled your guests and then just before you launch the show Everything Changes one of your hosts is out in your left to figure out who's going to take the Mike just as you're looking around for that new host. Everyone else's eyes. Turn to you surprised you're the house. Now. What do you do? Hello everyone. I'm Lindsay check the CEO and co-founder of Cassat the B2B podcast platform and this is our podcast.

So there's this little company called Salesforce. Maybe you forfeit that not so little company has a not so little podcast. It's called the Salesforce marketing Cloud cat was actually one of the first B2B podcast launching shortly after another little show called cereal right after it hit our ear drops for the first time that show the Salesforce marketing Cloud cats that have a long history of evolving over the years but maintaining is listenership indicating the way to a few other Salesforce podcast a huge part of the reason for the show's success is one of the show's original hosts the show ended up with one of its first house and has since gone on too handsome Mike over to a new set of talented host.

What's your from Oaxaca herself on the Salesforce marketing Cloud cast and how it was created as well as the unexpected turns it took a long way and it's all the work. She did behind the scenes to capture great interviews create exceptional guest experiences and promote the show to get maximum value from it.

I'm high Chi young. I'm our senior manager for strategy and insights at Salesforce. Thanks. I got it's so good to have you on the show and you're coming to us from a company. We all know Salesforce you're here to tell us about the marketing Cloud cast which is one of the first really B2B podcast that that was out there on so give me a little bit of context about your history. They're your role and how the podcast came to be. I've been around Salesforce for about six and a half years, I guess depending on when this is published in the exact date. So I joined exact target in February of 2013. I was the first ever new hire on the vendee send content marketing team. And so I was writing, you know working on things like white papers and research report and so many different blog post blog post for everything under the sun in the world of marketing and I work.

Guess it was about 5 years ago that there was a group of people. I guess I would call them content innovators that sells worse thought leaders internally always just pushing the envelope on content types of the individuals. I'm referring to you or Jeff rohrer. So used to lead her insights function and Joel book who was our primary thought leaders around all things email and digital marketing and these guys kind of got together and said no. Hako you're on our content team. We'd love for you to help us make a podcast. So many of us are listening to podcast now, you know, this is kind of right around the time that that cereal was becoming really popular and of course everybody in marketing anytime. You see that bright shiny object that new content format. You want to make it to you feel that Creative Energy kind of pulsing through your veins and you want to make something similar to to the content creators that you admire and so just enjoy this idea and I was really

Jazzed about helping them as a producer. And so I said I'm going to learn how to do this. I'm going to wrap my mind around what's needed logistically to help you and Wendy and trying to figure out you know, what I needed to do to produce the show for these guys. I'm one of them just actually had the opportunity to pursue a new challenge outside of Salesforce and I was really sad because we had already put a couple episodes in the can and what I was doing at the time was just recording a few of these and you kind of just getting some contact ready to launch that when we did have a bunch day all the branding in mind because we could go for it and he said you know what I really think you should do I got is just get yourself cleaned. This may not have been anything you've ever done before but I really think you should just be the one to try it you got to be on all the calls anyway as a producer so you should just do it run for it and I was super nervous, but I decided

That's awesome. So I guess what was it like did you end up airing episodes that Jeff was a part of and then you just switch over to you or what that was like. No, we ended up needing to unfortunately we ended up meeting to upcycle but not fully using them. But yeah, so I kind of threw this process. I kind of just began to think about some of my favorite podcast not just those in marketing but really out in the world in general and what made me big fans of the show and try to just figure out and how Joel and I could bring something similar to the one that's really what I did at least in terms of thinking about how we would approach the hosting but there were so many other logistical consideration for launching a show like this and it sounds so easy as it gets

Young. Lo-Fi. I'm sure anybody out there who's ever launched a podcaster thinking about it. I thought about it can relate by air podcast on so easy like how hard could it possibly be a microphone hit record talk about some interesting stuff on the contrary all of us, especially those of us who are in B2B marketing at large complex organizations know that there are so many more boxes to Ted check off when you embark on a project like this and it's really not as simple as the best podcasters make it sound. Yeah, that's one of the things it's like watching Olympic sports and like I told you that right at the very very very best. Yeah the very best make it seem so Flawless like a jet ski slope I could totally do that. I've never actually been skiing before but I'm sure sure I could do that. Right and it's a thing of podcast listen to a really really good one and it seemed so effortless, which is good.

Tell me about time leading up to the show how how much was involved between the days that okay, we're going to do this thing and the watch the yes so many Logistics I could probably write a book just on what I did logistically to try to prepare for this and I probably still didn't do everything that I possibly put how to make this a real success. There was definitely a lot of that internal selling and pitching of the idea mainly my manager know I let her know I'm with some numbers financially what this is going to cost the team that even though but podcast isn't too expensive it can certainly X escalating costs with the complexity and with the more that you want to do things like run ads for it and paid campaign for it either has Billy no shortage of money that you could spend if you had the ability to do so I even though it's pretty cheap to get started. So

Turn off with some of his initial numbers. No crunching those. This is what we think that we should do and then just really going into the logistics of you know, where this is going to be published. All the distribution tactics are bloggers social Channel. They mentioned those organic channels are great for podcasters cuz they are free and I think many of us going into podcasting it may not be approving taxes yet. See if they have to start with a smaller budget than you would for a brand new event. For example of proven tactic. We did a lot of work on The Branding so we did we did go through a process that we are working on a couple logos working on the title, making sure everybody felt good about that. He knows all of the legal approval necessary to make sure you can bring a new brand name like that into Market licensing a bunch of music for things like, you know, the intros are commercials on other podcast outros and so on.

All of the equipment together for the host as well as a guest if they did need it. They wanted to borrow it. But yeah, I also just some of the other logistics things like transcription. I'd like pre interview question that you would send them. I'm getting all of that up and running because once it is the podcast is like it's like a train once it starts, right the train is and you were the conductor of the train you got to feed the beast. You got to be piping hot coals into that thing every week so that it's continuing to maintain momentum in the market got more listen to download at least if you're trying to do a weekly podcast things that you could consider I would say if I had to think about the one or two that would make the biggest impact. It was really analyzing the strategy like analyzing the top.

Text Ian. Just the types of gas that we wanted to feature making sure everybody felt good and was with a line on that and then are aligning on the distribution. So all the channels week 2 weeks that we would be using to to promote it cuz there's nothing worse than creating something amazing wonderful content and then nobody can help you promote our launching this. Oh, well, we can actually use that at this time because they are paid by just for going to this thing really distribution arm is as important as the creation of the super super key. Absolutely absolutely mean in one thing. We talked a lot about hear it. Yes. It is your show publisher. Just getting started right if you just hit publish, you're leaving so much value on the table if that's what you do with it from there. So it took me a little bit about about that. So how in your time with the show

Did you Leverage The Shot? What did what did you do with it once you published it but there are really three key audiences that I wanted to love this show marketing at Salesforce sales at Salesforce and of course our customers and our Prospect and so I had different metrics of success and just different measures of how I would know that I was resonating for each of these groups on the marketing side. My goal is really to tap into as many organic channels as possible. So things like organic social social images audiograms. There's a lot of really cool tools that let you do this now. So just as many free channels as you can possibly tap into on the marketing side do all of those the great then there's the sell-side so for us our sales people have a ton of content that they can push out to customers. Some of it does tend to you might just be pretty salesy. It's pretty

Artichoke assistant have any more top of the funnel about leadership type of type of approach here and something very engaging and interactive for them to share with their customers is great. But it's also an educational tool for sales. You know, it's the sales people are not just the mouthpiece to customers. They're not just the middleman between you and customers need this information to probably get educated on the market as well. So one of the things I was really proud of was how much are sales team would reach out to me and say I always listen to this, you know, what I'm driving into my territory just gets me in the right mindset for work and it keeps me fresh on all of the latest trending topics that that I'm going to be talking to, you know, really wanting to make sure that customers knew about it that they could participate in it by joining is gas and that if they were guess that they have at VIP experience, so

I was really focused on making sure that customers who appeared just kind of felt like even though this was the Salesforce marketing podcast and I knew I'm The Wizard of Oz behind the curtains I'm pulling all of the levers and it's it's kind of just me but making it feel like a very first Ray experience for them afterward making sure that they knew the nice things that people internally at Salesforce were saying about how we were using it and just giving them like a great a great memory of their time. And so I think the podcast is it becomes kind of an essential part of sales marketing and external engagement. If you look at it that way. Yeah, absolutely because again, if you have all you're doing is supposing the show and expecting sales to use it and take us to know that it's there and your client through your your guests to share it and people to just fall in love with it and it to go by

That's that's not typically what happens if you just getting started and leveraging it and making sure you're getting all the value of it. Not only has a podcast but also we could part of your overall content strategy, right?

You were talking about consumption of podcasts and how you can't do it during more and more and more same could be said for creation has definitely and editing or pushing through Gaston. You're not paying or following up when you have someone who's on your show, whether they are a high-profile author or influencer or there a practitioner someone who's doing the work on the show. It's really really important to really be thoughtful about that experience and what your guests go through. So how did that evolve? How'd that come about and how to build a wall? That's a great question. And I think it's definitely even though I wasn't so eloquent eloquent as to say the, you know guest experience as you just said, I think that it did become apparent to me that if I wanted these guests to be repeat gas.

If I wanted them to share with their networks, like you said if there were an influencer and they had Up Abroad social network part of the benefit. Obviously, you're getting I guess there's also that you hope they're going to share it with people. Of course. Yeah, it became clear to me that creating a great experience for them from the scheduling process all the way through to the interview itself down to give assets for social sharing was really important. So I had a few different template eyes emails. Like I'm just a sucker for efficiency. So if you know, I'm social Graphics that I would share with them initially. It was just png's and images but later I brought in like some audiogram different types of videos for social Cherry has all an important part of the process and probably the Apex of that experience is really interview itself. So whether you are planning to interview the person and then

Almost verbatim cut. And tape and then publish it or whether you're planning to do a more detailed and type of edit with it. The interview is really everything that's where you get all of the tape in the great moment. And so, you know, I actually asked a lot of experts. Oh well back like people that always go on podcast, you know, what kind of what are the best podcast host doing to make this a good experience for you? Like I don't want it to just be another show and then you forget about it. And there's just some simple things you can do you like being prepared doing your homework at sounds really simple, but not everybody does it also just getting to ask to answer questions that they've never answered before why the show hot ones on YouTube is so popular. The interviewer is always asking me sometimes

And I suggest you know, treating people really treating them like humans and not just like interview robots can't but people are not dogs. You can't say Sit Stay say a great quote. You really have to coax them into great moments of tape.

The benefit that I really had for launching a new podcast at Salesforce like this at was that I had to buy in of a couple key individuals namely Jeff and Joel who thought it was a great idea you wanted to help and so having a couple folks who have a lot of respect in the organization. That is a great way to just get some of those early Executives bought in at once. They know that there's already a lot of great talent and devoted to a project like this but definitely a side from just us, you know, there wasn't that many people who were all part of this team was a pretty small tiger team who came together and said, yeah, we're going to make the time to do this week after week. We're going to schedule to guess all we really need is a small investment in real estate on the Block. Creative resources to create a few logos and different images for social social sharing but a lot of the spot early on was really put more toward.

Why do we need this? What are going to be the differentiators of this show? Do we have the bandwidth to know is it a podcast that we need to create a video series or something else and really just thinking through what it would take realistically I think was key in evangelizing this idea. We took several months to really go through this due diligence and I think that really helped pay off in the end in terms of making sure everybody was bought in on the fact that this wouldn't just be such a such a small left. It would actually require a lot of collaboration. So do you feel like looking back that those estimates and predictions were correct or did you overestimate or underestimate how much would be involved? Well, I definitely overestimated estimated across-the-board, you know now looking back there's things that that I definitely know that that

You know that a couple I guess a couple things I would say. What is that? I can't took for granted that a lot of people would know how to listen to and download podcast. It sounds really simple, but I'm not just talking about you no customers and audience members. I'm also talking about people internally. I think there's a there's a subset of the American and global population that loves listening to podcasts. You know, we got them on our devices everywhere were listening at Double the speed so we can get through more. We're kind of a super listeners that there's a lot of folks that never actually downloaded a podcast before maybe this is brand new information to that. They don't know what they should and externally and internally, I think I kind of overestimated the amount of people that would just immediately know how to do this. So I'm one of the things that I began doing was in all of my blog post.

Early on I would just include like a couple quick screenshots with literally how to subscribe.

People know how to do this like click on this button and you will be subscribed to schedule and get high quality gas as well as just sending them swag just basically everything having to do with external guess it is such a beast of the job. It involves things like PR, if you're killing my profile authors our customers, it involves things like like maybe there's some sales people that you want to capitalize on their relationships with customers. So you need to educate them about what you need and then get their customers on board so many different pieces. Like I also had this idea early on that. I see another podcasters you where they mailed gifts to all of their guests. So I thought it was a really sweet and that spreadsheet that I maintain of addresses and

Guess it took so many hours of my life. And I think it was probably worth it. But I would tomorrow I numbers to know for sure what its success look like to you. What what kind of things are you measuring? How are you doing that definitely will anybody who's ever worked on a podcast nose and that measuring is kind of a moving Target. We talked a little bit earlier about how a lot has changed since I watch this podcast in 2015. So back in 2015 iTunes didn't even have that data yet on duration. Listen to it was really interesting downloads, you know countries in the world where people have listened from and it was really rough. It's her we're doing so today. I would not look only look good. But I would also look at certainly duration. Listen to you know, this is something Jay acunzo says all the time get them to the end. It's the most important thing in what percentage are actually

Heading to the end and if they're not getting there could be a couple things at play. It could be too long of content. It could be you not resonant enough. There's some different things you could look into there. And I also did a number of listeners surveys to just inquire. What was what were some of the most interesting pieces of content to them. What were their favorite interviews as well as their least favorite. So it's hard but you kind of got to ask what don't you like about this and you'll get some really interesting answers and then I also measured success by number of customer stories highlighted. So I wanted to make sure we had a sufficient number of those Crocs are the Apex of a multi-faceted Content strategy. So just measuring how many other types of content that we were able to create based on these interviews, which admittedly are kind of a high-lift so

There's definitely a lot more. I think that podcasters can look into for their specific business needs. Another thing that we did at one point. I should point out to was we we did a bunch of SMS text to download and we had those links created and Salesforce. They were unique URL just with it the podcast, you know as the driver and so we were able to see how many people downloaded a different PDFs from lead generation Pages based on the podcast. That was a cool idea to try with SMS. But you know, I think more so than just the numbers alone. You're so many vanity metrics around this. We're in the top 10 on iTunes in the business category or whatever it is that are great. But I think for me what I was more pleased with was just kind of the residents so not so much just to reach but just the resonance, you know, we want a couple of War.

Birds won for best podcast from the content marketing Institute who won for best content marketing multi-year program, which I'm probably more proud of just because I think anybody can create something cool one time, but it's really if you can create something cool repeatedly that is more impressive. I'm interested just a long tail of it and other people still come up to me at conferences and talk to me about my participation in the cloudcast years later still really amazing the back catalogue of podcast. So popular people love to go back to their favorite shows and listen from the beginning just knowing that it continues to find an audience of her something that I did years ago is just it's so cool. And it's one of the things that I'm really proud of 7 my marketing career.

As you should be as you should be so what was it like to hand it over and and when did that happen? It was really Bittersweet to hand over the marketing podcast to the very capable and talented post that right now Tina and again, although I knew that it wasn't the right time for me to continue doing it. I had received a promotion and said the company and a new role did make sense for me to try to hold on to it. I was still sad to just lose that weak to weak connection with my audience and all of the relationships that I have built with with different gas is just so unique to podcasting the richness in the quality of the relationships in the conversations that you have.

But it was ultimately for the best, you know, I was able to pursue something in our Industries team at Salesforce time over on our retail and consumer goods side. Now it's a bit more of Anisha area than Marketing in general. And so I just think Tina and Megan are absolutely rocking it. Now. I'm really proud of everything that they brought to the show. I continue to hear such great feedback from our customers and our listeners about the show. So I'm really happy with where it ended up but I definitely do still missing and I miss I miss just kind of being able to you know, hop on the phone with some of the industry's coolest most interesting people and just ask him whatever I wanted to for 30 minutes. So if you're in a position of getting to do this for your company, you're producing a show your editing it you're even one of the hosts. You should feel real.

Fortunate cuz it's a big deal to get to serve in this function for your company. You're getting your be entrusted with a lot of important relationships and conversations. And then that's something to be very proud of ya for sure. And so as podcasters we all have stories behind the mic if you will those times where you forgot to record or or there's something happening at the studio that you're so glad there's no video feed so I know and you know the episode that you've got story. So share one. What's one you can say

Back when I was using Skype there was definitely one time that I was under the blanket for and I accidentally turned the camera on and so I'm not sure if anyone saw if they did they were very polite, but I'm pretty sure that I turn the camera on by accident for a split-second. So people saw my sweaty face in my closet, you know recording this podcast.

What what is happening over there? Yeah, it's missed it. These are the things that happen when you're do what you got to do what you got to do and hey Acoustics. Don't get much better than in a closet under blanket.

Thank you for sharing everything. Is there anything you would share his listeners who might be getting started down this path or anything that you would have done differently learning future. One of the things I would really recommend doing as much as possible. And as early as possible is as much listener feedback as he possibly can. So I did some listener surveys buy a Google form. I think this was really effective but I would have I would have loved to do it sooner in the process if I had if I had just more resources for getting it out there and then addressing some of the feedback so more listener surveys. I also recommend like kind of a digital focus group giving them sneak previews kind of like a patreon model for your podcast. This is something that I never did but I've heard of some great podcasters doing it and that I really admire, you know, folks like Jay acunzo who has a

A group of VIP listeners that he bounces ideas off of and and shares I'm content with before releasing to the general public and I think this is a great I am I also think it would have been a great idea to just get an email list for a show. I think email could have really been the key to unlock long-term subscribership and participation Beyond just the podcast but it was kind of hard to implement, you know, getting email addresses or somebody opt-in requirements and rules and it was a little bit of a beer to try to get it set up, So that's something that I would definitely try to do more just to get people to engage off of the headphones.

That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to today's Gaston to learn more about them and see tested in action with clips of today's show and related content visit casted. Us. Thanks so much for listening.