Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, a conversation with industry leaders who have seen firsthand how the game changing approach to inbound marketing, sales, and customer success can propel their businesses forward.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (00:17):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, brought to you by SmartBug Media. I'm your host, Jen Spencer, and today I'm speaking with Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder at Casted. And if you're not familiar with Casted, Casted is the first amplified marketing platform, and it's the only audio and video podcast solution that was specifically designed for B2B enterprise marketers. So to give you a sense of who's using Casted, some of their customers are Salesforce, PayPal, HubSpot, Drift, and Zoom Info. So B2B enterprise solutions.
(01:00):
Welcome, Lindsey, so good to have you on the show.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (01:02):
It's so good to be here. Thanks so much, Jen.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (01:05):
And we were just getting a little bit caught up the last time we saw each other was at Inbound, which feels, in some ways, like it was just yesterday, in other ways feels like it was a decade ago.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (01:15): It does.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (01:17):
Our world of being busy, very growth oriented leaders for growth organizations. Definitely keeps us on our toes.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (01:30):
I would love to kind of sort of help set the stage here, being that your cofounder, I think the first co- founder, first founder we've had on this season, on the podcast. And just wanting to dig in a little bit, when did you found Casted? Why did you decide I want to start this company? And then maybe just give us a sense of the size of the organization just to help frame the rest of our conversation as folks are listening and learning from your experience.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (02:04):
Sure. Yes. So when did we start Casted? It was about three and a half years ago. April 2019 was my first days in the seat. Why did I start Casted? I spent 15, 20 years as a B2B marketer. I've seen B2B from every angle from the agency side and large corporate enterprise and everything in between. And in a nutshell, keep it short, then we can dig into it. But in a nutshell, we're solving a problem that I had with content just like this. With audio and video content that wasn't doing everything that I knew it could do. We were creating all this great content on this team that I was leading and my team was working so hard and it was doing great things. It had so much possibility, but we couldn't unlock it. It was stuck in this podcast, and we couldn't do anything else with it. We couldn't make it more accessible. We couldn't measure the impact it was making on the business. We couldn't maximize that impact.
(03:01):
And so, that's what Casted aims to do. We're a software platform made specifically for B2B marketers that want to both maximize and measure the impact of that audio and video content. And then you asked about the team, as I mentioned, we're about three and a half years old. We've got about 30 people on the team today.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (03:18):
Wonderful. So being that I'm a B2B marketer, I mean turned B2B marketer turned CEO of Marketing Agency, still in that world, right? I host a podcast focused on speaking to B2B executives with marketers being a huge part of that, that part equation. And this podcast is one piece of a larger content strategy and an inbound marketing strategy. So how would I use Casted?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (03:54): Sure.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (03:56):
Yeah, it's just, let's get super tactical. I feel like I'm going to be on a sales conversation now, but just to help kind of, just again, framing it for everyone.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (04:05):
Yeah, yeah. Just to get where it fits into the flow. So we're doing a podcast, right? We're recording now. Eventually you'll hand this off to someone, I presume, unless you moonlight as an audio engineer.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (04:16): I do not.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (04:17):
You never know. You'll hand this off to someone who will edit it, polish it up, make it your finished show, which is what people are consuming right now. But after that editing is done and you have essentially a file, you have an audio and/or audio and video file, that finished product gets uploaded into Casted. That's where we step in. And then from there, we check the box of hosting it, syndicating it, and distributing it. So we give it a place to live on the interwebs, both in a part of the real estate that you own on your website. We give you a page. And then we host it and syndicate it out to Apple, Spotify, YouTube so that people can find it elsewhere, and consume it there, but ultimately gives them an opportunity to consume it on your own real estate too.
(05:04):
That's step one. And then we help you really unlock, like I was saying, that frustration of not being able to unlock that content. We give you myriad ways to atomize it, to break it apart, to ring out all that value. And what that looks like is transcription, clipping, sharing, key takeaways, that landing page, the ability to take pieces of this show and use it across all the other channels that you have. On your email, and your blog, and your sales content, and your sales enablement, so that you're getting more value, expanding the reach of every single episode that you create. And then we say, okay, how is all that atomization? How is all that amplification working? How are people engaging with it, and who is engaging with it? And then we go so far is to even integrate with your CRM to say, okay, how can we connect the dots between that content that's being created, the engagement that it's generating, and then also tying it to the revenue possibilities that it's influencing and unlocking.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (06:06):
Very cool. So I heard a couple of things that I think are really powerful based off of what I hear on a daily basis from what the marketing community is looking for. So one is, I heard is kind of consolidation of tool set. Because as you were going through that sort of first step inside of Casted, it's second step of the can create whole podcast process, but of your kind of building out all of the clips, the transcription, all of those pieces of organizing how you're going to actually be sharing this content. I was running through my head of the three, four, five different tools that I know we are using, right? So I can see, all right, you're replacing that, you're helping consolidate that stack and then have that all in one place and adding a lot of value.
(06:54):
But probably more importantly is kind of that next step, and it's the attribution. Because I know when I talk to others in the podcasting community, one of their frustrations is they're only able to really look at macro level analytics. Right? They're able to go, okay, well, when we podcast, when we talk about these specific topics, we see a surge in consumption. And so, you can use that as an indicator, but you're not getting super granular where you know who is actually consuming this content in the same way that we are accustomed to using HubSpot. I can look, and I know if I've cookied that person, I know what articles of my blog they've read. If they're consuming videos that I have hosted on Vidyard, I know exactly what percentage of the video they've watched. I have all of that data and it's been like a black hole in the podcasting space.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (07:54):
100%. Yeah, exactly. So we are aiming to change that.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (07:58): Yeah.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (07:58):
So in a few different ways. One, we say one, wring it out so that it is creating more of a ripple effect. It is generating a greater reach. And then we say, okay, how can we provide anything about any of that engagement? Let's start there. And so, we do provide, okay, where are people coming from? Where are people going to? Where are people engaging, watching, listening? How many impressions are being generated by this content of all of the content that you have? Broadly speaking, what is the most engaging, what's the most relevant? What are people reacting to the most? And that helps you say, what's working, what's not? How can I plan and continually approve?
(08:37):
Then we go deeper and we say, okay, how can we say of, exactly what you said, of the people that are in my database that I've already cookied, how can I understand who is engaging of my known contacts How are they engaging? How can I append it in the contact records so that it becomes actionable by both sales and marketing and CX, if that matters or if that's relevant to that contact. And then we go even further and say, of those who are even unknown, who would otherwise be completely black hole territory, how can we say, okay, what account are they likely with? What company do they work with? What brand are they with? And then that makes it a lot more actionable by both sales and marketing as well to say, okay, five people from SmartBug are consuming your content. Hey salesperson, or hey CX person, this account is yours. Why don't you ping them and see how they liked it? See what we can do to help provide more information or to better serve them. So that's literally what we're trying to do every day is make that content, one, easier to wring out, and two, easier to understand how it's actually impacting the business.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (09:47):
Well, this space has been ripe for innovation for quite some time. So kudos to you for taking that leap, and helping to solve a problem that I'm a pain that I know I felt for many years.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (10:02): Same. Yeah, likewise. Thanks.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (10:05):
So this is the Intelligent Inbound podcast. We talk about intelligent inbound marketing, sales, customer success. What does inbound mean inside of your revenue organization? How important is it or isn't it?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (10:22):
Oh my gosh, it has been how I view how to marketing for my whole career. I mean, I've grown up, it's very appropriate that we actually met face to face at Inbound because that has been my so foundational to my marketing career is saying, why wouldn't you pull people in? Why wouldn't you engage people? Why wouldn't you entice them in with being compelling and engaging and informative and building trust and credibility, and then earning the right to be their partner, or their provider, or their vendor? Inbound has always been the way that it seems like it should be.
(11:01):
And so, it really goes hand in hand with what we call amplified marketing, which is everything I've been talking about so far in our conversation where you start with a podcast or video and you wring it out. That to me, that and Inbound are very similar in that they're based on this premise of human connection, appeal to the human first, engage with them, be relevant, provide thought leadership, not for your own ego, but because you're providing real value to your audience, and then bring them in, Keep providing value until they're a customer, and then onward. And so to me, that's foundational to how we approach marketing, how I approach marketing, and literally how Casted is built as well.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (11:48):
And when you launched Casted, and maybe even still today, I mean, well actually let's start with when you launched it, what was that first sort of go to market motion? Was it strictly inbound? Was it a mix of inbound and outbound? Was it strictly outbound? Just when folks are early stage organizations, sometimes people don't recognize that inbounds can take some time to really kind of get cooking. How did you go about acquiring those initial customers?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (12:23):
Our earliest, earliest days, like my first five weeks in this seat.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (12:28): Sure.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (12:30):
You're looking around, you're like, well, we don't have a product yet. We don't have customers yet. What do we do? And so, I spent my earliest days doing what I think marketers do best, is just I was talking to people. I didn't go on my own pains, my own understanding of the opportunity. It was like, okay, how do I validate this notion? Right? So I talked to as many marketers as I possibly could, and then I asked all of them who else I should talk to? And just said, hey, podcast, no podcast? Yes, no, why, why not? Would you, wouldn't you? If you did, what would you want it to look like?
(12:59):
And all of that data turned into three things. Our earliest MVP, it influenced what we should build first. The tiniest possible thing that we could build to go to market. Two, it turned into our first context in the CRM to say, okay, these people will be interested when we X. And then three, it turned into our content, right? People are most curious about this, people want to know about that. People have biggest pain points here. And so, that's what we talked about first and our earliest blog posts, and of course I started a podcast. I think if we launch, my day one was April 29th, 2019, and we launched a podcast I think in August or September. And so, it was me talking to some of those people just saying, podcasting in B2B. I know it's a thing, you know it's a thing. Let's tell everybody else why it's a thing. And that resonated with a lot of people. People wanted to know how, and why, and what other people were doing. And we had some really good questions to ask and to address based on those earliest conversations.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (14:02):
Wonderful. I love it. I mean, I was always the kind of marketer who if I did one thing I wanted a 10 x whatever it was, because time is so precious. Right? So I appreciate that. And I think it's one of those things that it seems like it's easier to wrangle when you're a smaller organization. I'm going to take these product related customer interviews or potential customer interviews, prospect interviews, and I'm going to convert them into product market research. I'm going to convert it into actual marketing, inbound marketing content, sales enablement content, right? As organizations grow, it becomes just so much easier for all of that intel, that insight to get siloed and to get stuck inside of teams. So have you thought about that as you grow, how do you remain agile? How do you keep that grit that you have right now as a 30 person company?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (15:10):
Yeah, I'm going to sound like an ad, and it has nothing to do with Casted, it's like for podcasting, but it's true. I talk to a lot of people. I mean, this right now, being another podcast and doing our own show, it helps literally and figuratively keep the conversation going, right? And easy for me to say, because I'm talking to marketers about marketing, and we market to marketers about marketing. But I think there's something really real there. The earliest days were conversations and now that's a touch point daily, weekly, monthly, talking to our customers, talking to prospects, talking to people in the industry, talking to our partners about what's happening, and what we're seeing, and what's more important now than ever. And we just did a series on the recession called The Recessions, and it's all about how now more than ever, when we're all feeling even more pressure to do even more with even less, what's really important. And we honed in on repurposing and reusing content, and really focusing on creating really, really great stuff that you can really ring out.
(16:20):
And so, I think when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I look at the lens of everything is a podcast opportunity, but I think that that really has, it's been great for our marketing. It's been great being our own best use case, but also it's been great for me too, to stay in touch with what's happening and what are top concerns among customers, and what great successes are they seeing, and how can we help amplify their voices. So I think that really is a great way to stay relevant and to keep that grit, like you said.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (16:53):
Yeah. And you touched on the economy, I wanted to ask you about that. Just from your seat, where you are, you have a MarTech solution. Right? We talked about consolidation a little bit. I can see, right, I've never used, by the way everyone, I've never used acid, never been inside it.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (17:20): Nope.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (17:21):
But at least not yet, but I can see, okay, I can see how there would maybe be some potential even cost savings for me in adopting a solution like Casted, right? Thinking about the currency of the economy, uncertainty, what are some of the big threats or even opportunities that you can foresee for businesses, people who should use Casted, right? Other B2B marketers, B2B organizations, given kind of where we are right now in a place that just feels sort of uncertain and maybe a little bit uncomfortable for some folks, maybe not the time that people are thinking about biting off a brand new initiative, right?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (18:08):
Yep. Absolutely. I think that to carry on what we're feeling, I think that there is absolutely a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of pressure to perform in spite of it all. Quite often with less, fewer team members, fewer resources, smaller budget. And so, in those times, focus and simplify and shop your closet. Right? So use what you already have. And so, focus meaning I think that it will feel like you need to play a game of whack-a-mole and oh, what am I going to do in social? And what am I going to do in email? And what am I going to do in here, and here, and here, and here, and here? And it's like, again, with podcasting, when you can focus on, hey, I'm going to go have a conversation and I'm going to wring it out, that simplifies things. Because it's like, well, here's this one source of content and how can I continue to pull at the thread and use this one conversation to fuel some of what's happening in social, and to fuel some of what's happening in email, and to fuel the sales team with great conversations and great snippets, right? From one, many, as opposed to many, many, many, all the time, everywhere. That's one.
(19:16):
So I said focus, and then simplify. I think, I have felt before as a marketer and as leading a marketing team, the push to be the expert, right? We sell semiconductors. So you need to ghost write on behalf of the leading semiconductor expert. Well, I know marketing, not semiconductors. And so, if you can go, instead of having to be the expert, or posture as an expert, what if you go talk to the expert? And if you're the master of all semiconductor things, I talk to you and I can do what I do, which is be a great marketer and harness your voice. And again, simplify that way and wring it out.
(20:00):
And then third, shop your closet. What do you already have? What content do you already have? What was created? I don't know if your company was around back then, if you're talking about the recession, what were you doing in 2008? Is there anything that you can say then versus now? Can you say, here's some predictions that we made heading into this year. What do you already have? And I'm not saying necessarily remix a blog post. What virtual event did your team, did your company lead, or host last year that you could go back and use some of those speaker sessions and ring them out? And then maybe you have a podcast, maybe you have a remixed episode that you could provide a lot of real tangible value to marketing and to sales. So get creative, take a breath, and before you're thinking about net new. New, new, new, new, new. How can you take what you already have, or take the one thing that you're going to create and wring it out? I think that's, it's like, just take a beat and think about what you can wring out.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (20:57):
I love that. I'm always like, I'm constantly encouraging our own internal marketing team to do just that, because the sheer volume of content that we've produced over the last 15 years is just mind boggling, right? And some of it needs to be, some of it's dated, right, and it needs to be sunset completely. And some of it's just a little bit dated and it needs an update. But updating something, it takes far less energy often, unless it's really, really, really outdated. And then it just, again, needs to be kind put out to pasture. But it takes far less effort than starting something new.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (21:39): Absolutely.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (21:40):
Completely new. And I think we get in our own way as marketers, because we want to, we're constantly inspired, right? By everything that we see, and we get all these ideas. And so, there's never enough time to act on everything.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (21:55):
Well, and I think too, that some of the things that we think are outdated still have little nuggets, right? So I always use this analogy, because it insert your own topics here, but let's say next quarter you're talking about ice cream, right, and the big topic of the quarter is ice cream. And you're certain that you don't have anything on ice cream, because you've searched everything and you've looked through all of your old podcasts, and your old blog posts, and nothing's about ice cream. But what if there's an episode about pizza or a blog post about pizza that does have a little nugget in there about ice cream that you could use, and you could repurpose, or that draws parallels to something else.
(22:35):
Marketers are really good at that. At taking things and saying, hey, remember what we said about this thing a long time ago? Or here's a contrast that we can take. It doesn't have to be, we're doing this thing about ice cream. What do we have about ice cream? It can be like, what do we have about the dessert world? What do we have about flavor enhancers? What do we have about how tastes have changed? I mean there's lots of different ways, especially, because I remember and you probably do too, the conversation used to be how do we get more content? More content. How do we get the content engine going? That's not the problem for 99% of companies anymore. It's we have so much content that I don't even know where to start. I don't know how to mine it. I don't know how to get to it. And we need to be asking ourselves that, especially now. What do I have that I already can use that's not necessarily on point, on topic, the perfect thing. Now I don't have to write it, but what ingredients do I have? How can I, I said shop the closet, maybe it should be shop the pantry. How can I go back and use some leftovers, and use some ingredients that I already have to put something kind of new, and creative, and really just interesting out there for my audience?
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (23:46):
You just inspired something in me that I'm going to keep to myself.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (23:52): Yay!
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (23:53):
But so I'm like, oh, I have something I know I want to do. But yeah, this is the downfall of being a marketer, is I'm constantly inspired.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (23:59):
And then later you can use this snippet when you launch whatever that thing is and be like, this was the moment.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (24:05):
This was it. Yeah, it is extraordinary. And I was going to say, it makes me appreciate a vigilant, having someone in your organization who is vigilant with naming conventions. I am horrible at this. I appreciate being surrounded by people who are very good at it, because it makes my life easier when I'm then looking for something. Because that's another thing you look at, well, I have all of this stuff, but it's just, I don't know what, you're not going to open every single file. Maybe you are, open every single file and dig into it. How actually you organize that. And of course, there's now software for all of these things as well too. But you never underestimate a good naming convention strategy.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (24:50):
Well, and okay, shameless plug for Casted, but for that very reason, everything in Casted is transcribed. So that yes, it's great because then your transcription goes live on your show page, and you can use it to create clips and everything has captions, so that's great. But it also makes everything searchable. So in that analogy about we're doing something about ice cream, and all I have is stuff about pizza. You can search all the transcripts for any mention of ice cream, and then something that was tagged with some naming convention all about pizza. There's that tiny little nugget about ice cream that you never would've found ever again unless you could search the transcript. So yes, Casted does that. Maybe if you have everything transcribed with another tool, you can actually search your transcription. So that's something that maybe you could do.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (25:34): Awesome, I love it.
(25:37):
Let's shift and talk about kind of from your seat, your CEO of this organization. You've got this team of about 30 people. You've got responsibilities, your VC backed. Yes, right? Okay.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (25:51): Yep, yep.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (25:51):
So you have a board that you're reporting to. I'm going to talk about board metrics in a minute, but before we get to that, if you look at every morning you look at a dashboard. Like you have one dashboard that tells you how healthy your organization is, how healthy the business is, if you need to jump in, get involved, make adjustments, what do you have on that dashboard that helps guide you as the leader of your org?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (26:22):
Oh man. So we're ARR. A lot of people are MRR, so annual recurring revenue, or your monthly recurring revenue. So we look at that, which basically correlates to growth, right? And then we look at net retention rate and gross retention rate. So are our customers staying and are they growing? And we look at logo retention. So again, net recurring revenue looks at are they staying and growing, and logo retention and kind of gross revenue retention also looks at what's just the rate of holding onto customers and maintaining the accounts that we have. Those are the most important to me and to us at the moment. And then there's kind of the next level down as far as with NPS scores and customer surveys. And we have obviously employee happiness and employee satisfaction. It's hugely, hugely important. And we look at pipeline, right? So what's here and what's coming in is that roughly three to five x of what we're hoping to close next quarter. But at the end of the day, the two most important things I would say that we look at is money coming in and money that's staying and growing. The accounts that are staying on hand.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (27:36):
Can I assume those are the metrics that your board is most concerned with? Most interested in, or are there others that they are focused on?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (27:44):
Yeah, I would say generally speaking, over the life of the business those are what they're looking at most. Those are the most important, then everything else digs in from there.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (27:53):
Yeah. And what kind of leadership team talent do you have on your team? I mean, are you still at your size? Are you still running most of the organization, or what kind of structure, what does your team look like?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (28:10):
Yeah, so as of today, so it's myself and my co-founder. And so yeah, I sit in the CEO seat and I'm also currently leading marketing, and partnerships. So that's on my plate. And then my co-founder, Adam, he heads up product and CX, and then we have kind of leaders in those areas.
(28:33):
Great.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (28:33):
But we're ultimately running those departments, if you will. Feels weird to call it a department when you're 30 people. And then we have chief sales officer who leads our sales team. And then we have a VP of finance and a VP of talent, and that's our leadership team.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (28:49): Awesome.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (28:50): Yeah.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (28:50): Very, very cool.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (28:51): Yeah.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (28:53):
So let's do a little bit of dreaming. And imagine you had a blank check to spend on one sort of campaign, one initiative like you've got this angel gift of something for marketing specifically. Where would you want to invest that money knowing it's sort a one time sort of initiative as opposed to just being, well, I would just increase my ad spend by 200% forever.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (29:29):
Have it everywheres. A little bit everywhere.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (29:29): Yeah.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (29:33):
Well I think one thing that's most top of mind right now is we just rolled out something called the maturity curve. It's the amplified marketing maturity curve that looks at where a company is as they get started with podcasting and video content. What that initial adoption typically looks like all the way on up through establishing a great show and growing an audience. Amplifying that content to grow the brand, and then ultimately the holy grail is using that show and that content not only to build the brand, but to drive real measurable, significant revenue to really impact the business. And so, we just launched it and I would, if I had a blank check, man, I would just light that thing on fire. I would just get it in front of more and more and more brands, and marketers, and individuals because it shows them a few things.
(30:27):
One, what's possible. It doesn't end with growing a great show. That's actually the middle. Having a great show, having an incredible audience, that's the middle. And then there's two more stages from there to say, how can you drive real impact as a marketing team on your business, and show the power of what you are doing? Especially as typically as a content marketer, being able to show the real measurable value. I mean, demand gen is huge, and awesome, and so important, but they often get written off as the ones that can show real value. Whereas content is just kind of creating the stuff. What if together as demand gen and content, you could both show the real measurable business impact that you have on the business. And so, being able to get that in front of more people, and also show that you shouldn't compare your beginning with someone else's middle. Right? So as you're just getting started, it's very normal to be here in this stage one and stage two. And here's how you escalate, here's how you ascend to seeing real measurable value. And who else is where you are. And what camaraderie and what community exists at your stage. And again, what's possible as you accelerate. So I would do that, and of course I would invest more in podcast and video, and in just reaching a broader audience.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (31:47):
So yeah, I was going to ask you for, if you're looking to get more eyeballs on that piece of content, right, that interactive, that tool that you've created. Are there go-to channels that you know would want to turn on or ones that you would avoid? Would you go the route of TV advertising? Would you go the route of podcast advertise... Like just thinking Spotify or XM Radio? Would you do something like that? I'm just curious of from your marketing brain perspective, what are the channels that you would try to activate?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (32:37):
Well, I think, okay, so for us, and I know some of your audience I'm sure is in the same boat, we are creating a category, not because it's fun or easy, it's actually opposite of both of those things. It's really hard. And it's not the easiest path, at all. So what that means is that we can't just say, hey, we're the shinier, faster, cheaper version of this other thing. Why don't you just come over to us instead? There takes a lot of education. There's a lot that can do that, and that's the path to growth to say, hey, you're paying too much for X, Y, and Z. We can serve you better. There's a lot of education, and relationship building, and trust building even more so involved when you're creating a category, when you're introducing something new. And asking for a new line item in their budget.
(33:22):
And so, from that perspective, and so this is certainly not one size fits all, but if you find yourself also in that situation, you have to create something that's really, really relevant, which is why I went to the maturity curve. So I believe that it is. And then I think that you have to really lean into things that are very human, right? That people will say, okay, here's the link that I have, give me more reason to want to spend more time with you and to trust you. So for that, I would lean more into yes, podcasts and being able to have conversations about it. It's just exactly like what we're doing now.
(33:57):
So more of this, but then also if there was some, putting money behind something, what kind of sponsorships and partnerships could you lean into? How can you get in front of more people by saying, hey, we're leaning into this partnership with these other great brands that you already know and trust, and here's why you should trust us too. And by the way, here's a conversation I'd like to have. And that's literally and figuratively, if it's being part of a newsletter, speaking at an event, partnering with someone to do something at an event, but we were both at inbound. So maybe you can do a dinner and get in front of more people, and you have that third party credibility of industry partners that say, hey, they're with me, and you should listen to them too.
(34:46):
There's a lot of value in that. And some of it is expensive, some of it's expensive just to get yourself to whatever physical location that is. Some of it's expensive because it requires a sponsorship of the event or of the thing. But I think when you're in this space of creating a category, having to do that much more education, build that much more relevancy, build and maintain that much more excitement, those kind of investments make a lot of sense. More so than here's a paid ad, here's these quick fix that make more sense either further on in our own maturity, and in the categories maturity, or that make more sense to those more comparative sales.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (35:31):
Yeah, spoken like a true scrappy and creative B2B marketer.
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (35:39): Thanks. Yeah, working on it.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (35:43):
And that kind of is a good segue into my last question for you. For all of the B2B podcasters out there, the folks that are hosting their own, or maybe they're a CEO or a CRO, and their marketing team has a podcast or two. What you think's most important for them right now?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (36:07):
Again, don't compare your beginning or where you are to where want to be. Be inspired by it and fully understand what's possible, and I'm telling you that what's possible is driving real meaningful business changing impact not as the direct result of a show, but with the show at the center. That's possible. So know that that's the thing, and know that there's a journey to get there and that's okay. And it's going to take time.
(36:34):
And so, that's one, and two start. Just start. Bring in help if you can afford a partner, if you can afford a production agency, get the tools and the people and the experts that you need. And if you can't afford those, just start recording. Have a great conversations. Remember who it's for and why you're doing it, and just don't ever lose sight of that. That'll help keep you focused.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (36:58):
Great. Great advice. Lindsay, thanks so much for joining me today. If anyone listening wants to learn more about you, follow the work that you're doing at Casted, where do you recommend that they go?
Ep8 Guest: Lindsay Tjepkema (37:11):
Well, that would be lovely. We're at casted.us, and you can find our podcast there and this Amplified Marketing Maturity Curve, which there's a self-assessment, so you can find out where you are. And that's all at casted.us. And then I'm really active on LinkedIn, and you can find Casted there and on Twitter @gocasted as well.
Ep8 Host: Jen Spencer (37:33):
Wonderful. Well thank you everyone for listening. Please join me next week for another episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast. You'll meet another growth-oriented, inbound savvy pro, just like Lindsay. And if you learn something today, please pay it forward by rating and reviewing us on your podcast listening platform of choice. Make it a great day everyone.
