I must confess that I am new to the podcast scene. I remember being introduced to my first podcast when my hair was still untinged by any hint of gray, and while I found the information useful and the host entertaining, I didn’t particularly have a desire to sit in front of a computer and listen to a blank screen. It may have worked for Orson Welles but a lot has changed since the days when families gathered around a table top radio receiver to hear the news and I didn’t see us going back in time. What changed?
We are a now in podcast Gen 2, which has exploded into the mainstream primarily because of bluetooth and the ease of streaming a podcast in a car while sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on the FDR. At first I used podcasts for entertainment: Serial and S Town were as good as any Netflix thriller and Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History is packed with the counterintuitive insights and examples of human folly that make his books such pleasurable reading. Over the past year, however, I started to use podcasts as an educational tool. I found a trove of B2B marketing podcasts that would prove to be a reliable source of professional development and education.
In honor of the launch of my podcast Raising Your Antenna, a B2B tech podcast that explores the latest trends and news shaping the B2B technology industry, I am sharing my top five B2B marketing podcasts:
1. Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner
For a great mix of good guests and practical topics, Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner is worth a listen. In addition to hosting compelling guests, Stelzner begins each podcast with a five minute segment in which he highlights a new app (usually free) that is of interest to marketers. These podcasts will be interesting to marketing enthusiasts whether they have a sophisticated marketing background or are just listening to pick up a few tips.
2. The Marketing School with Neil Patel and Eric Siu
The Marketing School with Neil Patel and Eric Siu takes seriously the Shakespearian dictum, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” These podcasts are usually 5-7 minutes long and will attack a constructive topic with authority. This is the podcast for you if you have five extra minutes a day and want to learn about some “hacks to generate more upsells”, “7 LinkedIn marketing tips” or “their favorite marketing WordPress plugins of 2018.”
If you don’t want to spend your time reading marketing books (I don’t) but still want a Cliffs Notes version of the book, then this is the podcast for you. The Marketing Book Podcast is released weekly and interviews an author of…. you guessed it, a recently published marketing book. The books are for the most part sales and marketing focused and the authors are willing to reveal much of their secret sauce while still holding back a bit in the hopes that listeners will buy the book. To this point, I have not been converted into a sale but it’s still early.
The Ad Lib podcast produced by Ad Age is not necessarily B2B focused but they do a great job of interviewing A-list marketing and media types. In the past month alone, Ad Lib has scored interviews with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, Michael Wolff of Donald Trump book fame, Raja Rajamannar, CMO of Mastercard and Mark DiMassimo of DiMassimo Goldstein. The episodes are replete with useful insights about media, marketing and communications and there are oodles of tips and ideas that will be of value to your B2B marketing campaigns.
5. The GaryVee Audio Experience
And lastly, there is the GaryVee Audio Experience podcast. My advice is to skip the coffee and listen to this during an early morning workout. It’s impossible to listen to Gary and not feel motivated, energized, emboldened and invigorated. If you don’t know Gary’s story then you should Google it: he is the embodiment of a marketer extraordinaire who practices what he preaches and has reaped the rewards of being ahead of marketing trends, technologies and platforms.