As organizations embrace A/V strategies to fulfill buyer demand, they’re investing in the creation and distribution of informative content that captures customer and prospect attention while building trust. The top four strategies practitioners are leveraging A/V content for include:

1. Attracting Prospects

A/V content helps B2B organizations capture the attention of their target audience and entice them into the sales funnel. Engaging videos, podcasts and webinars act as magnets, drawing prospects in with valuable and informative content. By addressing pain points, showcasing industry insights and demonstrating thought leadership, A/V content establishes credibility and positions the organization as a trusted resource.

2. Nurturing Leads

Once prospects enter the sales funnel, A/V content becomes instrumental in nurturing them toward conversion. Educational webinars, personalized video messages and interactive content provide opportunities for deeper engagement. These mediums allow organizations to deliver targeted messages, address specific pain points and guide prospects through the buyer’s journey. A/V content creates a personalized experience, strengthening the organization’s and the lead’s relationship.

3. Closing Deals

When closing deals, A/V content can be a game-changer. Presentations, product demos and virtual meetings enable B2B organizations to showcase their offerings in an immersive and persuasive manner. A/V content adds a visual and auditory dimension that captures attention, facilitates understanding and builds trust. It brings the product or service to life, making it easier for prospects to envision its value and purchase.

4. Retaining Customers

A/V content plays a crucial role in retaining customers long after closing the deal. Organizations can keep their customers engaged and satisfied by providing ongoing support, training materials and customer success stories through videos, podcasts and other A/V platforms. A/V content helps customers maximize the value they derive from the product or service, fosters loyalty and encourages advocacy.

To accelerate and orchestrate those practices, organizations are turning to emerging technologies to measure A/V content engagement and connect it with measurable outcomes. Advanced analytics, AI-powered insights, interactive elements and personalization enable organizations to gain valuable insights into viewer behavior, optimize their strategies and drive desired outcomes. Furthermore, tech continues to evolve and better help practitioners produce content.

A/V content is a powerful tool in business, enabling organizations to engage, educate and delight their audience throughout the customer lifecycle. With the advent of emerging technologies such as advanced analytics, AI, interactive elements, and personalization, businesses can create compelling A/V content and measure its impact and effectiveness.

For deeper insights into the current state of A/V content marketing, check out the full report now!

The post Lights, Camera, Conversion: The 4 Uses Of A/V Content Across The Buyer’s Journey appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Casted is designed to help marketers streamline the publication, distribution, amplification, analysis and measurement of content, allowing them to better understand engagement. The new program is now available for early-stage businesses with limited budgets.

“We’ve proven that Casted can help marketers amplify vital business voices to drive human connections that ultimately drive business growth,” said Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and Co-Founder of Casted. “Casted for Startups enables us to level the playing field in B2B podcasting by giving startups the mic — literally and figuratively! We’re enabling marketers at all companies, regardless of size, to maximize and measure the value of their podcasts in today’s changing market.”

The post Casted Announces Podcast Program For Startups appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

It was critical for the marketing team to communicate that Walker & Dunlop was still alive and well. The company had to let clients and prospects know that financing deals were still getting done and that they could count on Walker & Dunlop to be a voice of clarity and confidence in a market that was suddenly facing uncertainty.

The Challenge

Given the large sums of money changing hands, commercial real estate finance is an industry built on trusted relationships. Historically, sales teams across the industry relied on face-to-face client interaction to showcase their expertise, build trust and close deals at conferences, on golf courses, over dinners and wine and maybe even cigars. So, how could the company build virtual relationships — at scale — to instill trust and client engagement when travel and events had come to a complete halt?

Marketing identified several key goals to solve this challenge, such as:

• Continuing to display a confident brand and extending its leadership in core markets;
• Building awareness and fueling expansion for high-growth start-up divisions; and
• Providing marketing and sales support for financing and property sales teams across the country, spanning 250 brokers and bankers.

Walker & Dunlop’s CEO, Willy Walker, saw an opportunity to create a high-visibility weekly webcast that would help establish the company’s reputation as a thought leader in the commercial real estate space. To that end, he tasked the marketing team with “building our brand as big and fast as we can.”

The Solution

After recalling that Walker wanted the webcast released “next week,” Zegal turned to Folloze, a buyer experience platform, to help his team build out a series of customer-facing webcasts featuring Walker and empower Walker & Dunlop’s 200-strong sales force to turn virtual relationships into revenue-generating opportunities.

The plan was to create an integrated, multichannel program with Walker on a virtual center stage, interviewing high-profile guests such as governors, NBA stars, Harvard professors and leading economists. The goal with “Walker Webcast” was to generate buzz for the company’s role in commercial real estate financing, provide fresh perspectives, create inspiration and foster education for all types of personal topics, including how to be a better leader, live a healthier lifestyle and become a better citizen.

The webcast series was launched in less than a week, with Folloze as the content and engagement hub. Walker & Dunlop relied on Folloze Boards, which are blank digital canvases that help marketers build content-rich destinations and campaigns across the entire B2B journey. The Boards are designed to transform customer data, such as firmographic, buying stage and intent, into memorable buying experiences that guide buyers through each stage of their journey.

Zegal said the proof of how easy it is to work with Folloze Boards is that no one on the team even talks about it — “it’s seamless: You create graphics, drag and drop and it’s done.”

Walker & Dunlop also built social media outreach programs around the webcasts, created a large YouTube following and turned the webcast into a podcast.

The Results

The webcast became a weekly engagement touch point with clients, investors, recruits and employees — keeping Walker & Dunlop top of mind.

“The weekly series has become the biggest webcast in our industry, with more than five million views across all channels — and we’ve surpassed more than 100 episodes,” Zegal said. “Folloze makes it easy to manage and showcase a huge amount of content every week.”

Key results of the collaboration with Folloze, the “Walker Webcast” and adjacent materials include:

• The podcast landing in the top 3% of all business podcasts, in terms of downloads;
• 1,500 registrations the first week of “Walker Webcast”;
• More than 5 million webcast views across channels;
• “Winning multiple awards and receiving several accolades,” according to Zegal;
• More than 100 episodes published and counting; and
• 150,000 visitors to Walker & Dunlop’s Folloze Board to date.

“People come to us for our expertise with something that’s pretty complicated, so there’s an element of trust and familiarity involved,” Zegal said. “Engagement is critical with this audience. Folloze helps us project that reputation as a company that our clients want to work with.”

Thanks to data from analytics integrated into the Folloze platform via partner Demandbase, Walker & Dunlop also discovered a high correlation between engagement with existing and net-new customers with the brand program: 69% of existing active accounts and 64% of new accounts participated in the Walker Webcasts.

“Most significantly, $7.5 billion of net-new transaction volume in 2020 came from companies that attended the webcast,” Zegal said. “So, we gained share, and we became No. 1 in our market in that year — while others were struggling, we rose to the top.”

From a CRM perspective, Zegal said the webcasts have proven to be great conversation starters and a powerful re-engagement tool.

“We had one client that watched 40 webcasts,” he said. “People are engaged, and engagement turns virtual relationships into real relationships and real monetary value. It also changes the dynamic with our CEO — when he walks in a room during a sales call, his presence has a halo effect.”

Zegal said he also plans to roll out Folloze to additional account teams across the business to create destination sites with personalized content for key clients.

“One of the reasons we went with Folloze was that we knew that it worked within our ecosystem, within our tech stack,” he explained. “There is a lot of potential to expand what we’re doing with Folloze, help build better relationships and cross-sell into our key accounts.”

The post How Walker & Dunlop Launched A Webcast & Generated 1500 Registrations In 1 Week appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

According to Casted, the components of Amplified Marketing include:

• Identifying the target audience, subject matter experts and assets that already exist;
• Creating audio and video content and breaking it into clips, transcriptions, key takeaways and more; and
• Amplifying all of the assets, resources and conversations across multiple channels and formats to maximize the return on investment and effort.

The features of Casted Themes will help teams access a central solution to create and manage content themes and leverage insights, while customers will have access to 360-degree views of their existing content with insights like audience engagement, content-type and revenue attribution.

“The future of B2B marketing is recorded,” said Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and Co-founder of Casted. “Companies and marketing teams have the assets — podcasts, webinars, customer stories, product videos — but often only use this content once and then put it in the archives. Amplified marketing empowers marketers to be more efficient and effective while also embracing greater creativity, strengthening connections with their audiences and driving revenue. And Casted’s expansion as the first Amplified Marketing platform provides marketers with the platform needed to put audiences before algorithms, authenticity ahead of automation and amplification at the heart of an integrated sales and marketing strategy.”

The post Casted Introduces Amplified Marketing Platform; Releases Casted Themes appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The relationship between sales and marketing is symbiotic for both teams — sales now has more insights into customers’ wants and needs thanks to intent and other datasets, while marketing has more revenue responsibility. When combined, both teams can work toward meeting the audiences’ needs at every touchpoint while simultaneously increasing revenue. When both teams are in sync, organizations see more revenue and greater customer loyalty.

But don’t just take my word for it — the numbers speak for themselves:

• 56% of organizations with sales and marketing alignment hit their revenue goals and 19% surpassed them, while only 37% of unaligned organizations hit their revenue goals and 7% surpassed them;
• Aligned organizations see 19% revenue increases and 15% higher profits;
• Companies with aligned sales and marketing saw a 36% improvement in customer retention and 38% higher sales to win rates; and
• 81% of companies with some level of alignment reported exceeding their revenue targets.

One way to promote the relationship between marketing and sales efforts is through podcasting. B2B podcasts are a tool to get information directly from a trusted source (internal thought leaders, subject matter experts and even customers) to target markets (professionals looking for insights).

How Can Podcasts Unite Marketing & Sales Efforts?

If the job of marketing and sales functions is to drive revenue, podcasting is a great way to build trust, rapport and expertise with potential customers. Humans don’t want to be sold to; they want to work with and buy from brands who have a genuine interest in seeing them succeed. Marketing and sales should align on content that fuels these connections with audiences.

For example, look at Lev, a Salesforce consultancy for marketers. Two sales team members started a podcast for the company as a passion project and spearheaded conversations with customers. While it would have been easy for the marketing team to claim the podcast as a marketing initiative, Holly Enneking, VP of Marketing at Lev, decided to support the podcast instead of overtaking it. She offered the duo topic ideas and strategies to ensure consistent recording and posting.

Through this effort, the sales and marketing departments received rich content tailored to the brand’s audience that helped build relationships and trust with Lev’s core audience. When sales and marketing teams work together, the result is a unified brand voice, message and presence across the board.

In general, podcasting itself serves as a primary source of content to fuel sales and marketing outreach through amplified marketing. This type of enterprise marketing uses conversations from experts as the focus of content strategy and then amplifies that expertise across marketing and business strategies.

Podcast content can be broken down into several forms, including transcriptions, audio and video content, which are amplifiable across all channels and provide sales and marketing teams with access to rich insights and information that help maximize their efforts.

How Does Podcasting Align Sales & Marketing?

Podcasts provide a wealth of information to both the sales and marketing teams. When that rich messaging is used to fuel marketing channels and sales outreach, it conveys a unified brand voice, message and offers valuable information to target audiences.

Marketing professionals can use podcasting content across their marketing channels by embedding an audio clip in a blog post, sharing audiograms on social media, using transcripts to fuel blog and social posts and building out case studies and E-books. On the other hand, sales teams can use podcast conversations to personalize touchpoints with prospects and customers by providing information that addresses specific pain points.

In today’s world, trust is more important than ever in buying decisions. When sales and marketing teams are aligned on messaging that’s valuable to audiences, it’s possible to build the level of trust that leads to connection, relationships and, ultimately, conversions.

Zachary Ballenger is the Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder of Casted, the first amplified marketing platform and the only audio and video podcast solution designed for enterprise marketers.

The post Using Your Podcast To Align Sales & Marketing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

With any marketing channel, there are mistakes that may be made. However, with proper education, they can be avoided, ensuring the brand podcast is a marketing powerhouse. This starts with the foundational idea that a podcast should be the center of the content strategy.

Let Your Podcast Fuel Other Channels

A cohesive messaging strategy is what marketers strive for. Podcasts should not only be part of the strategy, but they should fuel it. The content strategy playbooks we rely on are outdated and suggest that marketers let keywords and SEO dictate content. This will lead marketers down a dangerous path. Content written for an algorithm won’t lead to personal connection, which is why the personal conversations happening on podcasts are so powerful. Subject matter experts aren’t focused on keywords; they’re focused on sharing information in a lively, engaging dialog.

So, using podcast episode content to drive other marketing efforts will maximize efforts. How? Incorporate clips from the show in blogs, E-books, social media posts and email newsletters. Transcribe the episode and use it as blog content. Let the sales team share episode clips with prospects. By squeezing everything out of an episode, the audience will have a unified, cohesive experience with the brand behind the show.

Pick The Right Host

When starting a brand podcast, a company’s CEO might seem like the logical choice to play the host simply because they are the face of the organization. But it’s important to consider who the show is aiming to connect with, regardless of title. Choosing the wrong host might just push the audience away rather than draw them in. The host should be someone passionate about the show’s mission. Someone who can have natural conversations with guests and bring out their top insights. Finally, and most importantly, the host should be able to get into the nitty gritty about what the podcast is about so they can have intelligent conversations with subject matter experts.

Determine How To Measure Success

Data-driven marketers might be frustrated with podcast metrics at first. The vague nature of downloads, listens, reviews or social media engagement can be limiting. The truth is, not one set of metrics will determine show success. Rather, marketers need to map metrics back to specific outcomes for the show. Outcomes could include building audience relationships, increasing listenership, industry education, demand generation or influencing buying decisions. Once the goal is established, marketers can use podcast metrics to map back to it. This is a more satisfactory measurement method than traditional metrics alone.

Consider Show Sponsorship Carefully

B2C podcasts are ripe with various methods of sponsorship. But with a B2B podcast, I’d caution marketers to tread carefully. Sponsorship can be fruitful. It can provide an audience with exclusive offers, more industry insights and news. Sponsorships can also be solid opportunities for co-marketing with partners for brand elevation.

But, before diving in, ask these important questions:

• Is monetization the main focus? If it is, this has the potential to cause the entire show to lose focus on what’s best for the audience because earning money could outweigh content consistency and/or quality.
• Will selling ad space impact the goals of the show? Staying homed in on the goals of the show can prevent the show from teetering off course by attracting the wrong sponsors.

Brand podcasts are an essential part of the amplified marketing mix, serving as the foundation for other marketing content and a new source of revenue. To ensure the podcast is as successful as possible, ensure it serves other marketing channels, choose the right host, determine how to evaluate the show’s success and consider monetizing the show cautiously. Never lose sight of why the show was created or who it is for to keep the strategy on track and exceeding expectations.

Lindsay Tjepkema is the CEO and Co-founder of Casted, the first and only marketing platform built around branded podcasts. With more than 15 years of experience in B2B marketing, including agency roles, leading brand marketing teams and even running her own consulting agency, she’s a dynamic leader who’s had tremendous success building and growing marketing teams on a local and global level. After launching a branded podcast for a global marketing tech company, Lindsay realized her passion for authentic conversations. This led her to founding Casted to help marketers unlock the full potential of their content by harnessing the power of podcasting. The company has since gained rapid traction among brands that wish to create greater connection with their audiences through authentic conversation.

The post 4 Ways To Maximize Your Brand Podcast appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

• The budget required to add a direct mail program into your marketing mix; 
• Creative ideas on what to include in your mailers; 
• The lead time required to do a successful mailing; and
• Key considerations to get direct mail integrated into your digital initiatives.

The post Podcast: Combatting Digital Fatigue With Tactile Marketing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Back-of-the-Box Details

Casted serves as a host for publishing a user’s audio content, amplifying their podcast’s reach across digital channels and preventing the content from being siloed. While serving as the host, the platform captures audience engagement data for measuring the content’s impact on marketing performance.

The platform provides users with tools for customizing their podcast show’s pages, transcribing the episodes for optimal SEO and embedding them onto websites. Casted also allows users to create additional written, clipping and audiogram content for easy integration into other platforms such as Hubspot, Word Press, etc.

Who It’s For

Casted is designed for mid-market and enterprise marketing teams who are looking to improve their content marketing with audio formats.

What Makes It Special

Casted aims to help align various internal teams by increasing the number of teams who have access to the audio content, allowing each to team to use the platform to amplify the content across their respective channels, including sales outreach, email marketing and more.

Contact

Casted

The post Casted Aims To Empower Marketers To Develop Podcast Content appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

So, hear me out. Brand blogging blew up in the early 2000s when websites became richer and the internet became more mainstream. This was 15 or 20 years ago, and present-day marketing teams are still turning to the same tactics used back then!

Today’s audience has higher expectations. Social media is ingrained in everyday practices. Podcasts are on the up and up. Still, the same old playbook established by yesteryear’s marketers is what modern marketers are following. It’s time to ditch that outdated playbook and provide an experience that engages your audience before they leave you for one of your competitors.

You need to let conversations lead your content marketing efforts rather than ruminating over keywords and creating less-than engaging copy to rank in search. One of the best ways to lead with conversations is through a brand podcast. Not only will this allow you to produce more content, but you’ll also see an increase in engagement and conversions.

Allow me to elaborate.

Transform Conversations Into Conversions

Not only do conversations connect individuals, they also connect speakers with their audiences. When an audience listens to the conversations between a host and guest of a podcast, they form bonds with the speakers and the brands they represent.

After connecting with the podcasters and their brands through these conversations, the audience is more likely to become a customer of the brands. A BBC study found that a podcast’s intimate and conversational nature lifts:

• Brand awareness by 89%;
• Brand consideration by 57%;
• Brand favorability by 24%; and
• Purchase intent by 14%.

Armed with a channel that has proven effective, B2B marketers can utilize their brand podcast as the driver of their entire content marketing strategy.

Unite All Marketing Efforts Through Podcasts

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every E-book, blog post, social media post or email newsletter if you build content out of the conversations in your brand’s podcast. Each episode provides a plethora of information for potential content. This method allows content marketers to serve as conversationalists who let stories come to them rather than journalists who constantly dig around for a new story.

By following these five steps, you can become a successful conversationalist:

1. Record conversations — Find someone who has expertise surrounding a keyword you want to talk about and connect with them over a recorded conversation.
2. Transform the conversation into an episode — Edit and share your interview on your website or other platforms for others to see.
3. Promote it on other platforms — Share bits of the conversation on social media, elaborate on the points made through related blog posts and articles and include snippets in your newsletter to boost the voices in the podcast.
4. Measure and reflect — Assess all metrics and look at them holistically, see the big picture of the past performance while planning for the future.
5. Repeat — Choose another subject matter expert and repeat steps 1-5.

Experiences that intrigue and connect across all channels are what your audience prefers and expects. Their attention is always being vied for, so your efforts must stand out. Using traditional tactics makes it very difficult to meet their needs but using your brand podcast as the engine of your content marketing strategy can solve this problem. It helps create a captivating experience for your audience without requiring your team to put in any extra effort. Talk about a win-win!

Lindsay Tjepkema is the CEO and co-founder of Casted, the first and only marketing platform built around branded podcasts. With more than 15 years of experience in B2B marketing, including agency roles, leading brand marketing teams, and even running her own consulting agency, she’s a dynamic leader who’s had tremendous success building and growing marketing teams on a local and global level. After launching a branded podcast for a global marketing tech company, Lindsay realized her passion for authentic conversations. This led her to founding Casted to help marketers unlock the full potential of their content by harnessing the power of podcasting. The company has since gained rapid traction among brands that wish to create a greater connection with their audiences through authentic conversation.

The post Podcasts: Your New Content Marketing Engine appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

• The state of the martech space and new trends that are influencing it most;
• New realities of B2B buying committees and how they’re impacting marketing best practices; and
• How the two companies plan to collaborate to better serve B2B organizations of all sizes.

The post Merkle & Digital Pi Leadership Share New Details On Merger appeared first on Demand Gen Report.