Podcasting as an Account Based Play to Reach a Super Hard Niche Audience (with Kathleen Booth) | Ep. 243 — Scrappy ABM

Welcome to Scrappy ABM. This is your podcast with practical playbooks that don't break the bank. In this podcast, we dig into the exact playbooks that ABM practitioners are using today to get their first ABM program off the ground. We'll dig into how they're using their current tech stack in order to create scrappy programs that rely more on creativity than new technologies. So if you're looking for how to get ABM off the ground in your organization in the next 90 days, let's dive into this episode. Hello and welcome to Scrappy ABM. This is your podcast with practical playbooks that don't break the bank. This is your host, Mason Cosby, and today I'm joined by Kathleen Booth, who is the SVP of Marketing and Growth over at Pavilion. Kathleen, thank you for joining me today.

Let's go. You should be an auctioneer. You are a good fast talker, Mason.

I, I did a speaking session at B2BMX, and afterwards they're like, wow, I didn't know we were gonna get an auctioneer today. Cause I try to talk fast. Fun fact, human brain can process more quickly than we can talk. So talk faster and people can still get it anyway. Kathleen, first, thank you for coming back for podcast number 2. You were one of the early guests on the Marketing Ladder, and I'm always thankful for the fact that you showed up for that show. And I'm excited to dig into some of your account-based plays. This is one of my favorites. Everyone knows that I'm a big fan of podcasting, so we're gonna talk about how you built a podcast as an account-based play to reach a super hard niche audience. So let's start with this audience, like why was this audience so hard and weird and niche to actually get in front of?

Yeah. So I've actually done this a couple times, but I'm going to focus on one of them. So the one that I want to focus on is when I was head of marketing at a company called clean.io and we were selling what I would characterize as a sort of enterprise-grade ad operations solution, software solution. And so we were selling to the people who led advertising operation teams within media and publishing. It's a niche part of the company, a niche industry, and not like titles that are easily targeted. And, and also I would say somewhat insular as an industry, probably because it is pretty niche. And so they all know each other. They all kind of stick together. Breaking in is not a simple thing. Uh, and we were a small company with not huge marketing budgets. And so the big question was like. How are we going to get in front of these people? Also, by definition, almost every one of them already had a solution. So we would be unseating a competitor. It's harder to, you know, get somebody to take a call in that kind of situation. So we needed a way to get in front of them and build brand authority and trust and get them to take that call. And so that's what led us to podcasting.

I just love the simple breakdown of like all the things that were typically stacked against you, like insular industry, already have a solution, already know each other, and we gotta break into that. So I'm curious, before we dig into some of the tactical elements, like why did you determine that podcasting was the right approach to then break into that kind of industry where those many things were stacked against you?

I mean, part of it is honestly falling back on the things that I'm comfortable with. The, this was a startup and so it was, I was the head of marketing and I had one person on my team, so we didn't have a budget, a big budget for software or a huge ads budget, we had to be super scrappy, right? Like, we had to figure out really high-impact solutions that didn't cost a lot of money, that didn't require a big tech stack, that didn't need tremendous operational support, that were honestly going to be a matter of, like, elbow grease, you know, that myself and the one person who worked with me could do. And I had run this play a couple of times before. I would say in this case, I really like refined it more. But I had hosted a podcast myself for 5 years called the Inbound Success Podcast, which, you know, meant I was very comfortable with podcasting as a format. So I knew that I could host it. I, and I also didn't want to rely on like a CEO or another subject matter expert in the company for execution because I just think that that's really difficult, especially in startups where everybody's doing 5 jobs, like trying to get somebody's attention and get them to do something consistently is tough. So I was like, I need to be able to do this. And I'm not an expert, by the way. I was not an expert in advertising operations. So I also needed something that I could do not being an expert. So it was like a lot of different factors and having done it a few times before, I had, I had run a similar play in a company that was a cybersecurity firm where I was targeting like founders and presidents of cybersecurity companies. And I'm not a cybersecurity expert either. So like the interview style podcast. I think as long as you can figure out the questions to ask, it's something that you can pull off if you're not a subject matter expert.

I love this callout because so many people think, oh, I've got to be the expert. And what I find— I actually try to do an analysis on like my talk time versus the guest, and especially on the Marketing Ladder. Again, for everyone that doesn't know, I did a show for 2 years where I just asked people, how did you build your career? And that was literally the only standard question. And I did 120 interviews and I was not the expert. I had not built my career to the point of being a CMO, and I interviewed CMOs and heads of marketing to how, on how they did it. So you just ask good questions and you're interested and just follow up and surprise, you build really great relationships. So I love that callout and just the simplicity of you don't have to be the expert, you just have to be interested in your customers.

Yeah. You have to have a deep level of curiosity and you have to be a good listener because you can go into, like, I mean, especially like in cybersecurity where I was like, I really don't know what I'm talking about. I had a set of questions, like I, I knew I had enough questions that could fill fill up whatever, you know, an hour or however long the interview needed to be. But a really good podcast, you have to be able to pivot and kind of go with the flow. And so like that requires you being able to like stop focusing so much on like, am I following the script? And like really listen to the person you're talking to and understand what the next natural question is.

I love it. Okay, so now as we think about So much of this is guest-driven, and I think one of the challenges people think about when starting a show is, well, how do I actually go get guests? So as you guys were doing this kind of approach, how did you actually get people lined up for the show?

Yeah, so in every case where I've done this, my first 2 or 3 guests were warm introductions. So when I did it at the cybersecurity company, I did lean on the president of the company who was a subject matter expert, did have the relationships to connect me to close friends of his who were in our ICP. When I was doing the Ad Operations podcast, I met a person who ran a community in the industry, shared with him what I was trying to do, which, by the way, this is part of the secret, is like the podcast, kind of like your Marketing Ladder podcast. It wasn't about ad operations. It was actually about the career of the ad operations leader, and nobody was talking about that. There were like— I mean, marketing, it's a little tougher because there's more, I think, just discourse on that. But nobody was talking about what does it mean to lead an ad ops team? How do you get there? What do you have to study in school or not study in school? Like, what are the challenges you face on the job? Basically, think of it like persona research in the form of a podcast. Like you're asking the exact questions you would ask if you were doing audience research. But essentially, like, you're shining the spotlight on the role and the career the person has chosen. So, when I found this person who ran a community for ad ops leaders, I was like, "Hey, I want to do this thing where I'm going to celebrate the career choice. And I'm going to make the people in your community the heroes. Can you introduce me to 2 or 3 people who you think are really great at this job, who would be awesome people to spotlight in the start?" That's every time I've done it, that's how I've gotten started. But also every time I've done this and I've hosted at least 3 different podcasts, part of my podcast interview format is towards the end, I always ask who's somebody else who's doing this, who you think I should shine the spotlight on. And so with the Ad Operations podcast, it was called, by the way, AdOps All Stars, and we had a great logo for it that looked like a, like a baseball team logo. And we made baseball shirts with their names on them, which was kind of cool. I would always say like, who else in this ad operations world is doing great work? Like, who should I interview next? And everybody loves the opportunity to like call out one or two great people who are their peers. And as soon as you stop recording, the next question is, hey, could I get an introduction to that person? And 90% of the time the answer is yes. And that's how you get your next guest.

There are like 3 things that are super smart that I just want to call out. One, you literally went to a community of all your ICP, and instead of saying the standard thing that most people say is like, hey, can I sponsor, or like, can I get access to this community so I can like pitch in the community, you said, hey, I want to turn your community a bunch of heroes and like highlight how awesome they are. Do you want to make a— like, so smart, because then that makes also the, the host of the community look awesome. So one, I'm writing that one down for all future podcast launches. And then two, like, you made it cool. Like, you just— you made shirts. Like, I know that sounds dumb, but like, people don't make their stuff cool. They just kind of phone it in. So you actually made it fun, which is awesome. Uh, and the last thing is just instead of saying, hey, by the way, thanks for being on the show, can you refer me business, saying, who else do you know? And I'm sure you're like— what I have found is the more I hang out with my target accounts and ICP-fit customers, It's crazy. They typically end up saying, what do you do? And like, you end up making sales, like super smart. The only question I wanted to ask is, was that how you got all of your guests was just essentially that, that connecting thread? Like you didn't do any outbound emails or any outbound DMs or like anything that was like specific, essentially like cold outbound for a podcast. You just kind of followed a thread.

In the beginning, it was definitely all the thread. Evolved and sometimes it was actually, I would go to my team because we did have customers and I would be like, which of our customers should we spotlight? Like who do you, who loves what we do and we want to have a give back for them. And so my sales team or my customer success team would introduce me to people. Um, so that was a great way to get guests. And then we were very involved in industry conferences, either we would sponsor them or I would just go and attend. And be present. And I would meet people there. And the great thing is, like, the first thing that would happen is I would walk in and I would see people who had been my guests. And like, I had never worked in this industry before. And the coolest thing about this approach is you go to an industry conference where everybody already knows each other. And I think it could be really intimidating, especially if you're representing a vendor, to walk in. And instead, I walked in and there were people who were like, oh my God, it's so great to finally meet you in person. I love you. Thank you so much for the podcast interview. Let me introduce you to my 5 friends. Like, I instantly felt like I belonged and I was one of them. And they— I mean, this was a great crowd of people too. It's worth saying if any of them ever hear this, it was— they were awesome people. And, and so once I started going to the industry events and people knew who I was and they knew that, like, I— it wasn't going to turn into a pitch, by the way, right away. Like, the motion— we can talk about that— but the motion was come on the podcast. I never talked about our company on the podcast. There was like, in the outro, there was a, if you want to learn more, go to, and I mentioned the website, but it was very subtle. And so, they would come on, we wouldn't talk at all about our company. I would, when the podcast ended, I would send them a swag box that was actually podcast swag. So, we had the baseball shirts that said AdOps All-Stars. Which is kind of cool. So it was like, you know, you're going to an industry conference, of course you want to wear your shirt that says you're an all-star. And then we had a few other podcast swag things, and then we would slide a few of our company swag items in there, but it's just swag, right? Like it wasn't a pitch or anything. And I would handwrite a thank you card and just say, thank you for being, you know, an all-star and coming on the podcast. And that was it. There was no ask in the swag box. And then The next step generally was if we were going to be at an industry event, we would host a dinner in conjunction with it. And generally we would invite like 50% of our customers, 50% of the people at the dinner would be our customers. And then the other 50% would be people who had, I had interviewed for the podcast and we'd get them in the room together. And again, we weren't like pitching our product at all. We were talking about topics relating to ad ops and sometimes the product might come up, but it was more. Allowing them to just be in the presence of customers who were happy and maybe how they're using the product would come up. Maybe it wouldn't, but it built the relationship. And that's, I think, like what this is all about. It's like really building a relationship based on trust, not based on like, I'm going to sell you something. Of course they know that like the long game is we want to sell them something. But I never said that. I never pitched them like I would invite them to virtual wine tastings. A lot of those types of situations. And it, um, you, you kind of have to have faith that it's going to lead to business eventually. And it, it really did because we would get introductions, like these software contracts come up for renewal once a year or once every 2 years. And we'd either have like, hey, you guys want to be in the mix this time? Or it would be, look, I'm not in a position to evaluate your product right now, but I have this friend who's looking at a solution and you should really talk to them. And so it was great.

So much that I love here. What I want to help people understand from a data perspective, we're running about 10 or 11 shows right now, and when we're looking at every 10 interviews that a client does or that we do for ourselves, typically it's somewhere in the ballpark of 4 to 6 interviews result in an opportunity within about a trailing 90 days. But what is actually happening is they're either— the guest is becoming an opportunity, or they refer someone because they know you exist. Yeah. So it's not, it's not always direct, like one-to-one, and it's exactly what you said, which is they came on a show, they had a good time, they felt like they were the hero, and they now know you exist. That's about it.

Um, and, and there's other ways of, I think, like some of the other things we added into that motion to maybe more directly make a connection back to the company. After I started the show, I began publishing interview-style blogs on our company website, spotlighting the person and their career journey. And so obviously to read that, you had to come to our website. So, you know, those people would share it on their social media and it gave— it then would give people a reason to come back to our site. And so, there's other things like that that you can weave in. But again, you know, it's a pretty subtle play.

There's one other thing you, you specifically mentioned. That was the fact that it was essentially a feeder for relationships that then continued with long-term. Like, you saw them at events, you invited them to dinners, they came to wine tastings. What I think some people miss with podcasting is they expect— I like, because people have now heard about this play and they think one interview equals one opportunity same day. And it's like, well, no, but it is a starting point to actually putting a name to a face And typically, I don't know about you, but I'm finding you're actually able to connect directly with buyers versus what I'm seeing with other account-based programs. You've got to like multi-thread up the organization. Like with podcasts, I just typically go for the person that's actually signing the contract and then invite them onto the show and then build a relationship one-to-one. So I just love that framing. I am curious as you think about, again, you referenced this is a startup, you're strapped for resources and podcasts. Like, this is probably an hour of your time per interview as like head of marketing. So I know that it had to have generated results in order to like continue. So I'm curious, as you look to measure results, like how did you communicate these expectations internally to make sure that it was actually given the room to breathe to generate the opportunities?

Well, I mean, for better or for worse, I didn't set any expectations in the beginning because, and the reason I was able to do that is that it was the ultimate like scrappy play in the sense that yes, I would do the interviews, but because I had done my own podcast, like I also was capable of editing my own audio. Like I knew how to use Audacity. I, um, would post the, I had a, an Upwork freelancer who I worked with who would put the intro and outro on the video and just clean the video up. I. Set up my own Libsyn to syndicate. Like I used Canva for all the graphics. I was really like, it cost us almost nothing to do this minus whatever I spent on those few software platforms and then the swag box that I would send. And so the, it was not really a tax on the organization at all. So I didn't need to justify it. Now, that being said, it's pretty easy to track, I think, the ROI because either you're getting pipeline from companies where the people you've interviewed work, which is pretty straightforward, or you're literally getting direct referrals where it's like, so-and-so told me to reach out, or those introductions. And so the attribution's pretty easy. I mean, there's also a question of like, oh, are there other people that are hearing the podcast and then contacting you? And I think that gets a little bit harder unless you have some kind of like code or offer. But I mean, we saw a considerable amount of pipeline that came direct from either the guest or the guest's warm intro, just like you're describing. So I didn't even need to worry about the sort of more long tail of attribution.

Love it. I mean, yeah, it's hard to beat. They came on the show and then within the trailing 12 months, they're in the pipeline.

Yeah.

And if you ask them, did you know that we existed 12 months ago? And the answer is no. It's pretty clear, the podcast. So I'm, I'm curious, as we wind down, is there anything that, as you've thought through podcasting— because as you referenced, you've hosted quite a few shows— like, is there anything that you wish you had known before you hosted your first episode?

Oh boy. I mean, I think it's interesting. I would say this example that I'm sharing with you kind of was the culmination of a lot of lessons learned, because I had had my own podcast that I had done this at the cybersecurity company. I had actually had another podcast before my own. Like, I think I've hosted 4 podcasts, some more successful than others. So in this one, I was really incorporating a lot of the things I had learned. And now today, actually, Pavilion has 2 podcasts, which I don't host. I'm not involved in as a host at all, but my— they sort of fall within my team. And we're— I'm still learning a lot. Like, we're working with different consultants who are really great, right now, for example, earlier today, I just had a call with a consulting firm that only specializes in YouTube optimization and watching the process they've gone through to understand like how to develop topics and how to build intros that have sizzle to take a podcast from like, yeah, we're going to build you a nice steady listenership of your ICP to like, no, we're going to have you go viral on YouTube. Like I'm learning so much about that, but I think. To, if I had to really boil it down, I think number one, the big lesson learned is you can do this very scrappily. Like you don't, it doesn't need to be a big production if you, if, if you don't want it to be like, but if you want to be, do it seriously, if you want to build a huge following, then yes, there, there are probably investments that you should make in terms of production quality. Um, I think you have to be very clear on your ICP and. Both, both from the standpoint of your guests, if you have an interview style podcast, but even more importantly, from the standpoint of the listener, the biggest mistake I see people make with podcasts is that they don't have enough of like a unifying theme in the content. And the problem with that is that podcasts succeed when people build a habit around them, you know, and I'm sure most people listening, if, cause you're listening to this podcast, you know, like the podcasts that you love, you anticipate them and you know, like, oh, that show. Always goes live Monday at 9 AM. So I know when I do my workout Monday night, I'm going to be listening to it, or when I walk my dogs or what have you. Like that habit is what builds a successful audience. And if you're, if the through line of your content isn't consistent in some respect, people can't build a habit around it. Like if you're covering things that are completely different all the time, each, it's like each episode is going to build its own audience, but that's not what drives momentum and growth. And so, the reason I loved DevOps All-Stars, it was very explicitly about the career. And so, if you were listening to it, you were listening because you either did that as a career or you were interested in it as a career, which is a very niche audience. And that was okay. Our goal wasn't growth. Our goal was like, if we only get in front of 20 people, as long as it's the right 20, then it's totally worth it, right? So, like, you have to understand your goal, understand your audience, understand what they care about, and then like build a show that's going to give them a reason to keep coming back and showing up every week and build that habit. And if you can do that well, then I think you're going to find a lot of success in podcasting.

Couldn't agree more, especially on the just learning on the YouTube front. That is a whole world. So I may end up getting some YouTube experts on to talk through that. But Kathleen, this has been fantastic. So thank you for, for digging so deeply into this. If people want to find out more about you, where would you point them?

Um, you can find me on LinkedIn and just say that you heard about me on the podcast and I'll be sure to accept your connection request. And if you're interested in learning more about Pavilion, you can go to joinpavilion.com.

I love it. Well, again, Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been Scrappy ABM and we'll see you guys in the next one. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Scrappy ABM. If you're looking for more content just like this, I highly recommend you go subscribe subscribe to our newsletter. We release weekly playbooks so you have the actionable ways in which you can start to build an ABM program today. Just go to scrappyabm.com/newsletter to subscribe. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate if you'd leave a 5-star review and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.