Nurture Today’s Listeners into Tomorrow’s Customers with Brian Grant

Transcript: Episode 10 of Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing

Episode Title: Nurture Today’s Listeners Into Tomorrow’s Customers with Brian Grant 

Brian Grant: When you’re taking testimonials or case studies, you’re getting the perspective of independent individuals within that market to be able to tell their stories. And so you’re connecting yourself to them throughout that. So I think when it comes to stuff like podcasts or really any asset you’re creating, getting those multiple perspectives is really important to establishing the brand.

Clark Buckner: That’s Brian Grant, associate vice president of marketing and communications at Odyssey Behavioral Healthcare. Over his career, he’s helped grow and differentiate B2B technology, e-commerce, and product companies worldwide. Brian joins us to talk about how podcasting can be a key way to nurture client relationships. He also discusses his own experience with implementing live podcasts at events and conferences, and he shares firsthand how podcasting can establish thought leadership in the healthcare industry.

Clark Buckner: Welcome to Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing, the show all about how to build a professional branded podcast that delivers on your business’ goals. I’m your host, Clark Buckner, partner and co-founder here at Relationary. We’re a turnkey podcast production agency for B2B content marketing. We help brands and agencies create engaging content to establish thought leadership, nurture key relationships, and promote events. For a recap and transcript of this episode and to download our free five step guide to building a branded podcast, head on over to relationarymarketing.com/podcast. Now let’s jump in.

Clark Buckner: You have had an excellent career in B2B marketing and healthcare, and you’ve been ahead of the curve with a lot of different tools, podcasting being one of those, just your overall approach to content marketing using podcasting. The way you use video, it’s usually different than your typical just talking head nonsense that you hear and see a lot of competitors doing. I believe you are a thought leader on this because you’re on the front lines doing the work and we’ve been able to work together for several years now. So could you just give me a snapshot of where you’re at today with your career, especially as it relates to B2B marketing?

Brian Grant: So I’ve been in B2B marketing related roles for essentially my entire career. Some roles have had a B2C element to them, but primarily there was always a B2B function within that. So looking back over the career, it’s been in a lot of different industries, healthcare, crafting, sewing, office furniture, alcohol. I have a wide variety of backgrounds. I tend to consider myself a mut, but I would say probably 75%, 80% of what I’ve done has been in the B2B space.

Clark Buckner: And now these last five to 10 years it’s been healthcare. And we’re in Nashville so healthcare is a big part of the fabric here. And how about we talk first about why you wanted to start incorporating podcasting, especially in B2B healthcare. Like what, who does that?

Brian Grant: Healthcare is a relationship-based industry. You get physicians, they have to walk into a patient that they’re seeing and they have to establish a relationship within the first few seconds of walking in. That attitude I think permeates the industry. And so when you’re selling to people who are used to having a very relationship-based interactions with people, you want to build that interaction with them long term. So a lot of that is how do you educate them? How do you give them knowledge or a different opinion or a different perspective on something? How do you help them in their role or as they’re researching, give them information or assets that can really help guide them in some way so that when they get to, I’m at the point that I want to replace this service, this product, this whatever it is, they already have you at the top of mind because you’ve already given them something of value.

Clark Buckner: When you think of the relationship nurturing, what an interesting way to use podcasting. I love how you’ve seen that from the beginning. And that might be a good transition to start talking about some of the different ways you can use podcasting and use this relationship nurturing vehicle to perhaps nurture someone in the sales process. So whatever comes to mind first, what do you want to start off with of just some of the ways we’ve been using podcasting? And I think some of them are surprising, but let’s just start off with what are some of the interesting ways we’ve been using it that you found valuable?

Brian Grant: So taking a step back, when you look at how do people take in information and learn things, people learn in different ways. There’s different learning styles. Some are by you have to do something with your hands to learn it. Some people like to read, some people like to watch things, some people like to listen to things. That’s how they tend to take in their information. So from a pure nurturing relationship standpoint, when it comes to marketing, you want to make sure that the information you have to share is available in a variety of modalities because someone may really like videos and reading case studies, but they don’t like podcasts. Or they really love podcasts and they like looking at websites. And so you want to make sure your information is available to them in the same way.

Clark Buckner: Very visual.

Brian Grant: So I always say, take your core messages that you want to talk about and put that into different modality. So take it and use it as a podcast, as a video, as a written document, put it on a website, have it in a story that someone is telling to someone in a presentation. Take that piece of information or that idea that you want to make sure is shared and make sure it’s available to people in the ways that they’re naturally wanting to take that information in. And podcasting is a key one of those. We’ll take those podcasts as well and we’ll also create different modalities off of that content. So we’ll put it online, we’ll make sure it’s available through different ways to subscribe to be able to listen, but we’ll transcribe it so it’s found through Google or from people who want to dive into it a little bit more. We’ll create blog posts that kind of summarize it and link back to it. We’ll create social posts that are linking back to it.

Brian Grant: So we’ll definitely use that. And we’ll take audio pull-quotes, part of that storyline, and use that into written case studies or other written documents where we’re taking those interviews and being able to repurpose them in different ways. So it’s a great way to capture an interview and then be able to take that content and leverage it in a lot of different ways so you can still share that person’s story through the modality that your recipients most want to receive that information. I’ll listen to them in the car, I’ll listen to them as I’m washing dishes, I’ll listen to them as I’m walking on a treadmill. So there’s ways that where I can’t read something either because it’s very dangerous and against the law, or because I would get the paper completely drenched, listening to something makes a lot more sense for me.

Brian Grant: So podcast has been part of that for me. So looking at just kind of the marketer’s toolbox, making sure you have things like podcasts available because some people really like that is really important to start out with. Ways that we’ve used that either at my current organization or at previous ones is one of the things to establish your organization is that you are a leader in what that industry is. So there’s a couple ways to do that. One of them is to leverage your internal knowledge base. So you have a lot of SMEs internally. You have a lot of leaders that have a very robust amount of history and knowledge about the industry that they’re in. You want to promote that. One of the easiest ways to do that is to have conversations with them. Podcasting is a way that we’ve used that is to share internal knowledge about a particular topic that we’re doing.

Brian Grant: The other way is to make sure that the brand is connected to the industry and to the people that are within that industry. So doing things like interviews at events or interviews when you’re taking testimonials or case studies, you’re getting the perspective of independent individuals within that market to be able to tell their stories. And so you’re connecting yourself to them throughout that. So I think when it comes to stuff like podcasts or really any asset you’re creating, getting those multiple perspectives is really important to establishing the brand.

Clark Buckner: I like how you’re talking about it can still be entertaining or interesting to listen to, but they’re trying to get to the next level. They’re trying to solve a problem in their industry, they’re trying to make their boss know that they have the expertise they need, or they’re trying to move something forward in their organization, whatever, it has a little bit of a different purpose. And I think all the reasons we love normal podcasts, the typical podcasts, when you think of stuff like that, that can still work with businesses.

Brian Grant: Yeah, I tend to think of it from a value-based marketing approach. It’s usually how I look at marketing overall. Is what we’re producing valuable to the recipients of it? What you don’t want to do is put something into the market that’s just fluff, it’s garbage, it’s junk because then people start to associate the brand with that. So being able to provide something of value to a physician or a clinician or someone in the business office or financial or C-suite is they have very different perspectives on what’s valuable to them. So creating content that is, in marketing you call those personas, is how you categorize individuals into buckets that you want to create content for, but making sure you have content that is going to be applicable to them. So take your core message, you look at the different modalities, you also want to look at the personas you’re talking to and make sure that that information is tailored to them.

Clark Buckner: That’s a really good way to think about it. And the sales side of things. Let’s kind of shift that way now because when you have so many touchpoints, you have so many people. You want to use every opportunity you have to make good touchpoints, simply put. So what are some of the ways that you’ve seen podcasts as an asset that sales teams can use to nurture that relationship to hopefully move the ball forward to make some big sales?

Brian Grant: So within the sales process, we try to also map content to where someone is in the sales process. At the beginning, for instance, it’s more about who the company is, what are the products you have? What do they do? Making sure that this company is a fit to what they’re looking for. As you get further within the sales process, people start looking for more life after purchase. For an IT system, that’s very important because they want to know what have customers done with that once they’ve bought that? Have they had good experiences? How have they used it? What has it done for them? So you get more into case studies and testimonials that people are interested in the further within the sales cycle you go.

Brian Grant: So podcasts we’ve used as part of our case study testimonial side to record different viewpoints from people within the different facilities sharing their perspectives of that story that we’re trying to tell because you then start hitting different personas across the organization based on who you have recording that conversation with. So as people are looking for information, they’ll go, “Oh, I’m a clinician. This is from a clinician. This is something I want to listen to.” Or someone that’s in finance will hear from someone in finance and go, “This is great. This relates directly to me.”

Brian Grant: So it’s helpful to be able to get a broad perspective within the organization from different viewpoints, different use cases within it within a single case study. Something that’s much harder to do in a shorter format like video or within a written document because it would take up a phenomenal amount of space or the video would become increasingly long that no one would ever watch it. But this way, people can hone in a bit more through podcast into someone who’s directly related to them.

Clark Buckner: Yes. And people love to be asked to be interviewed. It’s one of the touchpoints you get with that person. And when they have a great experience being interviewed, you mentioned social posts, they’re going to want to share that. It feels good to be on LinkedIn and share like, hey, someone cared enough to hear my perspective and that’s a nice plug for them. So they share it. Now, their audience, typically their peers, other decision makers, they see that and it’s easily shared content.

Brian Grant: And this is another way that we’ve really used podcast is through things that we’ve done at events. Events have been very important to us. So in the show booths that we have, and we podcast probably at about a dozen plus events a year now, it’s been something that has been tremendously successful for us. From a core usage standpoint, we’ll set up the podcasting station within the booth. We’ll have proactive outreach that will be leading up to it either through our sales team or account teams. They’re always looking for prospects or customers or the best people to get there because it’s a great touchpoint for them within the booth. It’s also something that we look at from just the general attendees. We try to look for people who are leaders within their specific area, or when it comes to a particular association, we’ll try to get that membership base represented there as well because it’s important to hear the different perspectives within the markets, even if they aren’t directly applicable to what you happen to be selling or providing to that market.

Brian Grant: So it’s been a great thing that we’ve done because when someone’s in the chair and they’re talking, they feel good about themselves. People want to be recognized as someone whose opinion or perspective matters. So when they come out of having a conversation, they’re feeling great. They have a high level of confidence, they’re feeling really positive. And so we always then have someone from our booth interact with them immediately following that. So whether it’s just a, hey, thanks so much for being here, for sharing your perspective. But a lot of times they want to know more about the company. What does the company do?

Clark Buckner: The guest.

Brian Grant: The guest, yes.

Clark Buckner: And after they get up here, they feel great. What I’m hearing from you is what we have seen over and over again are the guests will often become super interested. It’s just like, I guess, being at a social event or a party or something. If you lead by just telling someone all about yourself, they’re not going to care.

Brian Grant: People tend to show up a little bit early before the podcast. So there’s some interaction we’ll have with them as they’re waiting for their turn. They’ll be in the chair talking for 15, 20 minutes and they’ll usually want to hang out and talk for a little bit afterwards. So it ends up being really easy to have someone who’s a customer or a prospect within your booth for about 45 minutes without having to really try very hard. They’re generally interested to be there. And that’s a lot more time than you typically have with someone within a booth.

Brian Grant: Podcasting for us at events has been a really positive experience from being able to partner with the different organizations that we work with in a very different way. So from a partnership standpoint, this has been great for us as well. We tend to see these partners or these groups at different shows that we’re at within any industry. It tends to be a pretty small world, so you tend to run into the same individuals on a pretty regular cadence. And our customers and our prospects are interested in hearing from them as well.

Brian Grant: So we love getting our partners within the podcasting seat to be able to talk about what are they seeing in their area and being able to share things that they know are going to be going out to customers, to prospects, to people that they also work with in a different way and be able to share their stories or their vision or where the industry is going. It’s something that we’ve had a lot of success with for NRHA-

Clark Buckner: And that stands for?

Brian Grant: Which is the National Rural Health Association. They work with rural hospitals across the nation. We’ve been recording podcasts with them at their shows for the last year. And coming up is one of the first shows that we’ve previously recorded at in a previous year. And working with them, they were interested in taking some of those podcasts that were done, and this is with their membership base. So this is with people who are attending these shows, who are important members for them and using those podcasts as teasers for people wanting to come to that particular conference. So they’re using it as a lead up for it. They’re seeing the value in those conversations and they want to make sure that their conferences are well-attended. And this is becoming important assets for them to share stories and perspectives from their member base to help them get more people there.

Clark Buckner: I remember when you called me to tell me that you and your team you had just made this partnership and it’s great that they get it, that they see the value. It’s an easy thing for them. Conferences want attendance, they want to generate buzz. And this is content that they can do that with. And conferences oftentimes will want to either partner or maybe do trades to give you access to additional people because it’s a win-win-win. So when you get access to their list and they’re sharing, and it’s coming from them, a group that’s already earned that trust with their membership base and they transfer that trust over to you, your organization, people see it. And we have that physical presence at the conference, but we have our little booth set up and it looks fun and it’s different. People walk up like, “What is this?” They see the interview happening in the moment, maybe they ask one of the sales guys like, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” They create a dialogue. It’s really fun.

Brian Grant: The last conference we did with them was it had shorter exhibition hours, but they had more educational sessions that went into more days following that. We got a lot of requests from people who were genuinely disappointed that we weren’t there longer. They’re like, “I missed being able to come and sit down with you and I had really wanted to do that.”

Clark Buckner: We were booked out.

Brian Grant: So I think from people who are members and for the associations themselves sharing perspective, sharing stories, sharing how the people who are there see the world and what they’re experiencing is something that is really important to be shared and something that people really want to learn from or want to listen to. This has been something that has been a good vehicle for being able to share those stories with a much broader audience than they would normally be able to share that with.

Clark Buckner: It’s a great way to put it. You want to get in front of these attendees. Clearly, that’s where you’re showing up. And these conferences too exhibit it. It’s an investment. They’re not cheap. You got to spend money to even be there. And so you layer on something like this and you can magnify how deep you can go into the visibility of a conference. This is an easy non-threatening way to do that.

Brian Grant: And then you see the people who were recorded, they start sharing that with their networks or their company start sharing it with their networks. And I think it’s something people are proud of. And so it’s a lot of marketing that is done that happens to include your company’s name without the focus being on the company. So coming from a trusted source is going to make more people want to listen to it and then consequently and hopefully want to go and find out well, who is this company who was doing this anyways? Why were they in that booth? So I think the opportunities to get traffic from someone who is a trusted source talking to their network is a lot more powerful than if we as a brand were the only ones sharing that information.

Clark Buckner: Man, I just like going deeper and deeper of all the reasons we love this. So you get traffic online and then you get the foot traffic in the booth, it creates a buzz in the booth. And you told me before like when you’ve compared a booth before a podcast lounge gets popped up in it versus what it looks like now. It feels different.

Brian Grant: I think it is different. Having something going on, whether it’s podcasting or videos or something where things are being recorded and there’s activity, people notice that as they walk by. It’s not just your typical booth with people standing around, there’s activities happening in it. And so I think people are naturally curious as to what is going on there and just getting the attention as they walk by for a little bit longer is important when there’s so many companies and booths and brands represented at any of these conferences.

Clark Buckner: And we’re still in the time where healthcare as an industry seems to be pretty slow at times with being innovative, especially with marketing and all that. And I can count on one hand how many other booths are doing something similar to what we’re doing. And that’s a small percentage out of thousands of companies that are trying to show up and be different.

Brian Grant: Getting visibility in a highly crowded market is always going to be tough. You’re trying to create your niche, you’re trying to make sure that the people who need to know about you recognize who you are and know what you do. And I think the more conversations you have with the people that you want to talk to is really important. And I think podcasting has been a great way for us to do that.

Clark Buckner: Man, what a great way to wrap this up. Brian, I’m just so thankful for you, your team. We love working with your whole crew, Shannon, everybody. They’re just an amazing group. And we just love being on the road with you all and being on this journey with you. And we’re pioneering some really interesting things together. So thank you for being a great client, friend, and a podcast pal. I can say that.

Brian Grant: Absolutely.

Clark Buckner: Because now we’ve been on the booth. We’ve done this. This is great, man. This is going to be some really great content that we’re excited to put out there in the world.

Brian Grant: And we’re looking forward to all the years to come of doing this.

Clark Buckner: Thanks for listening to Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing. We’re a turnkey podcast production agency for content marketing. And we’d love to hear from you. For a recap and transcript of this episode and to download our free five step guide to building a branded podcast, visit relationarymarketing.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this content, please follow, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.

Clark Buckner: Are you hungry for more helpful tips on how to build a branded podcast? Stay on the lookout because season two of Brandcasting is coming soon. We’ve got a lot in store, including how to use podcasts as part of live events like conferences, trade shows, and special events, all with the goal to promote brand awareness, connect with new customers, and amplify the experience for attendees.

Clark Buckner: Brandcasting is a production of Relationary Marketing. This episode was produced by Simon Mack and executive producers, me, Clark Buckner, and Chuck Bryant with editing by Dylan Carrow, music by Jess Grommet, and additional production support provided by Anthony Luciani, AJ Meyers, Riley Wallace, and Jasmine Meriweather.