BRX Pro Tip: Why are B2B Podcasters Quitting?
Stone Payton : And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. So many B2B podcasters, I don’t know what the latest stat is at the time of this recording, but I do know the vast majority of these folks do just a handful of episodes and they quit. And I know more and more of our work is fixing broken B2B podcasts. Why are they quitting?
Lee Kantor: I think the number one reason that they quit is kind of a misaligned expectations. They believe that this is something that is going to be a quick fix, that if I do this thing, I’m going to get a lot of leads, I’m going to get a lot of sales, I’m going to build a big audience. Then I’m going to get sponsors, and then my life’s going to be easy because I’m going to just do this show that I love doing, and then I’m going to get all these people that are going to care about me, and they’re going to kind of dump money on me. And it just doesn’t work that way. The results are never going to come fast enough for those kinds of people, and in a short period of time, their motivation just drops like a rock, and they just don’t have the systems in place in order to execute anything with a motivation that’s kind of plummeting like that.
Lee Kantor: So, podcasting is a longer-term play. It’s not some shortcut to viral content that’s never going to happen. That’s a lottery ticket if that happens.
Lee Kantor: The number two reason I think that B2B podcasters quit, there’s no strategic purpose. Too many of these shows start as content experiments with no real business goal or growth plan. They don’t have a plan. They think that everybody’s doing it, so I’m going to do it too. How hard can it be? It’s not super expensive to buy the equipment to start. But if you don’t have a strategy that connects the podcast to your pipeline, the podcast to your partners, the podcast to revenue, then this effort is going to quickly feel pointless, and you’re going to not prioritize it anymore. So if there’s no real strategic reason for doing it, then you’re going to quit. You have to have a long-term kind of perspective when it comes to this thing.
Lee Kantor: The third thing, third reason they quit, is because they don’t have systems and support in place. It’s just the operational lift of doing a podcast is underestimated by most people. They don’t understand what it takes to book guests, to find guests, to book guests, edit the show to sweeten the audio, to promote the show, to distribute the show.
Lee Kantor: If you don’t have repeatable systems and processes in place, this is going to become overwhelming, and it’s unsustainable pretty quick. I think that really contributes to why they quit after four episodes, because once you’ve done four episodes, you realize what you’ve got in store. And if you’re not getting a result in four episodes, you’re like, why am I doing this? This is a lot of work.
Lee Kantor: And the final thing that I think the reason is that most B2B podcasters quit is a lack of accountability. If there’s no external accountability or a team to share the load, one missed episode becomes two, and soon you’ve stopped altogether. I think that people don’t realize, oh, I’m going to do a show once a month, and then they miss one episode. Well, guess what? Now you’re doing a show once every two months, and two months is a long time between shows. That’s just not going to make sense to continue for any length of time.
Lee Kantor: But if you want to beat the odds, I would recommend getting help. And if you want to really beat the odds, I would recommend partnering with us at Business RadioX because we spend our time fixing a lot of broken B2B podcasts.
