Should Every B2B Brand Start a Podcast? Here's What We Learned Spending $20k on Ours

Sometimes, the best ideas are the ones that make your CEO look at you like you've lost your mind. 

I knew before my first day at Vector that we needed a video-first content strategy. It's the easiest way to get mindshare, build trust, and let people see the humans behind a company. Plus, the repurposing possibilities are endless. Knowing our audience, I felt a podcast was the right bet.

But not just any podcast recorded on Zoom. It needed to be as unique as the Vector brand. It had to stop the scroll. That meant recorded on-site, authenticity off the charts, around topics that had very little to do with our actual product.

Cue Josh internally freaking out.

What I didn't expect was the complete creative meltdown that happened nine days before we were supposed to start recording. What we learned about the process, measurement, and when to trust your gut over your spreadsheet completely changed how I think about bold marketing investments.

What you’ll learn:

• How we pivoted from a product-focused show to something actually worth listening to 
• Why trying to measure everything will kill your best marketing ideas 
• How to convince your CEO to invest in brand-building when you can't promise direct ROI 
• How to use genAI as a brainstorming buddy
• What is actually worth measuring with a podcast, including the "repurposing multiplier"

TOP THREE TAKEAWAYS

Takeaway 1: It’s never too late to pivot

I spent weeks crafting what I thought was the perfect podcast concept. We called it "Funnel Cake" (still love that title), a series about the old way versus the new way of marketing. Each episode would tackle a different pillar of modern B2B marketing—things like intent, personalization, and micro-audiences. 

It was smart. It was strategic. It was also a giant infomercial for Vector.

Every time Josh and I sat down to outline episodes, they kept coming off as a hard sell, even though we were consciously trying to avoid that. The content was fine, but it felt preachy, and not like us. 

And if we wouldn't listen to our own podcast, why would anyone else?

Nine days before we were supposed to start recording, I had to face the music. I went to Josh, pulled the plug, and asked for 24 hours to come up with something better. The panic was real—we'd already invested in the Creator House, booked travel, and built up internal excitement. But sometimes the best marketing decision is admitting when something isn't working, even when you're already invested.

The breakthrough came when I stepped away and asked myself: what do Josh and I actually talk about on a daily basis? It's not polished marketing theory. It's the messy, real stuff—should we hire an agency? How can we get Josh posting on LinkedIn more regularly? Should we favor free trial or demo booking CTAs on our site?

These are the conversations that actually matter, the ones that people actually want to hear, and the ones that will build trust with our audience rather than pitch slap them.

Takeaway 2: Your repurposed content should outperform the original

Here's something many marketers get backwards: they think the main content piece—the full podcast episode, the full research report, the full webinar—is the hero, and everything else is just supporting material. 

But I've learned that your repurposed pieces actually work harder than the original. And it’s something worth measuring.

I call it the "repurposing multiplier,” the difference in engagement between your shorter, derivative pieces of content meant to pull people in and your original piece of content.

The best programs I've seen get ~120x more engagement on repurposed content than the original. That's not a typo—one hundred and twenty times more.

Let’s take episode 1 of This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast, for example.

This completely changes how you view your pillar content. Your podcast, research report, webinar, whatever isn't just that singular thing—it's powering your organic social, your paid ads, your email newsletter, your LinkedIn thought leadership, your blog, and more. When you frame it this way to your CEO, suddenly that investment starts checking a lot more boxes.

Takeaway 3: Anecdotal data is still data

There's this CEO tendency to want attribution for everything. I get it—we've all been burned by marketing investments that didn't work out. But here's what I've learned: so much of a brand’s success comes from things we cannot measure. Vector would be a very different (and more boring) company if we only invested in things we could track directly.

That doesn't mean we're flying blind. For things like the podcast, we're looking for signals: Are people mentioning the podcast in sales calls? Are we seeing good engagement on LinkedIn? Are downloads trending up? Are people sharing episodes and saying "this is my new favorite podcast"? This kind of qualitative feedback tells you way more than trying to trace every listener back to a closed deal.

How should you share these signals? Vector has a Slack channel where we share general love for the company—not just marketing wins, but overall brand affinity. Screenshots of LinkedIn posts, text messages from colleagues, kudos from other marketers admiring our content… those messages are often the most valuable measurement because they capture something you literally cannot track: people falling in love with what you're building.

But please, for the love of everything holy, download this podcast every time it comes out. My job depends on it. K thx bye.

Catch the full episode (and subscribe to This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast!) on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.