Podcasting has become an important marketing tool—it helps establish businesses as knowledgable and insightful, it shares important industry information with key audiences, and offers a deeper opportunity for engagement.
But when Lindsay Tjepkema started a podcast, as the lead marketer for a large enterprise global SaaS business, she couldn’t find the tools she needed to collaborate, gauge metrics, create clips to share in social network streams, and ultimately demonstrate the value and effectiveness of her efforts.
So she left the company to found Casted, a tech startup that offers a full podcasting solution for B2B marketers.
On this edition of UpTech Report, Lindsay discusses how she’s helping companies create compelling content and integrate that content into a full marketing strategy.
More information: https://www.casted.us/
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, she’s a dynamic leader who’s had tremendous success building and growing marketing teams on a local and global level.
After launching a podcast for a global martech SaaS enterprise, Lindsay saw the tremendous opportunity for brands in podcasting, as well as a huge void in the tech landscape with the lack of software to support marketing teams in leveraging these shows as part of their content marketing efforts. This led her to start 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.
Today, with Casted, marketers can access, amplify, and attribute their brand podcasts while engaging their audience, increasing sales alignment, and quantifying podcast value with metrics that matter.
TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER: Below is an AI generated transcript. There could be a few typos but it should be at least 90% accurate. Watch video or listen to the podcast for the full experience!
Lindsay Tjepkema 0:00
No matter what, as you’re as you’re getting started with podcasting, or you already have a show, don’t ever neglect to think about who is your show for, and why are you doing it
Alexander Ferguson 0:17
once you UpTech Report, this is our Applied Tech series. UpTech Report is sponsored by TeraLeap, learn how to leverage the power of video at teraleap.io. Today, my guest I’m joined by Lindsay Tjepkema, who’s based in Indianapolis, Indiana. She’s the CEO of Casted. Welcome, Lindsay. Good to have you on.
Lindsay Tjepkema 0:35
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Alexander Ferguson 0:37
Absolutely. So the your product is an all in one b2b podcasting solution. So those out there if you’re a marketing leader at a mid size or enterprise organization, wanting to get more out of your podcasting efforts, this might be a platform you want to check out. Now, Lindsay, on your site, you state prove your podcasting impact on the bottom line. Tell me more How did the problem appear for you? How did you discover the problem that you set out to solve?
Lindsay Tjepkema 1:05
Well, okay, so I spent 15 years as a marketing leader prior to starting casted I was in b2b marketing, I was on the agency side, I was on the company side and most recently, before jumping in and starting casted. I was at lead marketing for large enterprise global SAS business, the branded content team, and we had this great content engine going. But when we started a podcast, I was vastly underwhelmed with the software that just didn’t exist to serve me or my team in leveraging the power of that, of that channel. In ways that really, we needed to as a team, we didn’t have a way to work together and collaborate the way that we needed to, we didn’t have a way to measure the impact on the business, beyond number of downloads. And so I set out to be the change, I wished to see and create a cascade that takes a show or podcast and says, Okay, get it out into the world. But what else are you gonna do with it? How are you gonna get more return on that effort? And how are you going to have metrics that really matter for a b2b marketer, things like engagement, things like integration with your CRM to understand, like you said, the impact that it’s making on the brand and the bottom line,
Alexander Ferguson 2:19
you saw the problem, that it just there’s nothing out there meeting your needs. And so you’re like, I’m going to build a solution better, which is a great, great founders journey. And speaking of that, definitely stick around for part two of our of our interview, where we’re gonna hear more, but Lindsay’s founding journey, but to give a taste, I’m gonna ask you a tough question. If you knew what you know, now, two years ago, what would you tell yourself? You just like, Man, I wish I had known this when I had started.
Lindsay Tjepkema 2:45
Oh, my goodness, don’t hesitate to jump at all. I think, you know, there was hesitation of leaving my my role as a marketing leader at a big business to start a company. And had I known then what I know now and I think anybody, anytime anybody tells you anything about what it’s going to be like, you don’t know until you’re in it, and it’s been a wild, amazing rocket ship journey. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. So yeah, I would have I would have jumped without hesitating.
Alexander Ferguson 3:15
Love it. Love it. Okay, well, we’ll get more to that when we jump to that part. But coming back to Cass, it helped me understand a bit more about the technology. How is it different from other options out there? Why should people care?
Lindsay Tjepkema 3:26
Sure. So kinda like I said, it was when when I started a podcast as a marketing leader at big business, I was just shocked that there weren’t tools, there wasn’t a platform, there weren’t, there wasn’t a way for myself as a marketing leader and my team, an agency that we worked with, to be able to manage the show, publish the show, schedule the show, use it as part of our comprehensive content marketing strategy, as part of our overall integrated sales and marketing strategy. You get used to tools that are able to serve you, there’s so much out there and martec, that you just kind of assume that there’s going to be a way to work together and to collaborate and to measure what matters for the business. And there just wasn’t there. There’s no shortage of tools and endpoint solutions in and around podcasting. There’s ways to host there’s ways to clip there’s ways to share there’s there’s integrations for social media, there’s pages, like there’s all kinds of things, none of which were made for me or my team. And so cast it really is the first and only b2b solution in and around podcasting that says okay, not only is this made for you b2b marketer to, to manage and get as much out of your show as possible, but really even bigger than that. How can you take a conversation like the one that you and I are having right now, and really make that the center of your content marketing strategy saying like, yes, make it into a show, but how can you get even more return out of the effort that you’re putting into this show right now and take transcription and use that across your your blog posts and leverage the transcript for SEO? value on your show your show pages on your website, pull clips that can be used in social media and and to equip your sales team to have more powerful, more meaningful conversations. And so with my background in marketing, and my co founders background in enterprise, SAS, we just designed the whole thing with b2b marketers in mind, saying, We want to give them a chance to work together in this platform to access that audio content in ways that are meaningful to them to just bring out that content, amplify it across the other channels that they’re already using to integrate with the platforms that they’re using. And again, to measure it in ways that they already are measuring some of their other content and expect to be able to measure their podcast to
Alexander Ferguson 5:41
Okay, podcasts have always been a powerful tool, and it’s kind of risen and fallen and risen again, in the value and importance of it. But it’s interesting fact that most of the solutions are more for one to two millions or consumer based mindset or an individual influencer, kind of feel less a b2b where your audience isn’t going to be millions of people, right? 1000s, or even hundreds, but each of those are so crucial. And how can you leverage that and that sounds like where you really honing in on that b2b solution where Sure, efficiency and like integration is is where the emphasis so tell me, give me a use case of one of your clients if you can say the name of the Great’s of like how they are using it right now.
Lindsay Tjepkema 6:29
Sure. So drift drift is a big, you know, SAS company that I think a lot of us are familiar with, they have last I checked at any given time, somewhere between four or five, six shows, and they’re always looking for new ways to use that content. So they they go out and they create episodes, they they understand their audience, while they understand different segments of their audience well, and create great shows. And then they say, Okay, how are we gonna get a return on the effort that we’re putting into these shows? So they have pages on their website, that they say, Okay, we’re gonna create the show, we use casted to host and syndicated out to the apples and Spotify of the world so that people can find it, if that’s where they choose to listen. But how are we also going to send people to our own website and say, Okay, if you have a chance to share a link to the podcast, or share a link to the episode, send them to your own real estate, get them coming to your own, your own webpage and access that content. They’re when they’re there. There’s key takeaways that are created in Cassatt. So there’s kind of like an outline of the episode. So yes, maybe you come in, and you click on the link that drift shares, and you go and you listen to the entire episode. Or maybe you go in and you just listen to a key takeaway, or a quick clip of the episode that you can easily see kind of an outline view. And maybe you you get so interested, you get hooked, and you you listen to the whole episode, then down below it, there’s related resources. So because they’re taking that content, that audio content and bringing it out and using it in so many other ways, there will able to link to blog posts or videos or upcoming events that are related to that interview. So that the audience member can dig in and, and get even more engaged and dig deeper into that content. So it’s really it’s not even just about the show, it’s about the the entire hub of everything else around it, and how they’re able to amplify those expert voices across many other channels,
Alexander Ferguson 8:23
as a business model is effectively to paying for a monthly yearly subscription. And it’s more of mindset, this is where I can just, instead of having lots of smaller solutions, just this one kind of things I know, guys,
Lindsay Tjepkema 8:35
yeah. Because if you if you think about a marketing team, and how they work, if you especially at mid market or enterprise, like there’s usually a lot of people involved, even if there’s one person that’s solely responsible for the show, along with the rest of their job. There’s typically you know, there’s there’s a VP of Marketing, who wants to understand how it’s performing or CMO. There’s the content manager who maybe as part of their job is doing the podcast, there’s social media, who needs to get and pull clips and promote the show. There’s sales enablement, who wants to know what in the world it’s going to do for the sales team and how the sales team should care about it. There’s email marketing, and newsletters who need to access it to say, Hey, what are we doing? And how do we want to talk to our customers or our mailing list about it. And then there’s an operations, marketing ops who needs to see how it’s performing. And without a centralized place, it’s nearly impossible to access all of that content and all of that information, collectively as a team. On top of that, if you’re lucky enough to have an agency that you’re working with a a producer or any kind of audio engineer that’s producing your show for you, whether it’s internally or externally, how are you kind of communicating with that team of people on the production of the show and to be able to access that content. So this gives those marketing teams a place to collaborate, to work together to get as much value as possible out of the show and to get a bigger return on that investment. not only money but of of time and energy as well.
Alexander Ferguson 9:59
If If you could share one word of wisdom to a marketing leader who’s in the podcasting world having to leverage all this, what would you share?
Lindsay Tjepkema 10:10
Goodness? No matter what, as you’re as you’re getting started with podcasting, or you already have a show, don’t ever neglect to think about who is your show for? And why are you doing it? Right? It’s really easy to say we need to podcast we need to jump right in. It’s something we need to do you know where it’s the cool thing, or we already have a podcast, we need to be what how is it performing? We get more out of it. Before you jump to the that anxiety ridden thought process. Remember who it’s for? Who is your audience? Why are you doing it? What do you hope to get out of it? How are you going to serve those people? And what do you hope that they do? What what is the intended behavior that you hope to get out of your show? That’s something I think is so foundational to any content, but it’s really easy to forget.
Alexander Ferguson 11:01
Those that want to learn more, definitely go to casted.us. Right? Yes, the.us, and you can be able to schedule a demo. Thank you so much for sharing about the platform. Now stick around, though, for part two of our discussion to hear more about her journey of being able to build this really cool platform. Again, everyone UpTech Report is sponsored by TeraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of video turley.io and go to UpTech report.com to be able to get more great interviews. Thanks again, everyone for joining us, and we’ll see you next time. That concludes the audio version of this episode. To see the original and more visit our UpTech Report YouTube channel. If you know a tech company, we should interview you can nominate them at UpTech report.com. Or if you just prefer to listen, make sure you’re subscribed to this series on Apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app.
