Picture the scene with me.
It's a home office.
The desk has been shifted somehow The beloved plant has
been relocated out of shot
Someone's watched three YouTube tutorials about camera angles
they've bookmarked a gimbal they like the look of, maybe even a ring light
They've ordered a color calibration card and it's on its way in the post
They're about to spend their entire Saturday night reconfiguring
everything about their life for the sake of a 10-minute video
The podcast has 24 episodes
And not one of those 24 episodes has ever come up during a sales conversation
The color calibration card is probably not gonna fix anything
Welcome to B2B Podcasting Insights with me, Neal Veglio.
I am the founder and director of Podknows Podcasting, a podcast agency that
helps brands and founders like yourself to get better results from podcasting
I wanna start this episode with a question.
Where are your buyers when they're consuming your content?
Not where you hope they are, where they likely are
So not the version in your imagination where they're seated at a desk, coffee
in hand, notepad and pen listening to your content intently like that's
all they've got to do for the next hour Not that, but the reality.
Where are they really?
What are they doing?
I know where mine are because I've asked them
One came through in a sales call and told me that she'd been
listening while on the treadmill
Another was watching her kid do lengths at a local swimming pool.
And while she was watching her little 'un splashing away, she had her phone and
her notepad and pen by her side, taking notes as she did two jobs at once, being a
parent, being a thoughtful business owner
I want you to sit with that for a second
Imagine it, a chlorine-scented room full of shouty kids
And the occasional whistle blast from a bored, overzealous lifeguard
who's really questioning their career choices at that moment
Despite all that
She was vigorously taking notes in a less than ideal environment because what she
was hearing was compelling her enough to take notes and keep that in memory forever
You can't replicate that with video.
I don't care who you are, I don't care what your expertise in video
is, you have to agree you cannot replicate that environment, that
situation, those results with video
nobody can watch a screen and give it their full attention and their
kid and do the same at the same time
And what we've got here is not a production insight.
It's not a comparison between different kinds of content.
It's a comparison between different kinds of commercial result and intent
The intimacy of audio, which has always been its strongest point, the fact
that it can live with your buyer in their everyday lives and doesn't demand
that they stop what they're doing to consume the thing as video does
That's an advantage
And it's part of the mechanism of the funnel of the content deliverable system
It's how the podcast gets to work for you before you've ever even spoken
with them Video disrupts that mechanism
Not because it's more expensive or because you have to put your face on
screen, which is obviously the common obstacle that people always talk about
when they're resistant to doing video.
That's just a surface level thing
The real fundamental obstacle with doing video over audio only is that it requires
the recipient to be sat stationary visually available as a human being
and present, as well as in the mood to buy
and open to what you're suggesting to them
And your prospect who's on the treadmill just listening to you,
they don't need any of that stuff.
You're there.
You're already in the brain.
You've done 90% of the work
The fact of the matter is in making yourself watchable, you are
risking making yourself missable
Now, you know what I hear every time a B2B founder or director tells me
that they're considering adding video?
And I ask them why.
Their response is usually something along the lines of, " Well, our
audience prefer video." And I come back at them with, "Based on
what?" I ask it every single time
And what I get back is some variation of something that somebody in the
office once said Which itself was based on something somebody saw on LinkedIn
which was probably based on a stat that they'd seen on a website
whose sole job is to get clicks and worry about the facts later
It was probably also sponsored by a platform that sells video ads
Or maybe Dave in marketing brought it up in the most recent general meeting
The thing is, Dave has his own YouTube channel about
pots, and he loves doing that.
That's his hobby.
But Dave is not one of your buyers Your buyers are probably
on treadmills, honestly.
Your buyers are probably at swimming pools because your buyers have lives.
Contrary to popular belief, your buyers are not sitting around all day just
watching television or scouring through YouTube or scrolling on TikTok and
Instagram Reels Your buyers are probably in cars on their way to meetings, or
they're in the gym getting ready to jump in the car on their way to meetings.
And so they're listening
Now, I wanna be clear here because this episode is not an argument
against using video in principle
It's an argument against adding video without a good reason
And there are some genuine good reasons to add video to a podcast
Here's the test to figure out whether or not it's right for you
If you stripped every visual element from your podcast episodes,
meaning have no charts, have no graphs, have nothing to point to
Would a listener still receive 100% of the insight that your podcast is sharing?
I mean, for this show, yeah, the argument is in the content.
There's nothing to see per se.
If you've watched this on YouTube or in Apple Podcast video, you will see that
there is nothing particularly compelling.
We don't really focus on stats and graphs in the visuals unless they come
up and we might as well show them.
But you're hearing me speaking about the stats anyway, so
nothing is lost in the audio mix
If you strip the visual version of this podcast away from
the content, you lose nothing
But say you're doing an episode on AI workflow setup.
Well, that's different
You're navigating an interface, a system, a UI You might be pointing at
a specific setting in a specific menu
And the meaning of that content slightly degrades without the visual.
You've gotta do more work to bring what you're describing
into their visual cortex.
That's very difficult to do without something to show them
In that event, you're not enhancing your podcast with video,
you're actually completing it.
You're bringing the full picture, if you'll excuse the pun Audio
alone in that environment would be com… Audio alone in that situation
would probably not be complete
If you're making any data-led argument, then charts are probably gonna be
really useful, and you probably don't wanna skip out on those.
That doesn't necessarily mean you've gotta shoot full motion video.
You could create those charts graphically using AI and put that in as B-roll.
But you probably are gonna have to give some thought to the visual
component of your podcast if you're using a lot of stats, charts, and data
It's not even a stylistic choice at that point.
It's structural
The honest nuance here is that in those cases, you've probably got a real
fork in the road that you're facing
You can add video or you can change the content
You can move away from teaching by numbers You could lean more into storytelling
You can make the arguments in a way that audio can carry all this on its own
All of these are valid decisions to make.
None of it is a compromise as such.
They're just different shows presented in different ways, which is why
I always laugh when anybody says, "Oh, there are too many podcasts
and there's no room for my new take on this thing." Of course there is,
because most people are doing the other takes, and they're all doing them
The thing that isn't valid is just adding a camera setup to a podcast
because someone told you you should Which brings me to the question
that usually gets skipped entirely
Here's what almost never gets said in any of these video conversations
The reason most B2B podcasters can't tell whether their video podcasts are working
is because the metrics are really hard to track
And on top of that, they have never really decided what successful looks like
There's no hard fast definition for success that's been put in place
Your inbound sales team are not really asking, "How did you find out about us?"
And if they are asking it, they're usually saying, "Oh, was it on a podcast?"
And if they are asking that, they're almost certainly not then
differentiating it by saying, "Oh, did you listen or did you watch?"
The attribution is pretty much invisible
Not because it's impossible to add, but because nobody
gave thought to how to add it
And the reason nobody thought to add it is probably the same reason that the
video decision is being made reactively in the first place The podcast doesn't
have a clearly defined job If you can't answer in one sentence what your podcast
is commercially meant to do, and we did an episode all about this a few months back.
If you wanna go back and listen for the whole topic
If you can't answer that sentence then you can't evaluate
whether any medium is working
Audio, video, billboards on a bus stop
You can only look at the numbers you're seeing, which feel like they should mean
something, and then hope for the best
Adding video to a podcast without a commercial job for that podcast to
do doesn't give you a video podcast
It gives you a more expensive podcast that still doesn't have a job
The color grading card, the color calibration card is still not the answer
Okay, so if you've listened to this and you're still not sure whether to add video
to your podcast or whether that question even matters for your show, good news.
I've built a one-page decision tree for you to follow through
and hopefully get clarity on that.
It'll take you about 90 seconds It's called Should Your B2B Podcast Add Video?
Very simple.
Does what it says on the tin.
Very Ronseal And it routes you to one of three outcomes
Not yet, probably.
No, or yes, but on your terms
And each one comes with a specific reason and a specific next step for you to take.
Nice.
No fence sitting
You'll find it at podknows.co.uk/video-decision.
That's podknows.co.uk/video-decision
And the link's in the episode description wherever you're consuming this
And if you work through this decision tree and you get stuck on the very
first question, which from memory is, what is your podcast's commercial job?
Well, then that's a different conversation that we probably need to have together.
And it's the one that the Podknows diagnostic is built for That link
is in the description as well.
But for the sake of ears jotting down with notepads, podknows.co.uk/diagnostic.
That's P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S.co.uk/diagnostic
If the honest answer to the question What is my podcast commercially meant to do?
results in you answering with, "Eh, we're still kind of figuring that out."
followed by a long pause
I'd point you back to that episode, Is Your Podcast Doing Its Job?
Your video decision sits entirely at the end of that question
Get the question answered first and then come back to this video question
Okay, Founder FAQs.
Every episode I respond to questions from people who have been in touch through
the website, podknows.co.uk/contact
This runs a B2B HR consultancy in Leicester, and Paula's been asked
by her web designer to provide a podcast bio for the show page, and
she's not sure whether it should describe the show or describe her.
Well, Paula, it should actually be both, but in the right order
A biography that starts with, "Hi, I'm Paula and I've spent 15 years in HR,"
is a CV, which is fine for LinkedIn.
Your podcast page is not LinkedIn
Your podcast page is for the person who consumed your content and then
visited the page because something in your show felt relevant to them
And they're wondering whether or not to invest the next 30 minutes of their
life in communicating more deeply with you Lead with the show's commercial job.
We're back to it.
Figure what, figure out what that is.
Not the topics, the job.
Something along the lines of, I don't know, uh, this podcast ex-
exists to help HR directors build the case for headcount decisions
in rooms where finance always wins
There you've talked to a person and you've solved a problem.
That's a reason to listen
Then follow it up with why you specifically are the person that can
help them take action on that problem
You can start talking on this show page about the restructures
you've been involved with, the rooms that you've sat in, the
leaders you've made decisions with.
That's your credibility, and that earns your place with the listener or
viewer once you've established that
So a bio that leads with you is a CV.
A bio that leads with the job that you do, that's a sales tool.
Same podcast, completely different outcomes from it
All right, this episode's quick tip
When you write your episode description, write it like your ideal buyer
has just said, " I'm not sure that this is for me" on a sales call.
The description is not necessarily just a summary of what you covered
in the episode, which is the trap that most people, including
me sometimes, often fall into.
It's not a track listing in a CD It's the reason that this specific person
who's stumbled across your content should click play right now with no delay
For example, in this episode, Neal Veglio discusses video podcasting
and whether B2B brands need to do it
An example for you.
In this episode, Neal Veglio discusses video podcasting and
whether B2B brands need to do it.
That's a summary.
Very few people are gonna press play on that
Something better might be, and I need to make a note of this 'cause
I need to use this, if someone in your business has just told you
that you need to do a video podcast
and you're not sure whether to believe them, this episode is for you.
That's a reason to listen.
That's a reason to watch.
The episode's exactly the same.
I haven't changed the content, but the description is making the difference
on whether or not the semi-interested person is gonna commit to clicking play
Until next time, good luck in your continuing production of your B2B podcast