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It feels like every B2B SaaS company has a podcast. We dug into the data to find out.

Just over a quarter (26%) of companies in our 2K+ B2B Growth Index run a podcast. In today's episode we'll breakdown the latest B2B podcast trends and highlight interesting approaches with relevant examples from high-growth SaaS companies. Check out my summary on LinkedIn.

Want to check our work? You can easily filter by Content & Community signals in our free B2B Growth Index.

Podcasting popularity vs. other marketing programs

On a macro level, podcasting competition pales in comparison to blogging. For perspective, there are 600M blogs (~2.5B posts) and just over 4 million podcasts (~70M episodes) worldwide.

But that alone isn’t a good reason to start a podcast.

Are there other, less saturated mediums with higher upside? According to our data, podcasting is on par with other content marketing activities in popularity. Nearly the same number of companies from our B2B SaaS index leverage communities communities (48%) events (47%) and webinars (51%) in their marketing motion.

More intriguing, just 47% of the 4M podcasts in existence have published more than three episodes and less than a million (720K) have produced more than 10. Considering how many give up early, supply and demand says there’s still ample upside.

Supply saw a massive uptick two years ago. Nearly everyone was starting a podcast in 2020, but that momentum (potentially spurred by the unique environment created by COVID) seems to have died down. The question is whether that’s from creator fatigue, listener fatigue, or SaaS-wide budget cuts.

On the demand side, jury’s still out. While US podcasting listening has increased every year, percent of the population listening every month actually decreased last year.

When B2B SaaS companies introduce podcasts

The average age of a B2B SaaS company with a podcast is 10 (founded in 2013) and 38% of companies started between 2010 and 2015 have a podcast, the most of any group we track.

Established companies (301 to 1K employees) are most likely to have a podcast compared to other stages, though the growth stage (100 to 300 employees) is a close second and the median employee size of B2B SaaS companies with podcasts is 199.

Of course, marketing resources matter, too. The average B2B SaaS company with a podcast has 31 marketers. However, that number’s heavily skewed by large companies in our dataset. 13 marketers is the median.

We thumbed through the 538 SaaS companies with podcasts than filtered by those with positive growth signals. A few unique approaches stood out:

The Influencer Approach

Riverside

Riverside knows its audience and the influencers in its space. Not only does their Hit Publish Podcast feature well-known marketers and SaaS personalities like Alex Lieberman and Amanda Navidad, they’ve also done a nice job of sponsoring influencer podcasts like Dave Gerhart’s Exit Five and Erin Balsa’s Notorious Thought Leader to further leverage those spheres of influence. Is there a better way to sell podcasting software than promoting it using… podcasts?

• Scratchpad (we mentioned their podcast approach earlier) co-hosts Beyond Quota with possibly the biggest (and definitely boldest) personality in B2B Sales, Corporate Bro.
• Revenue.io went big with their podcast, doubling down on their niche with the RevOps Podcast and partnering with 2X award-winning sales author Andy Paul, ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts.

The Network Approach

Klue

Why launch one podcast when you can launch 5 (and support 13 others)? Klue started with their own internally-hosted show, The Competitive Enablement Show, then partnered with expert influencers in the space to create The Compete Network. Bonus Points: Their dedicated landing page is easy to navigate and separate from their product brand, elevating the perceived quality.
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• ProfitWell (recently acquired by Paddle) took a similar approach with Recur Media. Along with their actionable pillar show, Pricing Page Teardown, they added Boxed Out, Protect the Hustle, DTC Priced Right, RevOps and Hops, Retention Talk, Tradeoffs, and Verticals, catering to several business models and decision makers.

The Build-In-Public Approach

37Signals

They may not have been the first, but 37Signals is certainly the first that come to mind when we think about B2B SaaS podcast hosts that speak from their own experiences rather than rely on guest interviews. It also aligns with their overall philosophy on work.

• Metadata’s Demand Gen U follows a similar mold. Their two marketing leaders co-host every episodes and they address marketing challenges based on their own careers and experiences. It humanizes the show and increases credibility.

Honorable Mentions

​Hashicorp, Hashicast + Resource Center​

Why can’t your content double as a sales enablement resource? Hashicorp's content resource page is what grabbed our attention. It includes options to filter by Hashicorp product, infrastructure provider, content type (including podcast) and more. Imagine if your sales team could search for content specifically related to a prospect’s need?

​Recorded Future, Click Here​

It’s one thing to say you want to build a media company inside your SaaS business. It’s another thing to hire NYT journalists to make that vision a reality. The Record is a media entity that covers real cybercrime stories via articles and podcast episodes. Former NPR Investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston hosts the Click Here Podcast, “a journey behind-the-scenes of some of today’s biggest cyber and intelligence news.”

​1password, Random But Memorable​

Given the product, we’d give 1password points for the name alone, Random But Memorable. Unlike many B2B podcasts, it’s also very listenable. It feels more like a casual conversation, which enforces 1password's overall brand and expands reach potential.

​PandaDoc, The Customer Engagement Lab​

In-person interviews. Creative host. This is the closest we’ve seen a B2B company get to a true talk show. The production is just as good as the top-shelf consumer podcasts and the big-network late night shows out there.

Do podcasts actually drive business growth?
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​The examples above showed one or more positive growth signals (that's how we picked our highlights), but trying to find causation between a particular podcasting strategy and company success proved to be a fools errand.

With that, we're looking for GTM Leaders who have cracked this and want to share their frameworks.

Are you running a podcast in B2B? Is it working? Let us know how you measure impact for your B2B SaaS podcast. We'd love to hear from you and highlight your company next time we cover this topic. Reply or join the conversation on LinkedIn.

I read all replies.

Best,

Adam & Camille

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