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AI is awesome. Marketers are throwing themselves into it, and why not? It’s fast, efficient, easy, and scalable. It’s the path to the apparent dream, turning all businesses into self-running vending machines. But for those selling B2B products, services, and platforms, which are significant purchases, can it earn your prospects’ trust?
I’ll go ahead and answer as fast as AI would: Nope. At least not on its own.
In the often reckless race to AI-automation implementation, many B2B brand marketing operations overlook that while speed and reach are powerful for producing more marketing assets, trust remains the currency that closes B2B deals. Sales simply don’t happen without achieving it.
But trust-building is just that, a build. And it’s consistent exposure to your human voice, your brand vibe, your POV, your expertise that best builds and earns the trust of your customers, prospects, and stakeholders.
That’s the crux of “The Balance,” a new free white paper that breaks down how marketers can tap AI’s muscle to assist and better leverage the human connection that only organic content can deliver. And why the engine of that human content should be a branded podcast.
The modern B2B buyer is suffocating on content
Every day, your prospects are hit with somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 marketing messages.
B2B buyers are exhausted.
Forrester reports 75% of them are taking longer to make decisions due to information overload and “content fatigue.” Translation: even your best, most worthy, most convincing stuff is probably being skimmed or skipped or “saved for later” (never).
It’s time to stop acting like a pop-up ad and start acting like a trusted voice.
Even as bots work harder to fool people, trust is a human game
Generative AI can truly amaze. And maybe it can do everything you need done…provided your brand has no unique point of view, story, perspective, experience, values, “why,” or anything a prospect could grab onto to start feeling some sense of care and connection.
According to Gartner, sales and marketing now influence just 32% of a B2B buyer’s journey. The rest?
It’s internal conversations, peer recommendations, and independent research. That means your authentic content better be out there reaching people and working long before your sales team ever makes contact.
Trust isn’t built with auto-filled first names and hyper-personalised subject lines. (Did you really think your targets aren’t savvy enough to know they’re getting impersonal personalisation?) It’s built with connections made between human beings over time. You can’t scale that with account reps, but…
Why branded podcasts crush it
Still think podcasts are just for true crime junkies and conspiracy theory bros? Think again.
Over 584 million people now listen to podcasts, a number climbing to 650+ million by 2027. But here’s what really matters: podcast listeners pay attention. They stick with content longer. They form a bond with the hosts. And 63% of them have bought something they heard about on a podcast. 63%!
Yes, that’s mostly B2C products sold in host-read ads, but that’s crystal-clear evidence of the trust a show can engender.
If your brand hosts the conversation, your buyers hear your voice, literally. That voice becomes familiar, comfortable, welcomed, tand rusted.
Organic content does what other content can’t
Nobody is asking you to stop doing the blogs, webinars, and social posts you’re already deeply bought into. But branded podcasts:
- Breakthrough. While others fight for clicks on a LinkedIn feed, you’re having a 30-minute, seemingly one-on-one chat that goes directly into someone’s ear.
- Humanise your brand at scale. Each episode, multiple listeners that matter to you, getting a gut feel for who your brand is.
- Leverage the desire to multitask. Listens happen on commutes, during workouts, while walking the dog, doing chores, etc.
- Keep your channels flush with content. Every episode generates material that becomes blogs, social posts, newsletter content, email content…a perpetual engine that populates all your marketing channels.
- Generate leads. Exposing people to your brand by having them on as guests, sharing clips, building an online community of listeners, and driving traffic to the show landing page. Your show is a warm lead machine.
The AI + podcast power couple
This isn’t an either/or situation. Keep using AI how you’re using it or plan to use it. But make sure there’s also an organic trust engine as well, one that AI can help facilitate and take maximum advantage of. AI can be the muscle, while your podcast is the heart.
Get the paper
I wrote “The Balance” because I see too many eyes blazing with AI and automation excitement (or compulsion), and the reputation of humanness and organic content for actually closing B2B sales being forgotten or diminished. I think sales and closing deals is still what matters.
In the paper, I go over:
- The pressing concerns of today’s B2B marketer and how branded podcasts speak to every one of them
- Why buyers buy
- A primer on branded podcasts with examples of brands that’ve been doing it for years
- Stats a-plenty
- The AI/Organic relationship
- Seven different ways branded podcasts serve organic content strategies
- A plan
