Hatch

Unlimited podcast editing and strategy for B2B companies at one flat-rate per month. Just upload your episode, and we'll take care of the rest.

www.hatch.fm

Founder

Lemonpie

Lemonpie is a podcast PR agency that helps brands like Freshbooks, HubSpot, and Levels talk to their target audience on podcasts they love. 

We get entrepreneurs, CEO’s, and executives booked as guests on podcasts that reach their ideal customers so they can grow their audience, generate qualified leads, drive revenue, and be seen as market leaders.

Podcast listeners are the most engaged of any audience online. Now is the best time to start.

Let’s chat! → lemonpie.fm.

Self-Employed

I worked with many successful podcasters like: 

- 4x #1 NYT Bestselling Author Tim Ferriss (Host of The Tim Ferriss Show ~ 700M downloads), 
- Jason Calacanis (Angel Investor, Founder, and Host of This Week in Startups) 
- Jerry Colonna (CEO Coach and Host of The Reboot Podcast)

Podcast Consultant & Strategist

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Provided risk-based supervision of National Banks and Thrifts ranging from $40 million to $15 billion in asset size.

Associate National Bank Examiner

Business is fun. I don't ever plan to ever retire and sit on a beach. Founder of Lemonpie & Hatch - Podcast PR & Production for B2B companies.

I built Hatch to help B2B companies get in front of the 100 million+ people who listen to podcasts every month.

Hatch is a flat-rate podcast production subscription for B2B marketing teams. You don't just need a podcast that looks and sounds good. You need one that works. Hatch helps you achieve both.

Podcast listeners are the most engaged of any audience online. Now is the best time to start.

This is a controversial marketing strategy to some, and I'm not sure why.

If you can get people to consume more of your content before they even have a need to purchase from you, you are going to have an easier time closing them as a customer when they do eventually have that need.

Content = future demand

Erik Jacobson

CMOs: "podcasting isn't trackable."

Also CMOs: "how much to sponsor that event?"

The B2B companies that win in the future will be the ones where customers can name people that work there.

We are averaging 20 new sales calls per month at the moment, and 100% of them hear about Hatch for the first time in Dark Social channels like:

• LinkedIn organic
• In podcasts
• In digital communities like Exit Five
• Direct word-of-mouth (in company slack channels, zoom calls, text messages, 1-to-1 emails)

And all of these inbound leads show up in our analytics as “Google/Organic” or “Direct”.

If we did not ask each customer “How did you hear about us?” we literally would not have the correct information about where and how they found us, and what type of marketing we’re doing that is actually working.

But what’s interesting is that even our self-reported “How did you hear about us?” form field does not always give perfect data.

Yesterday I was on a sales call and the person I was talking to told me they heard about us from a recommendation in the Pavilion community.

This is not an uncommon type of thing to hear, but what was interesting is even our self-reported attribution didn't have it correct, which was answered as "Search".

𝗔 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀:

𝟭) 𝗗𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀

In 2024, B2B buyers get information on products and vendors in tons of places that do not show “intent” and do not get tracked by attribution software.

• Social Networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)
• Content Platforms (Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)
• Digital Communities (Groups in Circle, Slack, Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, etc.)
• 1-to-1 Word of Mouth (DMs, text messages, Zoom calls, etc.)
• Events & Meetups (Digital and In-Person)

B2B buyers did not have access to or did not use most of those things 10 years ago, but these are the dominant places they discover and research products and vendors today.

You need people in those Dark Social channels and places to be talking about your company, and the best way to do that is to create content for it. 

Create social posts, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. that are all meant to be consumed on the platform you are posting it, that share information that can help inform or educate your buyers on something they can use even if they never work with you, and that does not ask for a click / conversion.

𝟮) 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹.

If we did not ask every single inbound lead on the demo request form “Where did you hear about us?” (as well as us asking again during the sales call), we would think Google search should be our strategy right now, but we know that exactly 0% of our leads actually discover us initially from Google search.

You need to pair quantitative attribution with qualitative. It’s really as simple as asking customers what made them choose you. There are many many ways to do that both pre and post purchase, but without it you might think you should not do what will likely become one of the top 3 ways customers find out about you.

Over the last 7 years, I’ve talked with many companies who are spending $100k+ per month on paid search or lead gen ads, but at the same time say $5k per month to help them create content on platforms their buyers are spending all of their time on is out of their budget.

Most companies are still completely ignoring marketing channels that require more trust and intuition, and are not easily attributable via a dashboard report in one click. 

The marketing channels that give you attributable ROI reporting are the most competitive places to do marketing. 

A Dark Social content strategy is one of the least competitive places to do your marketing.

With things like organic content creation designed for Dark Social channels, you can reach a very targeted audience of your buyers, with huge ROI (in comparison to the investment needed), low competition, and in a way that meets them in the way and the places they naturally consume information on the internet.

But the tradeoff is you can’t get the same guaranteed immediate “scale"of impressions as quickly.

Dark Social content works (this is proven), but it’s rarely ever predictable and takes time.

So most companies continue to throw money at Google, Facebook, lead gen ads on LinkedIn, etc. where they are all competing with each other and driving prices up and returns down.

This leaves the “more trust and intuition” channels with much much less competition, and a place where the most savvy marketers and companies can make investments in and win.

I’ve always believed one of the best business strategies you can do is be early, but not too early.

I was early to podcasting in 2016, but not too early that a company in the space was not viable. 

I was early to building a distributed remote team of the best talent all over the world in 2018, but not too early to where companies were not willing to work with us because of our team model.

I was early to B2B creator partnerships in 2020, but not too early to where there really weren’t any/many B2B creators to actually partner with. 

Being early to those things have benefited Hatch in a massive way.

Right now, I believe creating content for Dark Social is in that exact same perfect spot.

It’s still early, but not too early. 

You have the opportunity to get the upside of being early (not an extreme amount of competition, lower differentiation and execution needed to win, etc.), while at the same time the strategy has been proven so you aren’t actually taking that big of risk (just taking execution risk, which is the same for any marketing strategy).

If you’re not allocating resources to Dark Social content, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to make an impact with your buyers in the way they are researching and discovering products and vendors in 2024.

Going forward, the companies who win their category will be the ones who produce great content that gets seen, shared, and subscribed to, and almost all of that is happening in Dark Social channels.

Please remember that there is no “right” way to do anything in marketing.

Every marketing "best practice" was originally created from someone NOT following a best practice.

There’s no right way to podcast.

There’s no right way to create content on social.

There’s no right way to build a YouTube channel.

There’s no right way to blog.

There’s no right way to publish a newsletter.

There’s no right way to run a community.

There’s no right way to do events.

There’s no “this-will-work-every-time” right way to do anything in marketing.

If only it were that easy.

Respect to the marketers who innovate, experiment, and push for new angles and approaches, even if it goes against what the crowd says is the "right" way to do it.

It might just lead to you being the one discovering the next “best practice”.

-------------

PS - Following “best practices” that were created 5-10 years ago means you are competing with everyone else. You usually have to win by outspending or out executing head-to-head. Both of which are doing marketing on hard mode. 

Being the one innovating creates the highest ROI potential because if you discover something that works well, you are literally one of the few companies in the world doing it (and potentially the only one doing it).

And discovering or being an early adopter of a new marketing strategy always has the biggest ROI potential due to the lack of competition.

PPS - Full disclosure, I am not an artist so did my best here. You’d think I’d be better given the 573 pictures I draw with my daughters each week, but nope.

There are not enough podcasts in B2B categories. Not even close.

Btw - I'm being dead serious.

Here's 3 specific ways I've gotten lucky while building Hatch:

1) Being early to the podcast wave (became obsessed in 2011). 

2) Getting a $10k freelance deal with Tim Ferriss in 2015 as the first dollars I ever made on my own after quitting my job, which showed me I was on the right path. 

3) Becoming friends with Dave Gerhardt and Chris Walker. 

Here’s the guaranteed formula I use to increase my luck in business:

1) The longer you work on something, the luckier you will get.

2) The harder you work on something, the luckier you will get.

3) The more you are willing to do for free with no expectations, the luckier you will get. 

Everyone who is successful has had luck. 

Don't sit around hoping it will find you.

Here's how I created luck in each of those 3 examples above:

1) I listened to 2,000+ business podcasts from 2011 - 2014. Complete obsession with learning, and finding my angle and edge. 

2) I put in 40 hours of work prior to reaching out to Tim Ferriss to make sure what I sent him was quality and stood out enough to get my shot. 

3) I offered to do very specific free work no strings attached.

—-

I have also learned that one of the best ways to create luck in 2024 is to create content. 

Content increases your surface area for serendipity, and is a magnet for luck. 

I’m putting in the reps daily on content in large part for that reason.

The day in the life of a B2B SaaS founder who has done a Founder-Led content strategy for the last 180 days...

You wake up and commute to your interview. No traffic or planes. Just 30 seconds to your home office studio.

You are interviewed for 45 minutes by a thought leader in your industry who has a podcast that 1,000 of your ideal customers listen to. 

You teach common problems you see in the industry, contrarian points of view, and lessons you’ve learned (many of which you learned the hard way through failure).

You teach instead of “selling” because you know the best way to sell is through being seen as the expert in your industry.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗴𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝟰 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 (𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗖𝗣) 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀:

• Podcast feed on Spotify and Apple podcasts (1,000 active listeners)
• YouTube channel (150 views per episode)
• Newsletter (5,000 subscribers)
• Short-form video clips the host will share on their LinkedIn (10,000 followers) and you can share on yours

This is the 24th podcast appearance you’ve done like this.

You believe in batching content, so after the interview, you record an episode of your own podcast that will then be broken out into 10 pieces of micro-content to share across your LinkedIn in the form of text posts and video clips.

For the last 180 days, your Founder-Led content strategy has been to publish and interact daily on LinkedIn, as well as record 2 podcast episodes per week (1 guest appearance on another show, and 1 episode for your show).

𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝟭𝟴𝟬 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀:

• Your LinkedIn has gone from 3,000 to 10,000 followers, and most of the people connecting with you or engaging on posts are your ICP.

• You have 250 ICP listeners for every podcast you release.

• Direct + organic traffic are up 34%. Prospects are searching for your company after seeing your content somewhere.

• “Founder’s LinkedIn” attributed to 22% of all qualified pipeline

• “Podcast” attributed to 14% of all qualified pipeline 

• “Recommendation / word-of-mouth” attributed to 8% of all qualified pipeline and is up 50% YoY

• Your sales team reports the average sales cycle has gone from 90 days to 65 days, and close rates have increased by 23%.

• Your domain authority score has increased due to the backlinks you've gotten from your podcast guest appearances, helping you rank better on Google. 

• You get recognized at industry conferences and events and people come up to you and say “I love your content on LinkedIn” or “I love your podcast”.

• You’ve gotten invited to speak at 6 industry events / conferences, which is up from 2 invitations all of last year.

• The largest deal in company history just closed, and it just so happens the customer was someone you had on your podcast.

PS - Every B2B company could be doing this.

Experiment worth trying that is wide open in B2B.

Make YouTube your salesperson.

Your entire sales and marketing strategy could be centered around ungating your content, and getting the 95% of prospects who are not ready to buy yet to your educational-based sales hub (i.e. your YouTube channel).

And then have your hub designed to create demand for what you do.

This means you are systematically sending prospects to your YouTube from places like:

- Paid ads
- Short-form social videos
- Organic LinkedIn
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Cold email
- Embedded YouTube videos on your site for product related videos (which can then still get people back to your YouTube channel).

Marketing should be getting a prospect to 90% of the sale before ever talking to your sales team.

You are going to have an easier time closing customers if you can get them to consume more of your content before they ever have a need to purchase from you.

An educational-based sales hub like YouTube is one of the most efficient and effective ways to get people to spend this time with you.

Your hub could also be a podcast or newsletter, but I like YouTube because: 

1) It can also house a podcast as one of the content pillars
2) You get the power of the algorithm
3) You can build trust faster via audio and video than you can a text-only newsletter.

But it’s important that the content is not all “media company” type brand awareness content meant to get attention, where you’re not talking about things related to what you do.

Attention does not equal intent.

Attention is cheap. 

Intent is hard.

Having attention = People know who you are.

Having intent = People want to choose you when they are ready to buy something in your category.

An educational-based sales hub like YouTube could be one of the most scalable strategies you use to drive intent.

There’s a big difference between being seen as an expert in your industry and doing a podcast.

You can only have one north star goal with your podcast, and it's very important to be clear on which one it is:

1) “We want to do a podcast to grow our long-form audio podcast subscribers and become a top-ranked podcast in our category” 

OR

2) “We want to do a podcast as a content creation vehicle to highlight our CEO / SME as a thought leader and expert to our target customers across all of the channels they hang out online, and will use the podcast as one pillar source of content for that.” 

The strategies you do to achieve #1 above are very different than what you would do to achieve #2 above.

Literally everything.

- The positioning of the show
- The format of the show
- The marketing of the show
- The repurposing of the show

Knowing which of those is your north star goal (and why) for your podcast will help ensure you actually get the result you want.

You have one of these 6 problems if your organic and Dark Social content engine is not working as well as you'd like:

1) You’re doing too little of it (the right strategy, but not doing enough to make an impact)

2) It’s not memorable or differentiated (too similar to other content out there already)

3) It’s inconsistent (publish what you have whenever you have it vs. a set cadence)

4) It’s created in silo’s (newsletter, social posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc. all created from scratch 100% independently)

5) It’s quickly abandoned (not given enough time to work)

6) It’s expensive to make (if it HAS to “work” quickly it is too expensive)

In one word, it's inefficient. 

Organic and Dark Social content works. 

It’s been proven literally thousands and thousands of times from almost every type of business and category in the world.

But, the companies that do it well are those who create it efficiently.

Efficient content is sustainable in these 3 areas:

1) Costs to run 

2) The production process is easily repeatable on a regular cadence 

3) Has high substance and differentiation

---

The future belongs to the B2B companies that have marketing do 90% of the work to get a prospect to close (rather than BDR's and the sales team having to brute force it).

If a prospect is getting on a sales call and they don't already know who you are, what you do, or what your product is via content you've created that has built some trust then you're going to have a really difficult time closing them.

Because of this, the most savvy companies will have organic and Dark Social content (ideally with video at the center) doing 50% or more of the work within their overall marketing mix.

If you can get prospects to consume more of your content before they speak to you, you are going to have a much easier time closing them as a customer.

I’ll be sharing case studies and research-driven examples of companies doing this organic and Dark Social content playbook well (and those using video at the center) in the future. 

Follow me (Erik Jacobson) if you want to see it.

I don’t believe in the idea that “B2B content is boring”.

Technical topics are not “boring” to your ICP.

You don’t need to be funny to not be “boring”.

Having content that is long is not “boring”.

You do not have to create content like Mr. Beast to “not be boring”.

People do not have shorter attention spans, but they do have higher standards.

People still watch 2-hour movies, listen to 2-hour podcasts, and read 300 page books.

But those same people might also get “bored” 3-seconds into a 10-second video clip.

What this actually just means is that you need high value per second of your content.

And in B2B work-related content, “value” is very different from general-purpose entertainment content.

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗜 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁: 

I am looking to learn something that will help me at work.

For this, I just need any combination of:

- First-person stories from people who have done things I want to do

- Original research that proves things to me with data I have never heard

- Expertise that will help me perform better at work

This content needs pro production and smart editing that helps retain engagement, but it does not need excessive over-editing or gamification to keep me hooked (my internal motivation of needing the information is way stronger of a pull than anything else would be).

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗜 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹-𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 (𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀, 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗱𝘆, 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗲𝘁𝗰.):

I am looking to relax and let my mind rest from business.

Here I am specifically looking to:

- Laugh

- Escape through passions and hobbies outside of work

- Learn about things that can help me in my life outside of work

There are 100,000x the amount of people creating content in this category than there are for B2B content categories, which is why this content needs to have much more gamification to keep attention (i.e. like a show where you watch someone interview celebrities while they both eat the world’s hottest wings). 

—----

I think it’s really important to understand these distinctions because ultimately for B2B what’s inside the content matters more than the wrapper.

And the good news is that B2B content does not have to be funny, have wild formats, use excessive over-editing, or foster drama to not be boring.

It just has to teach me things about how to do my work better, with pro production that makes it feel effortless to continue consuming, and done in a way that I could not get that same information anywhere else.

Most of your prospects don’t think they have a problem right now, or the pain is not high enough to actually prioritize solving it.

You can try and convince them, but your solution won’t help them solve a problem they don’t think they have.

You will be able to help some of them “see the light,” but it’ll be an uphill battle of convincing / pushing for many months.

So how can you be who they think of when they are ready to buy?

Most people are always open to learning and self-betterment (being a better version of themselves everyday).

𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀:

1) Understanding what’s possible in their profession
2) Learning something new that will help them get an edge in their work
3) Seeing inspirational world-class examples of what good looks like
4) Helping them feel connected and a part of a community in their industry
5) Showing them they are not alone in their pain points or frustrations
6) Finding ways to grow personally outside of work

How can you help your prospects be a better version of themselves today, until they are ready to buy in the future?

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝟮 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀:

1) Create social content from personal profiles at your company (yourself or others) daily

2) Create episodic content (podcast, video series, newsletter, etc.) that helps them, and that they can follow regularly.

They can have a zero-cost way to learn and level up each week from you, and you can build trust with them now so when they are ready to buy you are already on the shortlist of names to reach out to (which is a much higher close rate list to be on than the "I found these companies from Google" list).

Helping people buy who are ready to and already know you > convincing people that don't know you that they have a problem.

PS - Most B2B companies do not look at marketing this way, and that's a good thing. 

It will give you a massive advantage in your "be on the shortlist" marketing strategy described above (in that you will have far less competition marketing to those not-currently-in-market buyers, which just so happens to be the vast majority of your TAM).

What term do you think is best for this? Would love to hear your thoughts. 

If you have a different term you like for it please put it in the comments.

PS - This is just for organic text, audio, and video content (not paid ads), and just for social and content platforms (not email or blogs).

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