John Bennett from Megaphone Spotify on the importance of customer success in podcasting
In this Q&A, Senior Manager of Client Success Operations John Bennett from Megaphone Spotify sits down to discuss how customer success is influencing marketing and sales and what to expect from Spotify in the near future
What is your current day job like?
I am the Senior Manager of Client Success Operations here at Megaphone Spotify. My day changes depending upon what's going on which makes it an interesting role which is why I really enjoy it. It can be client success one day and client operations the next as you are there for your clients and helping them accomplish their goals.
We do two kinds of work with part of it being proactive where we are gathering insights and looking at data in order to provide our clients with suggestions on how to better monetize their podcast, potentially improve their reach, and let them know of features that can benefit their podcast. We also do reactive work as well which is more inbound and people reach out to us and we guide them through their problems as well receiving input on what they are seeing with the platform. At the end of the day we are there to make sure their podcasts are being downloaded, delivering all the ads they should be and their business is moving forward with the podcast industry.
What gets you excited about the podcast movement/business with all of the growth in podcasting?
The explosive growth is very interesting to me as I have always worked with high growth and emerging technology companies. What is exciting about podcasting is that anyone can start a podcast out of nowhere and it has the potential to take off at any time. The other nice part is there is a podcast out there for everybody and depending on what you are into you can most likely find a podcast that you are able to relate to. I find that with other content mediums that it is categorized and granted that Youtube has a lot of niche content, but the content podcasts that are coming out with are personal for the host and the audience. When listening to a podcast, I feel a personal connection to the host and I know others feel the same way when they are able to connect to a podcast. It is far more personal than if content was being delivered over video or if I were to read it over text.
What does the future look like in podcasting with Megaphone becoming a part of Spotify?
Spotify is dedicating a lot of resources to making sure Megaphone is successful and our clients are successful. I think that our clients are going to be reaping from the benefits in the near future where there is a lot from a product perspective that we are working on and we are able to keep improving because of the amazing feedback our clients give us. We really allow our clients to have a say on where we are going from a product perspective because we need their input to keep improving. The resources that are available to us, by being a part of Spotify, are really going to benefit our clients and make sure they continue to be successful.
The other amazing part about being with Spotify is that when it was just Megaphone, our ad sales team was amazing with what they did on the scale they were on. With Spotify coming in, our sales team is growing at a factor of 10x and we are really looking at trying to monetize all of the possible content that we can with our clients. The sales team is really going to take care of that for us and make sure our clients are generating revenue from their unused ad position.
The other exciting part for us being a part of Spotify is the reach they have. With Megaphone before, we were a well known commodity in the podcasting space, but the brand reach they have is something we are very excited about as there is a lot to look forward to in that regard. There is a lot in the works on the content side as well, so we want to make sure that Megaphone continues to host and deliver high quality content that people want to listen to.
How do you define customer success in today's environment?
Customer success really depends on the client and that's one of the things that our client success managers work on with our clients almost everyday. Finding out what their goals are and where they want to go in podcasting is important. While everyone has different goals, the end result is almost always the same with it being to help grow their podcast, their reach and their revenue they are generating. Also tightening up the yield on a podcast by podcast basis such as improving on the amount of revenue they generate per episode, those are all important things we are working on with our clients to make sure they are maximizing their downloads and impressions. It is all about the audience match, so if these brands are trying to match with a certain segment of listeners we can help them deliver on that wherever that audience may be. Overall, we just want to make sure that our clients are happy at the end of the day while their business is profitable and they continue to grow along with us.
How has the arrival of customer success redefined marketing and sales?
From a marketing perspective, we are working with Catalyst SF on the publisher side, but what it really does is allows us to help tell those success stories to the broader marketplace. The positive things we are doing or our clients are doing allows us to work collaboratively with marketing to show that. But also to help guide them along so that they can leverage what we have learned. With that, it's great talking about client successes as without the marketing side it can be sometimes difficult to learn or hear what clients have to say which is really positive for us. A lot of times when clients get on the phone with marketing and there is no client success person present it is kind of a feedback session instead of looking forward and being positive around what they are doing. With the Client Success team, we can help frame that for marketing and it really shows how well we work together.
From a sales perspective, what we can really do there is help sales better understand what makes a successful client and provide them with the information so they can go out and find more publishers who are a right fit. It may be different types of content, but there typically is a certain type of publisher you are looking for. There may be different types of content, but there typically are a couple of types you are looking for such as business structure, past experience, their specific audience are all factors that come into play for people being successful in podcasting. We live and breathe that everyday as we can provide that insight back to the sales team. Our sales team is amazing and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t learn something new from someone on the team. Being on the client success side, it is great to work so collaboratively with the sales team and I have seen that with Megaphone Spotify as we are all on the same page with everything we do.
What are some of your personal favorite podcasts?
I wish I had more time to listen to podcasts as it is just too difficult to find the time throughout the week. I am a big fan of the Bill Simmons Podcast and listen to it on a regular basis. I am also a big golf fan so I enjoy listening to No Laying Up and the Subpar podcast which are both great and the main ones that I am listening to right now.
With COVID19 affecting everyone over the past year, how has Megaphone been able to adapt to our new world?
Megaphone has been put in a very interesting position as everyone else has. However, we have been growing very quickly and Megaphone has done a great job of making sure employees feel engaged and connected across the organization. Also making sure all the teams are connected and moving forward as one organization was a key focus throughout the last year. I tell my team that the three P’s (People, Product, Process) are what you need to learn to be successful in software and service and being remote can make that difficult. For example, not being able to listen in on our VP of tech and engineering chat about problems and solutions is something you are not able to do being remote and would be a valuable learning experience to better understand the product.
Also, with podcasting being a decentralized space for the most part, we have hired people all over the country and hopefully we will be able to hire people all over the globe for my team. From a leadership perspective, that has been encouraged to not only look in your geographic area, but broaden outside your area which has been very beneficial to us throughout the pandemic. From a talent perspective, I don't have to hire people that can just make it into our office but can hire people anywhere as long as they are able to work the hours that we need them too.
Moving forward, it will be very interesting as we have all learned to work this way and the great part about Spotify is that with our work from anywhere program we will be able to continue to do so. We won't have a talent crunch based on a certain geographical region and will be able to grow this team faster and push the things we do further in order to be the best in class client success team that podcast publishing has.