Podcast strategy

What podcast strategy is

Podcast strategy is a short written document answering one question: should this business start a show, and if so, what show. It names who would listen, what the episodes would cover, how often they would appear, who would host, and what it would cost you in hours every week for the next year.

It is not a launch service. Nothing is recorded, no artwork is designed, no feed is submitted to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It is a decision argued on paper, with the case against set out as fully as the case for, so you can have the argument once instead of every month. In most cases the recommendation is not to start one.

When you need one

You need this when somebody has begun saying that you should do a podcast and nobody has priced what that sentence means. Most often it arrives a few weeks after a competitor launched one. That is the commonest reason a small business starts a show, and it is not a reason.

The arithmetic is worth stating before anyone buys a microphone. A weekly show is a morning a week, indefinitely, and the indefinite part is the expensive part. That morning covers booking a guest, recording, chasing the edit, writing the page underneath it and writing the posts around it. The audience builds slowly, and for a good number of business shows it does not build at all: a year in, the listeners are the people who already knew you.

There are situations where the answer comes back yes, and they have little to do with audience size. A show is a reason to ask people you want to know for an hour of their attention, and those relationships can be worth more than every listener combined. A show works where a trade is genuinely undiscussed and nobody is publishing anything in it. And a show works where the owner is far better spoken than written, in which case recording is simply the cheapest way to get what is in their head out of it.

You do not need this if the real question is narrower. If you already record things and want more from them, buy content repurposing. If the question is which channels deserve your time at all, that is channel strategy, where a podcast is one line among several.

What gets looked at

• The real reason. Asked directly, on the first call, and written down. If the honest answer is that a competitor has one, the document says so, because everything after that depends on it.
• The hours. A week-by-week estimate of the time the show takes from the person who would host it, measured against what that person currently does with those hours.
• The listener. Who would subscribe, why they would choose an hour of you over everything else competing for it, and how many such people exist in your market.
• The guest list. Twenty names you would want in a room. If they exist and would say yes, that is often the strongest argument for going ahead.
• The alternative. What the same hours would produce as writing or as video, so the show is compared with something rather than with zero.

What you get

The recommendation. Four to six pages, opening with a plain yes or no in the first paragraph, then the reasoning and the conditions under which the answer would change.

The case against. A page written deliberately from the opposite side, so that if you proceed you do so having read the strongest version of the argument not to.

The format, if the answer is yes. Length, cadence, solo or interview, season or continuous, and the first ten subjects with the guest each would need.

The redirection, if the answer is no. What to do instead, costed the same way, so the conversation ends with a plan rather than a refusal.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A three-partner engineering consultancy in Winnipeg, working on building envelopes for cold climates, decides it wants a podcast because a larger national firm launched one in the spring. The partner who would host has eleven uncommitted hours a week, and the firm has published six pages on its website in four years.

The recommendation is not to start. A weekly show would take most of those eleven hours, the buying decision in their trade is made by a handful of architects and property managers who are not looking for a new podcast, and the firm has not yet written down the things those people ask at every first meeting. The document instead proposes recording the host with one architect a month and publishing each as a written piece, which uses two hours rather than eleven. The partners read the case against, agree with it, and stop discussing it. Two conditions under which the answer would flip are named, so the question can be reopened honestly in a year.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What prompted the idea, who would host, and what else that person is meant to be doing. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Agreed before anything starts, and the same price whichever way the recommendation goes.
3. What you send. Your website, anything you already publish, the host's honest weekly calendar, and the people you would want as guests.
4. The work. Five to eight working days, including listening to whatever shows already exist in your trade.
5. The walkthrough. An hour on a call going through it, including the part you will not like.
6. Delivery. The document, the case against, and either the format and first ten subjects or the costed alternative.

What it costs

Podcast strategy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the size of the job depends on how much you already publish and how many people have to be persuaded. The number is fixed in writing before work begins. It is charged in full whether the recommendation is to start a show or not to, because the advice is the product and a no takes the same week of work as a yes. The pricing page sets out the four ways of working.

What happens next

If the answer is yes, the next piece of work is a structure to record against, so the first ten episodes are shaped before anyone presses record. Every episode then needs a page beneath it, which is show notes, and getting each one heard is promotion copy. If the answer is no, the usual next step is publishing those same conversations as edited interviews. This document is complete on its own. Nothing further is assumed, and a recommendation not to proceed is a finished piece of work, not a deferred one.