3 Things Your Company Needs to Start Its Own Podcast

It’s early 2021, and brands are talking podcasts. In fact, they’re asking more than talking, wondering about the What, Where, Who, How, and Why of podcasts (all great questions!).

We’ve written extensively about these topics and encourage all our clients to focus on adding value for their audience and develop a general understanding of the podcast world before diving in.

We think the opportunity to start a podcast is now so we want you to be positioned to harness it. While many brands may develop an excellent idea for a podcast it’s so much more than that.

So is your brand ready for the big podcast opportunity? Here are the three ingredients you need to get started in podcasting.

3 Things Your Company Needs to Start Its Own Podcast

1. An audience-focused Idea

Execution skills are great but don’t mean a lot without a strong and fresh idea to action. And that idea must be focused on your audience.

The most successful brand podcasts are focused on their audience. They deliver value base on what their audience needs.

  • Is there something they need to learn?

  • Where do they need help?

  • Do they need a laugh?

And like we wrote about in a previous post, you don’t even need to be the one to come up with it. It never hurts to have an outside perspective.

A great example of this is Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, a podcast by Ben & Jerry’s. Ben & Jerry’s worked with Vox on the production. The podcast, aimed to educate and inform their audience, examines the white supremacist foundation on which the nation’s legal, political and social systems were built. It’s intense, but it’s the type of content that Ben & Jerry’s (an activist brand) is known for.

A well-produced, audience-focused podcast like this is going to draw in their audience, have them subscribing, and keeping them listening for as long as possible. This is going to increase the long-term value of their audience/customers, who then act as evangelists, which increases their word of mouth, and lowers their cost per acquisition.

Thus, an audience-focused idea can plug the leak in your funnel by increasing retention.

The same can be true for you and your brand with the right idea.

2. Time

But a good podcast takes time. If you create your brand’s podcast off the side of your desk it’s going to show. Whether it’s the audio quality, storytelling, or marketing support a podcast treated like an afterthought will sound like an afterthought.

But not every brand (or agency) has the internal resources to fully develop and execute the creative behind a podcast, and definitely not the technical know how.

Our clients dedicate upwards of 25% of their time to working on their brand’s podcast, and it shows. It can be a lot of work, for sure, but the classic “the more you put into it the more you get out of it” applies. And the same applies if you are taking all of the production and marketing on yourself.

Whether it’s researching guests, planning future episodes, or aligning with the internal marketing team, they treat the podcast like a serious medium and dedicate their time accordingly.

3. The Team

And you must be supported by a great team – this a blend of external partners and internal staff. And the time needed for your internal staff doesn’t have to be as much as you’d think.

In our experience, here are the team members needed through each phase of a successful branded podcast. We find that clients don’t have all of these people internally, so we have highlighted with an asterisk* where you can lean on an external agency partner like JAR Audio. This will save you capacity, and bring an outside perspective to the project.

Prepare Phase (Strategy)

Project Lead – The main point of contact with the agency. They are also responsible for coordinating approvals internally. (You should budget 12 hours upfront)

Key Decision Maker – This person can also be the project lead, but in a lot of cases is someone more senior. (10 hrs upfront)

Strategist* – Researching the audience, competitive podcasts, uncovering the opportunity. (30 hrs upfront)

Creative Director* – Developing creative concepts, a storyline, season arc, and guest strategy. (40 hrs upfront)

Producer* – Developing the timeline and overall project plan. (30 hrs upfront)

Marketer* – Develops marketing plan (40 hrs upfront)

Production Phase (where you produce the podcast)

Project Lead – Responsible for coordinating the in-house marketing team, and obtaining approval of key decisions. (2 hrs/ep)

Key Decision Maker – Approval of scripts and guests (1 hrs/ep)

Host* – We recommend, in most cases, hiring an outside, professional host. This improves efficiency by negating the need for training. (2 hrs/ep)

Audio Engineer* – This person is responsible for all recordings. (2 hrs/ep)

Producer* – This person is responsible for writing episode scripts, including a question line, intros/outros/narration for each interview. This person is also responsible for the overall production of the podcast (including the timeline and project plan). (8 hrs/ep)

Writer* – If you have a dramatic or a genre-specific podcast, or complicated scripting needs, you may need a more specialized writer in addition to the producer.* (10 hours/ep)

Editor* – This person is responsible for taking all paper edit notes and cues from the Producer, mixing and editing the audio recording (including applying SFX and music). (8 hrs/ep)

Content Producer* – Also known as a Chase Producer in the radio world, this person is responsible for scheduling and preparing guests for the episodes. In some cases, this role is handled by the Producer. (4 hrs/ep)

Graphic Designer* – Establishes podcast artwork and outputs files for marketing (5 hrs/ep)

Marketer* – Executes marketing plan (20 hrs/ep)

Push Phase (where you host the audio files and metadata, then push the podcast out to directories)

Project Lead – Approval of final file, coordination with the internal marketing team if required (2 hrs/ep)

Key Decision Maker – Approval of final file. (1 hr/ep)

Producer* – Writes show notes and other metadata then uploads the final file to a host server and pushes it to podcast directories. (2 hrs/ep)

Marketer* – Executes marketing plan (20 hrs/ep)

Promote Phase (where you grow the podcast audience)

Project Lead – Approval of final file, coordination with the internal marketing team if required (2 hours per episode)

Key Decision Maker – Approval of final file. (1 hrs/ep)

Producer* – Works with Marketers on materials to fulfill marketing plan. (10 hrs/ep)

Creative Director* – Works with the marketing team to promote episodes. (10 hrs/ep)

Marketer* – Executes marketing plan. (40 hrs/ep)

Pull Phase (where you pull in analytics and consumption data to inform future creative)

Project Lead – Distributes analytics and consumption data internally (1 hrs/ep)

Strategist* – Downloads and assesses analytics. Creates a report with recommendations. (4 hrs/ep)

Creative Director* – Makes adjustments to upcoming episode creative content based on analytics and consumption data. (2 hrs/ep)

Marketer* – Makes adjustments to marketing plan based on analytics and consumption data. (4 hrs/ep)

Here’s a summary of each key role, based on a 6 episode season (ballpark):

Project Lead – 54 hours

Key Decision Maker – 13 hours

Host* – 12 hours

Audio Engineer* – 12 hours

Producer* – 50 hours

Writer* – 60 hours

Editor* – 48 hours

Content Producer* – 24 hours

Strategist* – 54 hours

Graphic Designer* – 30 hours

Marketer* – 544 hours

Podcasts can definitely be scrappier than this, but these roles must be filled before getting started. Some of these roles could be filled by one person. And some of these can even be filled internally, but in our opinion, it’s best to leave many of these positions to the experts (aside from Key Decision Maker…that one has to be you!).

So, if you have:

An audience-focused idea

Time

And a great team

– you’re ready to podcast!

Roger Nairn is JAR Audio’s Co-Founder and CEO

Looking to Solve Your Business Problems with a Podcast?

JAR Audio is a full-service agency that solves brand problems with Original Podcasts.