Pulling Back the Curtain: How We Launched Our Top 30-Ranking Podcast
It’s been over three years (really, close to four) since we launched The Strategy Hour Podcast. Since then, we’ve made the ranks of Apple’s Top 30 Business Management Podcasts, have been featured in multiple blog posts about business-related podcasts, have had millions of downloads on Apple Podcasts alone, and we’re coming up hot on the heels our 500th episode (that’s a lot of freakin’ recording time!).
And while we’re so grateful that our podcast took off the way it did and has influenced thousands of lives and launching it was a blast, in no way has it always been easy. So, today, we’re going to be pulling back the curtain on how we launched our podcast, the challenges we faced, all of the hustle we put in to launch, how we plan and upload new episodes, the whole 9.
If the idea of launching a podcast has been tossing and turning in your brain, our totally candid and honest experience will hopefully help you determine whether this is the right next move in your business journey!
Why We Started a Podcast
Let us take you back to 2017. It was a great time in our business and our brand, and we wanted to reach a new audience. We had worked really hard to build up the blog, our Instagram, and our online community, but those people were all coming from the same spots. We knew that if we wanted to uplevel, and if we wanted to reach people who hadn’t ever heard of us, we needed a new spot.
Talking out strategy is something that we both really, really enjoy, so we knew that this podcast would be right up our alley, in that sense. We’ve gotten to interview some really amazing guests, and it's given us the chance to open up those new relationships. We can’t count on two hands how many affiliate opportunities that have come our way from connecting with some real cool people on our podcast.
Building the Bones
So comes the hustle of actually building the framework of your podcast. There’s all of the front-end stuff, like deciding on a name for the podcast and branding, creating your graphics for iTunes, getting approved for iTunes (which was definitely not as easy as you’d think).
Before going live, you have to know what your podcast is going to be about and who you want to have on the show. You also have to buy equipment, get it all set up, do sound checks, make sure all of the tech stuff is figured out if you have guests on your show, and consider what needs to happen once the episode is done.
Determine what kind of quality you’re hoping to achieve. This is where equipment comes in, and it can be a hefty investment, so you have to be really clear on what exactly it is that you want to achieve. In our case, we wanted as high a quality as we could get within our own means, not knowing what we were doing. We’ve invested in other equipment along the way to help make the sound even better.
Oftentimes, you don’t know what it sounds like until it is actually out there, so a lot of it comes down to tweaking and readjusting where necessary to reach your desired outcomes. Podcasting is definitely not your average blog; it requires way more steps. Then, it’s time to plan a launch!
Launching and Promoting Your Podcast
You need graphics for your iTunes cover, episode titles, show quotes, banners for your email newsletter and blog posts, Pinterest graphics, square graphics for your feed, and Stories graphics, so that you can launch your podcast and promote it across all platforms. We’ve already handled this part for you with our Podcast Launch Bundle in The Creative Template Shop. We’ve created 20 total templates for you to get your podcast up and running and promoted ASAP!
If you really want to get strategic with your launch, we highly recommend grabbing our Launch Planner also. That way, you can map out dates, intentions, checklists, and everything else you need to run a smooth and successful launch.
You can grab both of these items from The Shop, but if you want to save some cash money (like, over $100), we highly recommend you become a member for only $47/month. That way, you can download these templates plus all current and future templates to come!
Our Monthly Investment
Back in 2017, we spent around $1300 per month to pump out 12 episodes, and that included having the episodes edited and transcribed, show notes written, hiring a blog editor, VA, and graphics person. Since then, we’ve stopped having transcriptions done because our audience simply wasn’t engaging with them enough for it to be worth the time involved, and we cut our amount of episodes back to 8 per month, which saved us 52 episodes per year (!).
All that being said, our costs haven’t changed a whole lot. Our average monthly spend is between $1200-1500. We still pay for an editor and show notes, have a podcast manager and designer, as well as hosting costs on our website and libsyn. All in all, it isn’t cheap to run the show, but it has been well worth the investment to pay for help rather than DIY all aspects.
Our Step-by-Step Process of Podcasting
The very first step in our process is coming up with the initial idea for the episode. Then, we outline the episode, record the episode and intro, and finalize the title. Our VA then uploads the episode to Dropbox, checks the ads, and sends all the files to the editor who edits the episode, creates the show notes, and posts the episode to Libsyn. It bounces back to our VA, who then edits and publishes the show notes to our website.
Our graphic designer then creates all of the needed graphics for the episode, which usually consists of three Pinterest graphics, a cropped headshot if we have a guest, IG Stories graphics, and square graphics. Finally, our VAs share the episode to our Facebook group, IG Stories, and Pinterest via Tailwind.
Setting Intentions with Your Podcast
The reason we put out more episodes in the beginning is because every time someone subscribes to your podcast, new episodes are downloaded automatically for them. So, we would have 12 new downloads just for one person per month. This was an awesome strategy for quick growth. In fact, we had enough sponsors after 3 months that our podcast paid for itself. That’s not to say that we made any profit from it at that point, but we did this deliberately because we know that we never wanted to have to edit and publish our podcast episodes ourselves, and we didn’t want to just be bleeding money forever.
Scaling back to 2 episodes per week also helped us in many other ways, too. After about a year of releasing 3 episodes a week, we felt like we’d said all we needed to say and were reaching for topics at that point. We’d already built a solid foundation, had a solid subscriber base, and a great relationship with sponsors. We started focusing on putting our higher quality content less often so that we weren’t contributing to all of the white noise that was going on at the time. It freed up our schedules, allowing us to do two things: bring on better guests (because we could be more picky), and get ahead on recording episodes.
Polling your audience could also help you make decisions about your show. Do they prefer shorter or longer shows? Do they want opinions or a breakdown of something? We make sure to constantly monitor what people are saying, so we can make changes accordingly. In fact, we’re going to be restructuring our show for 2021!
It’s Work but Can be Worth It
Launching a podcast is hard work. To recap, you’ll need to:
Decide what your podcast will be about
Decide on a name and branding
Create your iTunes cover
Get approved for iTunes
Buy your sound equipment and test it
Decide your podcasting workflow and any extra services you want to invest in (like how we used to get our episodes transcribed, or how we still pay someone else to edit them)
Set your launch goals and intentions
Create your launch plan
Create your promo graphics
But even though it’s hard work, the results can be so worth it if you stick to it and are willing to hustle hard to get your podcast out there. And don’t forget, if you need graphics for your launch, download our Podcast Launch Bundle in The Creative Template Shop by becoming a member!
