When it comes to capturing audience attention, podcasts are in a league of their own.
While leading content marketers and top business owners fight tooth and nail for mere moments of audience attention, the average podcast fan will happily listen for hours at a time.
That’s a big opportunity to have your voice heard, and a lot of time to build deep and rewarding relationships with your prospects and customers.
If you’re looking to launch a financial markets podcast, now is a great time to do so, but there are a few things you need to have ready before you press record.
Read below for the 5 things you need to start a financial markets podcast.
1. A clear purpose
Like every business decision you make, launching a financial markets podcast should be done with a specific end goal in mind.
What are you looking to achieve from it?
Do you want to reach a new audience? Update your brand perception? Cement your status as a thought leader in your space?
For businesses, podcasting is essentially a form of content marketing. And like all content marketing, it must be done strategically to yield the highest possible returns.
So don’t start a podcast without knowing what you want out of it first—this should be a performance metric that can be objectively quantified or qualified in some way.
Figuring out your end goal will help you to decide what form it should take, which leads us on to our next point…
2. A winning format
While the conversation you hear in the final edit might be free-flowing and off-the-cuff, a good podcast takes organization and direction.
It needs something to be centred around. A strong framework or premise that guides the course of each show.
There are two main reasons for this.
Firstly, it takes consistency to build a dedicated audience.
If new listeners stumble on your podcast, like what they hear, and find it to be of value to them, they’ll want to revisit your show for more of the same.
Without a consistent format, you’ll fail to deliver on this, and risk losing their interest.
Secondly, as a content creator, having a clear format will narrow your focus—making it much easier to settle on ideas for each episode, and plan ahead.
So have a long think about central ideas, structures, or themes on which to mould your financial markets podcast.
If you’re struggling, look back to the purpose you established before, and let this guide you.
For example, if your aim is to expand your audience, having a format that involves different guests each week is a smart move, as each one will bring new people to introduce to your brand.
If your goal is to show your market that you have some valuable insights to bring to your market, you might want to opt for more of a monologue format. For each episode, you can zero in on a different topic within your niche, and offer a ‘hot take’—whether that’s recommending investment strategies based on previous experience, or sharing your outlook on the latest stock market activity.
3. A hosting platform
Unfortunately, launching a financial markets podcast isn’t as simple as just recording the audio, and then uploading it straight to Spotify, iTunes, or Audible.
You need to register with a podcast hosting platform to distribute your content across all the right channels and apps.
There are a lot of different hosting platforms out there.
Each one has their own pricing structure, features and benefits. So take the time to study and assess each one, then determine which is best suited to you and your goals.
If you want to know the best podcast hosting platforms out there, how they are priced, and the pros and cons of each, here’s an excellent breakdown by Adam Enfroy.
4. A professional finish
There’s more to a podcast than just audio. Much more.
Making sure each episode is professionally packaged is crucial if you want people to take your podcast seriously.
Here are the fundamentals of a professional business podcast:-
Intro + Outro
These aren’t just features that bookend your podcast, they’re key marketing tools that help cement your brand into the subconscious of your listeners. So use them wisely.
For your intro, include top-line information on who you are, and what your podcast is all about. Think of it like an elevator pitch, only with added background music.
Your outro on the other hand is a great opportunity to thank your listeners for tuning in, encourage them to follow you, and tell them where they can go to find more of your content.
Cover art
Your podcast needs an image to go with it so you can submit it to all major directories.
This is your chance to stop people scrolling through the sea of other finance podcasts. And, it’s the first visual impression that many podcast fans will have of your business.
So put the effort in, and make sure it looks the part.
Description
Each episode you publish needs a short blurb summarising the contents of it, and what listeners can expect.
The key benefit of this is it makes that show more searchable.
This is crucial for those episodes that cover a popular or contentious point of discussion, or when you’ve had a guest with a particularly large following.
Make sure your description is clear, concise, and contains any keywords or phrases that potential listeners are likely to type in the search bar.
Transcript and show notes
A transcript is a document or page that lays out everything that was said in a given episode, word for word.
Show notes on the other hand are the words that you publish on your website to accompany the release of your latest podcast episode. They’re essentially a blog that goes out with your podcast.
Writing transcripts and show notes can bring numerous benefits, mainly concerning SEO.
Search engines don’t index audio, so by transcribing each podcast episode and writing some website content to accompany it, you increase the chances of someone finding your podcast online.
Secondly, they instantly up the amount of content you have on your website, which increases your domain authority, and again raises the odds of your podcast being found via search.
Finally, transcripts help you to connect to audience members that are deaf or otherwise hearing impaired.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.5 billion people currently suffer from hearing loss.
That’s nearly 20% of the global population—don’t exclude them from your audience!
5. A backlog of episodes
Having several episodes ready on launch day has been shown to help podcasters improve their reach and engagement.
The reason for this is it gives new listeners more upfront value, and gives them the option to ‘binge’ on your content if they really like it.
Buffer recommends launching with a minimum of three episodes, but also states that their research indicates it’s a case of “the more the merrier”.
From there, it’s important to keep a recording schedule that is well ahead of your release schedule.
If you can, we’d even recommend recording an entire series in advance.
Listeners like a podcast with a regular release schedule—and so do podcast distributors.
By recording a backlog of episodes for your financial markets podcast and having them ready to go, you can set a schedule and stay well out in front in terms of content production.
It also means you can take the time to finetune those accompanying features and make sure they’re 100% ready on publishing day, rather than it being a last-minute dash every time.
What you need to start a financial markets podcast: Key Takeaways
To recap, here are the things you need to start your financial markets podcast:-
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- A clear purpose; figure out what you want to achieve from your podcast, and set an objective goal to work towards.
- A winning format; this will help guide the course of each show, and give you the consistency you need to build an audience.
- A hosting platform; register with a hosting platform to distribute your podcast across all the right channels.
- A professional finish; your podcast needs an intro, outro and cover art. Descriptions, transcripts and show notes will make you more searchable.
- A backlog of episodes; publish multiple episodes on launch day for greater reach and engagement, and to keep your content production well out in front.
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We’ve launched successful podcasts for a number of fintech and financial markets businesses.
If you need help launching your own podcast, contact our team.