These days, anyone with a smartphone or computer can play around with software to bring their audio ideas to life. However, hiring a professional podcast production company can help you get a higher quality, more targeted product and make life easier for your teams. Here’s why hiring a podcast production company is worth the investment:
- Reach the right audience with a bespoke content and marketing strategy
- Get a better quality of production from skilled experts in writing, narrative and mixing
- Podcast production companies have specialised knowledge around podcast distribution
- They’re experts in generating ideas, imaginative formats and exciting genres
- Streamline content creation and reduce your workload with a podcast production partner
- Maximise content solutions beyond audio
- Marketing and communications expertise: Integrating podcasts into your brand
- Safe and compliant practise
- Measurement: Get to grips with interpreting data and analytics
- Upskill your digital team and learn from the best
Podcasting is an amazing opportunity for any organisation with a message to share:
This medium gives communicators the chance to reach individuals via completely bespoke and creative narratives. Audio is also a deeply-engaged and loyal medium to add to your range of communications channels.
So why hire in help from a professional podcast production company?
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Reach the right audience with a bespoke content and marketing strategy
Why do you want to make a podcast? What do you mean by a podcast? Who do you want to reach, how will you do that, what change will you make in their world, how will you promote your programme, how can this enhance your existing communications channels and how will you measure success?
Just a few of the questions that will be at the forefront of any factfinding call with your professional podcast production company. These insights will form the basis of the strategy and proposal they’ll develop to help move your customers and change their worlds for the better! You can read more about how audio content can help you create value for your audiences here.
- Get a better quality of production from skilled and speedy experts in writing, narrative, editing and mixing
Whilst programmes such as Descript, Alitu and Riverside can help with recording and edits, a podcast production company brings together skilled audio engineers, writers or editors to take the quality of your product to the next level. When it comes to language, tone and structure, the scripting and planning around your audio stories will make the difference between an audience that drifts and one that hangs on your every word.
And that goes for editing too! The professional company knows how to unfold a story with the right tone, tension and intrigue to provoke emotion in your listener, and make sure it stays with them long after the programme has finished. Conversely, a lax edit can break the atmosphere and distract from the message at hand.
There’s a little art and a little science in a good mix. Understanding sound dynamics and knowing what tech is best for the situation is something that comes with training and experience too. Usually this shows in the finished product by being something you don’t notice at all. Instead, listeners can enjoy being immersed in a story and swept along by the conversation without uncomfortable bumps in volumes, distracting interference or other noises taking them out of the moment. At the other end of the spectrum, editing and mixing your audio and video via a professional engineer will make sure a quality sound does justice to the quality of your organisation. You work hard at your job, why let a poor-quality final sound undermine the work your organisation does?
- Podcast production companies have specialised knowledge around podcast distribution
How do you get your podcast on all platforms? What if you want a private RSS feed? Whilst plenty of hosting platforms also help you do this as part of your subscription fee, if you’re working with a professional podcast production company on creating your content, let them take the hassle of publishing, writing enticing, optimised show notes, allocating it to the best category for your platform and generally knowing their way around publishing platforms with the lights off.
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They’re experts in generating ideas, imaginative formats and exciting genres
Perhaps you listen to a lot of interviews or are a junkie for true crime or investigative podcasts? Maybe you love a documentary or just want to hear two titans who really know their stuff in conversation? A good podcast production company will help design a format that presents your message in a manner that’s compelling for the audience you want to reach. They’ll know what’s achievable for your budget and they’ll be experts in making it go as far as it can, whether that’s in time saved by fast and accurate professionals, a great network of specialists for your subject matter or genre, or in having a breadth of expertise, knowledge and support on their in-house teams.
Read how we’ve worked with science and research organisations and charities to help share their messages through compelling formats.
- Streamline content creation and reduce your workload with a podcast production partner
Love podcasts? Let’s keep it that way and not add multiple unnecessary tasks to your already groaning “to do” list. As a client, your role should be to brief the vision and message of your programme so that your podcast production company can reflect back to you the best and most creative manifestation of it.
Whatever your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses are, your production company should be able to wrap around your team, plug the gaps and ensure everyone is playing to their strengths in producing this content.
Yes, an external hire will need to learn about your tone of voice, values and culture and make sure they can reflect that to the intended audience. Yes, they’ll need to learn from your internal experts to best showcase your products and people. They’ll also be able to extract what matters most to make a great programme.
If you have niche expertise within your organisation, a podcast production company will be able to research, interview and get to the heart of the issue without getting lost in the weeds. Bringing important information to light for new audiences in a manner that’s easy to understand, moving, memorable and inspiring is your production company’s job. That leaves you a fresh pair of eyes and ears to feed back on the products and how they reflect your big picture.
Even if you and your team enjoy a more ‘hands on’ approach to your content creation, a trusted podcast production company will be able to plug into and adapt to your organisation’s unique structure, skills and knowledge and ensure project management is a clearly communicated and easy process for all.
Whether your podcast is audio only or also filmed like this series we made for a conservation charity, you should be able to brief in and receive back an amazing programme that chimes with your audience. And that goes beyond the core product…
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Maximise content solutions beyond audio: look for a podcast production company that can gather and create additional assets to make the message go futher
Time is money, so let’s make it work harder! A good podcast production company will be able to look at the opportunities for podcast recording as well as for film and wider multimedia repurposing. From capturing video that can be repackaged as films or used to generate assets and trailers that engage on different platforms, to written content such as articles, transcripts, SEO-optimised web content as well as design and imagery.
If you look for a podcast production company that thinks laterally and can offer this, you may see more return on your investment and greater reach and engagement for your show whilst taking the strain off your existing in-house teams for asset creation and promotion.
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Marketing and communications expertise: integrating podcasts into your brand and comms channels
On that note, there’s myriad options and platforms to promote and support your series through paid advertising, but which ones really work? Where is it most beneficial to you, as opposed to using your existing channels? And moreover, what else can you do through earned media and best practise to promote your programme and grow reach and engagement with your audience? You could research all this yourself, but a podcast production company can help you make the most of what you already have and avoid making costly mistakes on the way.
Safe and compliant practise: Trust podcast production experts with your content
If you have great contacts, you should be able to confidently hand them over to your company to juggle diaries, brief, record and edit. But you should also be able to trust in their journalistic integrity, licencing knowhow and compliance expertise. What’s more, if your subject matter or content is sensitive to any degree, you can rest easy knowing your content is balanced and diligent for the medium and that safeguarding of contributors is a priority. A must for anything your organisation is putting its name on.
Measurement: Get to grips with interpreting data and analytics
Measure it! How do you know if you reached that audience or changed their mind? How do you know if your message has landed? The podcasting world is becoming an ever-richer place for insights on how your content moves your audience, thanks to both qualitative and quantitative data and the integrations available through multi-platform compatibility and planned user-journeys. There are more and more tools and clever ways in which to do this that a podcast production company will be able to support you in discovering.
In short, a production partner can help you demonstrate how well your idea worked with the numbers to back it up. Your stakeholders will thank you for it!
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Upskill your digital team and learn from the best
We’re big believers on sharing the information and insights we have as a podcast production company with our clients. A great collaboration will inspire and educate your in-house team to pick up and take forward tools, technology and practises that not only inform your future podcast offerings, but which can support the quality of content you produce multi-platform.
When it comes to making branded podcasts, or podcasts for charities, NGOs, nonprofits or other organisations (basically anyone with a strategic message to deliver!) Podcast Pioneers are well-versed in complementing the talent and skills our clients already have.
There are many more benefits to engaging external professionals to help you get your audio series off the ground.
Reach out to us if you’d like to find out how a professional podcast production company can support you in creating beautiful programmes and films that change our world for the better!
We’re on mail@podcastpioneers.comor call +447754659649
