We have assisted more than 500 entrepreneurs and company owners in developing business strategies to launch and expand their podcasts over the previous 20+ years. We’ll start this page by providing you with some background on the significance of company planning. After that, we’ll walk you through a podcast business plan template step-by-step so you can start writing yours right away.

Why Is a Podcast Business Plan Needed?

What sets your podcast apart from the many others that don’t have a business plan at the beginning? Why not simply get right in and see where podcasting takes you?

The process of creating a podcast is similar to that of any other business endeavor. To get it done, resources, money, and time are needed. Dragging yourself down the podcast highway with no end in sight will grow boring very quickly, even if your main objective is just to have fun and not to manage a million-dollar podcast.

You can prevent that with the use of a podcast business strategy. Or at least add milestones, goals, and aims to that trip to make it more meaningful. In general, business planning is beneficial in three major ways:

1. Gain More Knowledge About What You’re Doing

Before you go in too far, having a podcast business plan might help you have a better understanding of what you’re getting into. Podcasting is much more than just publishing a new episode now and then. 

Prioritizing your planning before you begin recording allows you to consider more than just the equipment, listener count, and episode names. You can explore what is already out there, who you want to create your podcast for, where you want to fit in, and how you want to develop.

1. Boost Your Chances of Success

The degree to which you succeed in podcasting depends on your ultimate objectives, which is why preparation is crucial. You must decide what success means to you and how you plan to achieve it.

Anything new is difficult to begin, but in my experience, having a plan makes things much simpler. It gives you a destination and a route to get there. There will be times when you truly require that.

1. Secure Funding (If Necessary)

To begin with, let me clarify that not all podcasters look for outside support. However, external funding is gaining popularity as podcasting becomes a more prominent corporate role and as a podcast becomes a viable business model. To have funding, you must have funders, whether they come from private investors or financial institutions. 

Funders use your business plan as a gauge of your chances of success when determining whether or not to provide you with funding. They are interested in learning how you plan to spend and recover your costs.

Making a business plan can help you gain support from your corporate overlords if you’re producing a podcast for a big firm. I’ve made podcast pitching presentations inside of big businesses in the past, and most of the time the executives don’t understand the potential of podcasting. A small amount of work and effort pays off big time.

Funding Sources for Podcasts

In terms of finance, bank loans, credit cards, angel investors, and personal savings are the primary sources of funding for podcasts. When it comes to bank loans, banks will look over your company plan to make sure they can trust you to pay back the loan plus interest. The loan officer will need to see a professional plan in addition to verifying that your finances are realistic to get this confidence. They will feel more confident that you can run a firm successfully and competently if you have a plan like this. Bank loans and personal savings are the two most popular ways that podcasts are funded.

How to Write a Podcast Business Plan

You need a plan if you want to start a profitable podcast or grow your existing one. We go over each aspect of a podcast business plan in detail below:

Executive Summary

Although it introduces your business plan, your executive summary should typically come last because it summarizes all of the important parts of your document.

Your Executive Summary should draw the reader in right away. Tell them about the kind of podcast you run and its current state. Are you a startup, for instance, or do you run podcasts in several regions or would you wish to increase your podcast?

After that, give a brief synopsis of each of the areas that follow in your strategy. Provide a succinct synopsis of the podcast industry, for instance. Talk about the kind of podcast you run. Provide specifics about your direct rivals. Provide a synopsis of your intended audience. Give a brief overview of your marketing strategy. Determine who the important team members are. and provide a synopsis of your financial strategy.

Company Analysis

You’ll include an outline of the podcast in your analysis of the business.

For instance, you may run any of the following categories of podcasts:

• Podcasts that feature interviews feature one or two hosts who have a conversation with one or more guests per episode.
• Podcasts that are conversational feature two hosts having lively discussions about particular themes and subjects; these podcasts are akin to radio shows.
• Investigative/storytelling podcasts: these podcasts have one or more hosts that use a news/current events issue or a story to delve into each episode.

Apart from the podcast synopsis you will manage, the Company Analysis segment must furnish contextual information about the enterprise.

Respond to questions like these:

• When did you launch the company, and why?
• What accomplishments have you made thus far? Achieving a certain number of subscriptions, getting a certain number of favorable reviews, attaining a certain number of listeners, and so on are examples of milestones.
• Your system of laws. Have you filed as an S-Corp? A Limited Liability Company? An individual business? Here is where you explain your legal structure.

Analysis of the Industry

You must include a summary of the podcast industry in your industry study.

Even while it might not appear required, this has several uses.

You learn firsthand by exploring the podcast industry. It aids in your comprehension of the market you are serving. 

Second, if you conduct market research and find patterns in the industry, it might help you refine your approach.

Demonstrating your industry expertise to readers is the third rationale for conducting market research. You accomplish it by carrying out the study and incorporating it into your plan.

The industry analysis section should address the following queries:

• What is the size of the podcast industry in US dollars?
• Is the market growing or shrinking?
• Who are the main rivals in the industry?
• Which companies dominate the market as suppliers?
• Which trends are having an impact on the sector?
• How much does the industry expect to grow over the next five to ten years?
• What is the size of the relevant market? In other words, what is the size of your podcast’s potential market? By determining the size of the market throughout the nation and then extrapolating that number to your local population, you can get an estimate of this kind.

Customer Analysis

Your podcast business plan needs to include a customer analysis section that describes the audience you now serve and/or anticipate serving.

Customer segments include people in a certain niche, households, students, and so forth.

As you may expect, the kind of podcast you run will be greatly influenced by the customer segment or segments that you select. It makes sense that college students would react differently to marketing campaigns than, say, those in a specialty catering to the cooking industry.

Make an effort to segment your target market according to their psychographic and demographic characteristics. In terms of demographics, talk about the geographies, ages, genders, and income ranges of the people you want to reach.

Psychographic profiles explain your target audience’s demands and desires. You will be more successful in drawing in and keeping your audience if you can fully comprehend and identify these needs.

Competitive Analysis

The direct and indirect rivals that your company faces should be listed in your competitive analysis, with an emphasis on the latter.

Other podcasts are direct rivals. 

Other possibilities that audiences must choose from that aren’t direct competitors are known as indirect competitors. This covers TV, radio, news networks, internet streaming, and so forth.

In terms of direct competition, you should describe your rival podcasts. Podcasts near your specialty will most likely be your direct competitors.

Give a brief synopsis of each of these rival companies and list their advantages and disadvantages. It will be impossible to know everything about your competition unless you were employed by them at one point. However, you ought to be able to learn important details about them, like:

• What kinds of audio programs do they host and what kinds of content do they offer?
• Which audiences do they cater to?
• How much do they charge (premium, inexpensive, etc.)?
• What skills do they possess?
• What shortcomings do they have?

Consider the audience’s viewpoint as you respond to the final two questions. Asking your rivals’ audience what they like and dislike about them is also a brave move.

Recording your areas of competitive advantage is the last step in your competitive analysis section. As an illustration:

• Will you offer podcast content that isn’t offered by your rivals?
• Will you offer superior and more pertinent subjects?
• Will you engage the audience more effectively?
• Will you provide enhanced streaming services?

Consider how you will surpass your competitors and list those strategies in this area of your plan.

Marketing Plan

The four Ps are traditionally included in a marketing plan: product, price, place, and promotion. Your marketing strategy for a podcast business plan must have the following:

• Product: You should restate the kind of podcast that you listed in your Company Analysis in the product area. Next, describe the particular services you plan to provide. For instance, would you offer blogs, online and media interaction, podcasts, and any other products?

• Price: List the rates you will charge and how much they will cost less than those of your rivals. Your marketing plan’s product and price subsections list the services you provide together with their associated costs.

• Place: The location (reach) of your podcast is referred to here. Note where you are and how being there will affect your success in your documentation. For instance, would your podcast be listened to nationally or only locally through streaming?

• Promotions: This is the last section of your podcast marketing strategy. This section will detail your strategy for attracting listeners and subscribers to your podcast. Some promotional techniques you may want to think about are as follows:

• Apps for streaming music
• Marketing on social media
• Online ads
• SEO advertising

Operations Plan

Your operations plan outlines how you will achieve your goals, which were previously outlined in the parts that followed. The two separate sections that make up your operations strategy are as follows.

All of the daily, short-term procedures that go into managing a podcast, such as creating fresh, topical content for each episode, interacting with listeners and/or audience, promoting the podcast, etc.

Your long-term objectives are the benchmarks you want to reach. These could be the dates you want to accomplish $X in revenue or the XXth listener/subscriber you anticipate acquiring. It can also correspond with your plans to launch your podcast on an additional streaming service.

Management Team

A solid management staff is necessary to show that your podcast can prosper. Emphasize the backgrounds of your important people, highlighting the abilities and experiences that demonstrate their capacity to expand a business. 

Ideally, you have firsthand experience running podcasts, or at least one of your team members does. If so, emphasize your experience and knowledge. Additionally, emphasize any experience you believe will contribute to the success of your company.

If there are gaps in your staff, think about forming an advisory board. An advisory board would consist of two to eight people who would guide your company in a mentorship role. They would assist in offering clarification and tactical direction. If necessary, seek out advisory board members who have successfully managed a podcast or have a background in media production.

Financial Plan

Your five-year financial statement, broken down monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually after that, should be included in your financial plan. Your cash flow, balance sheet, and income statements are examples of your financial statements.

Income Statement: A profit and loss statement, or P&L, is a more popular term for an income statement. To determine whether you made a profit or not, it first displays your revenues and then deducts your costs.

As you are creating your income statement, you must make assumptions. To expand your audience of listeners and subscribers, will you, for instance, begin streaming your podcast locally or nationally? And will sales increase annually by 2% or 10%? As you may expect, the assumptions you choose to make will have a big impact on your company’s financial projections. Try to find as much evidence as you can to support your assumptions via study.

Balance sheets: These documents list your possessions and obligations. Balance sheets might contain a lot of information, so attempt to distill them down to the essential details you should be aware of. For example, investing $50,000 to develop your podcast won’t result in instant financial gain. Instead, it’s an asset that should continue to bring in money for you in the future. Similarly, you are not required to repay a $50,000 check that a bank sends you right away. Instead, you will eventually have to repay that obligation.

Cash Flow Statement: This document will assist you in estimating the amount of capital required to launch or expand your company and ensure that you never run out of money. The majority of entrepreneurs and company owners are unaware that it is possible to make a profit but still run out of money and file for bankruptcy. 

Several of the major expenses involved with launching or expanding a podcast should be included when creating your income statement and balance sheets. These include:

• The price of equipment and supplies for podcasting
• The podcast’s marketing expenses
• Payroll or salary for employees working in production Business Insurance
• Licenses and taxes
• Attorney fees

Appendix

Include all of your financial estimates in the appendix of your strategy, along with any additional documentation that strengthens it. For instance, you may specify the subjects your podcast will cover, the kinds of listeners you hope to reach, and the streaming services where your podcast will appear.

 It is worthwhile to put together a business plan for your podcast. You will be a true expert by the time you finish if you adhere to the above template. You’ll have a thorough understanding of your audience, your competitors, and the podcast business. You’ll have created a marketing strategy and have a thorough understanding of what it takes to start and expand a profitable podcast.