Why You Need a Podcast Launch Plan and How to Create One

You’ve got your list of big goals for the year, and “launch a podcast” is on the list. It’s on there along with “send weekly emails to my list” and “sign 5 new clients.”

You know that launching a podcast could be the key to your business growth, providing more visibility and a broader audience. But the problem is that launching a podcast is not a task on your to-do list; it’s a project.

It’s a project that, if you want things to go well, requires some thought and planning before jumping in and doing all the work.

And if you’re a visionary or a quick-start, you may not love the idea of taking time to create a plan for your podcast launch!

In this post, I want to share some tips with you to help you get started with creating a plan to launch your podcast.

But first, why do you need a plan? Why can’t you just jump in and start recording your podcast?

5 Reasons You Need a Plan for Your Podcast Launch

1) When you lack a plan, you might create a podcast that doesn’t actually help your business grow. It may not be what your audience needs and/or it may not appeal to your audience. Or you might not have the elements in place to bring people from the podcast into your business.

2) Without a plan, you may not be able to sustain the podcast. You could end up “pod fading” after 5 or 7 episodes, which is definitely not what you want to do.

3) A plan will help you save time in the long-run, because you’ll know exactly what you need to do and how you’re going to do it. You won’t waste time making decisions that you didn’t anticipate.

4) You’ll save money because you won’t buy every piece of equipment or software or marketing plan that pops up because you will have thought through it ahead of time.

5) A plan will help you stay on track and meet your goals. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to launching a podcast, and it is definitely not something you want to just “wing”. With a plan in place, you’ll be able to move forward confidently and know exactly what you need to do to get your amazing content out into the world.

Okay, so how exactly are you going to go about creating your podcast launch plan? 

7 Steps to Creating a Podcast Launch Plan

1) Start with your why for the podcast.

As I shared in this blog post, it’s essential to know why you want to start a podcast before you jump in. This will help you stay focused if and when something goes wrong.

When you run into a roadblock or challenge with your podcast launch, you can go back to your why and be reminded of the reason you are pursuing this goal! This will help you stay focused instead of throwing in the towel before you even get started.

2) Secondly, you want to identify your goals for the podcast launch.

What would you like to see happen during your launch phase? You might want to set a goal for number of downloads, number of ratings and reviews, or number of people added to your email list or FB group.

Note: it’s easy to get really ambitious with these numbers, especially when you listen to some big names talk about their podcast numbers. But the reality is that the median number of downloads per episode (after approx. 45 days) is approximately 150-200.

So when you set your goals, you should make sure you are realistic. You might want to talk with other podcasters or join groups where podcasters hang out so that you can get an idea of what that means.

It’s also important to note that your topic, niche, and audience will play a huge role in this, so I definitely recommend not getting hung up on the numbers. But having a goal to shoot for is always a good idea. Always remember, though, that podcasting is a long-term game, and the launch is just a very small snippet in time for your podcast.

3) List out everything that you need to do to launch your podcast.

You can do this on a piece of a paper, in Trello (my favorite tool), Asana, or a Google or Word document.

Don’t worry about making this an organized list or getting everything planned out right now. You simply want to jot down all the things you can think of that you’ll need to do. You can also put down all your current ideas as well.

Some of the things you’d want to include would be researching your idea and your target audience, naming your podcast, creating artwork, recording episodes, and securing hosting.

Not sure about all the things that will be needed to launch a podcast? In my Podcast Project Planning Sessions, I’ll walk you through every step and provide you with a Trello board that has everything you need to know!

Would you like my FREE Guide filled with resources that I’ve personally curated for you to help you launch your podcast?

4) Organize your list.

Now you’ll want to get your list a bit more organized by moving things into “buckets”. For example, you might want to put all the researching and planning items into one bucket. Then all of the creation items into another bucket, and the marketing or promo into another bucket.

Having these items categorized will help you to focus on one type of activity at a time. If you’re using Trello, you can create a list for each of the buckets, and move the tasks into the corresponding list.

5) Assign due dates.

Once you have your lists of things to do, you want to start prioritizing what needs to happen first, second, and so on. Of course, some things will need to be happening simultaneously. But the important thing is that every task on your list will have a due date.

When it comes to setting due dates, you may want to work backwards. Start with the goal of when you want to launch the podcast, then move backwards from there. I’d recommend giving yourself 6-8 weeks to get everything ready to launch. Depending on your other commitments, you may need more or less time to accomplish this goal.

6) Assign the person responsible for every task.

Next up, you need to decide who will be responsible to get the work done. Some of the items on your list, such as “recording episodes”, can only be done by you. But other things like editing, creating graphics, and so on, could be done by someone else.

If you have a team in place or the ability to outsource, this is an excellent time to do so. Because launching the podcast is a short-term project, it doesn’t require you to add someone to your team permanently (though you certainly may want to have that ongoing help to maintain the podcast). But you could hire someone to do some of the tasks and free up your time to focus on what’s most important: the content.

Whatever the case, you want to make sure to assign the tasks to whomever is responsible to complete the task. This will help you to keep track of everything and be clear on who is doing what.

7) Review the plan and look for any obvious holes or gaps.

Before you jump in and get to work, take a moment to review the full plan. Is anything obviously missing? Did you give yourself 3 weeks to research and only 1 week to create your content? If so, you may need to adjust the plan to fit reality.

For this step, you might want to have someone else review the plan with you. If you’ve never launched a podcast before, or if you just want an outside set of eyes, you can reach out to someone with more experience to review the plan and make sure you are on the right track.

Time to Work on Your Podcast Launch

Hooray! Your plan is complete. Now it’s time to get to work. You’re going to be able to move forward with launching your podcast much more easily because you have a plan.

Need help with your podcast launch? Click here to learn more about Podcast Propel, an 8-week group program to help you launch your podcast.

Would you like my FREE Guide filled with resources that I’ve personally curated for you to help you launch your podcast?