The Do and Don’t of pitching were covered by Leanne Alie, Development Producer BBC Sounds in an afternoon session on Day 1 of Radiodays Europe.
Alie believes “pitching is about bringing across the passion so that I feel excited about working with you.”
She advised that when pitching a podcast idea, DO:
- Get to know your commissioners;
- Think outside of the box;
- Make content that is authentic (and not just what you think commissioners want); and
- Get creative with your pitches.
The DON’Ts:
- Allie cautioned against waiting for someone to give the ok, just go ahead and make your podcast.
- She cautioned against feeling discouraged from pitching and suggested finding the point of difference in your story.
- Lastly don’t say your podcast is like the well known BBC show ‘Desert Island Discs’
Questions to ask yourself for successful podcast pitches are:
- Do you think your idea fits the platform’s target audience?
- Is the production complicated and requires a lot of resources?
- Are you prepared foe the idea to evolve with input from editors and commissioners?
- Would you benefit form being part of an organisation, for help with things like legal clearances?
Alie responded to the question, “How do you assess a successful pitch?” by highlighting: size of audience, retention of uses, what do we want to say about subject and how do we want to say it.
Allie responded to the question, “I host a podcast about books, the culture of books with 600 episodes how do I take this further” by saying: lean into your audience e.g. crowd funding, try publishers, suppliers of products, note that audience building is work, monitoring is work.