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.