It's time you established your own podcast. 

I can help you do that. 

I've begun to publicly offer this service after speaking to so many FinTech companies that are struggling to develop their own customer reach. It is absolutely essential to tell your story -- and what's more, your customers (and potential customers) are really, really keen to hear it.

They don't want heavily produced marketing nonsense -- the equivalent of a dry, boring Whitepaper.

They want to learn how you work, what you offer, and how customers are using your services. 

It's not rocket science. 

But when I sit and talk to FinTechs struggling to reach senior executives -- and struggling to explain the value they offer -- I often say "Oh, come on, setup a podcast!"

The usual response? "Oh, we're not a media company, we don't know how to do that." 

Or: "Our marketing team doesn't really do this."

Guess what: You are a media company. 

You've already got media.

You're already producing media. You are. Go and check out your company's LinkedIn page, X or Instagram. At minimum you're already producing posts on LinkedIn. Someone on your team (or at your Marketing agency) is already doing this. 

But you need some more content. 

Better content. You need to tell your company's story.

If you aren't telling your story, who else will?

It's Actually Quite Simple

If you have customers, get them to tell your story.

Interview your customers. 

Ask them how they're using your services. 

Ask them how they came across your offerings.

Ask them what they value most. 

Ask them what they'd like to see from you in future. 

Ask them what trends they're seeing in the wider market. 

That, there, dear reader: That's your episode! 

You Don't Need A Million Listeners

The next query I get is, "How do we get lots of listeners?" 

How many do you want? How many do you need? If you take a step back, in many cases, there might be perhaps 5-10 decision-makers at a financial services player that actually care about your offerings. 

That's fine. You might have maybe 50 potential interested parties at a bank, but perhaps 1-5 decision-makers. 

So if you're targeting 50 banks -- if you'd be absolutely delighted to have 50 bank customers -- then your total 'addressable' market is something like 50 banks x 50 people. That's 2,500 people. 

If we conservatively double that to 5,000... that feels small, doesn't it?

This puts off a lot of executives. It feels a bit weird. It feels strange -- or too small, especially when you're accustomed to your announcements in mainstream media being read by 'millions'.

But we're talking about you, your company, your products - and mainstream media isn't doing this. They're not talking about you. Not often enough and definitely not in enough detail. 

What if only 50 people listen to an episode? 

Tke a step back: What if those 50 listeners comprise a 5x CIOs, a 3x SVPs of Infrastructure and so on? What if your episode helps them move from a 'maybe' to a 'sounds interesting, say more' status in their mind? 

What if your sales and business development teams are able to leverage your podcast to open doors, generate conversation and create more meaningful dialogue? 

What if, finally, you've got something interesting to say on your currently 'vanilla' social media channels? And FINALLY you've got something relevant to feature in your regular customer newsletters. 

How to get started

Here's the key list of items to consider: 

• You need a name for the podcast. 

• You need a strategy - a topic, a mission, at least for the first 10 episodes. 

• You need the 'plumbing' and infrastructure setup - so we can all find it on Spotify or Apple and easily subscribe and listen. 

• You need a host who knows what they're doing - at least, for the first 10 episodes. 

• You need someone to record, edit and produce each episode.

• You need to organise your marketing and social teams so that they're ready to promote each episode when they're published. (That's the easiest bit - you already have this.)

• You need to figure out a 10-episode 'season 1' plan. 

And that's it -- don't over complicate things. 

A Sample 10-Episode Guide

Here's how that first series might look: 

• Episode 1: Interview your company's CEO - ask them to introduce the company, the podcast and give a flavour of what's coming. Get them to give some background on the company's origin story and how they help clients. 

• Episode 2: Interview your company's COO or founder - similar to Episode 1, set the stage with a bit of background and market commentary

• Episode 3: Your first customer. Can you get a C-Level speaker from your first or most prominent customer to talk about working with you? Background, origin stories, and ask them how they use your services. 

• Episode 4: Your company's subject matter experts - get one of the SMEs to talk about how they see the market shaping over the next few years. Ask them to discuss what sort of feedback they're hearing from customers and the marketplace. 

• Episode 5: Interview another long-standing customer. 

• Episode 6: Interview a newer customer. What were they doing before your services? How are they using your products? What trends are they seeing in the market?

• Episode 7: Interview one of your Board or Non-Executives to get a slightly different viewpoint on the market. 

• Episode 8: Interview your Chief Product Officer to discuss your latest upcoming release - give an overview of some of the features you're adding. 

• Episode 9: Interview one of your partner/vendors/implementers to ask about their experiences and ask them to describe what they're seeing in the marketplace in terms of demand and trends.

• Episode 10: Interview another customer.

And there we go. If you reflect on that list there, you'll see how straightforward things are, right?

Actually, you'll see how compelling that content would be. 

I defy you not to read that list, thinking about your company featuring, and recognise that this would actually be really good. It would be fun to listen to. Your employee base would listen. Your vendors, suppliers and partners would be interested. And crucially, so would your customers. 

Wouldn't this look good in your company newsletters and corporate social channels?

Get started. Today. 

Here's How I Can Help

I can do it all for you.

I've done this quite a few times -- most notably for my own podcast (New Era FinTech Podcast) and for another I produce regularly.

All you need to think to consider is the name and the guest list. I'll do the rest - I can be the episode host too. Or perhaps that's something you'd like to do. Or perhaps you've got a colleague who would be keen to do that?

I can offer you advice on the right technology, software and approaches too. I can write the plan and the strategy for you. I can create the sample questions, or help with the technical plumbing to make it all work.

Typical fees for me to help you are:

• $2,000 to cover the initial infrastructure setup - this includes making sure the podcast feed and website is setup and operating. 

• $500 per episode (10 episodes x $500 = $5,000)

So, high level, allow about $7,000 all-in for a 10-episode season.

I'd also suggest allowing about $500 a year to cover the software you'll want to produce, host and manage the podcast's home on the internet.

There are some add-ons you might consider, too. For example, many organisations like to have an initial strategy document defined, along with a marketing process definition and publishing schedule detail. I can help you with these too. Allow a few thousand extra in the budget if you're thinking about these aspects.

In terms of additional management time from your end, I'd estimate this will also need perhaps 2-3 days a month of attention from one of your marketing team colleagues to help define, decide and manage various aspects including guest list, episode publishing priority and so on.

And there we go.

If you'd like to discuss this, drop me a note: I'm ewan@ned.partners or send me a note on LinkedIn.

Ewan