Creating an effective long-term podcast strategy with Historic England

What more could your podcast achieve for your brand? We worked with Historic England to create a podcast strategy that would elevate their podcast creation and help create unified content in the future.

Having already journeyed into the world of podcast production, Historic England came to us to better understand what more their podcasts could achieve for their content strategy. Through a series of Discovery Workshops, we worked collaboratively to mine their strategy for new depths. We found opportunities for new kinds of podcast content, developing their branded podcast efforts, and advising on where best to place their resources and energy going forward for maximum results. 

The Takeaways

• A podcast strategy is important for any brand that wants to maximise their efforts

• Podcasts can help elevate several parts of a wider content or business strategy 

• Our Discovery Workshop process is developed to get to the heart of what a strategy really needs

The Challenge

Our challenge was to work with Historic England to identify opportunities and define a strategy for their podcasts going forward. They already knew that podcasts would be an important part of their wider content strategy, but wanted a way to set clear outlines and define a brand style for any podcasts that they might create in the future. 

The challenge was to ensure that we gave them a detailed enough strategy to take forward, as well as helping to build out ideas they could actively use. Looking for a bigger picture plan to guide them, Grégoire Hermann, Digital Communications Manager at Historic England, said, “We didn’t have the threads [in place], to keep things growing year on year.” 

By building out a clear plan, defining ideas and offering up suggestions, we hoped to help with another key part of the challenge, which according to Grégoire, was a lack of time and resources to develop a strategy internally, as well as a desire to push their podcast output into new and exciting directions. Looking for sustainable growth, ways to keep their content consistent across platforms and opportunities for innovation, our consultancy work looked for solutions. 

The Process

Our timing was such that the development of the strategy coincided with the COVID-19 lockdown. This meant that we had to work completely remotely with the team at Historic England, employing our various collaborative tools to ensure we had productive and dynamic conversations. 

Despite this obstacle, Grégoire says, “We were reassured from the start [by Message Heard]… we liked their professionalism and sense of their being a small creative team.” Working closely with Message Heard’s Sandra Ferrari, Head of Production, and Emily Whalley, Marketing Lead, we began to sort through all the relevant information that could inform potential podcast content ideas.

Grégoire had this to say about the process:

“We had written a brief before choosing Message Heard, but this was our chance to go deeper. We were really guided by Emily and Sandra… we didn’t feel constricted to a certain set of rules. It was made to get everything out of our heads - we felt involved in a creative process.”

Together, we looked at all the key aspects of what their content needed to achieve for them, building out their audience definitions, analysing their competitors, and finding the opportunities for new podcast content that they were uniquely placed to develop. 

Insights Explained

Learning 1: A podcast strategy is essential for any brand that wants to maximise their content efforts

A strategy might seem like an afterthought, but for any team with a limited budget, time or other resources, a strategy is what can ensure your commissions are always on brand and in alignment with wider business goals. 

Whatever the size of your team, a podcast strategy sets the scene. Grégoire says, “It gave us a solid foundation to structure processes.” By having a clear set of documentation, Historic England were given a set of principles to define what they wanted from their content, offering a clear point of authority to refer to when commissioning. Helpful not just for their internal team, but for any external production agencies they may work with in future. 

Learning 2: Podcasts can help elevate several parts of a wider content or business strategy 

Podcast creation not only comes about as a result of a holistic content strategy, but it can also in turn feed into ideas for other kinds of content going forward, and align with the larger strategy of a business. 

In the case of Historic England, they had used podcasts to support the exhibitions and events they created as a business in the past, with successful results. In turn, their podcasts generated other forms of content, and served their higher purpose as a business. Grégoire says of this: “We don’t sell anything to the general public… We are a statutory body. Our role is to inspire people.” 

Podcast storytelling therefore aligned with the larger values, and the process of defining a specific podcast strategy gave Historic England new ideas about how they promote their content across the board, as well as helping to define specific podcast stories they could tell. 

Learning 3: Our Discovery Workshop process works to get to the heart of what a strategy really needs

Our Discovery Workshop is a really important part of starting work with any client, but it’s essential to the process of developing a specific strategy that suits the individual needs of a brand. 

The sessions aim to audit and brainstorm, so that a business understands the current podcast market, their competitor activity, any untapped opportunities, and the need behind podcasts for a brand. By working together to clarify marketing goals, define the core audience and key messages, as well as the themes, specific formats, software and equipment needs, licensing solutions and promotional opportunities - in short, everything that’s needed to ensure a podcast series is as effectively aligned with a brand as it can be, and resonates in the right places. 

As a process, this divides into a series of workshops, each of which focuses on a core aspect of the strategy. For a remote workshop, we worked to break larger topics down into sessions that fit easily into our client’s schedule, and we made the most of our online collaborative tools. In particular, we include space to brainstorm as if we were in front of a whiteboard together, about which Grégoire says, “The tools were very helpful to visualise what we were doing.” 

Our approach adapts to our clients, and for this reason, we continue to refine it - we adapt the process and the way workshops break down, in order to suit the client’s needs, resources and schedules.  

The Impact

Initially, Grégoire and the team took the strategy document we created and prepared top line summaries for their internal teams, and now commissions are due to occur on the back of the developed strategy. He says of the results, “As a client, we felt listened to. We gave Message Heard enough freedom to do proper research - we could trust them.” He also said, “We liked that Message Heard’s approach talked content with us - we are a content team. Other proposals we received skewed towards a marketing approach. But we wanted to tell good stories.” 

By offering up storytelling-focused solutions, the team at Historic England were very happy with the “invaluable suggestions” that we could provide, working to help them further their mission to “Create new advocates for the built environment.”

Want to learn more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand reach new audiences. Find out how we can help you by getting in touch.