Five situations where a firm would get more from something else, and what that something else usually is.
By Will Nash
9 November 2026
We make podcasts, so treat the following with the appropriate suspicion. There are situations where a firm would get more from spending the money elsewhere, and it is worth naming them plainly.
The common thread is that a show is slow, it compounds, and it works on people who are already broadly interested in your subject. Where any of those three is wrong, something else will do better.
When you need results this quarter
Audio accumulates. The value shows up over months, as the same people hear you repeatedly and a body of material builds up behind you.
If the requirement is pipeline before the year end, that is a different instrument. Direct outreach, an event, or a piece of targeted advertising will move faster, and starting a show under a quarterly deadline usually produces both a disappointing report and an abandoned feed.
When nobody at the firm wants to speak
This is the one that sinks most projects, and it is knowable in advance. If the partners who hold the expertise are unwilling to give an hour, unwilling to say anything that might be disagreed with, or unwilling to do it more than once, the show will be careful, sparse and eventually quiet.
Ask three of them before committing anything. Their reaction is better evidence than any amount of planning.
When the website does not explain what you do
Audio sends people somewhere. If the place it sends them is a site that does not make the firm's offer clear, the show is buying traffic for a page that cannot convert it.
Fix that first. It is cheaper, it is quicker, and it improves everything else you are already doing.
When the audience is tiny and known
If the people you need are forty named individuals, you probably do not need a published show to reach them. A series of conversations, a small private briefing, or a well-made written piece sent personally will do more.
There is a version of audio that fits this, which is a closed feed for that specific group, and it is a different proposition from a public podcast.
When somebody wants a podcast rather than a result
Sometimes the request arrives as a format rather than a problem, because a competitor has one or because someone senior enjoyed being interviewed. That is a poor reason and it produces shows nobody can evaluate, because no one agreed what it was for.
Ask what would be different in a year if it went well. If the answer is vague, the project will be too.
What to do instead
A newsletter, if the audience reads and your people write more comfortably than they speak. We have written a comparison of the two elsewhere.
A small number of properly made written pieces, if the goal is to be found in search.
A private briefing or a roundtable, if the audience is small and senior.
Nothing, if the honest answer is that no one has a clear purpose for it. Doing nothing is an underrated option and it costs less than a show nobody finishes.
When it is the right answer
Worth stating the other side too. Audio suits a firm whose expertise is genuinely in people's heads rather than in documents, that wants to reach an audience it cannot currently get in front of, and that has at least a couple of people willing to think out loud in public.
Where those three hold, it is one of the few formats that makes senior expertise accessible without taking much more of the senior person's time.
In short
A podcast is slow, cumulative, and dependent on people at your firm being willing to speak. If you need results this quarter, your experts are reluctant, your website does not explain the offer, or the audience is forty people you could ring, spend the money elsewhere and come back to this later.
We are an AI-native podcast agency, so our incentive here runs the other way. A show started against a quarterly target tends to end badly for everyone, and it is better to say so before anybody signs anything. If you would rather be told this is a bad idea than sold one, get in touch.
