There is a direct link between understanding your podcast analytics and your audience growth
As a marketing agency, we often sit down with our podcasters to explain and analyse their data and analytics. This can take anywhere between an hour to half a day, and there is one particular thing we are always looking for – the link between good marketing and download spikes. Analytics are the key in drawing conclusions of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to your show and audiences. While creating great content is your job as a podcast creator – leave it to us to tell you exactly how your analytics can help you get more listeners for your podcast:
Number 1: Understanding Listener Demographics
No matter where you are hosted, you will be able to see insights of your audiences (although if you are still struggling to decide between hosting providers, check out this article by Lower Street that breaks them all down). For example, these could be age, gender and location. Looking at these breakdowns is important for one key reason – these are the people actually accessing your podcast! While you might have started with an idea of an ideal listener, the data will show you who the show is actually resonating with. Don’t try to break the pattern and attract more listeners of the opposite demographic, i.e. if most people listening are 30+, capitalise on that instead of investing in Gen Z marketing. Lean into your audiences and promote your podcast in country-specific ways with local influencers or by allocating host read budgets across shows that you know have similar audiences.
Number 2: Tracking Episode Performance
Have a look at your podcast on an episodic level. What does best in terms of downloads – is it shorter eps? Episodes with guests or without? Did a particular CTA (Call to Action) in an episode provoke more engagement? Asking yourself these questions and then looking at completion rates, overall downloads and any engagement you received would help you build a stronger show.
Number 3: Figuring Out Listener Retention
This metric is key to understanding your whole podcast episode. Some platforms, like Spotify and YouTube, will show you where the listener/watcher drops off. We can’t overstate this enough: you HAVE TO track this number. If you consistently see the same drop off rates at a 6-minute mark, you should consider what happens in those 6 minutes. Yes, this will count as a download or a watch, but there is always space for improvement and getting more listeners to stick with you is only a good thing. Watch or listen-though time is one of the metrics that platforms use to decide whether to promote your show. It’s a key indicator for YouTube and Apple use it when compiling their charts. We have some tips on creating bingeable content, if you need some help.
Number 4: A/B Test Marketing Initiatives
As an industry, we are so good at many things – amazing shows, clear marketing, fantastic ads – but we can be quite poor at testing. Don’t let this be you. Check in on your analytics at the same time each week, month, year etc and compare what does well and what doesn’t. You are always looking for a connection. Marketing itself is often just about finding a link between your content and your audiences, so let the data guide you here. Look at your analytics and chart when you maybe changed your artwork, had ads running at the same time as your episodes, attended other shows as a guest, etc. By aligning your marketing with your data, you will be able to attribute spikes in downloads to things that worked and any dips/platitudes to things that simply did not. This will help you finetune and refine your marketing.
Number 5: Use Click-Through Rates (CTR) to Get the Most from Your Campaigns
If you are sharing anything to do with your podcast, use click-through rates as a measure of success. This could be links via social media, or any display ads, or even emails that you send to your dedicated listeners. If you claim your show on podfollow, they provide free click tracking for social media links. You should also use tracking for your audio ads and host reads, whether they are paid or arranged via a mutually beneficial agreement through Podcast Outreach. This is a simple way to understand how many people are engaging with the things you are sharing and it will help you to focus on things that work.
We know data might not be everyone’s thing. We totally get it. If you are a creator with a brilliant vision for a show, the last thing you want to think about will be numbers. And yet, just by spending even 20 minutes a month looking at everything you are doing and how it corresponds to your listenership would not only help your podcast grow, it would help it thrive. Don’t dismiss the numbers and remember – the more you look at them, the less scary they become! happen with a seamless autoplay on whatever platform they are using. each out to us about your network or your podcast’s cross-promo strategy to get some advice or to help you execute the whole thing.