For 74% of podcasters, downloads are the primary metric used to measure success. But should they be?
For years, downloads were one of the only ways creators could measure the reach and impact of their show. But over the past few years, we’ve been getting a slow but steady stream of new analytics tools and data points… many of which provide much more useful information about
whether what we’re doing is working than downloads alone.
Topics Covered
00:00 Why do so many people care about downloads?
06:06 The case in favour of downloads
08:13 The shortcomings of downloads as a metric
09:02 How paid podcast promotion campaigns can ruin your analytics
10:22 Is listen time a better metric than downloads?
13:26 Alternative hard podcast metrics to track
17:36 Soft podcast metrics to track
28:17 Understanding leading & lagging indicators
38:21 How we combine metrics to measure success
42:36 One final obscure metric for you to track
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⭐️ Take our 2-minute podcast marketing audit to instantly identify the marketing problems keeping you from growth: https://go.podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit-pmte-sn ⭐️
Resources Mentioned
7 Obscure Podcast Metrics to Track
Bumper
Anne Handley
Podcast Movement
PodScan
Podchaser
Open Podcast Prefix Project
Additional Resources
Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report
Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter
Try Transistor.fm for free for 14 days
✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback
More on Podcast Analytics
While podcast analytics might appear to be stuck in the stone age compared to platforms like YouTube, Google Analytics, and many social media platforms, there's a lot creators can learn about how to improve their shows and their marketing... if you know where to loo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justin (00:01):
One thing to realize about all analytics numbers,
they're all going to fall preyto some disadvantage.
Jeremy (00:08):
I suspect that most of the most profitable shows have
very minuscule download numbersand nobody will ever hear about
them.
Justin (00:15):
As a marketer, I'm way more on the soft metric
qualitative side than thequantitative side. This is data
where you actually have a humanbeing responding to you.
Jeremy (00:29):
One One thing that I like is that it feels like,
okay, I can actually influencethis.
Justin (00:33):
If I care about the download metric at all, it's
that I've just noticed that ashow needs to hit a certain
level of downloads before youstart to get those responses.
Jeremy (00:44):
To me, this is almost the ultimate metric, and it
sucks that we only get it once ayear. So one of the stats that
has really jumped out to me fromboth the 2023 and 2024 podcast
marketing trends report is thiskind of pair of stats. They're
kind of like under the radar. Iactually buried them a little
bit at the end of the reportbecause they didn't seem like
that big a deal. But then someother people started like
(01:06):
mentioning it to me and reachingout and saying, Hey, does this
really make sense to you?
And it was this kind ofdisconnect between the stated
purpose that people had of theirshows and the metrics they use
to measure success. And so inparticular, we had in 2024, '40
percent of respondents say theirshow's purpose is to grow or
support their existing business.In 2023, it was 42%, so very
(01:28):
similar. But in both of thoseyears, in 2024, only 8% of
respondents cited a revenuerelated metric as their primary
measure of success. And in 2023,it was 10.4.
So Mhmm. We have 40% ofrespondents saying the show's
purpose is to grow the business,which I would assume means bring
in clients and customers andrevenue, but less than 10% of
(01:49):
people are actually using anykind of monetary metric to
measure the effectiveness of theshow. Is this kinda weird to
you?
Justin (01:56):
In a way, yes. And in a way, no. This is kind of what
always happens in marketing.It's like, how's our website
doing? Well, the views are up,you know?
Okay. Well, but is revenue up?Are those views translating into
paying customers? Part of itbecause it's harder to track
that. It's just very difficultto to figure out if someone went
(02:18):
from website viewer to customerand in the same way, podcast
listener to customer.
So in a way it's not weird. AndI think we're just as a species,
we just love vanity metrics.That's part that's just the
they're easy to get. They'reeasy to display. We like when
(02:38):
metrics are going up into theright.
So I can understand why maybepeople aren't going that extra
mile and and figuring out, isthis podcast actually growing my
business?
Jeremy (02:49):
Yeah. So whether or not you are producing a show for
your business or you'reproducing it for some other
reasons, essentially thedownload is still the default
metric far and away. And I'm notentirely convinced that this is
the best metric that peopleshould be tracking. I know
you're a little more bullish onthe download, kind of going
against the the current grain alittle bit. So you might get
(03:10):
into some tension, butting headshere a little bit.
But let's maybe just start offand go back in time and look at,
like, why is the download thedefault metric that every
podcaster essentially obsessesover?
Justin (03:22):
I mean, originally, and this persists to this day, a
podcast is an RSS feed that hasall these audio enclosures that
point to MP3 files. And in theold days, you would download
those MP3 files, sync them toyour iPod, bring your iPod into
your car, plug it into thething, and then listen off the
(03:44):
iPod. And so you could track andsay, oh, okay. How many people
downloaded this episode and thentransferred it to their iPod?
And then eventually, the iPodswould automatically download and
they'd give you a little queueof episodes to listen to.
That's how the metric started.Essentially for an RSS based
podcast, that is still how itworks. So these days, when
(04:08):
people click play in theirpodcast player, they might think
they're streaming that audiofile, but it actually downloads
it to the device. So when youclick play in Apple Podcasts or
Pocket Cast or any of those,even Spotify, if they're doing
pass through, it's actuallydownloading that file to your
device, and then you'relistening to it. There's some
criticism of it because it's notexact.
(04:31):
It doesn't tell you a lot ofother things. How much of an
episode did people listen to?Where did they drop off? There's
other additional metrics that Ithink are helpful. I'm still on
the team that says, I think thedownload is a useful metric.
I think there's a lot ofmisconceptions about the
download. I think you can addother metrics to it to make it
(04:52):
more valuable, but that's thehistory. And, that's why it's
still really the primary metricthat podcasters use to evaluate
their success or or failure.
Jeremy (05:04):
I would say from my perspective, being less
technical than you involved onthe hosting side of things, The
download was one of the onlymetrics that you could measure
with traditional RSS going backbeyond podcasting even. Of
course, this was better thananything else that was out
there. Now we have platformslike YouTube that have come
along that offer all theseanalytics and now we have
Spotify for podcasters back endand Apple Podcasts back end. And
(05:27):
they give us some of these otherdata that, you had kind of just
mentioned there. But I think fora long time, like, it's just the
easiest metric.
And I think that it's hard forus to understand a lot of other
metrics. And it's hard forhosting platforms and anyone
else to give much more than thedownload. And you can see that.
And so I think a lot of timesthere's almost a software UI
(05:49):
bias here where it's like, ifyour hosting platform tells you
this is the big number, you'relike, as a user, I don't know
what to pay attention to, butthey're telling me that I got
this many downloads. So I'mgonna pay attention to that.
And I'm gonna chase that. And,really, for a long time, really
up until the past few years,that was all that we really had
to go on. And so I think thingsare shifting in download land,
and a lot of people are superagainst the download. I see some
(06:12):
pros and cons, but I'd love toto hear you state the case for
the download as a continuedrelevant measure of traction or
success of a podcast.
Justin (06:20):
Well, the the high level numbers on any centralized
platform have the same problem.So on YouTube, it's views. What
is a view? A view is somebodywho watches a video for x number
of seconds, whether that videois thirty minutes long or two
minutes long. What's a stream onSpotify?
A stream is anyone that listenedto it over sixty seconds. That's
(06:43):
still the big metric that peopleuse on those platforms. It has
the same problem. In some ways,I think the download is still
useful because most of thosenumbers people say, well, a lot
of those numbers are autodownloads and things like that.
Auto downloading is not really athing anymore.
Most of the apps don't autodownload anymore. Most of the
(07:03):
listening that happens with RSSbased podcasts is still people
clicking play and requestingthat episode. It, to me, feels
just as valuable as say sayingsomeone watched a video for x
number of seconds or streamedsomething for sixty seconds. It
they're basically the same, typeof high level number. So if
(07:25):
you're gonna look at high levelnumbers, I think they're useful.
The other thing I'll say ispodcasts on Transistor that have
momentum, downloads areconsistently going up. And then
they can look on Spotify orYouTube, and often they'll see
the same things. Oh, streams onSpotify are also up in basically
(07:46):
the same way. Views on YouTubeare also up in basically the
same way. So if you just want ageneral guidance on how's the
show doing, is it gainingmomentum, is it not gaining
momentum, Podcasts that aredoing well, their download
numbers are going up.
They're up into the right. Eachepisode has more downloads than
the previous episode. Having alot of downloads is still an
(08:08):
indicator that your podcast isdoing well, and I don't think we
should avoid it.
Jeremy (08:13):
I agree with a lot of that. And I think that there are
some places where people get toofixated on the number and they
forget what they're actuallytrying to measure, what the
download is supposed toindicate. For most people, it is
engagement with the show. And soI think probably if you are
producing a show for yourbusiness, your assumption is
people are more likely to becomea client or customer if they
(08:34):
engage with not only oneepisode, but many episodes over
time. And so downloads arehopefully an indicator that
there are people coming back toa show.
Downloads do not tell us howmany episodes each person is
consuming. And so you could have5,000 downloads in a month, and
that could be 5,000 peoplelistening to one episode each
for thirty seconds, or it couldbe one person listening to 5,000
(08:54):
episodes of your back catalogall the way through if you have
those or listening repeat times.Mhmm. And so both of those could
be true. We don't really knowthat from downloads.
But I think where downloadsworry me sometimes is when
people start trying to juicetheir numbers, let's say, and
they are treating that as realgrowth of engaged people. And so
you see this a lot of times. Ihave done several client audits
(09:17):
where they have engaged certainpodcast promotion services. Some
are kind of thought of as morereputable, some are more kind of
LinkedIn, CD, comment, spammytypes, but all of them really
ruin your ability to understandwhat's actually going on in your
show. And so a lot of times,people will pay for these
downloads and they mightactually get repeat downloads
(09:38):
because there are actually stillsome platforms that do auto
downloads.
I think Castbox is one. Mhmm.There are several like lesser
used podcast apps that you'llsee, like you paid for this
campaign on the platform and yougot a whole bunch of downloads
and you're like, great. My showis big now. And then you realize
it just either drops offimmediately for some campaigns
if you stop paying and otherones, you just continually get
this high rate of downloads thatyou're just thinking like,
(09:59):
there's no way I actually havethis many downloads on Castbox.
And so keeping in mind, like,what are we trying to measure
here? It's not actuallydownloads. It is engaged
listeners of the show. And Ithink that this is somewhere
where other metrics can, if nottotally replace downloads, offer
some kind of useful augmentedinformation about, you know, the
people who are listening to ourshow and their experience with
(10:22):
it. And some of our goodfriends, Dan Meisner and Jonas
Wust at Bumper, they've been bigadvocates of moving away from
the download and toward listentime, overall listen time as
well as in episode listen time.
What are your kind of thoughtson that as a metric to track?
Justin (10:36):
I think it's a good additional metric to track. I
think they're on record sayingthat they still track downloads
for their their clients as well.One thing to realize about all
analytics numbers is thatthey're all going to fall prey
to some sort of disadvantage. Iuse the example of Marc Maron's
(10:57):
podcast where I primarily listenfor the monologue at the
beginning, then I'm out. Heknows us.
He puts all the ads at thebeginning. So he knows a lot of
people are just listening to thefirst five, ten minutes, and
then some folks will stay forthe conversation. And so maybe
Mark's numbers are really bad interms of episode consumption
rate. But on his side, he'slike, it's perfect. I'm getting
(11:19):
exactly what I need out of this.
One thing I'll say is be carefulwhat you optimize for and make
sure that it's aligning withwhat you actually wanna achieve
out of this show.
Jeremy (11:31):
Two more things that I wanna add in terms of the
download, just for some contexthere. The other danger of
looking at downloads is when youstart to compare yourself to
others, And it is very hard tocompare two shows because people
have different reasons forproducing their show. They do
different things within theirlives and businesses. And so you
might have two shows on the sametopic in the same category that
(11:53):
one show does 50,000 downloadsan episode and one show that
does 500 downloads an episode.And you might say, well,
obviously, the 50,000 downloadan episode is way more
successful.
But I suspect that the number of6 and 7 figure businesses run on
podcasts, I think most of thoseactually have very small
download numbers that have highpriced products on the back end.
(12:15):
And so I think probably most ofthe most profitable shows have
very minuscule download numbersand nobody will ever hear about
them. And so Mhmm. I think thatthis is something to keep in
mind as well. Like, what are thegoals for the show and really
measuring against yourself tosome extent.
I've seen the back end of all ofthese types of shows. I've seen
small shows that do multiplehundreds of thousands of dollars
a year in revenue based largelyon the podcast. That's not the
(12:37):
main product, but it funnelspeople into the main product.
And I've worked with manyclients who have high download
numbers that are breakeven orlosing money on the show. And so
when you're using the downloadas the singular metric of
success, it's really easy tolook at what the industry is
saying.
This is what you should beaiming for. And you lose sight
of, like, does my show need toget that type of download
numbers? And you end up chasingsomething that actually be
(12:58):
probably shouldn't even befocusing on. This is something
that would, like, a lot theycome in to work with me and
they're like, I wanna grow theshow. And then I do an audit of
the show and I talk with themand I'm like, you know, for way
less effort, you could have away smaller show that would be
way more profitable for yourbusiness.
And it is just so hard to createa show that gets that level of
downloads. Like, what if werecalibrated our, you know, view
of the show and, you know, it'sjust gonna be way more money for
(13:19):
less effort. And isn't that kindof what everybody wants? And a
lot of people are like, oh, Inever thought about it that way.
Yeah.
That makes way more sense. Let'sdo that instead. Mhmm. So we've
already talked about listentime, and we mentioned
consumption rate a little bit aswell. Let's maybe dig into some
of the other alternative metricsthat people can use to kinda
calculate and get a sense of, istheir show resonating with
people?
Are there people who areengaging with it? Is it, you
(13:41):
know, quote, unquote successful?Whatever that means to
everybody. And in my mind, thesekind of fall into almost two
categories, hard metrics, whichare kind of like numbers on a
screen somewhere you can findonline. And then there's more
kind of like soft, maybequalitative metrics, which might
exist in not quite so black andwhite numbers.
So let's maybe start with thethe hard metrics and go through
some of these things that peoplecan measure.
Justin (14:03):
Yeah. So in addition to consumption rate and listen
time, there's conversion rates.We talked about this last
episode. So how many people sawyour episode on the Spotify
homepage and then actually gotinterested in an episode. And
then of the people who expressedinterest, how many converted to
an actual stream?
That's a hard number. Yeah. Ifthat's going up and your
(14:23):
conversion rates are increasingevery time you make a change,
that's a positive direction,probably.
Jeremy (14:30):
And we're gonna talk about this later in the episode,
how a lot of these metrics areactually things that may lead to
more downloads. And so if we'rechasing downloads, probably
looking at some of these thingswill actually lead to that. And
so this is certainly one ofthose on the conversion rates.
So we've also got a little bitof a more obscure metric here,
which you can find through theopen podcast prefix project or o
p three. And this is a prefixyou can add to your podcast, and
(14:52):
then you actually get someadditional data that most
hosting providers don't supply.
They they basically show you howmany unique devices, consumed
your podcast over the pastthirty days and how many
downloads in total you had. Andso you can kinda take these two
numbers and then calculate howmany roughly this is a very kind
of blunt measurement, butroughly how many episodes did
each person listen to. And forme, there used to be the
(15:15):
chartable cross episoderetention data when chartable
was still around. And so youcould kind of see of the people
who listen to one episode, whatpercentage of those listen to
the next one and so on. This iskind of the closest we have to
that right now where you cansee, you know, ideally, we want
everybody who listens to ourshow to listen to every episode
we published in the last month.
That's never gonna be the case,but I think that this metric,
looking at that, you know, howmany unique people or devices,
(15:37):
how many downloads total, youcan kinda get a sense of, like,
okay, are people listening tomore than one episode on average
or is it people who are justcoming in and churning
immediately? So that's, I think,another interesting one, to look
into. What else is on your listhere?
Justin (15:50):
Yeah. So there's also these, like, Spotify wrapped.
Pocket Cast did this for thefirst time this past year.
Jeremy (15:56):
Mhmm.
Justin (15:56):
And what's interesting there is if you can see if
you're somebody's number oneshow that when it gets
published, you're going to thatepisode. You're going to listen.
And, I've noticed in myconsumption, like, I have shows
where I listen to every episode,and then I have shows where I
listen to every second or thirdepisode, and then I have shows
(16:16):
that I'm a fan of, but maybe Ionly listen to one episode every
quarter or something like that.Taking a look at these wrapped
numbers and seeing, for how manypeople are you their number one
show, that could be aninteresting stat to kind of
observe. And if you're nobody'snumber one show, if your goal is
(16:38):
to be a can't miss podcast, thenmaybe you wanna, yeah, switch
things up.
Jeremy (16:43):
To me, this is almost the ultimate metric. And it
kinda sucks that we only get itonce a year. There's one update
a year, so you look forward toit all year. You can't really
make many adjustments. Thefeedback cycle is really long.
But I think that's really whatall of us should be aiming for
is to create the favorite showfor some people. And this was
something that you you only getthe Spotify, you users here or
Pocket Cast listeners
Justin (17:04):
in the
Jeremy (17:04):
case that they rolled this out now. So it's not your
whole audience, but I actuallytook the numbers from our
Spotify rap to this past year.And then I extrapolated that out
across, okay, Spotify makes upthis percentage of our listener
base. So if that were true forall of our listeners, I think it
was actually like severalhundred people that we were the
number one show of, which I wasmy mind was blown because we
only did a kind of like tenepisode season. And I guess we
(17:26):
had the roasts in our feed thenwe've now since removed them.
So we had maybe 25, 30 episodes.So we weren't even publishing
all year. And I thought, wow,that is really, really
interesting. And I think thatactually maybe leads us into
some of the soft metrics here.
Justin (17:41):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (17:42):
Which are things that are a little bit harder to
measure. But my experience ofproducing season one of the show
is I had a lot of people whowere giving me the feedback or
posting publicly online. Like,this is my favorite show right
now or I'm listening to everyepisode. I'm listening to
multiple episodes. Last week, Iwas on a call with somebody who
was asking, so when's the showcoming back?
Like, I I miss it. And it's it'sbeen basically ten months since
(18:02):
our last episode, and thisperson is now telling me, like,
I want more episodes. And sothat's this interesting overlap
here. We got this Spotify kindof favorite show, but then we
can actually get some of thatdata the rest of the year. So
what are some of your favoriteways to kind of get some of this
mushier, looser, more kind ofephemeral data?
Justin (18:20):
To kind of expose my personal preference as a
marketer, I'm way more on thesoft metric qualitative side
than the quantitative side. Ithink I inherently distrust most
quantitative metrics. I thinkthey're always a little bit
messy. You never really know thecause and effect. Whereas
qualitative metrics, if you'redoing them consistently, they
(18:43):
can become quantitative and thatyou eventually build up so many
anecdotes that you have reallyreliable data, but this is data
where you actually have a humanbeing responding to you.
I've always said my number onemetric is response rate. You put
out an episode. Do you get anemail? Do you get a comment? Do
(19:04):
you get someone stopping you onthe street?
Do you get someone stopping youat a conference? Do you get
people trying to find yousomewhere on the Internet and
saying, listen, that episodechanged my life, or that episode
was great, or that episodereally made me think. That
metric, that response rate iswhat I'm looking for. And if I
care about the download metricat all, it's that I've just
(19:27):
noticed that a show needs to hita certain level of downloads
before you start to get thoseresponses. Once you have, let's
say, 500 to a thousandlegitimate downloads per
episode, I've found personally,that's when you should be seeing
some responses, some peoplefinding you and telling you how
(19:51):
much they enjoy the show orinteracting with you in some
way.
I think response rate should bethe number one metric. You're
trying to get people to respondin some way, either to become
customers or become fans, justengage in a thoughtful way with
what you're talking about.That's accessible to everybody.
(20:11):
And I like that podcasts havealways had this friction because
this is what makes the listenerto me more valuable than a
YouTube viewer is they'redriving home and they have to
wait until they get into thegarage before they reach out to
you. That kind of engagementwhere they have to actively,
like, pull over and then writeyou an email or get home into
(20:33):
the garage and then respond toyour message on Blue Sky, like,
that's response rate.
And I think it's really whateveryone should be optimizing
for.
Jeremy (20:44):
I was turned on to this by, newsletter writer and book
writer and marketer, AnneHandley. I don't know if you're,
familiar with her. She's a greatperson to follow. She's more in
the b to b space, but she's gota just a wonderful marketing
newsletter that's, like, funnyand warm and human. I think it
was for her hundredth issue ofher newsletter.
She shared, like, a bunch ofmetrics that she tracks, and her
number one was response rate. Ithink she actually called it
(21:05):
unsolicited response rate. Itwasn't that you asked for
somebody to respond to you. It'sjust that people read the
newsletter and could not helpbut write back.
Justin (21:13):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (21:14):
And ever since then, that was several years ago. I
actually, for an old newsletterthat I wrote, I turned this kind
of soft, more anecdotal datainto hard data where basically I
put a a spreadsheet togetherwhere if ever you get issued the
newsletter, I said, okay, here'show many people received this
newsletter. So maybe it was like7,000 and here's how many
replies that I got. And usuallyit was like a small number. It
(21:36):
would like most issues might getzero or one.
And then you'd get one that goteight and you're like, woah,
that I I was onto somethingthere. And so then, of course,
you can just make a formula thatturns that into a percentage. So
what is your unsolicitedresponse rate? And so I actually
turned this into a hard metricand you can just see the trends.
And a lot of times I was verysurprised that the episodes that
I just really wanted to landwith people got crickets.
(21:58):
And I was like, that it's stillone of my favorite issues and
I'm gonna go to my grave sayinglike, this was the best thing
I've ever written. And then itwas some other things that were
to me, I was just like, I don'tknow that there's really
anything here. I'm gonna writethat. And that would get a bunch
of replies. And you can kind ofget an insight into like where
people are at and and what isresonating with them about your
work.
So Yeah. I I love that metric.The other thing that I would add
(22:19):
on to that or there's actuallytwo additional layers to the
response rate, and it has to dowith the actual content of that
response. And so the one couldbe a specific thing that you
want to hear people say. And soyou may want to be building mind
share in the market that you areoperating in around a specific
thing.
Justin (22:35):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (22:36):
And so that might be, like, you want to be associated
with a certain idea. And somaybe we want to be associated
with data driven podcastmarketing. And maybe I even
wanna know that people find ourapproach to making data feel
approachable refreshing. And soif that's a goal of mine, then
that is guiding the show. Iwanna hear that back, and that
is a sign that, hey.
We're doing our job that we'rewe're setting up to do. The one
(22:57):
for me right now that I've kindof heard a lot from people
recently, like, once a month,I'll get on a a call with
somebody or they'll send me anemail and they'll say, yours and
Pod News are the only twonewsletters I subscribe to on
podcasting. And to me, I'malways like, okay. Great. That
is exactly what I want.
I want to be a must subscribe,must read, or people say, yours
is the only newsletter I readevery day. I know the bar for
(23:19):
quality is consistently high ifpeople are giving me that
feedback. And so Yeah. That's,one of the other things. You can
kind of set a goal for yourselfof, like, what do I want people
to associate with me?
And then that goes into yourcontent. And then if that's
coming back to you, you know,I'm hitting the mark on that
thing.
Justin (23:33):
And by the way, I think the reason I like this approach,
there's actually more ambiguitywith quantitative research
often. You're guessing. Mhmm. Solet's just take examples like
book sales. An author puts out abook, and they don't know how
what percentage of the book gotread.
People have no idea how manypeople are reading it, how many
(23:54):
people buy it and don't read it,all that stuff. What they do
know is response rate. Hey,author. I'm emailing you right
now because chapter six changedmy life. I need to let you know.
Here's all the reasons I careabout this. That's response
rate. Response rate is almostalways correlated with things
(24:16):
you want. People talking aboutyour thing word-of-mouth, people
recommending it to a friend. Myguess, for example, is, response
rate or kind of generalqualitative chatter about the
show Severance is correlatedwith the number of people who
are watching it and consuming itand going all the way to the
(24:36):
end.
But this approach allows you tojust bypass all that, like,
wonky data stuff. Like, oh, isit Where is this all coming
from? And what does thisconsumption mean? And Oh, it
doesn't matter. If responserates are up, you're golden.
And as a creator, it's human. Ifyour streams are going up or
(24:58):
your average consumption rate isgoing up, okay. Great. This
happened to me at PodcastMovement in LA. I'm walking by
myself.
You know, you're not there. Mywingman's not there. I'm just
walking around. And somebodycomes up to me and says, hey. I
just wanna let you know that Ireally enjoy the show that you
and Jeremy are doing together.
It's like, holy crap. Like, outof a fairly small number of
(25:23):
people, there's someone thatrecognized me and actually had
the wherewithal to come up andtalk to me. That speaks volumes
about Mhmm. I can extrapolatefrom that and go, wow. We must
be reaching a lot more people ifyou have that kinda interaction.
But then on a human level, it'slike I can go, oh, well, can you
tell me, like, what's resonatingabout the show? What do you
(25:45):
like? What don't you like? Itgives me way better information.
And as a creator, that's waymore motivating than just
saying, Okay, well, consumptionrate is down this month.
That sucks. Like, I can use someof that information.
Jeremy (26:00):
You know, it's striking me here that you were talking
about response rate as in peopleresponding to you. But there's
also like, that is actuallyindicative. All of these soft
metrics but also all the hardmetrics, I think come back to
this, like, emotional responserate where it's like how many
episodes that you put outconnect with people in some way.
And that could the the varietyof connection can be name any
emotion and there's a way toconnect with that. And so that
(26:21):
could be inspiring or motivatingor teaching them something or
entertaining them, making themlaugh, like, whatever that is,
making them feel like as part ofa community.
All of these things, like, thisis what we're really trying to
do. People will listen more ifthey are getting an emotional
experience in some way out of ashow. People will tell a friend
if they're getting thatexperience. Like, they will
remember the show. It will stickin their mind if they're getting
these things.
So this idea of response rate isalmost kind of like how many
(26:43):
times can you hit that mark withyour episodes and you're gonna
see a lot of these other things.So it's almost like everything
is kind of tied back to aversion of response rate, but
it's more like what you'reputting out there is that
connecting with people. So
Justin (26:56):
That's right.
Jeremy (26:56):
Yeah. I think people sending you emails, responding
to your social, post, thingslike that, mentioning you
unprompted online, that's notreally a response to you
directly, but them sharing yourshow. You also mentioned that
there's ways to do some of thiskind of, like, social listening,
things like that. I knowPodchaser actually has a feature
you can sign up for free, andyou can see if your name or your
show is mentioned on othershows. Mhmm.
And this is actually somethingthat after every year after I
(27:19):
put out the podcast marketingtrends report, then I see a
bunch of other podcasts, usuallyabout podcasting, are mentioning
the report or mentioning me. Ican see, oh, I didn't see that
anywhere. Nobody mentioned thatto me, but I'm hearing about
this through this tool that,like, oh, other people are
talking about this. Or Mhmm. Youknow, I hear that, sometimes
I'll talk with somebody on acall and they'll say, oh, I was
on this webinar the other dayand they mentioned you.
And I'm like, oh, cool. Like, Ihad no way to track that, but
(27:41):
here somebody else is telling methis.
Justin (27:43):
Yeah. There's actually another service I'll shout out
called PodScan that allows youto set up Google alert style
alerts. So you can say, here'smy brand name or here's my
personal name or whatever, andit will alert you every time
you're mentioned in a podcast.They're transcribing every
episode ever released. And sothat's another indication.
(28:05):
You know, does this idea spread?We're looking for resonance.
That's why we're doing this. Andso if you're looking for
resonance, then evaluate yoursuccess or failure based on
that.
Jeremy (28:18):
So you again mentioned, you know, a lot of these things
lead to downloads or lead torevenue. And so, essentially,
what we're talking about here isthis idea of lead and lag
metrics, or some people callthem leading and lagging
metrics. How would you describethis concept to somebody who's
not familiar with it?
Justin (28:34):
A leading metric in the software business is if we're
getting more trials, thatgenerally means that, you know,
revenue will increase, and thelagging metric is revenue
increased. A leading metriccould be we're getting way more
customer support requestscomplaining about bugs, but a
lagging, we get more churn.People are Right. Canceling.
Jeremy (28:56):
It's essentially, like, there's some early indicator
that predicts a future thing.And so there's, like, if you're
seeing this now, you mightexpect to see this thing later,
essentially.
Justin (29:05):
That's yeah. Because by the time somebody cancels or
churns, and this happens inpodcasting as well, they're
like, you know what? Thisepisode's just not doing it for
me. And then you listen to twomore, and you're like, this is
so dumb. I'm just gonnaunsubscribe or unfollow this
podcast.
Well, by the time they'vechurned, it's too late. Right?
The lagging indicator hashappened. There's nothing you
(29:26):
can do about it. But if you weregetting some leading indicators,
like, people are finding youyour email and saying, listen,
man.
Like, your audio quality hasjust gone downhill. Like, you've
gotta fix this. I can't listento it anymore. Getting an email
like that from a bunch of peoplewould be a leading indicator
that you've gotta do something,and you actually have some time
(29:46):
to do something about it.Whereas, once you've lost them,
you've lost them forever.
Jeremy (29:51):
It's interesting because I was thinking mostly of
positive leading indicators, butthere are also the negative
leading indicators that thingsare going to get worse. And it
it actually makes me think of Iremember Jay Klaus talking
about, like, now his YouTubechannel has exploded. His
podcast is pretty big. TheYouTube channel is much, much
bigger. But when he first gotinto YouTube maybe two, three
years ago, something like that,he was in his first year, was
putting out really high qualityvideo podcasts.
(30:14):
And he mentioned at one pointthat he got all these comments.
He was just, like, reallyfrustrated with the process
because he put in a lot of moneyinto the process in terms of
hiring, building out a studio,doing all these things. And then
he'd also put in a ton of timeinto doing it and was still
getting, you know, 800 maybelike 1,500, two thousand views
an episode. But he's like, ourquality that we're putting out
(30:34):
is so much better than this andI just I don't know what to do
about this. Like, should I quit?
It doesn't feel like I canjustify putting in this kind of
expense going forward if we'renot getting the views. But he
mentioned that he kept gettingthese comments where people in
the YouTube comment sectionwould be saying, dude, I don't
understand how you have so fewviews. Like, this is gold. This
is so good. And that, in myexperience, is always a leading
(30:56):
indicator that you're doingsomething right and that there
is a breakthrough coming at somepoint.
And it's impossible to say thetimeline on that, but if you are
repeatedly getting that feedbackthat people are kind of
incredulous almost that, like,how are you not getting more
traction to this? Why why have Inever heard about you before?
It's like, okay. Now I know.Like, that is almost the purest
leading indicator that, okay, Igotta keep doing this and double
(31:17):
down on this and good things aregonna come.
So Yeah. That's like a big one.I'm curious about, like, some of
the other podcast focusedleading indicators that you are
going to get future maybe uptickin downloads.
Justin (31:29):
Well, one that I can think of right now is if your
numbers are compounding eachyear, whether that's downloads,
whether that's listens if theycontinue to go up and double
every year, at first, that canseem so small. Like, I doubled
from 500 to a thousand regularmonthly listeners. That's a good
sign if you do that two or threeyears in a row, because the
(31:52):
tipping point is when all of asudden it's like, well, going
from a thousand to 2,000 didn'tfeel very big, but going from
2,000 to 4,000 starts to feelbig. And I've used this this,
metaphor of rolling a snowballdown the hill. You know?
It just, like, starts small, andit gets bigger and bigger and
bigger. And I think thatapproach to growth in general is
(32:14):
what we're looking for is, youknow Yeah. Am I consistently
getting more and more numbers asopposed to the other approach,
which is the slot machineapproach where you're just,
like, pulling a lever andsaying, okay. Did that move
things? I got a big guest.
Like, did it did it work? Did itwork? It's like, no. Like,
focusing on the things thatcompound, I think, are, a really
(32:34):
good leading indicator.
Jeremy (32:36):
That's a super long term, leading indicator there.
One thing that I like about alot of leading indicators is
that they actually feel moreapproachable, and it feels like
you have a bit more agency over,okay, I can actually influence
this in a more direct kind ofcause and effect way than
download sometimes. Mhmm. And sothe one for me that I think is
the my favorite leadingindicator for basically all good
(32:58):
things in podcasting is thatconsumption rate. You mentioned
before with the Marc Maronexample, there are certainly
scenarios where maybe the pointis not that everybody listens
through the whole episode andit's segmented in a way where,
you know, the first half of theepisode is for, you know, the
casual fans and the rest of theepisodes for the die hards.
Justin (33:13):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (33:13):
But most shows are trying to get people to listen
through the full episode. And Ithink if you're only getting 50%
of people making it through theepisode, if the average
consumption rate is 50%, that isa leading indicator that you are
going to stay plateaued or evenshrink. And so that is probably
something that is a negativesign for the future of your
show. Whereas if you're getting70 to 80% of people who are
(33:35):
completing the episode, that's aleading indicator that, okay,
like, I might have smalldownloads now, but if I have an
average consumption rate of 80%,that is better than average. And
that is a sign of a greatobjectively great show that the
people who are coming in, theyare loving the show.
The content is on point. And soprobably people who listen
through full episodes of a showare more likely to come back.
(33:57):
And people who are more likelyto come back for an episode are
more likely to talk about it orshare it with someone. And so
for me, that's one of thosethings where we actually have
direct control over that interms of how we're structuring
our episodes, how much editingwe're doing, the types of topics
that we are, you know, coveringin our shows, and how we
structure those from a kind ofcontent perspective.
Justin (34:15):
I think this is one reason the folks at Bumper like
listen time as a metric becauseMhmm. If you are increasing
listen time Yeah. Sometimes whatyou'll do is you'll go, well,
people are only listening toforty five minutes of an hour
show, and so then you'll reduceit to thirty minutes, but then
the consumption rate stays thesame. Whereas Yeah. Maybe what
(34:36):
you wanna optimize for isoverall listen time.
Like, people are just listeningto more minutes on average every
month, and that's also a leadingindicator. Like, I'm putting out
enough good minutes of audiothat people are increasing the
amount of audio they'relistening to from me every
month. And sometimes that couldmean I'm just gonna put out more
(34:58):
episodes. And Mhmm. Lo andbehold, my listen time goes up.
Sometimes it means I'm gonnamake the episodes longer knowing
that my consumption rate willstay roughly the same, but I'll
get more listen time.
Jeremy (35:10):
I had a client a few years ago who had that exact
conundrum where he put out maybean hour and a half to two hour
episode, and it was about realestate or something like that.
And he'd just been in theindustry so long, he could just
get on and riff. And he was oneof those types of, like,
charismatic people who can kindapull that off. Mhmm. But he was
seeing that he was, like, 55%consumption rate.
And so he was, like, oh, I wannaget that up. So he immediately
(35:30):
cut his episodes in half, andhis consumption rate went up.
But then he started hearing someof this response from people.
And it was all of his people whowere, like, his existing
customers and people who wouldbecome customers most likely who
were saying, hey. We like thelong episodes.
And so it turned out a certainsubset of his audience actually
loved and wanted to eat up asmuch content as possible where
more of the casual listeners,you know, were tuning in for
(35:52):
less. And so it was actually thebest thing for the business was
to keep those longer episodesand actually have a lower
consumption rate, but a higheramount of listen time.
Justin (36:00):
Another one to look at is just overall impact of the
funnel. So last time we talkedabout what you get in Spotify's
new dashboard, how manyimpressions you got, and then
here's how many people you gotchecking out the show, and then
here's how many people actuallylistened. If the overall impact
and momentum in that funnel isincreasing, meaning Mhmm. At the
(36:22):
top of the funnel, you'regetting way more impressions,
and that's leading to morepeople checking out your show,
and that's leading to morepeople listening, and then that
leads to more people stickingaround. That is a good leading
indicator.
Conversion rates are somethingto look at too. But sometimes,
in marketing, it is just waybetter to get way more people in
(36:44):
the funnel, at the top of thefunnel, even if your conversion
rate, declines. Mhmm. You'rejust getting more people out at
the bottom. That's a a goodleading indicator that
something's going well, I think.
Jeremy (36:56):
The last one that I have here related to leading
indicators, this is more for thebusiness side of things, is
podcast driven email growth.Mhmm. And so I'm a big believer
that podcasts play a hugelyimportant role in generating
clients and customers, but it'snot the only tool that you need.
And really, email is the perfectcomplement to that. And part of
the problem with podcasting isthere's so much friction getting
(37:17):
people into a podcast and out ofa podcast.
And so you might have diehardlisteners, but getting them to
go to a sales page when they'redriving or running or cooking or
anything else is just reallyhard. Mhmm. And so you're gonna
unlock more of that potentialrevenue, more of those potential
customers and clients if you canhave podcast listeners who are
also on your email list. And soI would say that especially if
you're in business, if you aredoing some experiments maybe
(37:39):
with your calls to action, maybewith your content strategy to
more clearly align it withwhatever you offer on your email
or a lead magnet or somethinglike that, and you see, oh, I'm
getting more people onto theemail list, like, that's a
leading indicator that probablyyou're gonna end up with more
sales down the line as well.It's good to think about, you
know, what these metrics are andthen also think about what are
the different things that I canplay with to influence them.
(37:59):
And then if I can, you know,improve my consumption rate,
improve my conversion rates, getimprove the number of
impressions I'm getting, whetherthat's in Spotify or just out in
the world Mhmm. And improve, youknow, the number of people who
are getting onto my email list.Probably all the other good
things you want, the laggingindicators or the lagging
metrics at the end of yourfunnel, whether that's downloads
or sales or revenue or whateverthat is, are naturally gonna
(38:20):
happen. Mhmm. Alright.
So we kinda started off theepisode talking about downloads,
some of the pros and cons here,talked about a bunch of the
other metrics that we can use totrack some of those hard and
soft metrics, and then looked atlead and lag, indicators and
metrics. You were prettyentrenched on the download side
of things early in the episode,but I I saw some excitement,
come out when it came to theanecdotal stuff. So Yeah. Where
(38:43):
are you kind of falling afterthis conversation at the big
picture? We've got all theseanalytics, all these things that
we can use to track the successof the show.
How do you kinda distill yourphilosophy around, you know,
trying to measure if what you'redoing is working?
Justin (38:56):
I mean, I think I'm still looking at downloads kind
of top level most of the time.Mhmm. And then just keeping
track of how many responses I'mgetting to the shell. And then
maybe every once in a whilegoing in and drilling down and
saying, okay. How's ourconsumption rate doing?
Some of these other things mayberun an experiment for a month,
(39:18):
two months, three months, andthen come back in three months,
drill down again, see if it'shad any sort of impact. But high
level, I'm still looking atdownloads. And then the next
thing I'm looking at is responserate. How about yourself?
Jeremy (39:32):
I will say that you won me over a little bit back to the
download side of things. It hasbeen something that, you know,
I've always tracked and I'malways going to track just
because it is that obviousnumber. And I think to your
point, it is a obvious indicatorof momentum. If you are not
meddling with your downloads bydriving paid traffic to it or
doing any of these podcastpromotion tactics, then if that
number is going up, clearly,that's a sign that more people
(39:54):
are either discovering the showor more people who do listen are
coming back. So, I think there'sa lot that we can take away from
the download as a kind ofsimplistic high level metric.
The other thing that I will goback to though, if you are
running a show that is part of abusiness, I think you need to
find a way to attribute revenueto the podcast. And so I think
so many people that I talk to,they just have no idea the
(40:17):
impact of the show on theirbusiness. And so they'll produce
it for three years. They'll puthundreds or thousands or tens of
thousands of dollars into itfrom hiring editors and all
these other things that comealong with it. And at the end of
the day, they really can't say,has this led to growth in my
business?
And I think a lot of timespeople think of monetization
purely as sponsor driven withpodcasts. But, again, the most
(40:37):
valuable podcast, let's callthem, the shows that drive the
most value for the businessesattached to them, do not have
any sponsors and they are clientand customer acquisition
channels and they're actuallypretty small in terms of
downloads. Mhmm. So, for me,that is is ultimately, you know,
a big thing that I'm looking forfor any shows that I do. I'm
looking for when I get on asales call with somebody, do
(40:57):
they quote back episodes to meand they say, oh, you and Justin
talked about this thing here andI I realized I needed to work on
that.
And I'm like, oh, there's a acertain type of response rate
that, like, okay. I know thepodcast is playing a role in
getting me customers. And sothat's something that, again,
you can put hard metrics to, butI think whether that's,
conversational or if that'ssomething like a post purchase
survey where, you know, somebodysigns up to your product and
(41:18):
there's a little checkbox thatsays, which of the following
have you engaged with? And maybethey say the newsletter and
your, Blue Sky feed and yourpodcast. And it's like, okay.
If you see 40% of customers areengaging with the podcast, you
can now actually say, oh, thepodcast, I can see that it's
having an impact on thebusiness. And so I think, yes,
downloads are useful. Butdepending on what your goals are
for the show, there's probablymore useful metrics that you
(41:40):
should try and find a way to geteven if it's vague data on some
attribution that it's doing whatyou want.
Justin (41:46):
Yeah. And this honesty, I think, will help people feel
better about their show. Becauseif let's say you're doing a a
business podcast and youremployees really enjoy it, and
it's just fun for them, and itgets them more activated, it
crystallizes their thinkingaround a bunch of topics, which
in turn helps drive the businessforward, just be Mhmm. Honest
(42:08):
about it. If that's what you'regetting out of it, a podcast can
drive results in all sorts ofdifferent ways.
And sometimes it's just like, Iget to talk to interesting
people in my industry, and thatalone is valuable. Or it helps
clarify thinking for blog posts,which then drive traffic to our
website or whatever. I thinkpeople will feel better about
(42:28):
their show if they're justbrutally honest about it and
being able to say, who caresabout the downloads? We're
getting something valuable outof it. That being said, I I
really like this other metricyou came up with, here at the
end, which is download to hourof effort.
What's this metric?
Jeremy (42:44):
Yes. I was just, brainstorming a bunch of obscure
additional metrics that youcould choose to track. And some
of these are things that Iactually do care about quite a
bit. We're not gonna go throughall of them now because they
require some explanation. I'mgonna put a link to them in the
show notes for this episode.
So if you wanna find, theseother obscure metrics that you
can track to help judge thesuccess of your show, you can
find those in the show notes.But this one here, I came up
(43:05):
with as I was brainstorming someof these, and it downloads to
hour of effort. And I thought,actually, it's kind of an
interesting way to measure theimpact of your effort. And so
let's say you put ten hours aweek into your episode and you
get, you know, 250 downloads.And then a year later, you're
putting in ten hours of effort aweek and you're getting two two
thousand five hundred downloads.
It's like, hey. I the sameamount of effort is getting me
more out of this. Or you couldalso look at this could be a
(43:28):
leading indicator as well.You're saying, I put fifteen
hours of effort in, and I'mstill only getting 250 downloads
an episode. Or maybe it wentdown to 200 And you're like,
okay.
Something is wrong here afterI'm putting more effort in and
it's not having the result. Andso I think there's something to
to kinda dig into there. Ithought it was just a funny,
kinda quirky little thing, but Imight actually start,
Justin (43:46):
tracking this in some way. Yeah. Like, what's the
effort to reward ratio? Howeveryou determine that. And anybody
can create a spreadsheet.
And so if you start tracking howmany hours or how much money
you're putting into the podcast,money invested to downloads or
money invested to response rateor money invested to business
outcome, then it helps youevaluate whether this is worth
(44:08):
it for you.
Jeremy (44:09):
So if you're curious in digging further into all of the
data that we talked about inthis episode, along with much,
much more related to growingyour show, building your
audience and having a moreeffective successful podcast,
you can find all of that at thePodcast Marketing Trends 2024
report, which is atpodcastmarketingtrends.com.
One thing to realize about all analytics numbers,
they're all going to fall preyto some disadvantage.
Jeremy (00:08):
I suspect that most of the most profitable shows have
very minuscule download numbersand nobody will ever hear about
them.
Justin (00:15):
As a marketer, I'm way more on the soft metric
qualitative side than thequantitative side. This is data
where you actually have a humanbeing responding to you.
Jeremy (00:29):
One One thing that I like is that it feels like,
okay, I can actually influencethis.
Justin (00:33):
If I care about the download metric at all, it's
that I've just noticed that ashow needs to hit a certain
level of downloads before youstart to get those responses.
Jeremy (00:44):
To me, this is almost the ultimate metric, and it
sucks that we only get it once ayear. So one of the stats that
has really jumped out to me fromboth the 2023 and 2024 podcast
marketing trends report is thiskind of pair of stats. They're
kind of like under the radar. Iactually buried them a little
bit at the end of the reportbecause they didn't seem like
that big a deal. But then someother people started like
(01:06):
mentioning it to me and reachingout and saying, Hey, does this
really make sense to you?
And it was this kind ofdisconnect between the stated
purpose that people had of theirshows and the metrics they use
to measure success. And so inparticular, we had in 2024, '40
percent of respondents say theirshow's purpose is to grow or
support their existing business.In 2023, it was 42%, so very
(01:28):
similar. But in both of thoseyears, in 2024, only 8% of
respondents cited a revenuerelated metric as their primary
measure of success. And in 2023,it was 10.4.
So Mhmm. We have 40% ofrespondents saying the show's
purpose is to grow the business,which I would assume means bring
in clients and customers andrevenue, but less than 10% of
(01:49):
people are actually using anykind of monetary metric to
measure the effectiveness of theshow. Is this kinda weird to
you?
Justin (01:56):
In a way, yes. And in a way, no. This is kind of what
always happens in marketing.It's like, how's our website
doing? Well, the views are up,you know?
Okay. Well, but is revenue up?Are those views translating into
paying customers? Part of itbecause it's harder to track
that. It's just very difficultto to figure out if someone went
(02:18):
from website viewer to customerand in the same way, podcast
listener to customer.
So in a way it's not weird. AndI think we're just as a species,
we just love vanity metrics.That's part that's just the
they're easy to get. They'reeasy to display. We like when
(02:38):
metrics are going up into theright.
So I can understand why maybepeople aren't going that extra
mile and and figuring out, isthis podcast actually growing my
business?
Jeremy (02:49):
Yeah. So whether or not you are producing a show for
your business or you'reproducing it for some other
reasons, essentially thedownload is still the default
metric far and away. And I'm notentirely convinced that this is
the best metric that peopleshould be tracking. I know
you're a little more bullish onthe download, kind of going
against the the current grain alittle bit. So you might get
(03:10):
into some tension, butting headshere a little bit.
But let's maybe just start offand go back in time and look at,
like, why is the download thedefault metric that every
podcaster essentially obsessesover?
Justin (03:22):
I mean, originally, and this persists to this day, a
podcast is an RSS feed that hasall these audio enclosures that
point to MP3 files. And in theold days, you would download
those MP3 files, sync them toyour iPod, bring your iPod into
your car, plug it into thething, and then listen off the
(03:44):
iPod. And so you could track andsay, oh, okay. How many people
downloaded this episode and thentransferred it to their iPod?
And then eventually, the iPodswould automatically download and
they'd give you a little queueof episodes to listen to.
That's how the metric started.Essentially for an RSS based
podcast, that is still how itworks. So these days, when
(04:08):
people click play in theirpodcast player, they might think
they're streaming that audiofile, but it actually downloads
it to the device. So when youclick play in Apple Podcasts or
Pocket Cast or any of those,even Spotify, if they're doing
pass through, it's actuallydownloading that file to your
device, and then you'relistening to it. There's some
criticism of it because it's notexact.
(04:31):
It doesn't tell you a lot ofother things. How much of an
episode did people listen to?Where did they drop off? There's
other additional metrics that Ithink are helpful. I'm still on
the team that says, I think thedownload is a useful metric.
I think there's a lot ofmisconceptions about the
download. I think you can addother metrics to it to make it
(04:52):
more valuable, but that's thehistory. And, that's why it's
still really the primary metricthat podcasters use to evaluate
their success or or failure.
Jeremy (05:04):
I would say from my perspective, being less
technical than you involved onthe hosting side of things, The
download was one of the onlymetrics that you could measure
with traditional RSS going backbeyond podcasting even. Of
course, this was better thananything else that was out
there. Now we have platformslike YouTube that have come
along that offer all theseanalytics and now we have
Spotify for podcasters back endand Apple Podcasts back end. And
(05:27):
they give us some of these otherdata that, you had kind of just
mentioned there. But I think fora long time, like, it's just the
easiest metric.
And I think that it's hard forus to understand a lot of other
metrics. And it's hard forhosting platforms and anyone
else to give much more than thedownload. And you can see that.
And so I think a lot of timesthere's almost a software UI
(05:49):
bias here where it's like, ifyour hosting platform tells you
this is the big number, you'relike, as a user, I don't know
what to pay attention to, butthey're telling me that I got
this many downloads. So I'mgonna pay attention to that.
And I'm gonna chase that. And,really, for a long time, really
up until the past few years,that was all that we really had
to go on. And so I think thingsare shifting in download land,
and a lot of people are superagainst the download. I see some
(06:12):
pros and cons, but I'd love toto hear you state the case for
the download as a continuedrelevant measure of traction or
success of a podcast.
Justin (06:20):
Well, the the high level numbers on any centralized
platform have the same problem.So on YouTube, it's views. What
is a view? A view is somebodywho watches a video for x number
of seconds, whether that videois thirty minutes long or two
minutes long. What's a stream onSpotify?
A stream is anyone that listenedto it over sixty seconds. That's
(06:43):
still the big metric that peopleuse on those platforms. It has
the same problem. In some ways,I think the download is still
useful because most of thosenumbers people say, well, a lot
of those numbers are autodownloads and things like that.
Auto downloading is not really athing anymore.
Most of the apps don't autodownload anymore. Most of the
(07:03):
listening that happens with RSSbased podcasts is still people
clicking play and requestingthat episode. It, to me, feels
just as valuable as say sayingsomeone watched a video for x
number of seconds or streamedsomething for sixty seconds. It
they're basically the same, typeof high level number. So if
(07:25):
you're gonna look at high levelnumbers, I think they're useful.
The other thing I'll say ispodcasts on Transistor that have
momentum, downloads areconsistently going up. And then
they can look on Spotify orYouTube, and often they'll see
the same things. Oh, streams onSpotify are also up in basically
(07:46):
the same way. Views on YouTubeare also up in basically the
same way. So if you just want ageneral guidance on how's the
show doing, is it gainingmomentum, is it not gaining
momentum, Podcasts that aredoing well, their download
numbers are going up.
They're up into the right. Eachepisode has more downloads than
the previous episode. Having alot of downloads is still an
(08:08):
indicator that your podcast isdoing well, and I don't think we
should avoid it.
Jeremy (08:13):
I agree with a lot of that. And I think that there are
some places where people get toofixated on the number and they
forget what they're actuallytrying to measure, what the
download is supposed toindicate. For most people, it is
engagement with the show. And soI think probably if you are
producing a show for yourbusiness, your assumption is
people are more likely to becomea client or customer if they
(08:34):
engage with not only oneepisode, but many episodes over
time. And so downloads arehopefully an indicator that
there are people coming back toa show.
Downloads do not tell us howmany episodes each person is
consuming. And so you could have5,000 downloads in a month, and
that could be 5,000 peoplelistening to one episode each
for thirty seconds, or it couldbe one person listening to 5,000
(08:54):
episodes of your back catalogall the way through if you have
those or listening repeat times.Mhmm. And so both of those could
be true. We don't really knowthat from downloads.
But I think where downloadsworry me sometimes is when
people start trying to juicetheir numbers, let's say, and
they are treating that as realgrowth of engaged people. And so
you see this a lot of times. Ihave done several client audits
(09:17):
where they have engaged certainpodcast promotion services. Some
are kind of thought of as morereputable, some are more kind of
LinkedIn, CD, comment, spammytypes, but all of them really
ruin your ability to understandwhat's actually going on in your
show. And so a lot of times,people will pay for these
downloads and they mightactually get repeat downloads
(09:38):
because there are actually stillsome platforms that do auto
downloads.
I think Castbox is one. Mhmm.There are several like lesser
used podcast apps that you'llsee, like you paid for this
campaign on the platform and yougot a whole bunch of downloads
and you're like, great. My showis big now. And then you realize
it just either drops offimmediately for some campaigns
if you stop paying and otherones, you just continually get
this high rate of downloads thatyou're just thinking like,
(09:59):
there's no way I actually havethis many downloads on Castbox.
And so keeping in mind, like,what are we trying to measure
here? It's not actuallydownloads. It is engaged
listeners of the show. And Ithink that this is somewhere
where other metrics can, if nottotally replace downloads, offer
some kind of useful augmentedinformation about, you know, the
people who are listening to ourshow and their experience with
(10:22):
it. And some of our goodfriends, Dan Meisner and Jonas
Wust at Bumper, they've been bigadvocates of moving away from
the download and toward listentime, overall listen time as
well as in episode listen time.
What are your kind of thoughtson that as a metric to track?
Justin (10:36):
I think it's a good additional metric to track. I
think they're on record sayingthat they still track downloads
for their their clients as well.One thing to realize about all
analytics numbers is thatthey're all going to fall prey
to some sort of disadvantage. Iuse the example of Marc Maron's
(10:57):
podcast where I primarily listenfor the monologue at the
beginning, then I'm out. Heknows us.
He puts all the ads at thebeginning. So he knows a lot of
people are just listening to thefirst five, ten minutes, and
then some folks will stay forthe conversation. And so maybe
Mark's numbers are really bad interms of episode consumption
rate. But on his side, he'slike, it's perfect. I'm getting
(11:19):
exactly what I need out of this.
One thing I'll say is be carefulwhat you optimize for and make
sure that it's aligning withwhat you actually wanna achieve
out of this show.
Jeremy (11:31):
Two more things that I wanna add in terms of the
download, just for some contexthere. The other danger of
looking at downloads is when youstart to compare yourself to
others, And it is very hard tocompare two shows because people
have different reasons forproducing their show. They do
different things within theirlives and businesses. And so you
might have two shows on the sametopic in the same category that
(11:53):
one show does 50,000 downloadsan episode and one show that
does 500 downloads an episode.And you might say, well,
obviously, the 50,000 downloadan episode is way more
successful.
But I suspect that the number of6 and 7 figure businesses run on
podcasts, I think most of thoseactually have very small
download numbers that have highpriced products on the back end.
(12:15):
And so I think probably most ofthe most profitable shows have
very minuscule download numbersand nobody will ever hear about
them. And so Mhmm. I think thatthis is something to keep in
mind as well. Like, what are thegoals for the show and really
measuring against yourself tosome extent.
I've seen the back end of all ofthese types of shows. I've seen
small shows that do multiplehundreds of thousands of dollars
a year in revenue based largelyon the podcast. That's not the
(12:37):
main product, but it funnelspeople into the main product.
And I've worked with manyclients who have high download
numbers that are breakeven orlosing money on the show. And so
when you're using the downloadas the singular metric of
success, it's really easy tolook at what the industry is
saying.
This is what you should beaiming for. And you lose sight
of, like, does my show need toget that type of download
numbers? And you end up chasingsomething that actually be
(12:58):
probably shouldn't even befocusing on. This is something
that would, like, a lot theycome in to work with me and
they're like, I wanna grow theshow. And then I do an audit of
the show and I talk with themand I'm like, you know, for way
less effort, you could have away smaller show that would be
way more profitable for yourbusiness.
And it is just so hard to createa show that gets that level of
downloads. Like, what if werecalibrated our, you know, view
of the show and, you know, it'sjust gonna be way more money for
(13:19):
less effort. And isn't that kindof what everybody wants? And a
lot of people are like, oh, Inever thought about it that way.
Yeah.
That makes way more sense. Let'sdo that instead. Mhmm. So we've
already talked about listentime, and we mentioned
consumption rate a little bit aswell. Let's maybe dig into some
of the other alternative metricsthat people can use to kinda
calculate and get a sense of, istheir show resonating with
people?
Are there people who areengaging with it? Is it, you
(13:41):
know, quote, unquote successful?Whatever that means to
everybody. And in my mind, thesekind of fall into almost two
categories, hard metrics, whichare kind of like numbers on a
screen somewhere you can findonline. And then there's more
kind of like soft, maybequalitative metrics, which might
exist in not quite so black andwhite numbers.
So let's maybe start with thethe hard metrics and go through
some of these things that peoplecan measure.
Justin (14:03):
Yeah. So in addition to consumption rate and listen
time, there's conversion rates.We talked about this last
episode. So how many people sawyour episode on the Spotify
homepage and then actually gotinterested in an episode. And
then of the people who expressedinterest, how many converted to
an actual stream?
That's a hard number. Yeah. Ifthat's going up and your
(14:23):
conversion rates are increasingevery time you make a change,
that's a positive direction,probably.
Jeremy (14:30):
And we're gonna talk about this later in the episode,
how a lot of these metrics areactually things that may lead to
more downloads. And so if we'rechasing downloads, probably
looking at some of these thingswill actually lead to that. And
so this is certainly one ofthose on the conversion rates.
So we've also got a little bitof a more obscure metric here,
which you can find through theopen podcast prefix project or o
p three. And this is a prefixyou can add to your podcast, and
(14:52):
then you actually get someadditional data that most
hosting providers don't supply.
They they basically show you howmany unique devices, consumed
your podcast over the pastthirty days and how many
downloads in total you had. Andso you can kinda take these two
numbers and then calculate howmany roughly this is a very kind
of blunt measurement, butroughly how many episodes did
each person listen to. And forme, there used to be the
(15:15):
chartable cross episoderetention data when chartable
was still around. And so youcould kind of see of the people
who listen to one episode, whatpercentage of those listen to
the next one and so on. This iskind of the closest we have to
that right now where you cansee, you know, ideally, we want
everybody who listens to ourshow to listen to every episode
we published in the last month.
That's never gonna be the case,but I think that this metric,
looking at that, you know, howmany unique people or devices,
(15:37):
how many downloads total, youcan kinda get a sense of, like,
okay, are people listening tomore than one episode on average
or is it people who are justcoming in and churning
immediately? So that's, I think,another interesting one, to look
into. What else is on your listhere?
Justin (15:50):
Yeah. So there's also these, like, Spotify wrapped.
Pocket Cast did this for thefirst time this past year.
Jeremy (15:56):
Mhmm.
Justin (15:56):
And what's interesting there is if you can see if
you're somebody's number oneshow that when it gets
published, you're going to thatepisode. You're going to listen.
And, I've noticed in myconsumption, like, I have shows
where I listen to every episode,and then I have shows where I
listen to every second or thirdepisode, and then I have shows
(16:16):
that I'm a fan of, but maybe Ionly listen to one episode every
quarter or something like that.Taking a look at these wrapped
numbers and seeing, for how manypeople are you their number one
show, that could be aninteresting stat to kind of
observe. And if you're nobody'snumber one show, if your goal is
(16:38):
to be a can't miss podcast, thenmaybe you wanna, yeah, switch
things up.
Jeremy (16:43):
To me, this is almost the ultimate metric. And it
kinda sucks that we only get itonce a year. There's one update
a year, so you look forward toit all year. You can't really
make many adjustments. Thefeedback cycle is really long.
But I think that's really whatall of us should be aiming for
is to create the favorite showfor some people. And this was
something that you you only getthe Spotify, you users here or
Pocket Cast listeners
Justin (17:04):
in the
Jeremy (17:04):
case that they rolled this out now. So it's not your
whole audience, but I actuallytook the numbers from our
Spotify rap to this past year.And then I extrapolated that out
across, okay, Spotify makes upthis percentage of our listener
base. So if that were true forall of our listeners, I think it
was actually like severalhundred people that we were the
number one show of, which I wasmy mind was blown because we
only did a kind of like tenepisode season. And I guess we
(17:26):
had the roasts in our feed thenwe've now since removed them.
So we had maybe 25, 30 episodes.So we weren't even publishing
all year. And I thought, wow,that is really, really
interesting. And I think thatactually maybe leads us into
some of the soft metrics here.
Justin (17:41):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (17:42):
Which are things that are a little bit harder to
measure. But my experience ofproducing season one of the show
is I had a lot of people whowere giving me the feedback or
posting publicly online. Like,this is my favorite show right
now or I'm listening to everyepisode. I'm listening to
multiple episodes. Last week, Iwas on a call with somebody who
was asking, so when's the showcoming back?
Like, I I miss it. And it's it'sbeen basically ten months since
(18:02):
our last episode, and thisperson is now telling me, like,
I want more episodes. And sothat's this interesting overlap
here. We got this Spotify kindof favorite show, but then we
can actually get some of thatdata the rest of the year. So
what are some of your favoriteways to kind of get some of this
mushier, looser, more kind ofephemeral data?
Justin (18:20):
To kind of expose my personal preference as a
marketer, I'm way more on thesoft metric qualitative side
than the quantitative side. Ithink I inherently distrust most
quantitative metrics. I thinkthey're always a little bit
messy. You never really know thecause and effect. Whereas
qualitative metrics, if you'redoing them consistently, they
(18:43):
can become quantitative and thatyou eventually build up so many
anecdotes that you have reallyreliable data, but this is data
where you actually have a humanbeing responding to you.
I've always said my number onemetric is response rate. You put
out an episode. Do you get anemail? Do you get a comment? Do
(19:04):
you get someone stopping you onthe street?
Do you get someone stopping youat a conference? Do you get
people trying to find yousomewhere on the Internet and
saying, listen, that episodechanged my life, or that episode
was great, or that episodereally made me think. That
metric, that response rate iswhat I'm looking for. And if I
care about the download metricat all, it's that I've just
(19:27):
noticed that a show needs to hita certain level of downloads
before you start to get thoseresponses. Once you have, let's
say, 500 to a thousandlegitimate downloads per
episode, I've found personally,that's when you should be seeing
some responses, some peoplefinding you and telling you how
(19:51):
much they enjoy the show orinteracting with you in some
way.
I think response rate should bethe number one metric. You're
trying to get people to respondin some way, either to become
customers or become fans, justengage in a thoughtful way with
what you're talking about.That's accessible to everybody.
(20:11):
And I like that podcasts havealways had this friction because
this is what makes the listenerto me more valuable than a
YouTube viewer is they'redriving home and they have to
wait until they get into thegarage before they reach out to
you. That kind of engagementwhere they have to actively,
like, pull over and then writeyou an email or get home into
(20:33):
the garage and then respond toyour message on Blue Sky, like,
that's response rate.
And I think it's really whateveryone should be optimizing
for.
Jeremy (20:44):
I was turned on to this by, newsletter writer and book
writer and marketer, AnneHandley. I don't know if you're,
familiar with her. She's a greatperson to follow. She's more in
the b to b space, but she's gota just a wonderful marketing
newsletter that's, like, funnyand warm and human. I think it
was for her hundredth issue ofher newsletter.
She shared, like, a bunch ofmetrics that she tracks, and her
number one was response rate. Ithink she actually called it
(21:05):
unsolicited response rate. Itwasn't that you asked for
somebody to respond to you. It'sjust that people read the
newsletter and could not helpbut write back.
Justin (21:13):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (21:14):
And ever since then, that was several years ago. I
actually, for an old newsletterthat I wrote, I turned this kind
of soft, more anecdotal datainto hard data where basically I
put a a spreadsheet togetherwhere if ever you get issued the
newsletter, I said, okay, here'show many people received this
newsletter. So maybe it was like7,000 and here's how many
replies that I got. And usuallyit was like a small number. It
(21:36):
would like most issues might getzero or one.
And then you'd get one that goteight and you're like, woah,
that I I was onto somethingthere. And so then, of course,
you can just make a formula thatturns that into a percentage. So
what is your unsolicitedresponse rate? And so I actually
turned this into a hard metricand you can just see the trends.
And a lot of times I was verysurprised that the episodes that
I just really wanted to landwith people got crickets.
(21:58):
And I was like, that it's stillone of my favorite issues and
I'm gonna go to my grave sayinglike, this was the best thing
I've ever written. And then itwas some other things that were
to me, I was just like, I don'tknow that there's really
anything here. I'm gonna writethat. And that would get a bunch
of replies. And you can kind ofget an insight into like where
people are at and and what isresonating with them about your
work.
So Yeah. I I love that metric.The other thing that I would add
(22:19):
on to that or there's actuallytwo additional layers to the
response rate, and it has to dowith the actual content of that
response. And so the one couldbe a specific thing that you
want to hear people say. And soyou may want to be building mind
share in the market that you areoperating in around a specific
thing.
Justin (22:35):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (22:36):
And so that might be, like, you want to be associated
with a certain idea. And somaybe we want to be associated
with data driven podcastmarketing. And maybe I even
wanna know that people find ourapproach to making data feel
approachable refreshing. And soif that's a goal of mine, then
that is guiding the show. Iwanna hear that back, and that
is a sign that, hey.
We're doing our job that we'rewe're setting up to do. The one
(22:57):
for me right now that I've kindof heard a lot from people
recently, like, once a month,I'll get on a a call with
somebody or they'll send me anemail and they'll say, yours and
Pod News are the only twonewsletters I subscribe to on
podcasting. And to me, I'malways like, okay. Great. That
is exactly what I want.
I want to be a must subscribe,must read, or people say, yours
is the only newsletter I readevery day. I know the bar for
(23:19):
quality is consistently high ifpeople are giving me that
feedback. And so Yeah. That's,one of the other things. You can
kind of set a goal for yourselfof, like, what do I want people
to associate with me?
And then that goes into yourcontent. And then if that's
coming back to you, you know,I'm hitting the mark on that
thing.
Justin (23:33):
And by the way, I think the reason I like this approach,
there's actually more ambiguitywith quantitative research
often. You're guessing. Mhmm. Solet's just take examples like
book sales. An author puts out abook, and they don't know how
what percentage of the book gotread.
People have no idea how manypeople are reading it, how many
(23:54):
people buy it and don't read it,all that stuff. What they do
know is response rate. Hey,author. I'm emailing you right
now because chapter six changedmy life. I need to let you know.
Here's all the reasons I careabout this. That's response
rate. Response rate is almostalways correlated with things
(24:16):
you want. People talking aboutyour thing word-of-mouth, people
recommending it to a friend. Myguess, for example, is, response
rate or kind of generalqualitative chatter about the
show Severance is correlatedwith the number of people who
are watching it and consuming itand going all the way to the
(24:36):
end.
But this approach allows you tojust bypass all that, like,
wonky data stuff. Like, oh, isit Where is this all coming
from? And what does thisconsumption mean? And Oh, it
doesn't matter. If responserates are up, you're golden.
And as a creator, it's human. Ifyour streams are going up or
(24:58):
your average consumption rate isgoing up, okay. Great. This
happened to me at PodcastMovement in LA. I'm walking by
myself.
You know, you're not there. Mywingman's not there. I'm just
walking around. And somebodycomes up to me and says, hey. I
just wanna let you know that Ireally enjoy the show that you
and Jeremy are doing together.
It's like, holy crap. Like, outof a fairly small number of
(25:23):
people, there's someone thatrecognized me and actually had
the wherewithal to come up andtalk to me. That speaks volumes
about Mhmm. I can extrapolatefrom that and go, wow. We must
be reaching a lot more people ifyou have that kinda interaction.
But then on a human level, it'slike I can go, oh, well, can you
tell me, like, what's resonatingabout the show? What do you
(25:45):
like? What don't you like? Itgives me way better information.
And as a creator, that's waymore motivating than just
saying, Okay, well, consumptionrate is down this month.
That sucks. Like, I can use someof that information.
Jeremy (26:00):
You know, it's striking me here that you were talking
about response rate as in peopleresponding to you. But there's
also like, that is actuallyindicative. All of these soft
metrics but also all the hardmetrics, I think come back to
this, like, emotional responserate where it's like how many
episodes that you put outconnect with people in some way.
And that could the the varietyof connection can be name any
emotion and there's a way toconnect with that. And so that
(26:21):
could be inspiring or motivatingor teaching them something or
entertaining them, making themlaugh, like, whatever that is,
making them feel like as part ofa community.
All of these things, like, thisis what we're really trying to
do. People will listen more ifthey are getting an emotional
experience in some way out of ashow. People will tell a friend
if they're getting thatexperience. Like, they will
remember the show. It will stickin their mind if they're getting
these things.
So this idea of response rate isalmost kind of like how many
(26:43):
times can you hit that mark withyour episodes and you're gonna
see a lot of these other things.So it's almost like everything
is kind of tied back to aversion of response rate, but
it's more like what you'reputting out there is that
connecting with people. So
Justin (26:56):
That's right.
Jeremy (26:56):
Yeah. I think people sending you emails, responding
to your social, post, thingslike that, mentioning you
unprompted online, that's notreally a response to you
directly, but them sharing yourshow. You also mentioned that
there's ways to do some of thiskind of, like, social listening,
things like that. I knowPodchaser actually has a feature
you can sign up for free, andyou can see if your name or your
show is mentioned on othershows. Mhmm.
And this is actually somethingthat after every year after I
(27:19):
put out the podcast marketingtrends report, then I see a
bunch of other podcasts, usuallyabout podcasting, are mentioning
the report or mentioning me. Ican see, oh, I didn't see that
anywhere. Nobody mentioned thatto me, but I'm hearing about
this through this tool that,like, oh, other people are
talking about this. Or Mhmm. Youknow, I hear that, sometimes
I'll talk with somebody on acall and they'll say, oh, I was
on this webinar the other dayand they mentioned you.
And I'm like, oh, cool. Like, Ihad no way to track that, but
(27:41):
here somebody else is telling methis.
Justin (27:43):
Yeah. There's actually another service I'll shout out
called PodScan that allows youto set up Google alert style
alerts. So you can say, here'smy brand name or here's my
personal name or whatever, andit will alert you every time
you're mentioned in a podcast.They're transcribing every
episode ever released. And sothat's another indication.
(28:05):
You know, does this idea spread?We're looking for resonance.
That's why we're doing this. Andso if you're looking for
resonance, then evaluate yoursuccess or failure based on
that.
Jeremy (28:18):
So you again mentioned, you know, a lot of these things
lead to downloads or lead torevenue. And so, essentially,
what we're talking about here isthis idea of lead and lag
metrics, or some people callthem leading and lagging
metrics. How would you describethis concept to somebody who's
not familiar with it?
Justin (28:34):
A leading metric in the software business is if we're
getting more trials, thatgenerally means that, you know,
revenue will increase, and thelagging metric is revenue
increased. A leading metriccould be we're getting way more
customer support requestscomplaining about bugs, but a
lagging, we get more churn.People are Right. Canceling.
Jeremy (28:56):
It's essentially, like, there's some early indicator
that predicts a future thing.And so there's, like, if you're
seeing this now, you mightexpect to see this thing later,
essentially.
Justin (29:05):
That's yeah. Because by the time somebody cancels or
churns, and this happens inpodcasting as well, they're
like, you know what? Thisepisode's just not doing it for
me. And then you listen to twomore, and you're like, this is
so dumb. I'm just gonnaunsubscribe or unfollow this
podcast.
Well, by the time they'vechurned, it's too late. Right?
The lagging indicator hashappened. There's nothing you
(29:26):
can do about it. But if you weregetting some leading indicators,
like, people are finding youyour email and saying, listen,
man.
Like, your audio quality hasjust gone downhill. Like, you've
gotta fix this. I can't listento it anymore. Getting an email
like that from a bunch of peoplewould be a leading indicator
that you've gotta do something,and you actually have some time
(29:46):
to do something about it.Whereas, once you've lost them,
you've lost them forever.
Jeremy (29:51):
It's interesting because I was thinking mostly of
positive leading indicators, butthere are also the negative
leading indicators that thingsare going to get worse. And it
it actually makes me think of Iremember Jay Klaus talking
about, like, now his YouTubechannel has exploded. His
podcast is pretty big. TheYouTube channel is much, much
bigger. But when he first gotinto YouTube maybe two, three
years ago, something like that,he was in his first year, was
putting out really high qualityvideo podcasts.
(30:14):
And he mentioned at one pointthat he got all these comments.
He was just, like, reallyfrustrated with the process
because he put in a lot of moneyinto the process in terms of
hiring, building out a studio,doing all these things. And then
he'd also put in a ton of timeinto doing it and was still
getting, you know, 800 maybelike 1,500, two thousand views
an episode. But he's like, ourquality that we're putting out
(30:34):
is so much better than this andI just I don't know what to do
about this. Like, should I quit?
It doesn't feel like I canjustify putting in this kind of
expense going forward if we'renot getting the views. But he
mentioned that he kept gettingthese comments where people in
the YouTube comment sectionwould be saying, dude, I don't
understand how you have so fewviews. Like, this is gold. This
is so good. And that, in myexperience, is always a leading
(30:56):
indicator that you're doingsomething right and that there
is a breakthrough coming at somepoint.
And it's impossible to say thetimeline on that, but if you are
repeatedly getting that feedbackthat people are kind of
incredulous almost that, like,how are you not getting more
traction to this? Why why have Inever heard about you before?
It's like, okay. Now I know.Like, that is almost the purest
leading indicator that, okay, Igotta keep doing this and double
(31:17):
down on this and good things aregonna come.
So Yeah. That's like a big one.I'm curious about, like, some of
the other podcast focusedleading indicators that you are
going to get future maybe uptickin downloads.
Justin (31:29):
Well, one that I can think of right now is if your
numbers are compounding eachyear, whether that's downloads,
whether that's listens if theycontinue to go up and double
every year, at first, that canseem so small. Like, I doubled
from 500 to a thousand regularmonthly listeners. That's a good
sign if you do that two or threeyears in a row, because the
(31:52):
tipping point is when all of asudden it's like, well, going
from a thousand to 2,000 didn'tfeel very big, but going from
2,000 to 4,000 starts to feelbig. And I've used this this,
metaphor of rolling a snowballdown the hill. You know?
It just, like, starts small, andit gets bigger and bigger and
bigger. And I think thatapproach to growth in general is
(32:14):
what we're looking for is, youknow Yeah. Am I consistently
getting more and more numbers asopposed to the other approach,
which is the slot machineapproach where you're just,
like, pulling a lever andsaying, okay. Did that move
things? I got a big guest.
Like, did it did it work? Did itwork? It's like, no. Like,
focusing on the things thatcompound, I think, are, a really
(32:34):
good leading indicator.
Jeremy (32:36):
That's a super long term, leading indicator there.
One thing that I like about alot of leading indicators is
that they actually feel moreapproachable, and it feels like
you have a bit more agency over,okay, I can actually influence
this in a more direct kind ofcause and effect way than
download sometimes. Mhmm. And sothe one for me that I think is
the my favorite leadingindicator for basically all good
(32:58):
things in podcasting is thatconsumption rate. You mentioned
before with the Marc Maronexample, there are certainly
scenarios where maybe the pointis not that everybody listens
through the whole episode andit's segmented in a way where,
you know, the first half of theepisode is for, you know, the
casual fans and the rest of theepisodes for the die hards.
Justin (33:13):
Mhmm.
Jeremy (33:13):
But most shows are trying to get people to listen
through the full episode. And Ithink if you're only getting 50%
of people making it through theepisode, if the average
consumption rate is 50%, that isa leading indicator that you are
going to stay plateaued or evenshrink. And so that is probably
something that is a negativesign for the future of your
show. Whereas if you're getting70 to 80% of people who are
(33:35):
completing the episode, that's aleading indicator that, okay,
like, I might have smalldownloads now, but if I have an
average consumption rate of 80%,that is better than average. And
that is a sign of a greatobjectively great show that the
people who are coming in, theyare loving the show.
The content is on point. And soprobably people who listen
through full episodes of a showare more likely to come back.
(33:57):
And people who are more likelyto come back for an episode are
more likely to talk about it orshare it with someone. And so
for me, that's one of thosethings where we actually have
direct control over that interms of how we're structuring
our episodes, how much editingwe're doing, the types of topics
that we are, you know, coveringin our shows, and how we
structure those from a kind ofcontent perspective.
Justin (34:15):
I think this is one reason the folks at Bumper like
listen time as a metric becauseMhmm. If you are increasing
listen time Yeah. Sometimes whatyou'll do is you'll go, well,
people are only listening toforty five minutes of an hour
show, and so then you'll reduceit to thirty minutes, but then
the consumption rate stays thesame. Whereas Yeah. Maybe what
(34:36):
you wanna optimize for isoverall listen time.
Like, people are just listeningto more minutes on average every
month, and that's also a leadingindicator. Like, I'm putting out
enough good minutes of audiothat people are increasing the
amount of audio they'relistening to from me every
month. And sometimes that couldmean I'm just gonna put out more
(34:58):
episodes. And Mhmm. Lo andbehold, my listen time goes up.
Sometimes it means I'm gonnamake the episodes longer knowing
that my consumption rate willstay roughly the same, but I'll
get more listen time.
Jeremy (35:10):
I had a client a few years ago who had that exact
conundrum where he put out maybean hour and a half to two hour
episode, and it was about realestate or something like that.
And he'd just been in theindustry so long, he could just
get on and riff. And he was oneof those types of, like,
charismatic people who can kindapull that off. Mhmm. But he was
seeing that he was, like, 55%consumption rate.
And so he was, like, oh, I wannaget that up. So he immediately
(35:30):
cut his episodes in half, andhis consumption rate went up.
But then he started hearing someof this response from people.
And it was all of his people whowere, like, his existing
customers and people who wouldbecome customers most likely who
were saying, hey. We like thelong episodes.
And so it turned out a certainsubset of his audience actually
loved and wanted to eat up asmuch content as possible where
more of the casual listeners,you know, were tuning in for
(35:52):
less. And so it was actually thebest thing for the business was
to keep those longer episodesand actually have a lower
consumption rate, but a higheramount of listen time.
Justin (36:00):
Another one to look at is just overall impact of the
funnel. So last time we talkedabout what you get in Spotify's
new dashboard, how manyimpressions you got, and then
here's how many people you gotchecking out the show, and then
here's how many people actuallylistened. If the overall impact
and momentum in that funnel isincreasing, meaning Mhmm. At the
(36:22):
top of the funnel, you'regetting way more impressions,
and that's leading to morepeople checking out your show,
and that's leading to morepeople listening, and then that
leads to more people stickingaround. That is a good leading
indicator.
Conversion rates are somethingto look at too. But sometimes,
in marketing, it is just waybetter to get way more people in
(36:44):
the funnel, at the top of thefunnel, even if your conversion
rate, declines. Mhmm. You'rejust getting more people out at
the bottom. That's a a goodleading indicator that
something's going well, I think.
Jeremy (36:56):
The last one that I have here related to leading
indicators, this is more for thebusiness side of things, is
podcast driven email growth.Mhmm. And so I'm a big believer
that podcasts play a hugelyimportant role in generating
clients and customers, but it'snot the only tool that you need.
And really, email is the perfectcomplement to that. And part of
the problem with podcasting isthere's so much friction getting
(37:17):
people into a podcast and out ofa podcast.
And so you might have diehardlisteners, but getting them to
go to a sales page when they'redriving or running or cooking or
anything else is just reallyhard. Mhmm. And so you're gonna
unlock more of that potentialrevenue, more of those potential
customers and clients if you canhave podcast listeners who are
also on your email list. And soI would say that especially if
you're in business, if you aredoing some experiments maybe
(37:39):
with your calls to action, maybewith your content strategy to
more clearly align it withwhatever you offer on your email
or a lead magnet or somethinglike that, and you see, oh, I'm
getting more people onto theemail list, like, that's a
leading indicator that probablyyou're gonna end up with more
sales down the line as well.It's good to think about, you
know, what these metrics are andthen also think about what are
the different things that I canplay with to influence them.
(37:59):
And then if I can, you know,improve my consumption rate,
improve my conversion rates, getimprove the number of
impressions I'm getting, whetherthat's in Spotify or just out in
the world Mhmm. And improve, youknow, the number of people who
are getting onto my email list.Probably all the other good
things you want, the laggingindicators or the lagging
metrics at the end of yourfunnel, whether that's downloads
or sales or revenue or whateverthat is, are naturally gonna
(38:20):
happen. Mhmm. Alright.
So we kinda started off theepisode talking about downloads,
some of the pros and cons here,talked about a bunch of the
other metrics that we can use totrack some of those hard and
soft metrics, and then looked atlead and lag, indicators and
metrics. You were prettyentrenched on the download side
of things early in the episode,but I I saw some excitement,
come out when it came to theanecdotal stuff. So Yeah. Where
(38:43):
are you kind of falling afterthis conversation at the big
picture? We've got all theseanalytics, all these things that
we can use to track the successof the show.
How do you kinda distill yourphilosophy around, you know,
trying to measure if what you'redoing is working?
Justin (38:56):
I mean, I think I'm still looking at downloads kind
of top level most of the time.Mhmm. And then just keeping
track of how many responses I'mgetting to the shell. And then
maybe every once in a whilegoing in and drilling down and
saying, okay. How's ourconsumption rate doing?
Some of these other things mayberun an experiment for a month,
(39:18):
two months, three months, andthen come back in three months,
drill down again, see if it'shad any sort of impact. But high
level, I'm still looking atdownloads. And then the next
thing I'm looking at is responserate. How about yourself?
Jeremy (39:32):
I will say that you won me over a little bit back to the
download side of things. It hasbeen something that, you know,
I've always tracked and I'malways going to track just
because it is that obviousnumber. And I think to your
point, it is a obvious indicatorof momentum. If you are not
meddling with your downloads bydriving paid traffic to it or
doing any of these podcastpromotion tactics, then if that
number is going up, clearly,that's a sign that more people
(39:54):
are either discovering the showor more people who do listen are
coming back. So, I think there'sa lot that we can take away from
the download as a kind ofsimplistic high level metric.
The other thing that I will goback to though, if you are
running a show that is part of abusiness, I think you need to
find a way to attribute revenueto the podcast. And so I think
so many people that I talk to,they just have no idea the
(40:17):
impact of the show on theirbusiness. And so they'll produce
it for three years. They'll puthundreds or thousands or tens of
thousands of dollars into itfrom hiring editors and all
these other things that comealong with it. And at the end of
the day, they really can't say,has this led to growth in my
business?
And I think a lot of timespeople think of monetization
purely as sponsor driven withpodcasts. But, again, the most
(40:37):
valuable podcast, let's callthem, the shows that drive the
most value for the businessesattached to them, do not have
any sponsors and they are clientand customer acquisition
channels and they're actuallypretty small in terms of
downloads. Mhmm. So, for me,that is is ultimately, you know,
a big thing that I'm looking forfor any shows that I do. I'm
looking for when I get on asales call with somebody, do
(40:57):
they quote back episodes to meand they say, oh, you and Justin
talked about this thing here andI I realized I needed to work on
that.
And I'm like, oh, there's a acertain type of response rate
that, like, okay. I know thepodcast is playing a role in
getting me customers. And sothat's something that, again,
you can put hard metrics to, butI think whether that's,
conversational or if that'ssomething like a post purchase
survey where, you know, somebodysigns up to your product and
(41:18):
there's a little checkbox thatsays, which of the following
have you engaged with? And maybethey say the newsletter and
your, Blue Sky feed and yourpodcast. And it's like, okay.
If you see 40% of customers areengaging with the podcast, you
can now actually say, oh, thepodcast, I can see that it's
having an impact on thebusiness. And so I think, yes,
downloads are useful. Butdepending on what your goals are
for the show, there's probablymore useful metrics that you
(41:40):
should try and find a way to geteven if it's vague data on some
attribution that it's doing whatyou want.
Justin (41:46):
Yeah. And this honesty, I think, will help people feel
better about their show. Becauseif let's say you're doing a a
business podcast and youremployees really enjoy it, and
it's just fun for them, and itgets them more activated, it
crystallizes their thinkingaround a bunch of topics, which
in turn helps drive the businessforward, just be Mhmm. Honest
(42:08):
about it. If that's what you'regetting out of it, a podcast can
drive results in all sorts ofdifferent ways.
And sometimes it's just like, Iget to talk to interesting
people in my industry, and thatalone is valuable. Or it helps
clarify thinking for blog posts,which then drive traffic to our
website or whatever. I thinkpeople will feel better about
(42:28):
their show if they're justbrutally honest about it and
being able to say, who caresabout the downloads? We're
getting something valuable outof it. That being said, I I
really like this other metricyou came up with, here at the
end, which is download to hourof effort.
What's this metric?
Jeremy (42:44):
Yes. I was just, brainstorming a bunch of obscure
additional metrics that youcould choose to track. And some
of these are things that Iactually do care about quite a
bit. We're not gonna go throughall of them now because they
require some explanation. I'mgonna put a link to them in the
show notes for this episode.
So if you wanna find, theseother obscure metrics that you
can track to help judge thesuccess of your show, you can
find those in the show notes.But this one here, I came up
(43:05):
with as I was brainstorming someof these, and it downloads to
hour of effort. And I thought,actually, it's kind of an
interesting way to measure theimpact of your effort. And so
let's say you put ten hours aweek into your episode and you
get, you know, 250 downloads.And then a year later, you're
putting in ten hours of effort aweek and you're getting two two
thousand five hundred downloads.
It's like, hey. I the sameamount of effort is getting me
more out of this. Or you couldalso look at this could be a
(43:28):
leading indicator as well.You're saying, I put fifteen
hours of effort in, and I'mstill only getting 250 downloads
an episode. Or maybe it wentdown to 200 And you're like,
okay.
Something is wrong here afterI'm putting more effort in and
it's not having the result. Andso I think there's something to
to kinda dig into there. Ithought it was just a funny,
kinda quirky little thing, but Imight actually start,
Justin (43:46):
tracking this in some way. Yeah. Like, what's the
effort to reward ratio? Howeveryou determine that. And anybody
can create a spreadsheet.
And so if you start tracking howmany hours or how much money
you're putting into the podcast,money invested to downloads or
money invested to response rateor money invested to business
outcome, then it helps youevaluate whether this is worth
(44:08):
it for you.
Jeremy (44:09):
So if you're curious in digging further into all of the
data that we talked about inthis episode, along with much,
much more related to growingyour show, building your
audience and having a moreeffective successful podcast,
you can find all of that at thePodcast Marketing Trends 2024
report, which is atpodcastmarketingtrends.com.
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