Tracking your podcast’s success can be complicated. Unlike other digital platforms, podcasts do not have a central hub where data is collected and analyzed. Because they are distributed through a variety of platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, and individual websites, tracking data across these platforms and getting the complete picture of your podcast’s performance is challenging.
However, although difficult to track, there are a lot of performance metrics you should consider benchmarking to get real and powerful insights about your podcast's success. Although each platform has different ways of measuring performance, key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurable criteria that can help you monitor your podcasting efforts.
Why Measuring Your Podcast’s Data Is Important
When starting your B2B podcast, chances are (fingers crossed) that you’ve set goals to determine if your efforts are worthwhile. Podcasting, although extremely valuable, is time-consuming and requires resources. Measuring data for your B2B podcast is important because it helps you understand how well your show is performing and how it is resonating with your audience. By tracking your key metrics, you can identify what is working well and what areas may need improvement. Data can also help you make informed decisions about your podcast content, marketing strategies, and distribution channels.
Essential KPIs and Data to Track to Measure Your Podcast Success
Measuring your podcast’s success can be done under a few overarching areas. Let’s take a look at the KPIs we’ve found to be the most important.
Tip: Measure these KPIs on each of your podcast hosting platforms to get an in-depth look at how your podcast is performing on each.
Listenership and Behavior
How many people are listening to your podcast, how often and what is their behavior while listening? This will help you to gauge the overall reach and popularity of each episode and your podcast as a whole. Listenership and behavior can be measured by:
-
- The number of listeners per episode.
- A person’s average listening time.
- The number of listens by source (iPhone, laptop, etc.).
- The top played episode(s).
Demographics
Who is listening to your podcast? Understanding your audience’s demographics will help you tailor your content and marketing efforts to better reach and engage your target audience. Podcast demographics can be measured by:
-
- The location of your listeners.
Engagement
How are listeners interacting with your podcast? Engagement metrics help you understand how well your content is resonating with listeners and whether they are finding value in your podcast. Engagement can be measured by:
-
- The number of unique downloads per episode — As podcasts can either be streamed or downloaded, downloads are not a precise measure of your podcast size. However, unique downloads are a more accurate way to gauge your audience size as it is a filtered statistic in which multiple download requests are allocated to the same listener.
- The number of subscribers to or followers of your show as a whole.
- Your show’s social media engagement.
- Your reviews and rankings — Although not all hosting platforms have review and ranking capabilities, it is important to pay attention to the ones that do. If your show has many downloads and only one star on Spotify, likely, you will not have return listeners.
There are a few more important engagement KPIs that are specific to your podcast website, such as:
-
- Your website’s traffic.
- Your website’s bounce rate.
- The number of trusted backlinks to your podcast website.
Conversion
If you are using your podcast to drive conversions, it’s important to track how effectively your podcast is doing so. This will help you understand the ROI of your podcast and identify areas for improvement. Your podcast’s conversions can be measured by:
-
- Providing specific trackable promo codes to your product or services.
- Building landing pages with forms asking for email addresses, phone numbers, etc.
Know How Successful Your B2B Podcast Is
Tracking KPIs and data is essential for measuring your podcast success. By understanding how to measure your podcast’s listenership and behavior, demographics, engagement, and conversions, you can identify what parts of your show are working well. By tracking these specific metrics, you can optimize your content, marketing efforts, and distribution channels to better reach and engage your target audience. Ultimately, tracking data can help you understand the ROI of your podcast and make informed decisions about how to grow and improve over time.
With Casted’s podcast hosting platform, you can not only publish and manage your podcast and video content simply and intuitively, but you can easily track your podcast’s performance with KPIs and metrics that matter most to B2B marketers.
