S2 86. When and How to Effectively Measure Your Podcast Metrics: A Business Owner's Guide
As a business owner, you're familiar with measuring key metrics: leads, website traffic, profits, and losses. But when it comes to your podcast, how often should you track its progress? In this episode, I will delve into how frequently you should measure your podcast's success and what specific metrics you should be monitoring to ensure you're not wasting time or missing crucial opportunities.
Why Should Business OwnersTrack Podcast Metrics?
Your podcast is a pivotal part of your business’s digital footprint. Despite the numerous moving pieces in running a business, it's essential not to neglect your podcast's growth. For those wondering about the optimal frequency for tracking, you're not alone. Many podcast hosts grapple with measuring audience engagement, subscriber growth, and episode consumption.
Download numbers aren't the only metric worth checking.
In fact, many business owners fail to capitalize on a simple yet effective metric: asking your listeners how they heard about you.
Including your podcast in forms or dropdown menus on your website can provide invaluable insight into how your audience finds and interacts with your content, and stop the guessing game about which channels are converting the best!
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Podcast Metrics
00:56 Why Business Owners Should Track Podcast Metrics Quarterly?
02:57 Quarterly Check-ins: The Key to Success
05:24 Analyzing Trends and Making Decisions
08:27 Aligning Podcast with Business Goals
13:27 Conclusion and Next Steps
When To Measure: Making The Case For Quarterly Reviews
First and foremost, I advocate for conducting a quarterly check. Much like your business profits and losses, your podcast deserves similar attention. While podcast growth is generally a long-term endeavor, quarterly analytics allow you to spot trends, notice spikes in downloads, and assess overall performance without the overwhelm of constant monitoring.
So in short, you should track monthly, but we all understand that for most of us in business, monthly
Understanding Podcast Trends And Data
Featuring current events in your podcast can result in noticeable engagement bumps, as I’ve experienced myself when covering timely podcasting reports or data. Quarterly reviews can illuminate how your audience reacts to different content types, allowing for strategic adjustments in your approach.
If you're running ad campaigns or have sponsorships, it can take up to six weeks to observe the effects. Therefore, quarterly reviews enable a realistic timeline to assess these endeavors and make informed decisions about sponsorship renewals and ad strategies.
Regularly reviewing Apple Podcasts’ analytics or Spotify for Creators can reveal how updates impact your reach, engagement, and downloads, helping you steer clear of common pitfalls or unexpected anomalies, like sudden spikes in downloads due to bots.
Making Data-Driven Decisions
Regular quarterly check-ins facilitate more effective, data-driven decision-making. For example, if guest interviews are not performing well, consider focusing on solo episodes. If long episodes aren’t engaging listeners, experimenting with shorter formats might be necessary. This strategic approach ensures you’re not wasting time or resources on formats that don’t serve you.
In looking at data, you can also align your podcast with business pivots. For instance, after noticing that my solo episodes outperformed interviews, I chose to pursue more speaking opportunities to expand my brand's influence. Data showed that audience engagement increased when I focused more on solo content.
The Benefits of Quarterly Reviews
Ultimately, quarterly deep dives allow you to correlate business decisions with podcast performance. You're not only maximizing your business's return on investment but reinforcing the podcast as a fundamental component of your growth strategy. These reviews prevent analysis paralysis and help you maintain a streamlined focus on what drives your success.
If you find yourself thinking, "I need help with this," know that I offer services designed to align your podcast with your business objectives. You can book a free 30-minute discovery call, where we can explore how to overcome limitations and enhance your podcast's impact.
Please share this article with others who might benefit from these insights. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for growing any business, and I would greatly appreciate your support.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Hi, I’m Ana Xavier, a multilingual award-winning podcast marketing and content strategist specialized in generating online visibility for women, multilingual, and minority impact-driven business owners.
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