Hi there,

There's a famous quote by Henry Ford around the idea of asking his customers what they wanted. The reply was,

(Sidenote: there's a lot of debate as to whether Ford actually said this or not, but let's go with it for now.)

The premise is, if you ask your customers what they want they'll tell you what they think they want, as opposed to what they actually need. It's classic Marketing 101 - when you give customers what they need as opposed to what they want, that makes them more loyal to your brand. Does it always work? Not always - but definitely more often than not, and this leads to increased success and sales.

Now, flip that over to podcasting and switch out "customers" for "listeners", and switch out "sales" for "podcast growth". When it comes to your podcast's growth, many podcasters look at downloads, and how to grow them. Take a look at podcasting communities on Reddit, for example, and that's one of the most popular questions, along with something like "how do I use social media to grow my podcast?".

While there's not a lot inherently wrong with that, it is missing the more obvious route to podcast success and growth, and one that's right in front of you: your listeners. And that's even if you're a pretty new podcaster with just a few listeners, never mind an established podcaster with a few hundred or thousand. Because it's your listeners - especially returning listeners - who are telling you what makes your podcast work for them, since, generally speaking, returning listeners will be the same persona types of new listeners that you're looking to attract to continue your podcast growth.

But how do you use that information? Well, the good news is, there are a few ways, so there's bound to be at least one that you can use.

The easy one - content and host analytics

The quickest way to gauge how your show is growing is via your podcast host's analytics (or your own, if you self-host). But don't just stop at downloads and listeners - while they're important (especially listeners), there's so much more information you can glean. I'm going to use Captivate's data for this, since this is where I host my podcasts (and, full disclaimer, I'm Head of Podcaster Support & Experience there).

• month on month data - is your podcast tracking upwards each month, staying steady, or dropping? If dropping in a specific date range, take a look at the episodes released then and see if there's a trend as to why they're not performing as well as others.
• performance comparison - speaking of episodes, if your host offers it, compare episodes directly against each other and see which ones continue to get listened to and which ones don't, then look to see if there's a trend there (topic, length, guest, etc)
• listener drop off - how long are listeners sticking with your episode? Ideally, you want them to listen to the majority of it (many will skip ads, or intros/outros), so see where they're dropping off, and if that tells you anything. For example, if a 60 minute episode sees regular drop off at 40 minutes, do you need to shorten it? Or if ads/calls to action are skipped at a certain place, do you need to move around?
• are calls to action being used and, if so, where? For my podcasts, I have an audio call to action in the episode, then a similar one in the show notes, both with different links. That makes it super easy to tell if the audio or written one is more effective.

These are just some of the data points you can get from your hosting company (at least, if they offer them - not all hosts do), and they're really effective at helping to see what's working and what's not.

Third-party data

Much like your hosting company's analytics, third-party data can tell you a lot, too. There are a lot of tools out there that offer additional analytics, but for this example I'm just going to use Podcasts Connect (Apple's podcaster portal) and Spotify for Creators (the reporting portal, not the hosting platform version of the same name).

Both of these platforms offer some great additional data around your listeners that you won't see on hosting platforms, like demographics, gender, etc. But for your podcast's growth, there's specific info you want to look at.

For Podcasts Connect, look at:

• followers (who's subscribed to your podcast)
• engaged listeners (listened to at least 20 minutes or 40% of an episode in a single session)
• time listened (this can be found on the main analytics overview dashboard)
• trends (is your engaged data tracking up)
• performance (does the audience continue to climb for each episode, or does it drop off after initial launch and timeframe)

Then click into individual episode analytics to see average consumption (how far into the episode they get, how much is listened to).

For Spotify for Creators, look at:

• streams (listened for at least 60 seconds)
• followers (subscribed to your podcast)
• Discovery tab (how people are finding your show on Spotify, so you can tweak how you share/promote to your listeners)

Then click into individual episodes, and look at stuff like:

• consumption hours
• episode performance
• audience (if you want to see breakdown of gender, etc, to see if that matches who your podcast is for).

Take that data and build a growth plan around that, but don't forget listeners on other apps, and their preferences, etc.

Reviews and feedback

When it comes to what people like and don't like about your podcast, the simplest way to find out is via any reviews your show gets, whether that's positive or negative. Now, there is obviously a caveat with this, since some people might leave a negative review because that's just what they do. These ones are obvious (since it usually has nothing to do with the show itself), so just ignore these.

However, for other reviews, take a look at:

• is the negative review valid? So, for example, does it mention differing volumes between speakers or other audio issues? Does it mention there are too many ads? Does it take too long to get to the topic? All this information is great if you recognize any of the points being made, and can help you optimize your content because of it.
• what stands out in the positive review? Are there repeating points being made by different people that may not be in every episode, but make sense to now add to every episode?
• are you getting lots of reviews from the same country/location, that might give you an advantage when it comes to reaching out to sponsors who serve that specific area?

Then, consider taking the data from your reviews and asking your listeners how they'd feel about certain changes to the show. This could be via an email newsletter, a survey, via your online community, etc - anywhere you can contact your audience, and build on the feedback you already have.

These are just some of the ways you can use what your listeners are telling you, and act on it to tweak your content so it becomes the best it can be at all times. Remember, podcasting isn't like the Field of Dreams - listeners won't just come because you'd built (published) something. They need a reason to come, and then a bigger reason to stay. By using the data that's in front of you, you can understand what that reason is, and provide it.

Until the next time, happy podcasting.