Episode 07: What Metrics You Should Be Tracking for Growth
Understanding your metrics is super important for podcast and business growth, and it's a common misconception that high listen and download numbers are what makes your podcast successful.
You'll learn:
How metrics help your business
The difference between downloads and listens
Tracking listenership over longer periods
What marketing efforts to adjust to maximise listenership
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Good Chat Media acknowledges the traditional owners of the land where we work, live and record the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and we pay our respects to elder's past and present always was always will be Aboriginal land Hey, I'm Cass, the founder podcast production agency, Good Chat Media and welcome to Good chats. Good chat is a podcast with a holistic approach to business and marketing. And with the help of some super special people, I'll be spilling all the secrets about boosting your brand building credibility and connecting with community through podcasting. Let's get into the episode.
Hi, Friends, welcome back to another episode of The Good chats, podcast. It's your girl Cass here, founder of Good Chat Media, and podcast queen, I got called the podcast Queen the other day, and I want to I want to take this title. Thank you. Thank you so much. So in the last week, I have gone to a Spotify event. And one thing that I noticed while I was there was there is no cool events in Melbourne for podcasters. And I want to go to cool events. So I started a podcast events group on Facebook. So I'll leave the link for you to be able to join that we are a community in Melbourne for podcast events support anything you need, we're here, it's a good chance to be able to collaborate with people and meet people that you maybe have never met before. Anyway. So that's super exciting. And I'm really excited to be able to have some events where people want to come to you and want to, you know, connect with other people and just get out of our own bubble. Because sometimes it's so lonely, we don't even realise that we need to be around other people doing the same thing. And this is a perfect opportunity to do so. So jump in there, the link is in the show notes, and watch out for some events that are coming up in the next few weeks.
Today, I am talking to you about metrics and what metrics you should be tracking. When why what are they for? What does that mean? Everything. The reason that people track their metrics is so that they can understand them and create a better and stronger show. So the stronger the numbers, the more people that are listening, the more you understand your audience demographics and behaviours, the more conversions that you're going to make. And if you're running your podcast as part of your business marketing strategy, this is something that's super important conversions are so important. So that's what we're getting into today. Strap in. And here we go.
So I'm answering a couple of questions here first, because these are questions that people ask me quite often, and I want to share how to understand your metrics and what they mean for you and your business and what you can do with these numbers. So something that is like the most simple question that I get is, what should I be tracking? And how do I measure success? Now, the answers are all different depending on your goals. So you could be wanting to get really high numbers so that you can get partnership opportunities or sponsorship opportunities. And if your podcast has a large and engaged audience, you may be able to leverage that to attract partners and sponsors and collaborations with other businesses that want to get hold of your audience's attention as well. And they know that your audience trusts you already. So they know that if they put their ad in your podcast, that you'll be the perfect person to sell that for them. But in terms of what metrics you should track, there's different things.
So there's downloads, listens, unique listeners, engagement, demographics, referrals, ratings, and reviews, lots of different things. So what should you be tracking? As I said, it totally depends on what the goals are for your business. So in a lot of the people that I work with, we're wanting to get conversions. We want them to use our podcast as part of our sales funnel. So we want them to listen to the podcast to then start understanding who we are, how we do business, how we speak to other people our knowledge, giving away that free knowledge is something that's so important if you're creating sales funnels. So instead of creating a free download, or creating a worksheet or a masterclass, having your podcast episodes as part of your sales funnel allows you to give that free information to your audience without having to do anything dramatically different. So that's how we lead to conversions. We give away the free knowledge and you leave people thinking, wow, if they are giving all of that away for free, what are they giving on top of that in their paid courses or their paid services? I want in on that. So conversions is something that's super high, and I'm going to come back to that in Second, because I've got a little story to tell you.
But I just want to clarify the difference between downloads and listens. So a lot of people want to focus on the downloads and downloads are great, but listen to really what are important for being able to convert your audience into paying customers. So podcast downloads are when someone downloads a podcast episode with an app like Apple podcasts, or Google or Spotify. And I know that there has podcasts that automatically download because I follow them. But that doesn't mean that I listened to all of them. So downloads are great because you have access to be in people's library ready to go. But it doesn't mean that they're actually listening to the podcast. And that's something that's really important, because if they're not listening, then it's falling on deaf ears, quite literally. So podcast listens, on the other hand, is when people open their podcast app and actually play the episode and listen to it. However, way through they go, it is making sure that they actually listened to the episode and not just download it and have it in their Downloads folder ready to listen, you want them to actually listen. Now going back to what I was saying with conversions, if you don't have a high number of downloads or listens, and you're feeling a little insecure about it, or you're feeling away about it, but you're getting conversions, that is I was about to swear them, but that is effing amazing.
You don't need to have high downloads and listens to be able to create content that actually converts your audience to sales. There's a story about this guy that lives in WA he has a podcast that I believe he only posts monthly and he gets something like 25 listens per episode. And you might think 25 listens, that's a bit shit, only 25. But out of those 25 listens, per episode, he converts one person. Now he has a very interesting niche, some sort of mathematics, and it's very, like very niche mathematics. I'm not even gonna try to explain what it is because that's not my strong suit. But he converts one person per month. And that person goes on to pay him a huge ongoing monthly fee, something like $20,000 per month from that one podcast episode.
So numbers don't have to be super high. If conversion is your goal, and you're getting conversions, I actually had a growth strategy session with some amazing guys that run a podcast that they were looking for some help with getting sponsorship, and we were talking about their services. And I said How often are you actually plugging it? How often are you talking about your services, and you know, telling a story about you know, how your client has overcome these barriers by you know, because of your services, you know, some sort of client transformation. And he was like, ah, never. And I was like, Okay, so let's have a look at the numbers for a second. If you want to get sponsorship, there's two options, you might have a flat fee of sponsorship, which I recommend if you don't have you know, 10s of 1000s of listens every episode, but if you go by the CPM, which is cost per 1000 downloads, you get between 20 and $25, let's say per 1000 listens. So I said to them, okay, if you're getting 4000 downloads for each episode, and you're going off the CPM, then you're gonna get $80 for that episode for 4000 people downloading your episode that is bros in my mind, so that I asked them, Okay, what is the cost of one of your courses or one of your services, and we were talking about one of their memberships that they were about to offer? And he said all up, it's about $5,000? And I said, okay, so out of those 4000 people that are downloading those episodes, if you can convert one person, per episode to sign up for your membership at $5,000. Or if you can get a sponsor on CPM. And that's $80. I mean, it's, I know what I would prefer.
So just know that if you're doing this in a business, that numbers aren't everything and conversions are something else that I would recommend you tracking is your engagement. So this includes average listening time per episode, the completion rate and a skip right. And these metrics really help you understand how engaged your audience is with your content and whether they're listening to your episodes all the way through, when we go back to talking about listens, and what are important. It is the number of people that are listening, but it's also how they're listening. So if we say the number of people that are listening, we track it by one day, three day, 30 day and 90 day downloads. So if you've got an episode that you know maybe didn't perform as well out in the first three days, but then overall, it's really high. And in that 30 or 90 Day lessons, you know that this is a topic that your audience likes, or it's a guest that your audience likes, and they want to keep coming back to make sure that they're getting all of that juicy info over and over and over again, or they're sending it to their friends, and people are liking it, people are wanting to hear more of those things. So you can have a look at what episodes are tracking over a longer period of time as doing better, not just the initial first week episodes, and then you can create your content around what is doing really well.
And then also, if you have a look at when people are listening, you can see what days do better on what episodes and you can have a look how many people listening on what day so say your episode goes live on a Monday morning. And most people that are listening are getting it on there Wednesday night at 5pm. And you think why should I change it to Wednesday at 5pm? My recommendation is no. What I recommend you do on Wednesday at 5pm or at 4:30pm is to schedule social posts around those times to make sure that you reminding those people that like to listen at 5pm that your episode has already gone live. And here is a reminder to listen to it with a link, make it really easy for them, put it on your stories and just say here, this is the episode, go and have a listen, you don't have to change what you're doing, you can just adjust little things surrounding it to make sure that you're reminding your audience and keeping them as front of mind that when they want to listen to the episode it is there.
Another thing that I would recommend you tracking is your ratings and reviews. Now, I've spoken about this before. But ratings and reviews are really helpful to measure feedback from your listeners. But it also can help you rise in the charts. So the more ratings and reviews that you have more people are going to find you in the podcast directories like Apple and Spotify and Google and the more you're going to be able to get more eyes onto your podcasts or years, whatever whatever the word we're going to use for that more is more eyes on your podcast, more people listening, more people downloading, then it ends up leading into more conversions. So there's something that I really recommend, I focus on trying to get ratings and reviews because it's great social proof, it's so good to be able to show other people Hey, yeah, this is my podcast. And this is what we talk about. And this is what people think of it, there's not a lot of things that you can do in marketing, that really have accurate feedback. So unless it's you giving a service to someone, and then them giving you, you know, Google review, or something like that. So the reason that we do track this to help your business is understanding your audience insights, to be able to know where they're located, how they engage with your content, and understand how you can connect with them better and tailor your content to service their preferences, because you want people to stay around. You want people to keep listening, you want people to share with their friends. So doing that will really help.
You also want to understand your metrics so that you can identify marketing opportunities in your business. So you want to be able to leverage your community to be able to promote your services and your products. When you've got something new. They're gonna be the first people who want to do it like I listened to the Georgie Stephenson podcast rising, conquer, and I absolutely love her. And, and she has done so well at creating a beautiful community and really making sure that she's connected, she understands what people want to hear. And she's really built that credibility with people that lack non trust. And so now when she puts up that she's got a new course and your product, you know, one of our businesses is doing something in particular, people run to it, including me, because I already know that I like her. I know her I trust her, I know that whatever she's putting out there is going to be brilliant. And that's the kind of like know and trust you want to build with your audience. So if you want to find out more about what metrics you should track, I do have a free ebook that is 10 Organic steps to grow your podcast, you can download this, I'll leave the link in the show notes for you to be able to go and download it. It is on our website in the store. And it has got 10 different ways that you can grow your podcast and one of those is understanding the metrics. There's even a little worksheet on the next pages so that you can start writing down what metrics you want to be tracking and really understanding your audience to be able to make a better podcast and make more conversions with the people that are already in your audience. So that is all from me today.
Thank you so so much for joining me on another episode. It means so much to me that people listen I I deal with podcasts a lot. And I really do understand what people like and what people don't like. But sometimes it's hard to be self reflective. So if there's anything that you're wanting to hear if there's anything that you'd like cassoulet stick to, you know, this topic, reach out, I know we're only up to number seven, and it's gonna get bigger and better as we go. As I tell all of my clients, you're gonna hate it at the start, but it's okay, like, Let's push through this. I would love to know what you think of the podcast, how you feeling about it, what you want to know what you want to learn from this podcast, because I really want to be able to make sure that your time is well spent by listening to this, and I want to make sure that my time is well spent by putting this out for you. So if there's anything that you want to know, jump over into the DMS on Instagram and let us know. I hope you have a fab rest of your day. And we will chat to you next week. Bye.
We want to say thanks so much for joining us for another good chat. We would love if you would help us with our 2023 goals to get to 100 ratings and reviews and then send this podcast on to someone who you think will love it just as much. Connect with us on LinkedIn Instagram, my good chap media. I will chat with you next week. Bye. This podcast was produced by good chat media.
