How do you measure the success of your podcast content? Though the answer to this question is tricky for a marketer to answer but we are going to discuss a few useful metrics which can pinpoint that your podcast content is on track.

Podcast being an auditory medium is different than the digital channels when it comes to tracking the engagement of the audience. Since most publishers would like their podcast audience to land on their website, some of the metrics will sound familiar to you, and some of them will be unique to podcasting as a channel. 

Let’s discuss them in detail. 

1. Episode Downloads

The number of downloads received for every episode of your podcast can be a good indicator of whether your podcast is performing good or bad. Every download that occurs in a computer, tablet, or mobile device contributes towards this number. For publishers, this could be one of the metrics to attract advertisers and sponsors for their content. But here’s the challenge…

How to decide the true number of downloads because they generally tend to increase as time goes by?

To make the advertiser feel that they got a fair deal, you only average out the number downloads you usually get after 30 days. Some publishers even go to the extent of taking 60 days into account. This number might be on the lower side, but it is still a just figure to show to your advertisers. 

If you are a niche publisher and don’t have impressive figures to show, don’t worry. Even with low numbers ROI of such podcasts are high enough. 

2. Direct and Referral Traffic

Your incoming traffic in the form of Direct and Referral is a good indicator of how effective it is in attracting visitors to your website. You should be able to see a spike in the Google Analytics graph for your podcast channel. If your show mentions specific links in the content, it will also show up as inbound traffic from these sources.

To better understand the nature and success of your podcast content, we recommend you create a dedicated landing page with a URL that looks like www.publisher.com/podcastname. 

3. Offer Codes

One of the most effective ways to gauge the success of your podcast is by delivering specific offer codes that are read on-air by the host and is even mentioned in the specific landing page. As mentioned above the landing page serves the specific purpose of receiving the traffic. 

In case you don’t have a landing page, you should ensure that your host mentions clear instructions of using these exclusive promo codes. The audience should be able to use these codes without much effort at the destination URL or check out page. Make sure these codes are unique to your podcast activities to differentiate the traffic resulting from them.

4. Audience Engagement on Website

It happens quite often that despite having a sizeable number of subscribers, they don’t eventually convert on your website. It could be that most of your listeners are not your target audience. In this scenario, it requires you to take a good look at your customer persona. The other reason could be that you have not done enough for your listeners to convert on the website. There are three key metrics in Google Analytics that can tell you whether your listeners are engaged.

• Bounce Rate

When a website visitor leaves a particular landing page without browsing further is called bounce rate. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not incentivized to browse further. You might want to keep it under check by tweaking your website content.

• Average Session Duration

The time spent by a listener on the website is denoted as Average Session Duration in Google Analytics. This metrics helps you gauge the interest of your audience in your content/product/service. If this figure is on the higher side, it tells you that your listeners are engaged. 

• Average pages per visit

When users visit several pages during their stay on the website, it shows they are consuming more content. The more the number of pages visited, the more your audience is engaged, and the more they are interested in your offerings.

Conclusion

The podcast is still relatively a new medium, and measuring its success through analytics is continuously evolving. It definitely has a vast potential which is evident by the rise of podcast specific platforms like Apple and Google podcasts are coming up with specific podcast metrics like listener activity, downloads, time spent listening, episode overview data, trend data, etc. For publishers, until these platforms become widely accepted, we recommend the above time tested conventional tracking methods. These are simple ways and ensure you have full control over the tracking process in case you don’t want to simply rely on a third-party platform. It also helps you to quickly tweak your strategy.