Grow Your Podcast Audience With Listener Data

GROW A PODCAST AUDIENCE

Johnny describes podcasting as a black box for getting information about who’s actually downloading and listening to your content. It can be tough to understand who you’re talking to. So, he came up with a solution to counteract that. It started with a Japanese Language Podcast.

“First, it was just my mom and my eight brothers and sisters who listened. And then, eventually, it rolled into a whole bunch of people listening to this show. I thought, If I can get 5,000 people listening, how can I get 20,000?”

Johnny started with a survey and then asked people to do polls. From there, he got them to call a text line and started trying to communicate any way he could. He designed systems and processes to help him understand exactly who he was talking to. 

“I started changing my message ever so slightly. And as I tweaked it, I made more succinct content, and my podcast grew.”

Keywords are critical to syncing your message with your audience. Finding out how they are communicating online, so you can do the same. 

“For example, I found it interesting that we did a podcast for a company here in Utah that sold health supplements and wanted to know who is listening to their show. So, we did some data, and we dug around, and we helped their show grow. We’ve quadrupled their audience in about eight months. 

We found that they were communicating well on Facebook, but they weren’t using words that people in their industry used to describe what they are looking for. 

So, when they search for them, of course, they weren’t going to find them. If you’re saying alternative health and they actually are searching up vegan. Then those words aren’t going to come up together. It would be best if you typed in vegan. And so by finding how and why and who we can speak their language and speaking their language and getting in front of the right people has catapulted their podcast.”

One of the main issues that hinder podcast growth is that the host may be producing quality audio content that speaks to the audience, but written content is lacking. These two go hand in hand as only 33% of the US population listen to podcasts.  There needs to be an alternative to audio, and those are things like blog posts, show notes, transcriptions, episode titles, and podcast websites. 

Parallel to the written content is social engagement. Make sure you are on the same platforms as your listeners. If people like and comment on your posts, research them. Find out what else they engage with, invite them to subscribe, follow, or join your mailing list.  

All these techniques discussed above help you to get a granular view of your listener persona. Building that persona and targeted message helps to secure podcasts sponsorships, as well as grow a podcast audience.

“If I know that my consumer is a 25-year-old male who likes to mountain climb. That’s going to be a very different target market than maybe a mom who just had a baby who is, now looking at ways to childproof her home. So having that very clear distinction on who your audience is, allows advertisers to pinpoint the show that they know is going to help move the needle.”

Get the full transcription on how to grow a podcast audience.