059: Podcast Goals and Metrics and How to Use Them
Don’t be afraid of your numbers. As a podcaster, this is one of the best pieces of advice I can share with you. How you look at your numbers should reflect the goals you have for your podcast and your goal for bringing in new leads.
That’s exactly what we’ll discuss today as we break down podcast goals and metrics and how you can use them. You’ll get tips into how you can determine if your podcast is producing leads for your business and the #1 thing you should focus on when it comes to your numbers.
What’s in this episode:
Why you need a goal in mind: leads or downloads
How to know if your podcast is producing leads for your business
The main thing to focus on with your numbers
How to use your numbers as leverage for information
Links:
058: Ready to Start a Podcast for Your Business? Here are 3 Things to Consider
Launch Pod
Bit.ly
Chartable
042: Streamline Your Marketing with a Podcast
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The Transcript:
059: Podcast Goals and Metrics and How to Use Them
I really wanted this to be an encouragement to you, to not be afraid of your numbers and to not be obsessive about them either. And to make sure that how you're looking at your numbers aligns with your goal for your podcast and your goal for bringing in leads.
Welcome to the Wild Home Podcast, where we talk about podcasting, life and all the wild in between. Join me, Caroline. Every week I share a peek into the world of podcasting and my wild life as well. Ready? Let's get into it.
Hello, and welcome back to the Wild Home Podcast. Today's episode is all about podcasts, goals and metrics. So last week I talked about three things that you need to consider if you're going to start a podcast for your business. And I touched for a very short moment on leads versus downloads and metrics. And so I wanted to expand on that in this episode, and this really can apply to a podcast or at any level, at any amount of downloads, at any amount of years or episodes. I want this to just kind of be something that you can think about and start to kind of look at, maybe in any way and maybe not necessarily in any way, but using goals and metrics in a different way to help grow your podcasts, but also to help grow your business.
And so when we talk about goals, we really want to think about what our main goal of the podcast is and if we're a business owner, more often than not, our goals are things like build authority, get more leads, drive more traffic to my website. Those kinds of things, as opposed to necessarily downloads and downloads are important, and I'm not knocking them. And I'm not saying that, you know you should be happy with low downloads or high downloads or you shouldn't have a download goal. That's not what I'm saying at all.
What I'm saying is, is that we have to kind of put download numbers over here and we have to put our goals over here and see how they kind of fit together and wanting more downloads is really a good goal to have for your podcasts. Absolutely. But making sure that we're framing it with the right language, right? So when we say I want more downloads, I prefer words like, I want more. OK, so for instance, this is my podcast. This is a podcast for podcasters. I want more aspiring podcasters and business owners to know about my podcast and be able to listen to it.
So when I say that what I'm talking about now is more of a reach, right, it's more of that kind of marketing thing where we want people to see the thing. However many times, right? I think seven fifty, I don't know. It's a lot these days to get somebody to buy, but that when I think about downloads, for me, that's what I'm thinking about.
It's not that I want anybody pressing the the play button. It's that I want to make sure that my podcast is getting into the right ears and that my podcast is having an impact on the ears that it's getting into. And so when you start to kind of think about the main goal of your podcast, this is how I want you to frame it. I think where we get in trouble is by saying like, I want each episode to have 10000 downloads. That's great. And I I think it's amazing that there are podcasts out there who are doing that and more. But the issue is, is what is that ten thousand downloads doing for you? Because if you're putting episodes out every week and you're getting that that many downloads or more, but you're not getting any leads, your business isn't growing, you're not building your authority, then there might be something else that we need to look at, right, in order for those downloads to make sense.
And a lot of times when we start making changes like this to our podcast and readjusting our goals. One of the things that we find is that sometimes our downloads go down right. This is just like with an email list. A lot of us as business owners have email lists, and we know that when we tend to niche down, we get a lot of subscribers that maybe aren't clicking or we may get a lot of unsubscribes when we shift gears a little bit and a podcast is the same way you're going to have an influx based on your content and what you're prioritizing, right? Because that also changes the priority for your listener. And so I'm saying all of this because I think it's really important to, like I said, frame those goals in a way that they make sense, not just for your podcast, but for your business. And now that we've kind of talked about that, we can talk about metrics and bringing in leads and all of those things. So firstly, I want you to think about what your main goal is, think about leads versus downloads. And then if there is a download number that you were wanting to hit, how can we frame that in a way that is going to create action steps for us that are going to make sense?
And and then look at your marketing plan for your podcast and for your business and make sure it's all tying together and reaching the right people, right? One of my favorite things to do is to create a customer journey, and I actually teach this inside of my launch pod, which is a DIY course for launching your podcast. And I share my customer journey in that. And it's a graphic I created, and it tells, you know which level of people in their podcast. Journey and her business journey, whatever, am I hitting them and that helps me kind of determine what content I'm going to share here on this podcast and on Instagram and my blog and all that kind of stuff. And it does help when I'm thinking about my goals for my podcast. You know, I think about my goals and then I think about where that person is and their customer journey and how am I going to get them from that point to the next point, right? And what kind of content do I need to share for that to happen? What kind of CTA do I need to have for that to happen? And so it's a really great step for just kind of framing pretty much everything you're doing in your marketing for your business.
And, you know, I didn't always think of it this way either, and I don't want you to be like, Oh, when I think of it that way, you know, I won't. I think it's natural when you start something new to kind of have it be in its own place and its own entity. And podcasting is still growing, and we're still learning so much about it. And so it's it's kind of like now that we're I don't know what phase we're in of the podcasting industry growth, but now that we're in this kind of place where it's starting to become more professional and we've been doing it for a while, and now we're starting to see how it integrates with other things. And that's my favorite thing to talk about is how it integrates with your business. And so use those goals to also help that.
OK, so let's talk about Leeds because I know one of the main things that people really want is they want leads from their podcast. They want people to listen to the podcast and then come over and download the thing. Join the newsletter, buy the thing, whatever that is. So let's talk about how to know if your podcast is bringing in Leeds because it's really hard to track, right?
You don't have like anything that's, you know, a direct correlation between hears this and go here, but you can create that. And there's a couple of ways you can do that. So obviously having links in your show notes linking your episodes to your website, seeing how many clicks you get from that. But my favorite thing to do is have a really strong call to action and having that in the show notes and having it in the episode as well.
So like, what is the thing that I want people to do when they're done listening? What is the thing that I want them to go? Check out what link is that? And making sure that that's very clear in the show notes when they hear it, they can look in their app, click it right and want it to be very seamless.
But there are some other kind of ways that you can figure out if people are coming to you from your podcast. And one of them seems really obvious, but it it isn't always, you know, I do calls every week. I have calls with people who want to work with us or new clients or clients who want to talk about their podcast now. And it's really interesting to me how often I will be talking to somebody and they will say, Oh yeah, I heard you talk about that on your podcast episode, and I like to take note of that because that means that they were listening. They came to me that stuck in their brain somehow, and that is one of the ways that the podcast is bringing people in.
And you know, it's funny because, you know, I always say that podcasting is long game, but I just had somebody contact me the other day. And so they have been listening to my podcast for a couple of years now, and they're just now contacting me, right? And so that's the crazy thing to do about it is it's it may not be an overnight thing. It's like, you know, doing the work, right?
And so that's a really I think it's obvious, like, obviously people are mentioning it, they're coming to you. But I think that's something that we need to pay more attention to. Like, how many times is somebody saying, Oh, I heard that on your podcast, right? And then the other thing is is ask people how they found you. Did they find you through another podcast that you were on? Did they find you through your podcasts? What made them decide to finally contact you? Have that information or that asked in all of your inquiry forms, right? So any forms on your website? How did you hear about us? Make sure that's there, and that's a good way to track, like where you're having an impact on people finding you right?
And so there are ways you can kind of create tracking. There's also other ways you can track. You can create, like Bit.ly links, you can use Charitable to create special links to help track that kind of thing as well. But I also think too like for me, having an opt in or a sign up and making sure that that's clear in my podcast episode, like making sure that I am clear and talking about that. That's the thing that I want you to do. And then making sure that that's linked in my podcast is really important.
OK, so now let's dove into the nitty gritty of metrics. And then I say metrics. I'm talking about numbers. When I say numbers, I'm talking about downloads. So downloads doesn't necessarily mean downloads. I think that's the interesting things is about this word still hasn't changed. Sometimes it can mean I press play and I listen past a certain time. It really depends on the apps and everybody has their own thing. There is some standardization that is happening that people are trying to standardize how we count listens and downloads and things like that. But for the most part, let's just say for the point of this episode, if somebody hits play and listens to your episode, that's called a download, right? OK.
So the first thing I want to say is that numbers aren't everything right? And I know that you probably knew this is where this was going based on what I was talking about. I think playing a comparison game is not going to do you any good in the long haul, right? Because that's what podcasting is. It is a long game, especially if you are starting a podcast and you're creating a new audience or trying to grow a podcast that maybe hasn't had very many downloads up until now. And now you're really working on your marketing. It's not going to happen overnight, and there are some things you can do to grow your podcast. And maybe, you know, I'll do another episode on that. I think I have a past episode, so we'll be sure to link to that as well.
But the main thing I want you to focus on is whatever your numbers are, how can we use them in a way that they are helpful? And one of my favorite ways to use them is to look and see, Am I growing? So am I getting more downloads every month? But here's the kicker are some of my older episodes still getting downloads down the road? That's really important to it, because that means that somebody just signed up, subscribed and started listening to all your episodes, right? So that's really key.
The other thing I like to look at is episode decisions, right? So if I'm thinking about content, what content is working, what content maybe isn't working so well? I like to go and look at my numbers, you know, which episodes received more downloads and then say to myself, OK, why do they receive more downloads? What was it about that episode? Did I share it in different places? Was it the topic? Was at the time of year? Was it because I had a guest on and they've shared it? Was it because I went on a podcast and shared about the episode? Right?
So we're digging into the numbers. We're not just looking at them and going, "Wow, that's not the number I want." We're looking at the number and we're saying, "Why is it that number?' I saw a conversation in a Facebook group a couple of days ago in one of my many podcasting Facebook groups I'm in.. And somebody was saying, you know, they had a lot of downloads and now they weren't seeing as many. And that seemed like their numbers were dropping off every month. And so my first thought to that is, OK, well, why? What's happening? What kind of content are you sharing? Are you meaning your listeners where they're at or are you talking about the things that they want to hear? Has your audio changed? How has the way that you direct the episode changed, right?
There's all these things to look at, and so you have to be really smart about how you look at your numbers and also be able to look at them objectively and honestly and say, OK, what is going on here with these numbers? What factors are affecting these numbers? And if the numbers aren't what you want them to be, how can you get those numbers to go up, right?
The point is the numbers are not there to make you feel bad about the time, the energy, the content you were sharing, right? The numbers are there just to inform you. And so it's really important to approach them that way and know that everybody has to start somewhere and not everybody starts in the same place again. You know, when I started my podcast, I didn't really have that large of an audience. I didn't have an audience already built ten. I didn't have a large following and Instagram. My email list is still a work in progress. You know, of course, any business owner will say all these things. And so you can't expect that to just like overnight, be a million downloads, right? For some people, yes, it does happen. But we also have to be realistic because if we are very niche down podcasts, which we should be to make sure that we're we're reaching the right potential clients and the right potential leads, then it's not necessarily going to reach that many. Or it may. Who knows?
But the point is, is that you don't want to be afraid to look at your numbers, right? If they can help you and they can help inform you. And so look at them objectively, and it's not something that you need to look at every day like, don't look at your numbers every day, maybe look at them every couple of weeks, every month, you know, see how things are going. I personally don't look at them too often just because I know that it takes time for people to listen. And they might be a couple of episodes behind. And, you know, every once in a while, I'll look at my downloads and I'll have a really pleasant surprise because an episode did a lot better than I expected. Or all of a sudden, you know, my downloads are looking up. And it's taken. It's taken time, and it does take time to do that.
And so I really wanted this to be an encouragement to you to not be afraid of your numbers and to not be obsessive about them either. And to make sure that how you're looking at your numbers aligns with your goal for your podcast and your goal for bringing in leads and that kind of thing as well. It all works together.
And there's no magic like spreadsheet or tracker or anything I use. I literally will just go in and look into my RSS feed host and see, you know, what my downloads look like. In fact, I hadn't looked at them in a while and I looked at them yesterday for some other reason, and I was, you know, really excited to see that it had some growth. And that's been a main goal for me is to make sure that I am reaching more people who need to hear this podcast. And so anyways, as I wrap up this episode, I just wanted to remind you that we all have to start somewhere and growth doesn't happen overnight. Podcasting is a long game, but if you stick to it and stick to creating content that is really meaningful for your potential clients and your listeners, you're going to do great. And I truly believe that.
So I hope this episode was helpful for you to kind of help frame goals and metrics for your podcast and how to use them. And if you have any questions, you can feel free to DM me on Instagram @WildHomePodcasting or send me an email hello@wildhomepodcasting.com and let me know, you know, if this was helpful for you. Let me know if you have any other questions that have popped up in this. And then of course, I'm looking forward to being with you next week, and we have some spots available for podcast launches, podcast refreshes and, of course, monthly podcast management. We are booking now for February and March. So if you are ready to grow, launch or uplevel your podcast, please check out our services at WildHomePodcasting.com/services. I have an amazing team and I cannot wait to introduce them to you in February. I'm going to be doing some episodes with the team and also sharing a little bit about them on Instagram, and I just think it'll be really cool to let the world know all the amazing people that are doing amazing work here at WHP. So have a great week and keep podcasting.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. To stay in the know, head to WildHomePodcasting.com and be sure to connect with me on Instagram @WildHomePodcasting. See you next week!
