“Is My Podcast Even Worth It?”: How to Measure Podcast Success and Get Clear on Its Value to Your Business
If you’ve been a podcaster for any length of time, you’ve probably asked yourself at some point, “Is my podcast even worth it?”. The answer to that question relies entirely on the role of your podcast and how it serves your larger business goals. That’s why actually measuring podcast success can look a little different for everyone!
Today, I’m sharing why the metrics for podcast success can feel a little ambiguous and some simple strategies you can implement to get clear on the value of your podcast. I cover everything from being intentional with your goals and your marketing funnel to tracking data through unique landing pages and listener inquiry forms. With a few tweaks and little patience, chances are that your podcast can be equally valuable to your audience and your business.
Why you can’t measure podcast success like you do content on other platforms
The first topic I want to address is how difficult it is to compare the metrics for podcast success with those of platforms like YouTube or Instagram. This is primarily because your podcast serves as longform content that allows you to connect with your audience on a much deeper level than heavily edited and curated content or a simple highlight reel. The result is that it nurtures your listeners and brings them into your world in a much more intimate way than can be achieved on social media. Where hundreds of thousands of followers might be your sole measure of success on those platforms, your podcast gives you a lot more leverage when it comes to growing your email list and ultimately selling more of your products and services.
Being specific with your goals and your podcast as a piece of your business funnel
If you want to be more intentional when it comes to measuring the success of your podcast, then being specific with your goals is a great place to start. For me, I hope that my audience will listen to my podcast episodes and opt to join my membership, or I hope that someone will listen to my podcast episodes and consider me for their next conference or speaking engagement. Those are just two examples of my personal metrics for success that I use to gauge the value of my podcast in the context of my larger business goals. The key is to think about your podcast as a core component of your marketing funnel, and ask yourself, “What’s the next step I want my listeners to take?”. Then, include a clear and direct call-to-action for them to take that step.
Tracking podcast success through unique landing pages and listener inquiry forms
When it comes to measuring the success of your podcast, data is your friend. One easy way to track data is by creating a unique landing page that coincides with the call-to-action in your podcast episodes. If you only mention that link in your episodes, then you can feel fairly confident that anyone who finds that link came from your podcast.
Listener inquiry forms are another easy way of simply asking people, “How did you find me?”. In most cases, what you’ll learn is that people are listening to several episodes of your podcast and really getting to know you before they actually click the “buy” button.
The importance of testing, tweaking, and acknowledging that podcasting is a long game
All that’s to say, podcasting is a long game and it’s unlikely that you’re going to see a return on your time and energy overnight. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable! It nurtures your audience in a way that few other platforms can. If you stick with it, and you’re willing to test and tweak along the way, then I’m willing to bet that your podcast is absolutely worth it.
When you put the effort into your podcast and you’re clear about what success looks like to you, then how you measure that success becomes a whole lot more straightforward. Want some more insight into how your podcast can better serve your business? Sign up for a podcast audit!
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The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
160: “Is My Podcast Even Worth It?”: How to Measure Podcast Success and Get Clear on Its Value to Your Business
[00:00:00] Caroline Hull: Sometimes when we talk about if a podcast is successful or not, it feels like it's hard to know. The metrics just aren't the same as social media or even YouTube videos for that matter. So how do we measure the success of our podcast? How do we know if it's valuable or if it's even working for us? That's what we're going to talk about today. Stay tuned. [00:00:22][22.2]
[00:00:25] Caroline Hull: Hello and welcome back to Share, Strategize and Shine. It is January 16th when I'm recording this episode, 2024 for all those future listeners, and we have been slowly easing back into our routine from a holiday off my homeschool, my kids. So getting back into what that looks like and setting ourselves up for a really great, um, rest of the school year and it feels like, you know, again, I think, and then this may just be a part of having kids, but you blink and time has just flown by, and I can't believe it's already the middle of the month. And there's so much going on and so many of the amazing things that are happening. And, you know, it's I'm just loving this feeling of the new year. So. Very excited to be here and excited to be bringing this episode to you today, because it's something that has been coming up in conversation a lot, um, between me and my team and my clients, um, people, I'm a mastermind, so I'm excited to dive into it. [00:01:27][61.9]
[00:01:27] Caroline Hull: But first, I want to share the problem that we solve this week. So I think I mentioned a couple episodes ago that I was getting more traction on Instagram. I was getting more traction on my podcast, and one of the things that, um, I really felt was helping with that was the quantity with which I was sharing. And then right before the holidays, and I'm talking about Instagram right now, uh, right before the holidays, those views, those likes, those and all that engagement that it felt like it had, you know, been picking up momentum, kind of died and. Over the holidays, I started asking myself, am I sharing too much? I tried posting several times a day. I had listened to a podcast on, um. I think it was Amy Porterfield's podcast she had somebody on. He talked about how they posted multiple times a day, and this is what helped them grow their Instagram account. And I was like, oh, sweet, I can do that. Like, I'm here for it. I tried posting several times a day and it did not work. And I was so frustrated going into the holiday break. And I posted a couple of things over the holiday break, but I didn't post every day. I and I didn't post multiple times a day. It was so interesting because those posts did amazing, and now I don't know if it's because we were all on break and we were surfing Instagram. We were on our phones, but it was interesting to me that posting less was actually equaling more. And so I really was asking myself, you know, am I sharing too much? Am I doing too much? Uh, and you know, I am of the belief that, like, you shouldn't be doing things that aren't serving you. Like, I'm not going to show up everywhere if it's not actually going to be helping me grow my business. I'm not going to spend my time creating reels and posts and all these things if it's not actually helping me grow my business, right. And so I have decided to relax my schedule on Instagram, which has felt really, really good. And honestly, like this is kind of day 2 or 3 of me relaxing my schedule a little bit. And um, the last two reels that I have posted have had more, um, views than the ones did before the holiday break. So I'm really excited about that. I feel like that's, um, a good tell that maybe posting three times a day isn't actually, uh, a really good strategy. Um, the other thing that is really interesting about this is I didn't realize how tired I was. I was really enjoying making the content, but it's also wearing me a little thin, I think. And I do think there is a pressure that comes from trying to show up all the time and show up in a certain way. And, you know, everybody was like, you need to record more B-roll. And it felt like trying to record B-roll has been such a hard thing for me, because I always feel like the angle's not right, and my sweat pants like, I'm not cute. Like I have all of these thoughts around it. And so it was really becoming a huge stressor for me. So I am doing away with it. I'm not going to worry so much about it. I'm going to post, um, I think once a day is kind of what I'm planning on for Instagram and then here on the podcast. So before the break, we were doing two episodes per week, which I love. That pace actually really, really do. And I saw a lot of growth with my podcast because of it. But again, we're going back to this feeling of being burnt out, this feeling of of being tired. And so I am going to pull back just a little bit, and we're going to be doing a solo episode every week, but we are going to be doing a, um, interview twice a month. Uh, and so those will be, uh, in those weeks with the solo episodes as well. We'll see how that goes. I may modify it again, but like, it's okay to try test and tweak. Um, and I know that this is going to come up again in this episode as we're going to talk, but I wanted to share that with you, because I know that when we're scrolling on Instagram, we're seeing people telling us we need to be doing this, we need to be doing this, we need to be doing this. And sometimes you just gotta do what works with you, what works for you. And so that is the problem that I solve this week for myself. I'm feeling really good about it and I hope you do too. [00:05:50][262.3]
[00:05:52] Caroline Hull: Okay. Today we're going to talk about how to know if your podcast is successful. Right. And knowing if your podcast is working can be really hard. There are those intangible things, like someone telling you that they heard a podcast episode, or they heard you on an interview, on another episode, on somebody else's podcast. Right? But when you don't have like direct money, like there is not money that is hitting my account, that came from the podcast. Right? Because my podcast doesn't have sponsors. My podcast is set up to be part of my funnel for my business. So when I don't have those like touching noises going off every time I post an episode, you know it can feel like you're wasting your time. And I bet if you're listening to this episode and you have a podcast, you've thought about this before. Um, because I hear this a lot. Honestly, this is the number one complaint I hear from business owners, um, from my own clients, uh, from people that I work with, um, from friends. They will say my podcast is costing me more than it's worth. And when they say that, it always I always get a little tick, you know, I'm like, wait, wait, wait. Uh, because I don't believe that at all. Um, it always shocks me because your podcast is this amazing, valuable piece of your funnel, right? It's this long form content. It's so much deeper and richer and filled with so much more insight and insight into you and who you are then you could get anywhere else. I truly believe, even on Instagram. Um, you know, I saw something today. Somebody was, uh, I can't even remember what it was. So if I find it all, reference it in the show notes. But I saw something today and they were talking about why podcasts are so unique, and it's that they are like this off the cars. You sit down in front of a microphone, you record in a way that is that is different than YouTube, in a way that is different than Instagram than any other medium. Right? Like this is this is literally open and go. It can be open and go for a lot of people. And it's a way for people to really get to know you intimately. Um, and I feel like and again, in a way that's very different from YouTube, which is usually edited and curated, and Instagram is so like a highlight reel. And so it really is this amazing, valuable piece of getting to know you of long form content and a piece of your funnel. But therein lies the problem, right? Because when we look at a podcast the same way we look at our Instagram account or even our YouTube account, we get in trouble. Those platforms behave so, so differently than a podcast, and it's really hard to compare. You know, when we talk about followers or subscribers, you can go on Instagram, you can see how many followers you have. And a lot of people equate value to the number of followers they have, right? So they think if I have 10 million followers, I'll get a bunch more sales. They think if I have, you know, a million viewers on YouTube, they're all going to click my link, uh, which is a whole other conversation about how we value, um, our audiences in these online spaces, because, you know, when it all boils down to it, right? The most valuable audience we have is probably our email list. Right. And how we get people to that email list can oftentimes be our podcast. You see where I'm going with this. But it really it really is different when we measure. Right. And I'm talking about analytics and I'm talking about money and value. When we measure things, they do measure a little bit differently than Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever you name it. But how do we measure the success of our podcast if it's different, right? And so I really want to dive into this today because I think that as the podcast world is shifting, this question is going to come up more and more and more and more because, you know, now we're wondering and I know a lot of you are I know some of my clients are. I know people that I work with are people in the membership. They're saying, is it worth it to hire somebody to help me with my podcast? Is it worth it to put more time and energy into my podcast? And I really hope that today, this episode can help you answer some of those questions. [00:10:29][276.5]
[00:10:30] Caroline Hull: Okay, so when we start thinking about this, we have to start with our goals. You have to know what the purpose of your podcast is. And you have to be specific. Like you have to dig deep and say, what do I want this podcast to help me achieve? What is it going to do for me, for my business? And you have to be very concrete with it because this is going to define how you measure success. So for me, some goals that I want to share with you that I have for this podcast is I hope you will listen to this podcast and join my membership. I hope that you will listen to this podcast and consider me for your next, uh, conference or speaking engagement. I hope this podcast, you will listen to it and you will want me to come talk to your membership. Right. So like I have very specific goals that revolve around visibility and my membership. And so I approach everything that I do with my podcast from this perspective, because these are the things that I am thinking about. These are the things that I'm measuring, and these are the things that I'm hoping to achieve with my podcast. Okay. And so, you know, the thing is, is we have to think about our podcast differently. This isn't a post in stories. And people get the link and then click right. This is this is about nurturing. So this really is about getting people bringing people into our world and having them get to know us in a way that is so different than anywhere else. This is about warming. Our or heating up, I don't know already. Warm leads right. This is about nurturing and conversion. And so you really need to know your path. We talk about the path a lot in podcast strategy. Um I say path. Another really great word for this is funnel. Uh, but how are people getting from your podcast to your business? How are they getting there? What makes the most sense? What are the steps once they get there? What happens to them afterwards? You know, you have to have a funnel and clear called actions if you don't have these things. It's measuring is is useless because at the end of the day, like you can have. A ton of downloads. But if you're not converting them, okay, then maybe we can start to think about the worth of our podcast rate or the value of it. Right? [00:13:01][151.6]
[00:13:03] Caroline Hull: And so if we want to start measuring some of this, there are a couple things that we can do. One of them is setting up landing pages for your podcast. Actually being able to track right how people are coming to your thing. A really good example of this is if you're listening to this episode, there may have been an ad run at the beginning, and I have set up a page specifically for this podcast. So that way when people go to that link, I know that they came from the podcast because that's the only place they would have heard this specific link, right? So that gives me a really good idea of how people are engaging from my podcast. Um, and this can be done with a lot of things. This can be done on an opt in. This could be done with a paid something. Um, if you're offering a discount or a sale, you could do that as well and have people go to podcast specific pages. You know, this is something that has been done for years with advertisers and sponsors. Whenever they advertise on a podcast, they will have a very specific link just for that podcast, so they know how many people are actually coming over. That's how they determine the worth and value of them paying for ads on that podcast. You need to do the same thing for yourself. Right. You need to treat your podcast the same way and do the same thing for yourself. So landing pages is a really, really great place to start. And when we talk about a funnel and building a funnel for your podcast, this is a really great way to do it, is to have a landing page specifically for. [00:14:33][90.7]
[00:14:36] Caroline Hull: One of my other favorite things to do is to ask people how they found me. I know this seems like a no brainer, and this kind of goes back to those intangibles like, you know, not necessarily money to Ching, but like, how did you get here? How did you come into my world when you, uh, set up an inquiry form asks them what made you. Fill out this form. Was it because you heard about it on the podcast or Instagram? What was it? Where was it? Right? And this is the other thing I need you to understand. Is that a podcast again, because it's a nurturing piece, right? This is a something that people have to choose. They have to sit down. They have to click play. They have to listen to it. They have to find the time to listen to it. Right. For me, that's a lot of times in my car, Wednesdays and Thursday, that's when I listen to podcasts and I can usually only get one episode in. So I usually have like something already cued up that I'm interested in. So it has to catch me. It has to be engaging. It has to be something that I need right now. But see, that in itself is qualifying me for for these businesses. Right. That's qualifying me. Uh, a really great example. I think I shared this on the podcast before is I was listening to a podcast episode, um, of a podcaster, and it was an episode. I can't even remember exactly what it was about, but I needed to hear it at that moment. It was something I was interested in and wanted to hear about the entire episode. She talked about her membership. And I really enjoyed the podcast episode. It was really great. But, um, I am not an ideal client. I'm not an ideal person for her membership, but I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't listened to that episode, honestly, because I've been on her sales page before and thought about it. But then I listened to the podcast episode and I knew that I was not her ideal client. So in a way, that podcast episode served as a qualifier, um, kind of weeding out the people you want versus the people you don't want. And it was a really great episode. Don't get me wrong, I loved her episode. I still like I'm like, thinking about, you know, oh, should I be here? But no, I'm not. I'm not her ideal client. But I love her membership and I love, you know, her podcast episode. I thought it was so great. But that just gives you an example of how I'm using it as a qualifier, right? So asking people how they found you is important to an understanding that they may listen to multiple episodes before they click the buy button. Because it's a nurturing peace. They found you. They found your podcast episodes are going to listen to several before they make a decision, and they're probably going to need to hear you talk about that service or program a few times before they go click on it, right. And so this is how we measure. This is how we start to think about the worth and the value of our podcast. [00:17:27][171.1]
[00:17:29] Caroline Hull: You know, I can sit here and I can give you download numbers and say, if you're getting this many download numbers, then it's valuable. But the fact of the matter is, I have had people tell me that 200 downloads per episode wasn't enough for them for it to be valuable. And have had people question if 5000 downloads per episode is enough to make it valuable, right? It's all in the eye of the beholder. And at the end of the day, you have to decide what's important to you. If you have a podcast and this is the best way that people get to hear about you and your business and how you help people, then it's worth it. Because it's nurturing them. It's it's allowing them into your world. And you're you're in their ears, you know? If you get 50 downloads per episode, that's 50 people that you're walking into a room that want to hear what you have to say. And here's the thing. Like if you let it pervade and don't put any real effort into it, then it's not worth it, right? If you're not consistent, um, you know, all those things we talk about, it's not going to be worth it because you're not going to see the return. You're not going to see the energy and energy out kind of thing. You know. And remember, a well thought out strategy for your podcast is going to help you convert your listeners, but you have to be willing to test, tweak, and adjust. You know, this isn't something that happens overnight, just like with Instagram. I mean, I have been on Instagram for how many years? I have 5000 followers. I get more engagement and clients from my podcasts than I do from my Instagram account, and that can be me. It could be because I'm better at podcasting than I am about than creating short form video, I don't know. But you know, I it's to me. The effort and the time I put into the podcast is worth it, because you get to sit here and hear me talking like this. I cannot show up like this on Instagram. I have not figured out how to do it right, you know? And podcasting is a long game. It is a long game. I know that's frustrating for a lot of people, but it's the reality. You know, this is something that grows over time, that grows alongside your business, that helps you grow, your business, that will grow as your email list grows, as your visibility grows, it will grow, and it kind of works in the background for you. And I don't really serve your business if you put the effort into it. Right. And this is an ongoing effort. I mean, I'm talking about the upfront effort to make really smart choices about your content. And your strategy and your goals. If you start there and make some really smart choices there. And then at three months, four months, six months, a year. It's going to be a really great piece of marketing for your business. [00:20:27][178.3]
[00:20:30] Caroline Hull: So is your podcast worth? Probably. It probably. Absolutely is. But you just have to reframe how you approach and think about it. And don't just value the number of downloads you have, and don't dis value the people who take the time to listen to you, because they are the people who are going to come and eventually buy, um, who are going to cheer you on, who are going to mention you to other people. And that is valuable in and of itself, right? And so I really hope this episode today helps you reframe that for yourself. And if you hear people saying podcasting isn't worth it or for it doesn't work for my business, you know, bring up some of these points to them, because it probably is worth a lot more than they know. They just haven't figured out how to measure it correctly for their business. And if you know you're listening to this and you're struggling with knowing the value of your podcasts or knowing if you have a strategy in place for it that's working. Uh, one of a really great step, a really wonderful place to start is to get an audit of your podcast. And these audits are where I come in. I look at everything. You fill out a questionnaire. I measure that against your goals. I look at your content a lot of other things, and then I write up an action plan for you. And this is a really great way to get not only my eyes on your podcast, but to find out, you know, what can I do today to make some changes that can start making a difference for my podcast? And I think it's a really great thing to do. If you're questioning, should I keep doing this? Is it worth it? You know, all of those things that I've talked about because usually we can find something. More than one thing to tweak. That's going to make a huge impact on how your podcast works for your business. So you can head to WildHomePodcasting.com/audit if you're interested in those. I only do a limited number of them each month. Um, and let me know what you think about this episode. I think this is a conversation we're gonna be having a lot this year about value and worth of podcasts, and I'm here for it because I just I think podcasts are amazing. They're so wonderful. And if it's something that you are thinking about doing for your business, there are so many benefits, um, that are going to help your business, uh, now and in the long term. So thank you so much for listening. And I'll be back next week with a new episode.
