Who’s Actually Listening to My Podcast?

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Who’s Actually Listening to My Podcast?

Dear Annie,

I work at a large tech company. We’ve been making our podcast for a few years now, and our target audience is IT decision makers.

The problem is, when our leadership team asks me who is actually listening, I don’t have a great answer, beyond a general feeling that probably only pretty tech savvy people would be interested.

I’ve poked around Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and while there’s some information there, it feels pretty thin. Am I missing something?

Is there a way to get a clearer picture of who our audience actually is?

​

Sincerely,

Fumbling for Figures

Have a question? Ask Annie here.

How to know more about your audience.

Hi Fumbling,

You’re not missing anything, and you’re definitely not alone in this frustration. Listener data in podcasting is notoriously limited, and for those coming from other digital marketing channels, it can be jarring.​

Here’s what the platforms do give you: Apple Podcasts and your hosting platform should provide you with some basic geographic estimates. Spotify goes a little further, giving you age and gender breakdowns. It’s a starting point, but I get that this is not sufficient to build out a listener profile. Don’t worry though, I have some ideas for you.

Podcasting traditionally runs on an open, decentralized infrastructure, with the RSS feed delivering episodes directly to listeners in whatever app they choose. (This is changing with more walled gardens like YouTube and Spotify becoming the biggest players in podcasting, but that’s a bigger conversation for another day). This can be good news for listeners who are increasingly wary of being tracked across the internet (probably like your target audience of IT decision makers). But it is frustrating for publishers who want to understand their audiences. With limited tracking, listeners need to actively opt in to share more information about themselves.

​So how do you get them to tell you about themselves? According to our Head of Audience Development, Alex Zingale Centner, the most reliable tool available to you is a listener survey. A well-designed survey, promoted through in-episode mentions and show notes, can tell you who your listeners are, why they listen, and what they care about. The risk here is that only the most engaged listeners will bother to fill it out. But really, those are arguably the people worth knowing most.

To go a step further, you could also explore private podcast hosting platforms (something like Supercast or Supporting Cast). The typical use case is for creating a paid subscriber feed. But there’s nothing stopping you from using them to instead create a small selection of bonus, subscriber-only episodes, and instead of charging for access, require listeners to fill out a short form. You could ask for an email address and a couple of demographic questions, similar to what you’d complete to download a research report. You’re essentially trading content for data.

The listeners who go out of their way to sign up are your most dedicated audience, which means you’re getting a clear profile of exactly the people you most want to understand. Plus, you get an email address you can follow up with later.

If you want to know who’s on the other end of your feed, you have to ask them.

Good luck,

Annie