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Podcast Playbook: Helping Coaches & Advisors Convert Podcast Content into Clients
These Metrics Will Tell You if Your Podcast Is Failing
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Is your podcast content really resonating with listeners? On the surface, it's a simple question, but when I ask a podcaster, I usually hear something like, yeah, I think so. A few people have reached out to say they loved an episode. Don't get me wrong, I love those messages as much as any podcaster. But when we look at the data, I often find a super fan doesn't represent a majority of your audience. So today we are taking a data first approach to answer the one big question. Is your podcast content actually good? I'll walk you through three retention metrics. I track on every episode to see how well my content landed with my audience. And I'll share simple changes that you can make to improve each one. Let's get into it. All. Data is good data to me, but one metric has a special place in my heart. Retention. Why? Because someone's attention is the most valuable resource and probably one of the hardest things to capture in a world filled with high quality competitive content. I also think this is one metric that's really hard to manufacture or manipulate. What do I mean by that? Well, let's look at a couple of other metrics that someone might use to indicate if their content is high quality or not. Number one is rating and reviews. If your primary call to action is requesting rating reviews from your audience and you go ahead and reward people for that, maybe you give away swag or you do a listener call out. It's oftentimes that I see an above average amount of reviews compared to a show with a similar sized audience. Nothing wrong with that. But I don't think there's a strong correlation between rating, review and how great someone's content actually is. Next up is social media followers. We all know that a couple of viral pieces of content can really lift your social media followers. And being in the in the world of content for long enough, I've also come to realize that a couple of people just buy their social media followers. So just because someone has a bunch of social media followers doesn't mean that they create high quality podcast content. And finally, let's talk about downloads. You would think that this would probably be a pretty good indicator around the quality of your content. And to some degree it can be. But. But I've also seen some shows with high downloads that don't necessarily have quality content. And why is this? It's usually because they're really good marketers and not necessarily great content creators. Somebody can be really good at packaging a show. They could have great thumbnails, they could have really good titles. They could even have maybe a dense network with well known guests. All of this might lead to people clicking and downloading episodes more, but not necessarily leaving episodes feeling like that was a really high quality episode. This is why I think retention really sticks out from this list of metrics. It's something that is really hard to buy. I have actually never even heard of a service where they improve your retention. Although I guess you could probably pay someone to listen to your podcast episodes all the way through. It's just not easily scalable. And second, unlike a, you know, sharing a rating review or giving a rating review, or following you on social media, or even giving some of the space on your phone to download the episode. Someone's attention Someone's time listening to your podcast episode is probably their most precious resource. And if they are giving you that time, that attention, that's probably a pretty good indicator that your content is high quality. That's why I think retention metrics are probably the most powerful barometer to identify if your content is is really landing with your podcast listeners. So let's get into the three retention metrics that I track on each episode to really gauge how well I'm doing with my content. Number one is average consumption. Simply put, this is how much of your episode the average listener actually hears. So let's say that you put out a 30 minute podcast episode and your average consumption is 15 minutes. That means on average your podcast listeners are hearing 50% of your content. The higher the number, the better job you are at holding your listeners attention. I really love average consumption as just kind of the baseline content quality score. So you're looking across 10, 20, 30 of your episodes and you're seeing pretty strong consumption rates. That probably means that you're pretty good at pacing, at storytelling, and delivering value in each one of your episodes. If you're looking at that same range of episodes and you're seeing your rate as very low, then you probably aren't hitting the mark with your listeners and you aren't sharing enough value in your podcast episodes. So why does average consumption rate matter? If you aren't able to consistently hold your audience's attention, you're never going to be able to convert a one time listener into an ongoing fan. So let's talk about a couple of benchmarks. I would say anything 50% or below means that you have your work cut out. I'm not saying that you can't improve that, but focusing on your content right now could drastically improve and help you grow your podcast. If you're in the 50 to 70% range, things are looking pretty good for you podcast listeners. Completing 50 to 70% of your podcast content is pretty strong indicator that you've got some pretty good content there. And then finally, if your average consumption rate is 70% or more, you are cooking with gas right now. Your content is strong, your listeners are listening to most of your content and your show is ready for growth. On the flip side, that 50% or below, you're just probably churning listeners through. You're never converting one time listeners into ongoing fans, and it's probably worth spending a lot of time focusing on improving your content quality. All right, the second retention metric that I like to look at is opening retention. Opening retention is a measurement of how many listeners are still tuned in after the first two minutes of your episode. In other words, it tells you whether your intro is doing its job or not, grabbing their attention and getting them excited for the rest of the content in the episode. Why this Matters the biggest drop off that I typically see in retention is within the first two minutes. The first two minutes is typically a big make or break moment for your content if you have an amazing topic, a great guest, incredible insights later in the episode. None of that really matters if listeners are dropping off early and never really getting to that part of your content. On the flip side, if you're really good at grabbing someone's attention and getting them excited about the content, you're more than likely going to be able to bridge your introduction in the core episode content. So, just like we did with the average consumption rate, let's talk about a couple of benchmarks. First things first, if you're looking across, you know, last 10 or 20 podcast episodes and you're seeing that majority of them fall, your opening retention falls 60% or below. This is a pretty good indicator that something is broken with your introduction. If you're in the 60 to 75% range, you're about average and you're holding some people, but not everybody is sticking around. And if you're 75% or more of your listeners are still engaged after two minutes, you have done a great job hooking your listeners and getting them excited about the core content that's upcoming. So what does a low opening retention and a high opening retention really mean for your podcast? A low opening retention is going to indicate that there are some things broken with the first couple of minutes of your episode. If you have repeated low openings, this could even affect your overall show perception and even the long term audience growth. If you didn't do a good job the first time, hooking them and getting them really excited about the content. More than likely they're not going to come around and give you a second chance. On the flip side, if you have high opening retention, your introductions are strong, your you're immediately engaging your listeners, you're teasing the value, and you're delivering something compelling. This has all the making of really high quality podcast content. All right, let's talk about the third retention metric that I like to track, and that is episode completion rate. This is the percentage of listeners who reach the end of your podcast episode. I typically back this up about two minutes before the end of my episode. Especially if you have a standard outro bumper or where you have to add a disclaimer to your podcast, many people are gonna skip through that or turn off your episode ahead of time. So if you wanna look at maybe the last two minutes or five minutes of your podcast episode, this might be a good indicator on what your episode completion rate really is. I also really love to convert it from a percentage to a number of listeners. So if you have a hundred people that listen to your podcast episode and your episode completion rate is 30%, you'd multiply that 30% by a hundred listeners and you know that 30 people are there at the very end of your podcast episode and why this matters. Well, many podcasters primary call to action whenever they are suggesting the next step to working with them is in the very end of their episodes. And we know from industry studies about 1 to 5% of people will take action on a podcast call to action. So if you want to multiply the 30 listeners by 1% to 5% and you know that about 0 to 2 people are going to take action on what you are suggesting at the very end of your podcast episode. This really puts things into perspective on return on investment and gets me honestly excited about how do I improve my episode completion rates so that people are sticking around and hearing what I want them to hear, which is typically, how can you continue working with me if you don't have strong episode completion rates, something is broken. Something needs to be improved on with inside your episode itself. So let's talk about benchmarks for episode completion rates. If you survey your podcast episodes and you are consistently seeing an episode completion rate of 35% or below, how can you get more people to listen to the episode to the very end? If you're averaging somewhere between 35 to 50%, you're gotta be pretty average having a third to 50% of everyone that starts an episode There at the very end is pretty strong indicator that things are looking pretty good in your podcast episodes. And finally, if 50% or more of your listeners are finishing your episodes, this is a high quality piece of content that you have. It is very hard, especially for longer podcast episodes, let's call it 40 minutes or above, to keep this high of an episode completion rate so you are clearly doing something right. People are sticking around and finishing your episodes. High completion rates are going to signal to you that your listeners are invested, that they're consuming your content that you spent hours crafting, and you got kind of that stickiness factor that keeps people returning for more episodes versus if you have low completion rates, people might be starting your podcast episodes, but there's gotta be dead spots or pacing issues throughout your podcast episodes that are making people tune off and not want to finish your podcast episodes. And of course, repeated low completion rates can often impact long term listener loyalty. And if they're not sticking around completing episodes, they're probably not converting into super fans for your podcast. So as we're finishing up this podcast episode, let's talk about how you can improve each of these metrics. First, let's talk about average consumption. Once again, this is on average, how much a podcast listener is listening to your content. Once again, this is how much of your episode the average listener actually hears. My number one suggestion to improve average consumption is to make your episodes tighter. Cut out the filler content, cut out tangents. Another big suggestion is to stick to one main takeaway per episode. If you're outlining your episodes and you're starting to feel pulled between multiple different topics and multiple key takeaways in each of your episode, that is probably begging that this is multiple episodes and not one episode. And finally, if you want some more advanced tips, use pattern breaks or segments. Using music cues or segmenting your content or asking probing questions really gives people who are zoning out an opportunity to re engage and tune back into the content. Next, let's talk about opening retention. This is how good you are at hooking your audience right away and getting them engaged and ready for the rest of the content. One of the biggest issues that I see with opening retention is is these long standard introductions. These are these introductions you record once and that you put in each one of your podcast episodes. If your standard intro is 30 seconds or more, it's probably too long. Not to say that there's not a place for standard introductions, but how can you say everything you need to say in a more concise way? So by shortening your introductions, you're probably going to strengthen your opening retention. I also love to start with a strong hook, a surprising fact, a story, a question, or a bold statement that's really going to resonate with your audience. By doing this, you're immediately going to pull them into the content and get them excited about what you're about to say, and then finally deliver on your promise. Quickly cut out the unnecessary chit chat, the long preambles, the off topic banter, and get to the juicy part of the content within the first two minutes. You don't want to make listeners wait too long to get to the first big payoff. Finally, episode completion rates. My big suggestion here is to make your episodes shorter. I've seen a trend where many podcast listeners are starting to prefer shorter and shorter episodes. I always get the question, how long should my episodes be? And although I almost always say, well, it depends or however long they need to be, I'm starting to notice trends that people are preferring somewhere in the 20 to 30 minute range for most podcast episodes. Why is this? Well, anytime that someone stops your podcast, maybe they have finished their commute, they have finished making dinner, they are done walking their dog, they're going to pause your episode and you are now at risk of them never returning to your podcast content. So shortening your episodes are probably going to help with your episode completion rates. Some other things that you can do are focus on your pacing and avoid any long or slow sections that don't add any value. And finally, reward the people that are staying to the very end. Add some community time or some interactive segments or elements to your show at the very end. Give that clear, actionable takeaway at the very end. You can even tease some of this stuff throughout the beginning and middle of your podcast episodes. Let them know that there's gotta be a bonus tip at the very end or you're gonna be revealing the answer to a question at the very end of your episode. Or all of this is going to help with your episode completion rates. Okay, so before we wrap up today's episode, I do want to tell you how to actually access this data. We've been talking about retention metrics and you'll notice most podcast hosts do not have any retention metrics in them. So where do you find this data? Well, I'll link a video tutorial in the show notes for how to find this data, but there are two primary places that you can go in order to access these metrics. Number one is Spotify for creators, and number two is Apple Podcasts for Creators. These are both accounts that you can set up separately. So if you're not currently hosting your podcast on Spotify, you can Google Spotify for Creators and you'll find the steps there to create a Spotify for Creators account. And then within there you can find these retention metrics, these Spotify specific retention metrics for each of the episodes by clicking on an episode and scrolling down to the bottom and and seeing that Spotify audience retention graph. On the flip side, Apple Podcasts for Creators. This is also going to require you to set up a separate account, but after you do that, there's going to be an analytics tab and you can scroll down to recent episodes and within side of that graph right there, you're going to see the average consumption rate for each of your most recent podcast episodes. You can also click on any podcast episode and you're going to see even more specific analytics for each of those podcast episodes themselves. Finally, yes, if you're on YouTube with Inside of YouTube Studio, on the analytics section, you can also find retention charts. I'm going to caveat that some of the benchmarks that I suggested throughout this podcast episode might not necessarily translate to video podcast or YouTube metrics. YouTube listener or YouTube watchers tend to have a little bit shorter attention spans. So all these metrics are probably a little inflated right now. But I think it's worth looking at your YouTube metrics, especially if you're a video podcast, but also if your audio feed is up on YouTube too, by going into YouTube Studio and clicking on the analytics section with inside there too. But once again, I'll link in the show notes, instructions for how to set these accounts up and where to find each of these metrics. So to wrap up today's episode, retention, I believe, is the best proof that your content is working. Anytime that I'm working with clients and I'm seeing these three retention metrics improve, I almost immediately know within the next couple of months their podcast is ready to pop. You're going to see more people subscribe to your podcast. You're going to see more people come back and listen to episodes because they found value in the first one. So by focusing on retention and really using your retention metrics to drive the improvement of your content, you're going to find yourself growing your show naturally. As a recap, the three metrics to track are the average consumption percentage with the goal of keeping people engaged throughout your podcast Episode number two is the opening retention, measuring the first two minutes of your podcast episode with the goal of hooking listeners fast and preventing early drop off. And finally, your episode completion rates. This is the number of people finishing your episode. You want to keep people engaged to the very end where, especially with my business owners, a lot of your primary call to actions Live. If you use these three metrics, you're going to start identifying what is working and what you need to improve on. And by improving on this, you're you're going to improve your content. And by improving your content, you are going to grow your podcast. Of course, if you need help finding or interpreting these metrics, you can always book a consultation with me. Send me an email@justinimpleplepodstudios.com and I'll help you pinpoint where your content is losing attention and how to fix it. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. I'll see you guys in the next one. Thanks for watching.