This post is part of a series of guest posts sharing reflections on the 2024 Podcast Marketing Trends Report.
This post is from Alison Osborne, VP of Marketing at CoHost, a podcast analytics and audience insights platform built for brands and podcast agencies—specifically those in the B2B space.
If there’s one thing we hear over and over again from our clients, customers, and peers in the industry it’s some version of this:
“Growth is hard.”
So the fact that the 2024 Podcast Marketing Trends Report brought new data to the feeling we all have is something of a relief.
Because it affirms what we as podcast creators already know… even if we don’t always want to believe it: There’s no “silver bullet” for podcast growth.
No one thing we’re missing that everyone else has figured out.
Said differently, we’re all in this together.
That being said, the report highlights some interesting insights that are worth giving a closer look.
This statistic stood out to me in particular: 51% of respondents reported growth in listenership, while 49% experienced a decline.
Despite the fact that half of the shows surveyed declined in listenership per episode, many—if not most of them—continue to invest time and budget into improving the quality and expanding the reach of their shows.
So, what does this mean?
Should a year of stagnant or declining downloads signal that it’s time to give up? Does it mean your podcast isn’t resonating with your audience? Or that it doesn’t have the potential to?
I don’t think so.
Smart minds in the podcast industry have always advocated for treating your show like a business, requiring investment, experimentation, and (often years of) iteration to find Product-Market Fit and gain traction with an audience or customer base.
And just like any business, podcasts experience ups and downs.
It’s worth remembering that it typically takes 2-3 years for a business to become profitable.
And whether you think of profit in dollars and cents or downloads and views, the same idea can apply to podcasting.
Growth isn’t always linear. In fact, it almost never is.
That’s not to say we as creators can just sit back, produce our shows on autopilot, and wait for the magic 2-3 years to pass when our shows will finally take off.
The need for both outstanding, refreshing, original content and intentional, strategic marketing has never been more important.
“If you build it, they will come” sounds great in a Hollywood movie, but it doesn’t hold up to the marketing pressures and competition of real life.
Because the reality of podcast audience building is this:
The majority of people who might enjoy and benefit from our shows are not actively searching for—and likely will never search for— a show like ours.
Some will mind you, but the majority are some combination of busy, satisfied with the shows they already listen to, and entirely unaware that shows like ours even exist.
Which means we need to bring our shows to them.
To seek out potentially resonant audiences and go to where they live online and off.
Sure, consistency in content creation is crucial, but it’s equally important to have consistency in marketing outreach and audience development to ensure discovery.
The breakdown of what Podcast Marketing Trends respondents reported works and what doesn’t for podcast growth, underscores this point.
Podcasters identified consistency, improving show quality, and guest selection as key drivers of growth — but these activities won’t have any effect without an existing seed audience and a way to get in front of new potential listeners.
Again, quality, consistent content and quality consistent, marketing are the yin and yang of podcast growth.
The more we as creators can embrace both of them, the better our results are likely to be.
