Is Your Podcast Worth the ROI?

Podcasting is one of the most popular content delivery methods in use today. It has been a boon for many companies, including those that are not well-known or have small budgets. Podcasts can be used as an effective marketing tool and may even help you improve your company's SEO ranking.

Evaluating ROI on these podcasts, however, is challenging because there are no definitive metrics to measure it by. In this post we will explore how to set up Google Analytics with your podcast approach so that you can tie data back into decisions and make sure you're tracking all possible elements of success!

- Evaluating the ROI of a podcast is an effective way to use data to gauge your return on investment.

- Marketing professionals who are concerned with their effectiveness and engagement should consider this analysis of podcasts as part of their marketing strategy.

- Podcasting provides both B2C and B2B marketers with another engaging outlet to reach customers, and it may help you improve your company's SEO ranking.

Evaluating the ROI of Podcasts

1. Topic-Specific Podcasts

If you are an entrepreneur with a product or service that you sell, a podcast can be a great medium to use to provide information about the business of your company. As an example, say you run a stationery store. You may speak on things like operational processes, marketing strategies, team building and leadership as well as offer tips on how others might get started in the industry.

Therefore, you’re not necessarily speaking only to your target audience. Those who are interested in your products and services may visit your website. Others may just be seeking business tips.

It can be difficult to track the ROI for specialized podcasts. You won’t always know if your intended audience even listens to your podcast. One of the easiest ways to keep track of ROI is by offering a freebie, which you typically give out to the podcast host in exchange for including an ad when they share it with their audience.

This could be a checklist or template based on the episode’s topic for the podcast audience. Then mention the usual freebie that you have specific for your audience which might have its own distinct landing page that is not indexed by Google (more on this later!). You can then follow up with that audience later to seek referrals for your business.

This helps to distinguish your real fans from the podcast fans. However, you may still struggle to accurately track ROI. You’ll have to keep an eye on your web traffic and extrapolate from any spikes around the time that podcast airs, perhaps within a 3-7 day window after publication.

2. Â Audience-Specific Podcasts

Another way to take advantage of podcasts is by joining in with ones that already appeal to your ideal client. These are more effective than topic specific podcasts, as you’re speaking directly to the people who will be most likely interested in what it is you provide for a living. Join marketing podcast if you sell marketing services, join wedding podcast if you sell wedding dresses, or join a podcast that is your customer’s industry.

This will also help you determine the ROI of your podcasts because now there are links to back up what they do for marketing and building relationships with customers! Evaluate how many leads you get from each episode based on the number of downloads per episode and any web traffic (i.e., number of visitors to your website, the engagement with social media posts on that topic).

Include any webinars or other resources you create based on what was discussed in a show and measure how many people attend these live events. Evaluate podcasts as part of an overall marketing strategy to see if they help build relationships and generate leads.

Methods for Tracking and Evaluating the ROI of Podcasts

A podcast lead magnet can be an effective tool for gaining traffic to your website or blog, but it cannot work alone. The ROI of podcasts needs to be tracked at a much deeper level and there are three different ways that this can be done:

1. A custom landing page: Create a customized landing page for people who download your podcast lead magnet and offer an opt-in.

Example, A blog post: Write about the topic of the lead magnet to engage those who downloaded it with additional content that can be shared across social media platforms or via email marketing campaigns. This is more time consuming, but may produce better results than just posting it on social media.

2. An email newsletter: Send a regular, detailed (or condensed) summary of the episode to your list and include links that will refer to either your podcast, blog post or landing page for more information about ROI.

3. A text-to-subscribe service: There are many free text-to-subscribe services that will automatically send out a message to people who have subscribed by texting the word “podcast” and your podcast title.

There are plenty of online platforms that offer text-to-subscribe services, like Textiful or Txtra. The great thing about text messages is that your listeners can quickly connect with your brand and get their freebie, even if they are walking their dog or running errands. You can then easily add them to your email marketing funnel and start tracking how many signups you have through the texting platform.

4. A vanity URL: If you’re hosting your own podcast, consider a custom URL for the show. This is something that can be added to any of these methods and will help people find your podcasts with ease by visiting Podcasts.com/YourPodcastName or YourPodcastURL

How to Accurately Measure the ROI of Your Podcast?

How can you measure the ROI of your podcast?

Well, it all depends on your end goal. Businesses and brands start podcasts for different reasons. And those differences affect how they should think about ROI. Broadly speaking, there are two main ways you can measure the ROI of your podcast:

• Financial ROI - The money you make from your podcast.
• Podcast Success - The downloads and engagement your podcast gets.

In this article, we’ll explore how you can measure and track these different ROIs.

Approach 1: Financial ROI

In business, there are two main ways to make money with a podcast. You can build an audience and generate revenue from ads or sponsorships. Or you can use your podcast to generate leads and drive sales of your own product or service.

If you’re looking to measure the financial ROI of your podcast, then look at these metrics:

A) Revenue from ads or sponsorships  - Evaluate how much revenue you make per episode. Evaluate this based on four main factors: number of downloads per episode and any web traffic (i.e., number of people visiting your website per episode), number of impressions (i.e., how many people you reached with each download, web traffic and ad views) and the average advertising cost-per-thousand listeners

B) Cost of producing a podcast - Evaluate what it costs to produce an episode on both a fixed monthly basis as well as other expenses that may come up (e.g., the cost of a microphone, hosting fees). Evaluate your costs based on these four factors: number of downloads per episode and any web traffic (i.e., number of people visiting your website per episode), the average advertising revenue-per-thousand listeners  and how many episodes are released each month.

Approach 2: Podcast Success

If your goal with podcasting is to create brand awareness, the following metrics are important: listener numbers, site traffic, and social engagement. If these grow over time as you produce the podcast, it will justify that time and energy in producing it.

A) Number of Podcast Downloads - Evaluate how many people download your episodes each month (e.g., by looking at the number of downloads per episode). Evaluate this based on four factors: average advertising cost-per-thousand listeners, web traffic and ad views and the number of episodes that were released in a given time period.

B) Number of Leads Generated - Evaluate how many leads you generate from your podcast each month (e.g., by looking at the number of monthly or yearly sign-ups for a mailing list). Evaluate this based on four factors: average advertising revenue-per-thousand listeners, web traffic and ad views, number of episodes released in a given time period and how many people subscribe to your mailing list.

C) Number of Website Visitors - Evaluate how many people visit your website each month (e.g., by looking at the number of monthly or yearly sign-ups for a mailing list). Evaluate this based on four factors: average advertising revenue-per-thousand listeners, web traffic and ad views, number of episodes released in a given time period and how many people subscribe to your mailing list.

D) Number of Social Engagements - Evaluate the number of times that people share or comment on a post from your podcast (e.g., by looking at the number of shares per episode). Evaluate this based on four factors: average advertising revenue-per-thousand listeners, web traffic and ad views, number of episodes released in a given time period and how many people subscribe to your mailing list.

Conclusion

Measuring ROI of a podcast can be tricky because there's more than one type. If you simply want money then it's easy, but if you want brand awareness it requires different tools and approaches.