Are you grabbing your share of 400,000,000 monthly listeners?
Podcasting has been going through a steady, consistent and continual phase of growth over the last few years to the point where the industry is now enjoying a reach of over 400 million listeners… every single month.
Yes, you read that right, almost half a billion people listen to podcasts every 30 days.
Now, I hear what you might be saying “OK James, but how many shows are out there?”. The answer to that is subject to a bit of debate, but the latest stats — according to Podcast Index, which I covered in a previous blog — show that 326K podcasts were released in the last month.
So, for simple maths lets say 400,000,000 listeners ÷ 326,000 shows = an average of 1,226 listeners per show.
Now, of course, not all people are listening to shows that are new (there’s quite a back catalogue of good content out there to say the least!) so let’s knock 50% off that number… That is still 613 listeners.
Obviously, not all shows are created equal — whilst we might aspire to Joe Rogan’s colossal download numbers we have to be realistic — so let’s be even more pessimistic on the stats above and say that you could only gain 10% of the average downloads numbers for your podcast…
That is still 61 listeners.
61 potential clients, 61 potential leads, 61 people who you can build a relationship with, 61 people with whom your brand is elevated, 61 people who might transact with you.
You get the point!
Funnily enough, when it comes to social media, podcasting, email marketing, funnels, paid-for ads etc. we end up focusing so much on the data that we forget every single number we are assessing is a person.
Every reader of a blog is person, not a number.
Everyone watching a video is a person, not a number.
And every listener to your podcast is a person, not a number.
Just to wrap this up this short article, I know that a lot of people will be reading this thinking “sure, sounds good but my audience is not podcast fans”. Well, I will respectfully push back on that idea; there are 18 main categories and just under 100 subcategories within the podcasting world (those are Apple Podcasts categories by the way, but most of the major platforms follow that general format) so, whatever your sector, niche or micro-niche, your potential audience is consuming content…you just need to enable them to find yours.
Here’s a list of the categories in case you need proof!
Arts
Business
Education
Fiction
Government
Health & Fitness
History
Kids & Family
Leisure
Music
News
Religion & Spirituality
Science
Society & Culture
Sport
Tech
True Crime
TV & Film
