Podcast Marketing Trends Explained: Data-Driven Podcast Growth Strategy

We've reached the end of Season two, but are by no means slowing down. Here's what we're going to be up to over the next few months between seasons.

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One in ten music albums makes its money back. The same is true for startups and movies. But what about podcasts?

Is it possible for any of us to create a successful show? Or are the odds always going to be stacked against us, with only a tiny fraction of shows breaking through to the mainstream?

In this episode, we break down the odds behind creating both a successful show and a successful career as a creator, and explore exactly what you can do to stack the deck in your favour.

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Topics Covered

00:00 The odds of success as a creator 
04:59 The data behind exceptionally successful podcasts 
13:21 Why you should quit more projects (and podcasts) 
21:19 The traits of exceptional podcasts 
31:56 Increasing your luck surface area 
37:42 The traits of exceptional creators 
47:47 Tapping into your unique personal genius

⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️

Resources

Brandon Sanderson Lecture Series
Nathan Barry
Seth Godin
Shaan Puri
Jason Roberts
Ozan Varol
Awaken Your Genius
The Tim Ferriss Show
Acquired
My First Million
Podcast Movement Conference

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Over the past year, median podcast growth rates were nearly flat. In other words, the typical show experienced almost zero growth over the previous 12 months.

If you’ve been in podcasting for a while, this might correspond with your feeling that it is harder to grow today than it once was. And yet… while growth may have slowed for the typical show, there are others that are unlocking more and faster growth than ever before.

So what’s going on here? And what do we as creators need to do to tap into the potential for growth that exists?

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Topics Covered

00:00 Is It Harder To Grow Now? 
01:56 Growing in 2008 vs 2025 
03:49 What the data says about growth rates 
08:33 Two reasons it might be harder to grow now 
13:14 The two types of competition today 
15:56 Keeping up with changing tastes and expectations 
21:38 Diagnosing your growth problem 
24:55 A tried and true way to differentiate 
28:35 Opportunities to grow a podcast today 
33:49 A sneaky approach to testing big changes 
35:16 The worst thing that can happen to your show 
38:43 The opportunities of podcasting for your business

⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️

Resources

• The Tim Ferriss Show
• This American Life
• Mel Robbins’ podcast
• Headliner 
• Descript 
• The Law of Shitty Click Throughs by Andrew Chen  
• Atomic Habits by James Clear  

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Video is changing podcasting, probably forever and probably in ways we can’t predict.

But while conversations and debates about the risks and upsides to creators as well as the industry as a whole are inescapable right now, they all seem to be missing the key point: That this isn’t a conversation about different consumption mediums and file delivery formats.

It’s a conversation about YouTube as a platform, and the power, influence, and magnetism it exerts on every person on the internet.

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Topics Covered

00:00 Is video podcasting a threat or opportunity? 
04:21 Video’s impact on podcast discovery 
07:49 YouTube's dominance over content consumption 
10:26 Leveraging YouTube for podcast growth 
18:03 The future of podcasting on YouTube 
34:16 The opportunities pitfalls of short-form content 
37:28 YouTube vs. podcast content 
42:41 The long-term value of “slow content” 
45:06 Case study: Jay Clouse’s YouTube strategy 
51:45 Case study: Chris Stone's YouTube strategy 
56:08 What is a podcast anymore, anyways?

⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️

Resource
Tom Webster 

Mark Manson 

Mr. Beast 

Mark Asquith from Captivate 

Jay Klaus of Creator Science 

Philip Pape of Wits and Weights

Austin Kleon 

April Dunford's book, "Obviously Awesome" 

Additional Resources

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Podcast Strategy
The difference between an effective show—one that does the job you created it to do—and one that is an endless drain on your time, energy and bank account comes down to your strategy… or lack thereof.

Strategy is an oft-misunderstood term that encompasses, guides, and grounds the intentional decisions around every aspect of your show and marketing, including your show concept, positioning, format, content strategy, packaging, monetization strategy, promotion, and more.

In short, the answers to any marketing question are based in your strategy. Which means without a clearly defined strategy, you’re shooting in the dark, and unlikely to ever get the results you’re looking for from your podcast, whether that’s audience growth, customer acquisition, or both.

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.

There’s no shortage of advice to be found on how to grow your audience. But how closely does that advice align with how podcast listeners say they actually find, choose (and abandon) the shows they listen to?

It turns out, there are a number of surveys that have asked listeners to share their discovery and consumption habits. And while the data can sometimes contradict itself, it offers us as creators a peek behind the curtain into podcast listeners’ hidden psychology, so that we can better meet them where they’re at with our marketing and our shows.

What’s more, this data offers us a blueprint for the questions to ask (and avoid) when conducting our own listener research.
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Topics Covered

00:00 Should you listen to your listeners feedback? 
05:42 The Mom Test 
08:23 How listeners discover podcasts: Active vs. passive 
16:07 Understanding the broader context behind audience behaviour 
26:33 Discovery doesn't matter without distinctiveness 
31:02 Why listeners stop listening 
39:13 Doing your own audience research

⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️

Resource

The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick
Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Life Profitability by Adii Pienaar.
Tom Webster 

Additional Resources

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✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback

Podcast Listener Psychology
Understanding why people listen to podcasts—and why they stop—is an essential aspect of improving the efficiency of your marketing—ie. more growth with less effort. Listener psychology encompasses everything from understanding attention spans and content preferences to parasocial relationships and listening habits.

Most podcast creators focus exclusively on content without considering the baked in psychology that is hard-wired into their listeners. The result is unwittingly marketing your show on hard mode. Learn to understand the cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and decision-making patterns that influence how all humans (including me, you, and all your listeners) discover, consume, and share podcast content, you can create shows that not only attract listeners but turn them into dedicated fans who recommend your podcast to others.

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.

People make decisions based on the information they have available to them. When it comes to podcast discover, that information almost always consists of just two elements: Your show title and cover art.

These two elements, then, are the first and more impactful listener filter. Get them wrong, and you’ll miss out on a constant stream of your ideal listeners who are passing the show over because they don’t realize it’s relevant or aligned with their taste.

But what does the “wrong” title or cover art even look like? And more importantly, what does the “right” packaging for your show look like (if it even exists).

In this episode, we break down the data from the 2024 Podcast Marketing Trends Report to identify what high-growth shows do differently when it comes to crafting their packaging—and how you can borrow those lessons to help increase your show's growth potential.

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Topics Covered

00:00 Why packaging matters 
00:42 Behind the scenes of our cover art development 
07:33 Attributes of memorable podcast titles 
20:51 Why artwork matters more than most people realize 
24:48 Analyzing podcast cover art effectiveness 
27:02 Host photos on cover art 
33:05 Designing distinctive visual elements 
34:24 Your artwork's primary job 
38:06 Developing taste for good artwork & titles 
44:52 Investing in professional help 
46:05 Our favorite podcast titles 
50:23 Our favorite podcast cover art 
56:25 Perfect pairings of titles and cover art 
01:01:32 Final thoughts and listener requests

⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️

Resource
Hello, My Name is Awesome by Alexandra Watkins
Stand the Fck Out* by Louis Grenier
Holly Arnett
The Dipby Seth Godin
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin
Crypto Confidential by Nat Eliason 

Additional Resources

Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained

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Podcast Packaging
You’ve probably heard that content is king. The problem is that no one—literally not one single listener—will consume your content without first passing through the gatekeeper that is your show’s “Packaging”—including your show title, cover art, episode titles, and descriptions.

While these elements are often afterthoughts to the podcast content itself, they have the power to single-handedly attract or repel would-be listeners, making them an unignorable aspect of podcast marketing strategy

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.

Why do people listen to podcasts? And why do they listen to YOUR podcast (or one like yours)? It turns out, the answers to these questions can be found in a nerdy, obscure marketing concept called Jobs to Be Done Theory.

Jobs to Be Done Theory origins date back to the 1930s, but was more fully developed by Harvard Business School researched Clayton Christiansen—primarily through an iconic case study about milkshakes… and how people don’t buy milkshakes for the obvious reasons you might think.

But JTBD applies to much more than milkshakes. In fact, it applies to every product, service, piece of content—including podcasts—that any of us spend time, money, or attention to consume.

In this episode, we’ll break down how to apply JTBD theory to boost the effectiveness of your marketing by aligning your content, messaging, and packaging with the job your listeners are seeking out a show to do.

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Topics Covered

00:00 Case Study: How Justin “Hires” Different Shows 
02:31 An Introduction to Jobs to Be Done Theory 
08:24 The Importance of Emotional Resonance in Podcasts 
13:06 Assessing Podcast Growth by “Job” 
21:19 Understanding Listener Psychology 
26:12 Understanding Trigger Events 
30:39 Examples of Trigger Events 
35:50 Challenges and Opportunities for Problem Solver Shows 
41:36 Challenges and Opportunities for Pleasure Giver Shows 
45:04 Leveraging Listener Behavior for Show Growth 
51:50 Practical Examples of Podcast Jobs to Be Done

⭐️ Take our 2-minute podcast marketing audit to instantly identify the marketing problems keeping you from growth: https://go.podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit-pmte-sn ⭐️

Resources Mentioned
Clayton Christensen

Ezra Klein
Freakonomics

Ramit Sethi
Dave Ramsey 

Mel Robbins

Joe Rogan

LeVar Burton Reads 

Additional Resources

Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained

Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report

Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter

Try Transistor.fm for free for 14 days

✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback

Podcast Listener Psychology
Understanding why people listen to podcasts—and why they stop—is an essential aspect of improving the efficiency of your marketing—ie. more growth with less effort.

Listener psychology encompasses everything from understanding attention spans and content preferences to parasocial relationships and listening habits. Most podcast creators focus exclusively on content without considering the baked-in psychology that is hard-wired into their listeners.

The result is unwittingly marketing your show on hard mode. Learn to understand the cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and decision-making patterns that influence how all humans (including me, you, and all your listeners) discover, consume, and share podcast content, you can create shows that not only attract listeners but turn them into dedicated fans who recommend your podcast to others.

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.

Its easy to imagine that if you just had a budget to put toward paid podcast advertising, all your marketing problems would be solved. But is that really true? Anyone who’s ever done any advertising will quickly tell you its one of the most gruelling, creatively challenging marketing practices on the planet—one where you have to be ok with burning a large amount of cash up front to figure out what (if anything works). That said if you approach it with a bit of savvy… paid advertising can be a sneaky smart way to grow.

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Topics Covered

00:00 Does advertising actually work? 
01:39 Our personal experience with advertising 
08:35 Understanding advertising metrics 
11:24 Podcast advertising platforms & methods 
22:22 Real vs fake listeners 
25:00 Advertising pitfalls to watch out for 
25:39 Best practices for podcast ads 
25:56 Crafting effective ads 
29:16 Retargeting strategies 
32:33 Multi-touchpoint ad campaings 
34:37 Advanced advertising techniques 
44:21 How we’d allocate a $10k budget

⭐️ Take our 2-minute podcast marketing audit to instantly identify the marketing problems keeping you from growth: https://go.podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit-pmte-sn ⭐️

Resources Mentioned
Jay Clouse's The Lab
Corey Haines and SwipeFiles
Kattie Laur and Pod the North
Terry O'Reilly and the podcast "Under the Influence"

Additional Resources

Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained

Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report

Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter

Try Transistor.fm for free for 14 days

✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.

Beneath the surface of every creative medium is a hidden code. Like DNA, this code dictates the constraints and possibilities of what’s possible within that platform. Like any platform, podcasting has its own code. The problem is most creators don’t understand the unique platform dynamics, constraints, and psychology baked into the medium… which makes it hard—if not impossible—to grow. Fortunately, once you’re able to decipher the code—of podcasting or any other platform—you unlock your potential for growth and ROI.

Topics Covered

00:00 Understanding podcast’s platform dynamics
01:58 Listener bandwidth
05:57 The data on podcast consumption
08:29 Platform constraints & listener psychology
15:37 The pros & cons of podcasting’s built-in intertia
22:13 Host-led vs concept-led growth
25:46 What do listeners expect from podcasting?
35:22 Are long podcasts actually better?
45:03 Our picks for best “podcasts”

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⭐️ Take our 2-minute podcast marketing audit to instantly identify the marketing problems keeping you from growth: https://go.podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit-pmte-sn ⭐️

Resources Mentioned
Pocket Casts
Money for Couples Podcast by Ramit Sethi
Jay Clouse and his Creator Science Show
Conversations with Tyler by Tyler Cowen
Professor G Podcast by Scott Galloway
Three Books Podcast
Ologies Podcast
Good One: A Podcast About Jokes
How I Write by David Perell
Making Sense by Sam Harris

Additional Resources

Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained

Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report

Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter

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✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback

About Podcast Analytics
While podcast analytics might appear to be stuck in the stone age compared to platforms like YouTube, Google Analytics, and many social media platforms, there's a lot creators can learn about how to improve their shows and their marketing... if you know where to look.

Beyond podcast downloads, metrics like listen time, consumption rate, Spotify's podcast discovery dashboard, and more give us clues about the issues facing your show—and often tell you exactly how to navigate them. Which mean understanding your podcast analytics & metrics, and how they compare to industry benchmarks is an essential skill for marketing and growing your podcast.

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.

For 74% of podcasters, downloads are the primary metric used to measure success. But should they be?

For years, downloads were one of the only ways creators could measure the reach and impact of their show. But over the past few years, we’ve been getting a slow but steady stream of new analytics tools and data points… many of which provide much more useful information about
whether what we’re doing is working than downloads alone.

Topics Covered

00:00 Why do so many people care about downloads?
06:06 The case in favour of downloads
08:13 The shortcomings of downloads as a metric
09:02 How paid podcast promotion campaigns can ruin your analytics
10:22 Is listen time a better metric than downloads?
13:26 Alternative hard podcast metrics to track
17:36 Soft podcast metrics to track
28:17 Understanding leading & lagging indicators
38:21 How we combine metrics to measure success
42:36 One final obscure metric for you to track

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⭐️ Take our 2-minute podcast marketing audit to instantly identify the marketing problems keeping you from growth: https://go.podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit-pmte-sn ⭐️

Resources Mentioned
7 Obscure Podcast Metrics to Track
Bumper
Anne Handley
Podcast Movement
PodScan 
Podchaser
Open Podcast Prefix Project

Additional Resources

Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained

Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report

Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter

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✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback

More on Podcast Analytics
While podcast analytics might appear to be stuck in the stone age compared to platforms like YouTube, Google Analytics, and many social media platforms, there's a lot creators can learn about how to improve their shows and their marketing... if you know where to look.

Beyond podcast downloads, metrics like listen time, consumption rate, Spotify's podcast discovery dashboard, and more give us clues about the issues facing your show—and often tell you exactly how to navigate them. Which mean understanding your podcast analytics & metrics, and how they compare to industry benchmarks is an essential skill for marketing and growing your podcast.

About Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Podcast Marketing Trends Explained is a podcast about data-driven podcast marketing, growth, and monetization. In every episode, we take a peek under the hood of one data point from the Podcast Marketing Trends Report and dig into what it can tell us about how to market our shows better, and grow them faster.

On the show, we'll explore podcast marketing strategies, growth tactics, podcast listener psychology, how to create a better podcast, how to use a podcast to market your products and services and grow your business, and broader marketing trends to help you grow your audience and stay ahead of the competition.

The show is hosted by Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy and the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter, and Justin Jackson from podcast hosting platform Transistor.fm.