What’s up everyone,

This week I’m going to be breaking down the most important aspect of podcast data to track.

I’m going to be using YouTube over a hosting platform, since the data on hosting platforms differs from each other.

YouTube provides a layer of granularity that lets you understand WHY something is working or NOT working.

If a piece of content is working, it’s not the time to pat yourself on the back. It’s time to get to work and understand WHY it’s working and DOUBLE DOWN.

When you have momentum or an edge, you need to go all in.

Here’s four metrics you NEED to track:

1. Traffic Source

Traffic source tells you EXACTLY where a viewer comes from.

There is no guesswork.

You want this heavily weighted towards ‘Browse Feature’ and ‘Suggested Videos’.

This is what the podcast bros call ‘hitting the algos’.

If you drive users from LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, this will appear as ‘external source’. Overall, this isn’t a good thing.

You don’t want to rely on you to drive 100% of the traffic. YouTube is a machine. Let the cogs in the background drive your content.

Interpretation: For videos that have a traffic source of ‘Browse Feature’ and ‘Suggested Videos’, follow a similar layout, format, titles, descriptions until you hit again.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click through rate means the amount of users who SEE your content AND click on the video.

This has two components:

- Thumbnail (75%)

- Title (25%)

It doesn’t matter if your title was written by Shakespeare, if your thumbnail looks like it was made on Microsoft Paint, no one will click on it.

Mr. Beast averages a 7% CTR on 1 billion impressions. An acceptable range is +4% on +100000 impressions.

Interpretation: Always refine and improve your thumbnails. Keep researching the best in your niche and constantly iterate. My first full-time hire was a graphic designer because even though I can download Canva, it doesn’t mean I should use it.

3. Subscriber Per Video

Looking at purely subscribers isn’t an accurate representation of an engaged audience.

I’ve worked with clients with 10K subscribers getting 50,000 views per episode and clients with 200K subscribers getting 1000 views per episode.

A good metric for a GROWING audience is the amount of subscribers for each episode. It shows:

- Engaged listeners

- Quality of content

- Relevant / relatable content

Interpretation: Aim for an increase in subscribers for each episode. Depending on your current subscribers, aim for 1-5% increase per episode.

4. Retention Rate

Retention is the amount of a video watched by a user.

This will widely differ on audio versus video, purely because people listen to podcasts doing an activity, and watch podcasts at home.

The longer the video, the harder to keep listeners for the full duration.

A good base line metric is 40% on video and 60% on audio.

This shows a highly engaged audience that listens to the end.

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That’s everything for today, see you next week people!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→Podcast Accelerator: Remove the stress, pressure and countless hours of growing a podcast. This comprehensive course will teach you the system I used to grow Kickoff Sessions and record with the sharpest minds in the world.

→Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.