Podcast Marketing Trends 2023 Report

Big vs Small

One of the questions we were most excited to explore was the difference between the actions, strategies, resources, and attributes of big shows vs those of smaller shows.

To do this, we divided the responses into three segments based on their self-reported download data and cross-analyze various other data points.

Throughout the report, we’ve represented these 3 distinct groups as follows.

Downloads Per Episode Distribution

Methodology

We calculated downloads per episode by dividing the total monthly reported downloads by the number of new episodes released that month.

While this approach does not account for the impact of back-catalogue downloads, we preferred this approach over segmenting based on overall monthly downloads as it better accounts for changes in publishing schedules.

02

Benchmarks

Unlike many other content creation and marketing mediums, most podcasting data isn’t publicly accessible (though the Open Podcast Prefix Project is working to change that).

While there are certainly benefits to this lack of transparency, it also makes it hard to know where exactly your show stands in regards to others and which shows are worth studying to take inspiration from for your own marketing.

To help provide clarity, we’ve assembled a series of podcasting marketing benchmarks we’ve been waiting years to have ourselves.

Note: All download-related data is based on the responses from shows that had been actively publishing for at least one year and included a full 12-months of download data.

Annual Trends

Key Takeaway

Definitely some interesting surprises to be found in the annual trends.

For one, it was interesting to see that November, a month where many are taking time off for the holidays was the month with the highest number of episodes published.

Also interesting is the download dip in September and October which goes against the common notion that summer is the slow season for podcasts with things picking up in the fall.

Our suspicion would be that people have so much going on in September with back-to-school and returning from the holidays that podcasts get pushed down the priority list.

Finally, the upward annual trend of episodes-per-month published aligns with our respondents’ self-reporting, with the average respondent saying they published more episodes this year than in the previous year.

Podcast Growth Rate Benchmarks

How quickly does the typical show grow?

Of all the questions we had going in, this was the biggest.

A benchmark growth rate allows you to calculate how many new listeners you can expect to bring in each month, which allows you to assessess the effectiveness of your marketing, make better-informed growth & revenue projections, and a whole lot more.

Here’s what we found.

Key Takeaway

We’ll be honest, these growth rate benchmarks are a little depressing.

There’s a bright side to this data, however, which is this:

If you’ve been frustrated with the growth of your show, it’s not just you.

More than anything, these benchmarks reinforce the idea that many cross-platform creators and marketers have known (or at least suspected) for a while: Podcasting as a whole is a challenging medium to build an audience in.

That’s not to say no one’s figured out how to grow, however…

Annual Growth Rate Distribution

While the 21% median annual growth rate from our respondents is lower than most creators and marketers would aspire for, there were a significant number of outliers.

In fact, nearly half of our respondents managed to outperform the median, and one in five respondents doubled their downloads over a one-year span.

Here’s the growth rate distribution based on respondents’ downloads-per-episode data at the start of the reporting period (February 2022).

How Likely Is Growth?

Many creators assume that there’s nowhere to go but up after launching a show.

And while that be true when you’re starting from zero, our findings clearly illustrate that for established shows, growth is not a given.

In fact, the larger you grow, the harder it is to keep growing… and the more likely you are to actually lose listeners.

Key Takeaways

>10k dl/ep

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Or at least, the harder it is to keep finding new listeners interested in your content.

It’s worth noting that while shows with more than 10k dl/ep were more likely to decline in downloads on a per-episode basis, only one of these shows experienced a decline in gross annual downloads.

The reason?

The largest shows were significantly more likely to increase their publish frequency throughout the year.

<1k dl/ep

On the flip side, shows with less that 1k dl/ep were most likely to grow by any amount, as well as double their audience.

This makes logical sense.

It’s much easier for a show with 100 unique listeners to find 100 more than it is for a show with 100,000 unique listeners to find 100,000 more.

1k–10k dl/ep

While the mid-tier shows only slightly trailed the smaller shows in their likelihood of growth, they were least likely to double their listenership.

Our guess as to why?

Mid-tier shows likely don’t have the reach and resources of the big shows, nor the advantage of small starting numbers (that are easier to double) of the small shows.

What’s more, many shows in this category have reached a transition point where what worked to grow them to this stage is no longer working.

In short, they need to adapt their marketing strategies to the new challenge at hand if they want to continue to grow.

Podcast Episode Consumption Benchmarks

Cross-Platform Audience Sizes

Given the lack of a universal in-built discovery engine for podcasting, it’s not surprising that podcasters in general are multi-platform creators.

In fact, of our 521 respondents, only one indicated that they were not active on any other marketing platforms.

When it comes to supplementary content platforms, here’s how our respondents are faring, based on the median follower/subscriber count for each platform in our data set.