We Asked Podcast Listeners Why They Stopped Listening (And They Didn’t Hold Back)

Less than 5% of your potential audience is listening to your show. Here’s why, in their own words. Even small shows with just a few hundred (or few dozen) downloads an episode have usually been listened to—at one point or another—by thousands of people. A small number of those people are your regular listeners and superfans. A larger number are casual listeners and samplers, people who don’t listen to every episode, but rather based on their interest in a specific episode topic or guest. And then there are the people who listened to one episode or less… and never came back. While the data is hard to measure, chances are, less than 5% of the people who are both aware of your show and interested in your topic are regular listeners. Which begs two questions: 1. Why aren’t they listening? 2. Is there anything you can do to change that? To get to the bottom of this frustrating phenomenon, we ran a survey to our larger audience to find out—in their own words—what kept them listening more regularly… or at all. The good news? They didn’t hold back. And in this episode, we break down their feedback, which—while aimed at our show—likely applies to your show as well. 📊 What did you think of this episode? Click to cast your vote: 🤩 Nailed It! 🙂 Solid 🥱 Meh 😒 Do better Topics Covered 00:00 Intro 00:49 9k email subscribers… 350 downloads 02:41 How listeners choose what content to engage 04:50 The role of 'Jobs to Be Done' in podcasting 11:32 Why our audiences are tuning us out experiment 15:30 Understanding your Total Addressable Market 18:32 Strategies for retaining podcast listeners 21:24 Earning the right to long term listeners 26:28 Breaking down our casual listeners repsonse data 29:01 The challenges of creating career-adjacent content 30:16 Creative ideas to engage more listeners 33:36 What listeners like about our titles and descriptions 37:13 Using feedback to guide your content strategy 41:50 Why non-listeners choose not to listen 44:06 How to break through to non-listeners 49:43 How we’re incorporating this feedback ⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️ Resources Check out our full audience survey data Walkthrough: How to replicate this survey for your show Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2023 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