Meaningful Data vs. Meaningless Noise: What Podcast Numbers Actually Tell You

PIMS EP 128 Transcript

Meaningful Data vs. Meaningless Noise: What Podcast Numbers Actually Tell You

Chloe Williamson 00:00:00  We kind of we kind of need to do like a composite look at all of these figures instead of just taking the word of the host, because of course, I mean, anyone's going to say, oh, a million people listen to my show. Don't you know, like you haven't heard? And then it's like you look into the databases and it's like, nah, it's not necessarily what this is saying, but sure.

Tom Schwab 00:00:29  Welcome to the podcast interview marketing show. I'm Tom Schwab and today Chloe Williamson, one of our senior account managers, and I are digging into a problem that's only getting bigger and bigger, meaningless data. You see, we've gotten more numbers than ever before. Followers, subscribers, viewers. Downloads. Listeners email lists. Impressions. Reach. It goes on and on. The dashboards, they keep getting prettier. But that doesn't mean the decisions are necessarily getting better.

Tom Schwab 00:01:00  Because in podcast interview marketing, the question isn't how big is the audience? The better question is, is this the right audience and will they take action? You see, a show of 5000 of your super consumers can be far more valuable than a broadcast, with so-called potential reach of 4 million people who'll never care, never remember and never buy. Bigger is not better. Better is better. In this episode, Chloe shares how to separate the signal from the noise. Why platform numbers can actually mislead you, and how to think like a seasoned strategist instead of just chasing vanity metrics. Because podcast interview marketing, it's not about activity. It's not about being a megaphone to make more noise. It's about being a magnet to attract your ideal clients and repel the rest and results. While they start with knowing which data actually matters. Chloe, it's great to have you here. We were having this discussion internally recently and I'm like, we've got to share this with the world on the podcast here. So do you want to frame what we mean when we say meaningful data? Absolutely.

Chloe Williamson 00:02:20  So data is everywhere, especially in this age of technology that we're living in. And with how increasingly impressive and maybe even scary, depending on who you are that technology gets, there's more data points, there's more numbers, there's more facts, there's more figures that all help us come to a meaningful answer about what is the right area for you and what isn't the right area for you. If we're talking about in terms of determining your podcast audience, and I'm finding that the more data we have, the more we have to be vigilant in determining what actually matters with that data and what is just extra noise that we maybe can completely disregard. So things like followers, engagement, subscribers, newsletter recipients, all of these numbers matter when we're determining impact of shows and audience and hosts and what's going to be the right area for you. But more and more, me personally, and I know other people in the team have expressed this sentiment to I'm running into data points again, facts, figures, numbers that are just noise.

Chloe Williamson 00:03:30  They don't really matter in the long run of things. And my main example for this is X, formerly Twitter. You know, it's been it's been on a journey that that platform in general has been on a journey. It's been taken over by new hands, the way that people use it as much different than as it was intended back in what, 2008, 2009 got. It's been that long again, for an example I always see when I am vetting hosts and podcasts for my clients, I see people have Twitter accounts or X accounts, pardon me, where they'll have 14,000 followers and I go, oh, that's amazing. But then when I actually look at their profile, they've never posted once. Not not just like they posted back in 2010 and haven't posted since. Like there's nothing there at all.

Chloe Williamson 00:04:22  You know, like, does that really matter?

Chloe Williamson 00:04:25  Like like, do those 14,000 followers really count if there's like, nothing for them to actually engage with or like pin that subscription to. So having to determine what's noise and what's actually meaningful data has been kind of a journey of mine lately.

Chloe Williamson 00:04:42  I'm really trying to find what matters and what doesn't matter to the people that it matters to.

Tom Schwab 00:04:47  And that's interesting because you can license all the data, right? And we license a dozen different databases. But it's not just more data. It's understanding what it means, which ones are meaningful. And it's probably, you know, a handful of things that are the most impactful. And they're not always the same for every client, right? It really depends on your goals. The other thing I'll, I'll add to this is I remember a high school math teacher that said figures never lie, but liars often figure. And sometimes we look at numbers and can use them for our benefit. Like great example. I remember a client early on, got them on a great podcast and they asked what the reach was. We looked it up and I think at that time it was like 5 or 6000, and they came back and said, well, why is it so low? And I'm like, that is a great podcast for you, right? Your ideal audience.

Tom Schwab 00:05:45  And they responded with it. They were just on a radio show and they got heard by 4 million. So why is it so low? And I asked what radio show was that and they're like, oh, I don't know. It was some station down in Indianapolis. And I'm like, were you heard by 4 million? Or did they have a potential reach of 4 million? And she's like, what's the difference? I'm like, well, they're signal reached 4 million people, right? Does it mean everyone was listening to that station at that time for you? So the number was right, but it was meaningless. I mean, by that logic, you could say podcasts, all podcasts have a reach of, I don't know, 5 billion. There's probably 5 billion people that, you know, have access to the internet that could listen to it. But, you know, not all of them are listening to it. Heck, not all of them even speak your language. So it's really trying to take that number and see what it means.

Chloe Williamson 00:06:47  Absolutely.

Chloe Williamson 00:06:48  I also see it. YouTube is another example. And a little inside baseball here. Obviously, you and I know the whole spiel about YouTube and how it factors into podcasting and stats for podcasting. So for anyone listening who doesn't know, YouTube is not primarily a podcasting platform, meaning YouTube views do not factor into a show's overall listenership or reach when those numbers are being captured by the databases that we license. So. Another thing I run into a lot is I will be talking about a particular show to somebody and they'll say, no. I looked at their YouTube. They only get like 100 views per video. That's really low. We need to be reaching more people. And it's and I have to be like, well, wait, well, wait. You don't realize that's actually a beautiful number to have stumbled upon, because that is a completely supplemental data point to the actual listenership, because, again, views don't get captured in that. And that's just an extra little bonus star on that number of reach that they're also ranking in raking in pardon about 100 views per YouTube video, because that's pretty significant.

Chloe Williamson 00:07:59  If you look at the average podcast, their YouTube platform, they're not getting that many views because most people aren't watching YouTube videos. Most people are listening to podcasts on Apple or Spotify or iHeart podcasts, and they're listening to it. When they're in the car, they're on a run, they're in an airport. It's it's usually less of an active listening experience than sitting down and watching YouTube. So that is not meaningless data, the YouTube views, but it's not as meaningful as the overall reach. Again, it's supplemental. So being able to tell what actually again, I'm repeating myself. But what's meaningful and what's just extra noise is really helpful when determining what's the right area for you. Because YouTube is really flashy and it's kind of the hot topic platform right now that everyone wants to focus on. But until it's actually properly factored, factored into a podcast's reach. It's it's it's really just kind of an extra little bonus. It's it shouldn't be the ultimate determination of what's worth your time and what is just extra noise.

Tom Schwab 00:09:03  Let's dig into that as an example. Right. YouTube can be a powerful number for the right audience. Right. So the data says that YouTube consumers tend to be younger, right? They they watch video. They consume video. Podcast listeners. Which is more the audio tend to be older, right? Yes. So if you're looking to talk with C-level executives in B, the B, right, you expect them to be an older audience. So now if you start to come back and say this podcast doesn't have a lot of YouTube subscribers, well, that's a good data point. Right. Whereas if you were saying, I'm trying to get people straight out of college, well, that data point means something different there?

Chloe Williamson 00:09:53  Absolutely.

Chloe Williamson 00:09:54  And again, if for anyone listening, especially any younger people listening, you may not remember this or be as keen to this. But podcasts weren't on YouTube. They weren't a visual medium for years that it was just like kind of like radio. So the fact that podcasters started releasing video and a visual element is still somewhat new in the podcasting space.

Chloe Williamson 00:10:17  That's it's becoming more and more common. You know, we always release the data that what is it like upwards of like 70% or more of shows now have a visual recording to go along with it. But again, that's only in the last few years. That's that's not how podcasting was initially intended. So yeah, if you are kind of going to be speaking to a more experienced crowd, YouTube maybe isn't the place you need to be looking at. But if you do want younger, sure. I mean, studies also show younger generations are watching YouTube more than they're watching television or streaming services or movies. That's kind of become the the new default entertainment area. So yeah, it makes sense that that kind of people would be looking for YouTube engagement and that kind of presence on those visual media platforms, but that could be meaningful data. It could not. It depends on what is meaningful to you and what data is going to contribute to that.

Tom Schwab 00:11:14  Yeah. And do you look back at it podcast comes from an A broadcast on an iPod.

Tom Schwab 00:11:21  Right. And most people today don't know what an iPod is. Right. When it first started you had to plug it in. You had to download it. It was audio only. And people still complain or argue over what is a podcast, right? Is it audio only? Is it video? Well, the way I look at it is I don't care as long as people hear it right. They could hear it on Sirius XM. A lot of their content is repurposed podcasts. Even terrestrial. Right. I remember listening to, a friend of the the show in the company. Joe. Saul. CI stacking. Benjamins. Right. Great podcast. It's also simulcast on Cumulus radio. So you look at that, his or his listeners, if you will, on Cumulus on Am radio. Don't show up in his YouTube. They don't show up in his podcast listens. But you look at that and it's like, that is a meaningful number that could really impact the overall effectiveness of a campaign.

Chloe Williamson 00:12:25  And Tom, actually perfect timing.

Chloe Williamson 00:12:28  You had a little bit of a slip there that I think is a great segue into another point here. You almost said downloads instead of listens, and that that's a whole topic in of itself too, and kind of leads to the bigger conversation here of what's meaningful data versus what's not. Because for years, the way that we measured a podcast impact was by the number of downloads. Not listeners, not subscribers, not followers. It was just downloads. And then as time went on and again, as our lifestyle started adjusting with the new rate of technology and the new way that we engage with technology, downloads became kind of an irrelevant measure because like we have told clients ad nauseam, time and time again, how often are you actually downloading a podcast? If it's only when you're about to go on a long car ride or a plane? That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Similarly, I know, at least for Apple Podcasts, I don't know how Spotify works. Personally. I know that if you subscribe to a show, it auto downloads.

Chloe Williamson 00:13:25  Unless you unless you go in and expressly turn that toggle off. So I would so you know, it's collecting download numbers for shows that like I'm not actually even listening to. So that became meaningless data. So now we're looking at listenership. And who knows, in three years from now that might wind up being meaning meaningless data depending on how everything evolves from there. So it's also important to kind of be vigilant. Like I said, in seeing what data matters and what doesn't, but also being open to the fact that just because this is meaningful now does not mean it's going to be meaningful down the line. And we have to be willing to kind of work along with these discoveries as we're making them to make the most informed decisions and make the greatest impact.

Tom Schwab 00:14:07  And even the meaningful. Is it accurate or indicative? Right. Is this idea of, I think we've been lied to by Facebook, by Google, that you can get a dashboard of real time data for everything now on YouTube. Right? It's most video goes through YouTube.

Tom Schwab 00:14:27  I think it's over 80% of, watches are there. So they can tell you who watched it, how long they watched it, where they stopped, where they went back to. There's great data there, but with podcast, it's so fragmented that you really don't know, like you said, just because you downloaded it, does that mean you listen to it? When did you stop? And I think there's this idea that all data has to be perfect and accurate. And I love Rand Fishkin from Spark Toro. He always gives the example that he said, If I'm talking on a stage or a podcast and someone hears me and they go back to my website, but they don't get the name quite right, Google will get them there. And Google is going to tell you 100% in Google Analytics that that traffic came from Google. Now, the thing is, is that they'd never heard him speak. They'd never be there. Now say they got to his website and life happened, right? They got, distracted and they left the website.

Tom Schwab 00:15:35  And then Facebook retargeting comes in and Facebook brings them back, and then they make a purchase. Well, Facebook is going to say, we brought you all of that traffic. We get credit for all of that now? Was it Facebook? Was it Google? Was it? Was it him speaking? It's a combination of all of those, but none of it would have happened without the speaking. And that gets no data, no attribution. So his point there was if you need perfect attribution on everything, you'll never get results.

Chloe Williamson 00:16:09  And if you need some level of attribution, that's also why we tend to sing the praises of landing pages a lot. Because if you are trying to track directly where your traffic is coming from, specifically from podcasts, that really is the best proven way to do it. Because just like you said, there's that human element that you can't really predict and you can't measure against. Things just happen. People get distracted. The power could have gone out of their neighbor, could have crashed their car into their house.

Chloe Williamson 00:16:37  We don't know, like anything could have happened that could have disrupted the process. That can't be captured by numbers and figures. It's that, again, that human element that you can't predict and data matters, but when you have those grey areas and those kind of nuanced areas, you have to be able to fill in the gaps somehow with impact otherwise. And so again, 14,000 followers on Twitter. Amazing. Never posted. That doesn't mean anything to me. If you have 19,000 followers or subscribers, whatever connections, pardon me on LinkedIn, but that host is not even promoting the podcast on that. It's not meaningless data, but how meaningful is it for the impact that we're actually trying to measure here? You know, I work very closely with a lot of health and wellness practitioners, people in those spaces, and something I run into a lot talking about podcast hosts here is I'll go to their Instagram and they have 25,000 followers and good engagement, like not just followers that you can tell they paid for. Like they get thousands of likes on their posts, they get lots of comments, they're posting a lot of stories.

Chloe Williamson 00:17:46  It's everything, but all they're posting is like their fitness routines or pictures of their family or pictures of their pets. Like never once is there any actual promotion for the podcast. So again, this isn't necessarily meaningless data. Obviously this person has a level of influence that we can't just ignore. But is that what's necessarily going to move the needle for you and your podcast appearance? That's what we have to determine. That's the human element that we kind of have to dig into and decide where's the right area for you.

Tom Schwab 00:18:17  Even like a question that gets off often asked is list size right? What how big is your email list? To me, that is a double edged question, right? I can send you a screen capture right now. our email list right now is about 29,000. And people are like, that's great, right? So you'll email all of those people. And I'm like, anybody that just spams their email list, is going to get in trouble these days, right? Yes. We've got a list of 29,000, but it's very, very, very segmented.

Tom Schwab 00:18:53  Will I share it with the people that I think could value from it? Absolutely. But this idea that I'll just spread it to the world. it's almost like that's a that's like Y2K thinking.

Chloe Williamson 00:19:07  And email. that's also a whole separate conversation in itself. God, I think at least three times a month, I sit down for a good 20 minutes and go through my email and unsubscribe from things. Because email is subscribers. That is a meaningful data point. Trust me, people ask about that all of the time. We're always having to ask people for that figure. Human element. Sometimes you so much as just click on a website, you're suddenly signed up for their email list. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're an engaged listener or someone who actually wants to do anything. Sometimes you're like me, and you got to sit down and say, oh my God, get this noise out of my inbox or I'm going to go absolutely crazy. I can't stand looking at it anymore. So to get caught up in the, you know, to pull something right from you directly bigger is not better.

Chloe Williamson 00:19:57  Better is better. Very high numbers don't necessarily mean an engaged audience. Bigger numbers don't necessarily mean fame and fortune and the fast track to the success that you're looking for. A lot of times it is meaningless data. It's noise. It's just an extra figure that I might not even give you, depending on what information you actually need when determining a host audience. Like like I, like I said, when I see the Twitter account with 14,000 followers and no posts ever made, I don't even include that. Because what? What does that matter to anybody? In the long run, that absolutely means nothing. I you know, I want to be as authentic as possible. I want our people that we help and are trying to get on the right track with what their goals are, to be as authentic as possible. And if we're already running on inauthentic data. Well, I mean, what's the point in even trying? There's there's no reason.

Tom Schwab 00:20:48  You had mentioned something in there, too, that I thought was interesting, where you said when you ask them for the number.

Tom Schwab 00:20:54  Talked a little bit about whether or not you're getting it from a third party source, or you're asking someone for it, I.

Chloe Williamson 00:21:03  I usually ask I will exhaust all databases that we license to see if I can get that number. I will say email the subscribers is a much more hidden number that's not as easily captured from the databases, such as like followers or listeners are. So sometimes you have to ask and people are usually very forthcoming. I have never I've never gotten this sense that someone was lying to me about about their numbers, whereas listeners that might be a different story, but that's potentially a conversation for another time. Email list subscribers. People will be very honest. And I mean, you'll hear anything from we have 500 to we have 56,000. And that again, how are they getting those things may be another question worth asking. Okay, well, are you are people getting added to your email list because they have to enter their email address when they visit your website? Are they opting to offer their email address? Is it something that they're buying into? Even data begets more data, and that's why it's important to determine what's meaningful and what's meaningless, because it could be a wild goose chase for ultimately nothing.

Chloe Williamson 00:22:08  That's not going to mean anything. Or it could be a little bit more insight to how that audience is being grown. And maybe depending on the person you're trying to help get in front of that audience, that could be meaningful because something I also see a lot of the time, again, especially in my health and wellness area, I see a lot of people, physicians, especially clinicians, people in those areas who are not very interested in social media, like number of followers is kind of moot to them. They don't care about that. They tend to like a little bit more of an organic approach to building their community with like minded people who are actually dedicated to the same things they are versus those more vanity metrics. Again, inside term, we love to use that. Followers can be a vanity metric. So knowing how things like email lists, kind of those more hidden metrics are coming about can be really meaningful to those people. Because if it's word of mouth or if it's organic community building versus I just visited your website and now I'm opted into this email list that I don't even want to be a part of.

Chloe Williamson 00:23:09  That means a lot to that could be the difference between the audience that we really want. Or again, just more noise.

Tom Schwab 00:23:17  Yeah. And who where the data comes from. And we license but almost a dozen different databases. And some people will say, well, why don't you just pick one? Well, because you've got to look at different data points because most of them are estimates, right? And I know people will say, well, how do they get the numbers? And the best way it's been explained to me is Apple and Spotify are not going to sell you their data, right? But there are smaller players that will sell the data. So these companies go out and they purchase that data and say if we've if we've believe we've purchased 30% of the data, right. We'll multiply that by three. And that's what we'll estimate the entire market's at. Right. I remember I had a podcaster reach out to me and he was doing pay to play, and he wanted me to pay some exorbitant fee to be on his podcast and said that it worked out to $0.02 per listener.

Tom Schwab 00:24:21  And I'm like, there's no way he gets this much right. If he was, he'd be up there with, with Joe Rogan. And so I went to two of our databases and took screenshots and sent it back to him and just said, I'm confused here, because when I do the math, it comes out to $2 per episode per per listener. Right? How am I off? By a factor of 100. Right. So from that standpoint, you're just looking for trends there. Now, was it, was he a hundred off? Was he 90, 90 times off? Was he 110 times off? It really doesn't matter. You're just saying those numbers don't mesh up anymore.

Chloe Williamson 00:25:05  And that's a good point too. In the past, especially, I will say the data that we get for listenership is most accurate now that it ever has been. I feel very confident in that. Across the databases that we licensed several years ago, it was a fairly self-reported number. A lot of the times you would only kind of get that straight from the host's mouth, and it was almost like a weird there was like this weird red tape element to it where like we were like, okay, well, how are y'all finding that out? And like, no one seemed to be ever be able to give us a straight answer.

Chloe Williamson 00:25:36  So it's like, okay, I'm starting to think that there's some, there's some padding going on here. So that was part of the reason we started getting more databases is because, okay, well, we kind of we kind of need to do like a composite look at all of these figures instead of just taking the word of the host. Because of course, I mean, anyone's going to say, oh, a million people listen to my show, don't you know, like you haven't heard? And then it's like you look into the databases and it's like, it's not necessarily what this is saying, but sure. And being able to trust a lot of sources is a really big virtue with this too. You can't just look at one and determine that's the only thing you have to do more research. You have to be more vigilant, which that's where agencies like us are really valuable to people, because most people don't have the time to sit and do a bunch of boring deep diving into a million databases and social media platforms to kind of determine what's good or what's not.

Chloe Williamson 00:26:26  That's that's what we that's what our job is. And it's it can get tedious, you know, and sometimes you do have to ask and sometimes you have to take a really huge grain of salt with the information that they give you. Sometimes you can tell when they're forthcoming. But again, it's all just more data into this big, this big blender of numbers and noise that we're trying to sift through.

Tom Schwab 00:26:48  I love how you use the term padding, right? I think that's a great one. It's like if you ask a woman her weight or a man how much he can bench press, the number might be padded, right? So I will swear that I can bench press 350 right now you're thinking pounds. I was thinking grams, right. And that's what sometimes podcasters do that, I get listened to by, by 10 million people or I've been listened to by 10 million people. I've, you know, I reach, reach all seven continents. I've been heard in 142 countries. All the rest of that.

Tom Schwab 00:27:29  It sounds really impressive till you go back and it's like, well, if you've had a daily podcast for the last decade. Yeah. To have 10 million. 30 million listens. That seems reasonable. It doesn't mean that next episode is going to get 30 million listens or, you know, there's always somebody that downloads it in a different country. But, you know, if I see it's a downloaded in a country that doesn't even speak our language, I can't really say, you know, I'm marketing to that company. So, you've got to take it all. And like you said, when you see the data every day, day in and day out, you can pick out the noise and you can pick out the signal.

Chloe Williamson 00:28:11  And another point to what you said, Tom Daley podcasts. That's another thing to, you know, we determine reach by amount of listeners per episode. Sometimes there you kind of have to even dig a little bit deeper there. It's like, okay, well, are they posting one episode a month? Because that number could be really impressive or not depending.

Chloe Williamson 00:28:31  Are they posting an episode every single day? Because if so, then yeah, of course they're going to get a lot of listeners. But if you like break it down per episode versus monthly listens. Maybe it's a little bit less impressive, a little bit more impressive. Again, data begets more data, and you can't really just be satisfied with one number. You kind of have to dig into why that number is, what it is, how it relates to the other numbers in the equation. And ultimately, what is that going to lead to for your goals and the impact you are trying to make?

Tom Schwab 00:29:03  I think of when we started 11 years ago, right. It was more podcast guessing than anything. There was no data, right? And now the more data we get, it seems like it's getting better and better, more reliable, but it brings up more and more questions on there. That's where it's really a an art as much as the science.

Chloe Williamson 00:29:24  Very much it is. It is an equation and a poem.

Chloe Williamson 00:29:27  And we're just trying really hard to do both at the same time, juggling, juggling both those plates at the same time. It can be difficult, but it brings clarity and it brings again the truth to the impact. And that's that's why we do it, right.

Tom Schwab 00:29:41  Well, what's ordinary to you and all the client account managers there at Interview Valet is amazing to others and how you can see that. So any final words before you wrap it up here?

Chloe Williamson 00:29:53  Try not to get caught up in one number at a time. Like I said, every data point reveals more than just that own data point. That's rarely the end of the sentence. That's kind of the the the preamble to the next paragraph in terms. Again, to put it in some literary terms, any analogy is fun, right? And I don't know if you ever really need some deeper insight. Talk to an expert, talk to someone like us. We can kind of sift through what matters to you and what doesn't. If they have a lot of followers and not a lot of engagement, maybe that doesn't matter to you, but also, does that platform even is your audience even on that platform? Because if so, sure, it's meaningless data, but it would it be meaningful even if it weren't? If that makes sense.

Chloe Williamson 00:30:36  Like you have you you have to determine where your people are. And if the noise is actually getting through to them. Otherwise, it's just noise that they're shutting their window to. And not even not even trying to hear.

Tom Schwab 00:30:48  Amen. We're we're going for impact, not just, activity. Thank you so much, Chloe.

Chloe Williamson 00:30:55  Thanks, Tom.

Tom Schwab 00:30:57  What a great reminder from Chloe. Every number tells a story, but not every story is true, useful or complete. You see followers without engagement, downloads without listens, maybe YouTube views without context, or email lists without trust. They can all look real impressive on the surface and still mean very little to your results from your last appearance. Remember, podcast interview marketing is not a megaphone to make noise, but a magnet to attract your ideal clients to be signal, not noise. To be remembered as the only choice. Not forgotten is another option. It's about real business results, not more vanity metrics. So here's your action item for today's episode. Before you say yes to that next podcast, or before you dismiss one because it's too small, ask these three questions.

Tom Schwab 00:31:56  Number one is my ideal customer, my super consumer listening. Number two is this audience engaged? And finally, number three, does this show give me a credible path to continue the conversation after the interview? That's how you move from guessing to strategy. That's how you turn their listeners into your leads. And that's how you build a business with targeted interview strategy. Not more noise, but more meaningful impact.