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How to Measure the ROI of a Podcast

How do you measure the ROI of a branded podcast? 🤔 It’s a common question I get asked often, and one that podcasters, whether they’re independents or professionals, frequently struggle to answer.

Setting Goals to Calculate ROI

When launching a podcast for your company, a client, or even for personal branding (whether it’s a hobby or for personal branding), it’s crucial to set goals at the start and later assess if the efforts have paid off. 🍌🍇🍒

Calculating your podcast’s ROI—or Return on Investment—allows you to not only understand what works and what doesn’t for your podcast, but it also serves as a motivational boost. 💪 If you find your podcast is yielding a positive ROI, that’s a sign to keep going, right? And if not, you adjust and move forward! 🚀

Calculating your ROI is essential for justifying your investment, whether in terms of time, effort, money, or other resources.

You don’t necessarily need a conversion or lead generation goal to calculate your podcast’s ROI.

Your goals could be:

Improving your site’s SEO,
Boosting brand awareness and credibility,
Establishing your expertise,
Fostering customer loyalty,
Driving qualified traffic to your resources,
Expanding your social media community,
…
It’s up to you to define your primary goal! 😄

Why Is It Hard to Calculate a Podcast’s ROI?

One thing to keep in mind is that investing in a podcast, and in branded content generally, is a bit like planting a seed: it can take a while to sprout. 🌱

This can be compared to blog posts: even if you write highly SEO-optimized content with all the right keywords, it might take up to six months to see a significant impact on your website traffic.

The same goes for podcasts!

Results won’t be instant; it’s more of a long-term investment.

If you’re aiming for conversion goals, you might find that your sales cycle is long and complex, making it even harder to track leads that can be attributed to your podcast. In an ideal scenario, a listener hears your podcast, clicks the link in your episode description, and either requests a demo or purchases your product right away. But let’s be honest, it’s usually more nuanced in real life. 😄

Moreover, some of the marketing goals you’ve set might be harder to quantify, like improving brand perception or establishing expertise.

Exploring the 3 Attribution Models

Let’s familiarize ourselves with the concept of attribution models, crucial for calculating the ROI of content.

There are 3 types of attribution models:

First-Touch Attribution: This model credits the very first piece of content that drew in your listener. For example, they might subscribe to your newsletter where you promoted your latest episode, and they decided to listen immediately.
Last-Touch Attribution: Here, the last piece of content your listener interacted with before playing your podcast gets all the credit. For instance, your listener might also subscribe to your newsletter and decide not to click at that moment, despite finding it interesting. A few hours later, they scroll through Instagram, see your post about your podcast, and decide to listen.
Linear Attribution: In this scenario, each interaction receives equal credit for the conversion to listening. This model recognizes the role each touchpoint has played in the listener’s decision-making process.

My advice to you

Mixing first-touch and last-touch models can provide a good overview of what’s working in your content strategy.

And if you have the resources, why not develop your own attribution model to really zoom in on the most profitable strategies?

5 Tips for Calculating the ROI of a Podcast

Now, how can we track the achievement of our goals? This is where it gets interesting.

#1 Use Tracked Links 🔗

Employ trackable URLs in your podcast promotion materials and episode descriptions. There are several tools at your disposal like Bit.ly, Campaign URL Builder. By associating your podcast with unique URLs that redirect to your website or products, you can easily see the portion of prospects coming from your podcast.

With Ausha, you can add custom buttons to the dedicated web page for your show, on your Smartlink, or Smartplayer. ✨

#2 Share a Promo Code with Your Audience ⭐

Create a promo code to share in your episodes. Tracking this is super easy. If new customers use this code at the time of purchase, you know they are podcast listeners!

#3 Launch a Newsletter Around Your Podcast 💌

Gain new leads by enabling the newsletter module on Ausha. If your podcast is hosted with Ausha, you can invite subscribers to sign up for your newsletter to get notified as soon as a new episode drops.

If you already have a separate newsletter, no problem—still activate this module and capture new leads to transfer to your usual database. 💪

#4 Create Specific Landing Pages

It’s true that this will require a bit of work… For episodes promoting a specific product or service, or discussing a topic for which you’ve created an ebook or a course, create a specific web page that will act as a net for your listeners. 🐟

Place the tracked link in your episode notes, and you’re all set!

5. Hunt for Social Proof

Or Social Proof in English. This refers to the number of mentions or shares of your podcast on social media or in the press.

How to Calculate the ROI of a Podcast? With What Formula?

To determine the ROI of your branded podcast, start by calculating the costs: production, distribution, promotion…

Then, evaluate the gains based on your goal: increases in your sales, generation of qualified leads, number of mentions in the press, growth of your social media followers, etc.

Use the following simple formula 🪄

ROI = ((Revenue Generated by your podcast – Investment) / Investment) x 100.

In conclusion, the ROI of a podcast isn’t measured by numbers alone

I hope I’ve given you some insights into measuring the ROI of your podcast, although, let’s be honest, it’s still a fairly complex calculation today for this type of content.

Just remember that success isn’t measured solely by numbers but also by the quality of engagement and the loyalty of your audience. 🥰

Emma