How to Fix Your Podcast When Numbers Take a Nose Dive

Back in 1980, before he was addicted to love, Robert Palmer had a song called I'm Just Looking for Clues.

And today somebody's asking, hey, my downloads are going down.

What do I do?

Well, today we're gonna go looking for Clues.

Welcome to youo Podcast Consultant.

Small lessons with big value.

With more than a decade of experience and millions of downloads, this hall of fame PODC is a featured speaker, author, and mentor to thousands.

Now he wants to work with you.

He's your podcast consultant.

Dave Jackson.

Yeah.

Doctor.

Doctor.

Give me the news.

Let's see.

I need for a podcast.

That's the username that wrote in and said, hi, all.

First time poster here.

I've podcast, I have podcasts I really enjoy doing.

Look, typing on Reddit is not always the easiest thing, but I've noticed our listeners have been decreasing since about January, and we started in November.

So as I record this, that means they're basically about three months in.

It's me and my sister talking about topics no one teaches you about.

Adulting.

Now, that could be a very, very wide range.

Top of topics.

I really enjoy the few listeners we have.

They give us good feedback.

But I've also noticed our stats are dropping.

How did you promote your podcast?

Any tips?

Well, here's the thing.

Your numbers are going down, which means you're losing the people you had.

Now is not the time to promote your podcast because it's not keeping the people you have.

It's when the numbers are going up that you start promoting your podcast.

Because you know it's good, they continue.

Both me and my sister aren't great at this side of podcasting and often forget to post to Instagram or anything like that.

That's not a big deal.

Uh, you're gonna get a trickle from Instagram, from Facebook, any social media, YouTube.

It is very, very, very hard to get people to switch from one platform to another.

And so when your numbers are going down, let's figure that out.

Why are your numbers going down?

The first thing you can do.

And this sounds kind of obvious, and yet nobody does it.

Ask your audience, hey, do you like the show?

Do you listen to the whole thing?

If you don't listen to the whole thing, where do you stop and why?

And how likely are you to share this with a friend?

That could be the whole survey, but there are places you can actually see where they are tuning out.

The first one is Podcasts with an S. Podcasts connect all one word.apple.com.

The second one is creators again with an s.Spotify.com and you can go in to those hubs.

It's the only place you can get this information and go into the episodes and see the completion percentage.

And you want it above 70%.

And that's where people go.

So mine says 40.

Is that good?

No, it is not.

Think of it like a school grade.

70 Is a C, 80 is a B.

90 Is an A.

And so we'd really like it to be above 80.

But 70 is good, right?

But again, if we want it to grow, we're really looking for 80%.

And so you can go in.

And the thing I love about Apple, and for the record, when you look at these stats, you're gonna get a big dive of people at the very beginning.

And that is because these are the people.

You can also see what percentage of your audience is following your show.

And if you have a lot of followers, that first two minutes is gonna be like a, you know, Niagara Falls.

And the reason for that is these people have heard your intro forever.

They don't need to hear you explain what your show is.

So that's fine for me.

When I have ads in my show, I can see right where they are because Everybody hits the 32nd.

Not everybody, but a good 15% of people hit the skip button to do that.

But you will see a general lowering of downloads of listeners the longer they go.

And the minute you even hint that the show is over.

So if you say something like, okay, so to wrap this up, that's it, they're gone.

So be very careful with that because the minute you.

You hint, it's over.

So that's something you want to look into.

Because again, the time to promote is not when you're losing your audience.

Then you're as bad as a movie theater.

It's like, wow, nobody's coming to this movie.

That's really awful.

We need to go out and spend money on promoting this really awful movie.

That wouldn't make any sense.

And so I get it that you might think, hey, I need more eyeballs.

But that's true.

But let's make sure, if you think about it, anytime you see Kevin Hart or Louis CK Or Chris Rock or any famous comedian and they do a special, do you think that's the first time they've done that special?

And, wow, they're just funny all the time.

No, they go to small clubs and they test these jokes and they tweak them, and they tweak them some more and they tweak them again before they put it all together and do it in front of an audience, and even that they've probably tested a few times.

Now, if you're a person that likes to read, or if you're a fan of audiobooks, I really love the book.

The audience is listening.

It's all about understanding your audience and.

And giving them what they want.

And when you do that, that's why your podcast is growing.

I'll put a link to that out in the show notes.

One of the things we do at the school of podcasting, we call them listener parties, where you can go in and request to have people listen to your show.

And we get a bunch of us together, and it's usually not a huge number, like four or five people, and you watch us listen to your show.

Why?

Because you know, when we're supposed to smile, you know when we're supposed to think, etc.

Etc.

And I got this idea from Ron Howard, the famous actor, director, who's got who knows, 20 plus awards, whether they're Oscars or Emmys or etc.

And he sits with an audience, even though he's won all these awards, he sits with the audience and he wants to see them react because he wants them to react a certain way.

And if they're not, then he goes back and he edits.

Because podcasting is a lot like the movie business.

We spend a lot of time getting our art just right, getting our episode just the way we want, and then we go out and we promote them after we know it's working.

And then our prayer is that the audience will tell their friends, because that's really how the movie business works now.

They sell a lot of popcorn, a lot of overpriced, you know, soda, but in the end, it's very similar.

And so in this case, you got to figure out why you're losing your audience, fix that, and then promote your show.

That's what I would recommend.

Now, if you need help with your show, I just told you just one of the features of the school of podcasting.

You can go over, sign up, use the coupon code, listener, and then you have 30 days.

And if on day 29, you're like, Dave, this is more work than I thought, or this isn't what I, you know, I'm not satisfied.

We will give you your money back.

30 Days to figure that out.

Now, why do I do this?

Because I'm Dave Jackson.

I love to help podcasters.

I've been doing it over two decades, and really, I can't wait to see what we're going to do together.

Because I want to be your podcast consultant.