I Created A Top 100 Podcast, But I Have No Idea Who Listens? 🤔
Who actually listens to my podcast and why the hell do they??
In case this is the first time you have come across my posts - hello, my name is Sina and amongst a lot of other things, I created and currently host The Millennial Entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial podcast focusing on both giving a platform to young hustlers such as Forbes 30 Under 30 winners (Stefanie Sword-Williams & Erifili Gounari), TEDx speakers (Sonya Barlow & Sam Harris) and many many more.
What’s the Big Deal?
Well, I started this podcast for a couple of reasons:
It gave me an opportunity to speak to some incredible young people that genuinely inspire and motivate me and by recording the conversations, hopefully the conversations may deliver the same result to a few others.
I WAS BORED - That’s right. The UK had just entered the first lockdown in April/March and I had so much time with not much to do.
However, as we approach the end of 2020 and the podcast has had time to get noticed, I have been wildly surprised.
What’s So Surprising?
To illustrate the reason behind my astonishment and confusion, here are some facts/numbers from April 2020 (launch date) to today (mid-December):
👉🏼 Listened to across 6 continents in over 40 countries 🌍
👉🏼 Peak Chart Appearances for Entrepreneurship on Apple Podcasts:
🇬🇧 23rd: United Kingdom
🇮🇹 10th: Italy
🇶🇦 3rd: Qatar
🇬🇷 26th: Greece
🇮🇳 58th: India
🇸🇰 43rd: Slovakia
👉🏼 Landed a PAID sponsorship deal
👉🏼 Personally featured on BBC Asian Network, Le Wagon, Founders of the Future, Like Minded Females Network, MSDUK and others
As you can see, there have been some huge milestones and growth in listenership.
Here’s the thing though - I have no clue who is listening and why they listen.
Understanding My Listeners
ThePowerMBA has taught me the importance of understanding your end-user (listeners in my context) and how well you understand who they are and why they listen determine the growth of the podcast.
It is extremely easy for both my podcast and any business that runs to merely see customers and end-users as mere numbers.
Listen Segments vs Listener Personas
I want to understand who my listeners are and their motivations for listening.
Segmentation
Listener or customer segments are about understanding where your listeners are and splitting them up based on parameters like age, geography, etc. I can already gather a feeling of this. The data shows that the majority of my listeners are 18-22 and male.
The majority are listening from the UK also.
These metrics are unsurprising as I am interviewing and targeting my content around people within that age demographic, and of course I am a UK-based podcast. The higher male-female split may be due to more males listening to podcasts as a whole compared to females currently, but the gap is narrowing.
Personas
Personas are more qualitative, more difficult to pin down. They add an extra in-depth layer onto the quantitative segmentation.
Segments can be measured, but you can not get to know a segment. A persona can be understood.
The persona encompasses motivations and behaviours of a listener.
Gut feeling and my initial hypothesis convey that my listeners listen for one or both of two reasons:
Listen for education - They are a wannabe or existing entrepreneur and they enjoy the advice and insights from a relatable guest to execute in their own endeavours.
Listen for entertainment - They have no desire of becoming an entrepreneur, but enjoy listening to the honest and open stories of young entrepreneurial journeys, including how they overcame challenges such as lack of product market fit, testing the market, releasing a minimum viable product (MVP), personal adversities such as mental health battles or discrimination due to race, gender or disability, etc.
Importance of Understanding Your Listener/Customer
I am using my podcast as the product in this instance, but the notion of customer personas is still extremely relevant and powerful in all other product contexts.
The instructors in ThePowerMBA warn about disregarding the customer persona. And many times, even if the analysis is undertaken, the results are ignored and never implemented.
In reality, the customer persona understanding should sit at the core of everything – marketing strategy, product iteration, website/app creation, the list goes on.
Essentially, if you don’t make your customers/listeners happy, they will leave.
And the only way to make them happy is to understand what makes them happy - their ‘why’!
Testing Listener Personas & How You Can Too
It seems easy, but the most effective way you find out and build a picture of customer personas is to just ask.
A common misconception is that you need to ask hundreds or thousands of people. ThePowerMBA mentions how you only need 8 maximum to understand.
Over the next month, I will be gather information around my listeners in two specific segments:
Regular listeners
Listeners who listen to entrepreneurship podcasts and used to listen to The Millennial Entrepreneur before but now don’t
The first group will be easy to find, but the second group will require more time.
I will be messaging many of my followers on Instagram to ask them how regularly they listen and if they are kind enough, to arrange a short phone call.
This is a snippet of the framework I will be using (taken from ThePowerMBA):
Next Steps
Consider this blog to be a ‘part 1’ on my exploration of listener personas.
In my next blog on this topic that I will be aiming to publish in January 2021, I will share how my approach faired, the success rate of gathering honest information and of course the insights gathered and how I will be using this information to build an image of a listener, to grow and target individuals like this moving forward.
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