✊ No, it's not just you...
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Hi friends, I’ll be honest, when I first discovered the median monthly growth rates in last year’s Podcast Marketing Trends Report, I didn’t believe them. In fact, I thought there must surely be a problem with my spreadsheet formula. Or that I was referencing the wrong data. Or that I'd made some kind of stupid mental error that led to this depressingly small number. That number, you may (but almost definitely don’t) recall was 1.62% month-over-month (MOM) growth. Which means a typical show with 1,000 downloads this month could expect to get 1,016 downloads next month. “This can’t be right,” I thought. “I know podcast growth is long, hard, and slow, but not this slow… Right?” So I checked my formulas, my data, and my sanity, and ran the numbers again. Same result. Apparently, for the typical podcaster in my survey, growing their show was this slow. And it was about to get slower. Because when it came time to crunch the numbers for this year's report, the same scenario played out. Except worse. Again I checked the formulas. Again I checked my data. Again I checked my sanity. And again I was confronted by the depressing reality of how long, hard, and slow it is to grow a podcast. This year, if you’re curious, the median MOM growth rate was a tenth of what it was last year, at just 0.11%. Which means now, a show with 1,000 downloads this month could expect to get 1,001 the following month. 💀💀💀 But this is only half the story. See, while the median growth benchmarks from this year’s report required you to get down on all fours and pull out a magnifying glass to see them, the averages were rather robust. In fact, they were up significantly from the previous year. The reason? While the vast majority of shows struggled to grow over the past year, there were a number of outliers who posted incredibly strong growth numbers, pulling up the average. In many cases, these shows doubled, tripled, or quadrupled their average downloads per episode. The highest growth show grew by more than 6397% going from 274 downloads per episode at the start of the year to 17,829 at the end. These high-growth shows were about everything from camping to children's health, horror fiction to pickleball, comedy to business, travel, relationships, marketing, tech, cyber security, and more. Some shows started the year with a few dozen downloads an episode and ended with a few hundred. One started with 4 million downloads an episode and ended with more than 8 million. I share this for a couple of reasons. First… If growth has been slow, nonexistent, or even negative over the past 12-18 months, it’s not just you. In fact, you’re firmly in the majority. But second… Despite the headwinds, there are plenty of hosts—across every show topic, format, and size—that have found a way to grow significantly. Explosively, even. Which means while growing a podcast may be harder than ever, it's still very much possible. And while there’s no singular equation to unlocking growth for every show, there’s a lot we can learn from the shows that have already achieved what you’re looking to emulate. Which is why the Podcast Marketing Trends Report exists. The 2024 report breaks down what high and low growth shows do differently. So if you’re looking to take a more informed, data-driven approach to your show creation and marketing strategy, I’d love for you to check it out. Then, hit reply and let me know what stands out to you the most. 👉 View the Podcast Marketing Trends Report
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