The Podcast Consumer 2019 report from Edison and Triton Digital is out, with lots of podcasters & pundits gobbling up the data and interpreting the results.
In this episode, I focus on the one slide from that report that holds the most significance to business-minded podcasters: The reasons and rationale of why people choose not to listen to podcasts.
And keep in mind: while the majority of Americans have listened to a podcast episode at least once, a good chunk of people walking around out there never have. Which means a good chunk of your customers, mailing list members, or anyone else you want to listen also have some preconceived notions about podcasting that you need to break through.
- 75% of non-listeners say podcasting isn't for them. Just like coupons will never entice me to try out a Chinese Buffet, cajoling (begging) your mailing list to listen isn't helping. Time to play the features/benefits card.
- 51% of them say there's not enough time for them to listen to podcasts. So consider the length of your episodes. If that's fine, you need to help these people in your list understand that podcast listening isn't a zero-sum game
- 49% think there's nothing inside of podcasts that they can't get through other means. Are you using those other means -- social, emails, blog posts -- to demonstrate the unique value contained inside your episodes? Or are you just auto-Tweeting headlines and a subscribe link? That's not going to work for them.
Speaking of that last one, I go into much more detail inside the episode, so give it a listen. (Though given the nature of the content of this show, it's probably immune to those reasons. Still, just in case...)
