161 | How To Diagnose When Your Podcasts Downloads Drop

If your podcast downloads have dropped in recent months and you are perplexed about why that is, maybe you're wondering if your listeners don't like you anymore, then listen up. It's not you, probably. You're probably doing just fine, and there was just a big change in the podcast industry that has affected podcast downloads on shows big and small, and actually, it's mostly affected the really big ones. What I said today on the show, what I'm going to do with you is step you through my process for diagnosing what's wrong when podcast numbers go down or even when podcast numbers aren't where you want them to be. This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach. I've worked with more than 400 podcasters directly over the past five years, and through doing that, I have developed this system for quickly honing in on why a show isn't growing the way we want it to and or why download numbers have gone down. If you are one of the many podcasters who is confused currently as to why your podcast download numbers are down, stick around because pretty soon you're going to understand why it likely isn't your fault this time around. Even if you haven't seemingly lost listenership over the past few months, I still think you should stick around because this episode is going to shine a light on how we echo the show, diagnose, changes in the data that we get from our hosting providers and help identify what we can do to fix it and to get download numbers rising again. Now as I mentioned out of the gates, the podcast industry has kind of gone through it. I mean, overall in 2023, it was a pretty brutal year for the podcast industry in many different ways, but in particular, starting in December, I started hearing from many different Grow the Show clients and some of whom that I really hadn't heard from in a while. And a lot of them started hopping in the Grow the Show Academy community. They started joining the calls, even some of my one-on-one clients came to me and they sounded and looked extremely somber, really down in the dumps like horrible, like I thought they were sick. And what they shared was that their download numbers have dropped in December and January and now in February and they really don't know why they're super discouraged. They're wondering what's wrong with them and I'm like, first of all, sheesh, we need to lighten up a little bit. I think everybody needs to take a step back and audit how much of ourself worth and identity we put into download numbers. My goodness, I have seen people who looked like they had family members die. I'm like, your download numbers went down by 200. It's okay. It's not a big deal. We can fix this. And it's true. I had clients who were despondent because they thought their show had shrunk a little bit. Your download numbers, your listen score, your views, your followers, they are not a reflection of you as a person. They're not a indictment of the quality of the content you put out. It is okay. Getting more downloads, more views, more followers is a skill to be learned. It is not a pure meritocracy. It is shifting wins. It is not a source of truth. It is okay. So we can fix it, please. So yeah, that's a little, my little side note there is I was just floored at how freaking sad people were. I get it. We care about this. But if your download numbers go down a little bit and it ruins your whole week, we need to take a look at your mindset. Anyway, I suddenly had tons of growth show podcasters tell me that their download numbers have dropped by a couple hundred per month and they were thinking of jumping off a bridge and I said, hold on a second, don't do that. There's a process for how to diagnose when your show isn't growing or if the show isn't growing the way you want it to. So let's step through it and that's what I'm going to do with you today. So today I'm going to step through this process that I have and my goal is that you can use this process to be your multi-step check to diagnose why your podcast isn't performing the way you want it to. Real quick, before I do that, I should disclaim that this is my process for diagnosing podcast growth issues. I know there are people and companies out there who do tons of research on podcast listener data and I pay some attention to those things, but I am not obsessed with them like others are. So I'm going to be sharing stuff that's anecdotal in my experience coaching podcasters one on one for five years. And yes, there may be a study that proves what I say wrong and then it was done by a large respected research company. And that's cool. I have not done any massive double blind studies myself. I've just been helping podcasters grow their shows, boots on the ground full time for five years, and I've noticed some patterns. So I share this diagnostic process with you and some of the anecdotal stuff that I've seen today in order to help you. My goal is for this to be useful, not perfect. So podcast experts out there who love to fight over stuff, please leave me alone. I'm just trying to help people. All right. So how do you diagnose when your podcast has stopped growing or isn't growing before we dive into that step number zero? Like I mentioned before, check your expectations, audience, eb and flow, businesses, eb and flow. This is not going to be a linear path up, up, up, up, up forever. And sometimes things will ebb and the best thing to do is change nothing and just keep doing your thing. It's okay. Also in step zero, I say, is it the summer or is it the holidays? Podcast listenership is a routine medium. So in the summer and in December is when people most get out of their routine. In the summer, especially July and August, people are on vacation. They're just kind of effing off in the holidays, same thing. People are not doing their normal day-to-day podcast listening. And so if it's December, June, July, August, you can expect that listenership is going to drop during those times. It's okay. Plan for it. Lean into it. Republish your stuff. Takes some time off. It's okay. Now once we've checked our expectations, we understand I know that is not the end of the world. My podcast downloads go down one month when I also understand that there's a yearly cadence for podcast downloads. And if it's July and my downloads numbers are going down, I'm going to say that's cool. I'm going to go to the beach for a week. Having said all that, let's get into the actual stuff. So number one, did you recently do any rebrands or adjustments in the focusing or the packaging of your show? You hear me talk a lot about the fact that you should have a cat one premise, a category of one premise, meaning that it is very clear what listeners are going to get from their show. Who it is for specifically, what they will get by listening and how your show is going to do that thing for them. Who your show is for, what your show will do for them specifically and how it will do it. So if you're somebody who recently came across me or finally recently took my advice to make your show more specific and more clear as to what it's offering its listeners and you just did a rebrand, your numbers are going to drop a little bit for a short time. That is okay. It is not bad. I hear all the time. The show last month and now my download numbers get down, Kevin, I thought you were going to help me grow the show. Yes, sometimes you have to take one step back to take literally 100,000 steps forward, not kidding. So if you recently did a rebrand or you changed the packaging of your show or you changed the way you talk about your show to be more accurate and more specific, there will be some people who stop listening to your show and that's okay. My mother does not listen to either of my podcasts. My first podcast was about Philadelphia. She does not live in Philadelphia, so she doesn't care about the people in Philadelphia. My second podcast, this podcast is about how to grow a podcast. My mother does not have a podcast, so she doesn't listen to this. So if you're somebody who has a super vague premise where it's like we interview successful people, we talk about how to be happy. Then the people who are listening to your show are the people who know you personally. They're your friends, they're your family, and when you rebrand to make your podcast more stranger friendly, meaning it's something that's going to be interesting to people despite the fact that they have no idea who you are, the people who know who you are and are listening to your show because they love you and the show suddenly becomes more specific for a specific type of person. Some of your friends and family are not those people and they're going to stop listening and that's okay. Again, take one step back to take 100,000 plus steps forward. Having said that, if you have had recently rebranded your show, the next thing you want to check are your episode completion rates. You can check those in your Apple Podcast dashboard. Have they changed? Have they gone up? Have they gone down? Have your episode intros changed? Are they crisp and persuasive or are you phoning them in to save your own time? Are you talking about the weather at the beginning of the episode? When people press play on your show, do they stick around? We want to shoot for 70%-ish plus, maybe a little bit less for interview shows, probably a little bit more for solo episodes, but that's what we're shooting for. We want to make sure that when we look at the retention graph, the intros are capturing people's attention. We want to get tons of people who immediately turn off the episode when it starts. If you have not looked at your episode completion rates and you're sad about where your podcast downloads are, look at your completion rates and if they are low, fix that. Because if they are low, that means that people are turning on your podcast, their starting to listen to some and they are actively pulling out their phone to turn it off. And until that no longer happens, I could get you the best podcast growth strategy in the world. I could get you a million downloads next week. If that's happening, if you have low completion rates and people are opting out of your episodes, the week after that, you won't have a million downloads anymore, you'll be back to where you are right now. Okay, so we've checked our episode completion rates. If they look good, we move on to the next check, which is your episode packaging. Your episode packaging is your episode titles, your show notes. If you're on YouTube, it's your title and description for the episode. Your episode packaging is what get the listener the last mile and convinces them whether or not they actually want to hear this specific episode of your show. And remember, you need to convince all of your listeners that they need to listen to every single episode of your show. As podcasters, we like to think of our audience as these people that tune in every single episode and just are hanging on everything that we say. But in reality, your audience listens to four to six episodes of your podcast ever, ever. And so your podcast audience is more of a river than the pond that you think it is. And even your best listeners, even your biggest fans are still looking at your episode title and sometimes even opening up the description in the show notes to see like, is this really what I want to listen to today? Or do I want to go listen to Tim Ferris or gold digger or something like that instead? It's a thing. You have to win every single play. And so if you have not put any energy into your titles and your show notes or your description or your thumbnails if you're on YouTube, then take a look at that or has it changed. That's another thing. We'll start phoning in their titles, phoning in their show notes, and then their download numbers start going down. So that's the next thing to look at. And remember, when you're creating your titles, you want to use the four use formula for copywriting. You want your titles to be at least two, but ideally all four of the following things. Urgent, unique, useful, and ultra specific. The biggest mistake that people make with their titles is they make them vague because you think that being broad and vague means you're going to collect everyone. Everybody's going to be interested in this. Not so. The more unique your title is and specific, the better it will perform. So we've looked at our titles. Our titles look good. Our show notes look good. If you're on YouTube, the thumbnail, the description looks good, and most importantly, has it changed recently, right? Because we're talking about download numbers changing. If that's not the case, and if you've gotten to this point yet, and nothing has changed about the show itself, your content, your shows branding, your episodes, your episode packaging, and none of that has changed. When you've still seen your download numbers go down, then we zoom into the next phase of the checklist, which is your marketing. And this is the big one. Honestly, this is the one that it usually is. And so the question is, have you changed the way you are promoting your podcast episode? Have you changed your marketing cadence for the show? AKA, have you slacked on emailing your list whenever there's a new episode? Have you slacked on participating in social media and talking about your episodes on social media? Have you slacked on guessing on other podcasts on a regular basis? I just spoke with a girl that showed accelerator client yesterday who asked me why her download numbers have dropped recently. And she didn't seem super worried. She was more asking out of curiosity, which is great. I was happy to see that she wasn't as despondent as some people are. And this client works on a show that has a really large social media presence. And I'm really, really tied in with this show because I'm working with them one on one. And so I know that they have not really changed anything about their shows branding or packaging recently. And so I skipped to this step in the process. And I said, have you changed your promo strategy on social media at all? And she kind of paused a second. She said, yeah, I said, what did you change? She said, we stopped posting about the podcast because we have a new lead magnet that we want to send people to. I was like, oh, there you go. If you stop telling people about your podcast episodes, they will stop listening to your podcast episodes. We had a laugh. We moved on. We talked about something else. And I'm willing to bet that this coming week, they're going to resume talking about their podcast on social media and their podcasts, download numbers are going to go right back up to what they were before. Now this is common. I'm sorry to break it to you, but you have to keep up with podcast marketing. You have to keep doing it. I attended an incredible conference a few weeks ago called kept showvians live. And one of the speakers put forth a one to one rule that said, for every hour that you spend creating your podcast content, you should spend an hour marketing your podcast one to one, four hours making, four hours marketing. That was a really good rule of thumb that I hadn't really heard before, but it winds up being true. And a lot of us want a dream of spending 10 hours on their podcast and no hours marketing. And you can do that if you want, but you're not going to have any listeners. And so you have to keep up with your podcast marketing cadence. And also with social media, you must evolve your podcast marketing. You must keep up with what's going on on social media. And that's another reason why I recommend people don't try to be on every single social media platform because that's a lot of platforms to keep up with and to understand how they have evolved. They evolved really fast. Well, works on them changes really quickly. And so especially if you're a solar printer podcaster, just do one platform, maybe two, but just one because if you're going to make it work, you're going to have to keep up with that platform and see how it is evolving. So that leads to the next question in the checklist. If you haven't changed your publishing cadence on social media, which many have many have slacked when their download numbers go down. But if you haven't slacked and you've stayed consistent with publishing and participating on social media about your podcast, then has the social media platform change said all. This check is for those of you who are still posting audiograms. If that's you, the answer is yes, social media has changed. Audiograms do not work anymore. Instagram has worked in 2018 when Instagram added video for the first time. Remember that? Can you imagine that? In the summer of 2018, Instagram was just pictures. That's it. There was no videos. And I remember when they introduced videos, I was like, this is dumb. Instagram is not a video platform. Now that couldn't be more wrong. But the reason why audiograms crushed back in 2018 was because number one, nobody had ever seen pictures move on Instagram before. So even just having captions show up blew people's minds. And number two, at that point of time, many people hadn't even heard of podcasts yet. So it was all super new and exciting back then. And that's the thing with social media. In order to get attention and get reached on social media, you have to be at least up to date to know what is working now. But even better, you must be able to see what's just beginning to work and what is new. That's just marketing. And so if you're using a social media strategy that worked in 2018, 2019, even 21, 2022, it doesn't really cut it anymore. And I'm sorry to say that. And I know you're like, oh, that sounds exhausting. Yeah, you just got to manage your time. This has just got to be a part of it. If you want to serve an audience, you need to make time to reach them. It's just part of it. Okay. So finally, if you've gotten to this point in the process and you haven't found anything that has changed or anything to improve. So your show's premise hasn't changed recently. Your completion rates aren't a good place and they've been consistent. Your episode packaging, your title, your show notes, your thumbnails, those haven't changed. Your marketing consistency is the same. So the nothing has changed there. You're still emailing the same. You're still participating on social media the same. You're still showing up on other podcasts the same. And you're still using a social media strategy that works today and you're aware of that and you're confident in that. And you still have experienced an explicable drop in your downloads. Well, that is what happened to most of us this past fall in 2023. There was a change that was made that made podcast download numbers drop nationwide. And so if you are one of those podcasters that I called out at the very beginning of this episode, who is just perplexed, flabbergasted as to why your downloads have dropped and haven't gone back up, it's probably because of Apple. You see, Apple released iOS 17 this past October, a brand new version of your iPhone's operating system. And with it, they made some changes to the Apple podcast app, which is one of the three most common apps used to listen to podcasts. So there's a lot of podcasts listeners using Apple podcasts. And so Apple made a change and it's really not that big of a change in how that app works. But for some shows, it has made a huge impact in actually the more often you published episodes of your show, the bigger the impact will be. And also the larger your show is, the bigger your impact will be. So what was this change? Well, when Apple published iOS 17 back in October, Apple changed the way that that app automatically downloads podcast episodes. And Apple actually put out a press release announcing this change on October 11th of 2023, which many of us missed. What Apple explained in the press release is how the Apple podcast app automatically downloads episodes. And remember, our metric for success as podcasters today are downloads. And so we get a download whenever someone's phone downloads our podcast episode, not when someone listens to our podcast episode, not always. And there are plenty of times where somebody's phone downloads an episode, we're like, yeah, we got a download, but that person never actually listens to the episode. And so the way automatic downloads works is when a listener follows your show, they will become a quote unquote subscriber in Apple podcasts. Then that means that their app is going to automatically download episodes of your show whenever there is a new one available. However, Apple podcast automatically makes some adjustments based on that person's storage on their phone. So if their device doesn't have any storage for new episodes, Apple won't automatically download new episodes. Apple also will stop automatically downloading new episodes of your show. If the subscriber has not listened to your last five episodes or the subscriber hasn't listened to your show for more than 15 days, when either of those things happen that listeners Apple podcast apps pauses downloading new episodes until that listener comes back to listen to your show. If you publish episodes daily and it is Friday and your listener has not downloaded an episode since Sunday, Apple will pause downloading new episodes or if you publish episodes weekly and a listener has not listened to the last two episodes you published, the Apple podcast app will stop downloading new episodes. This is not what has changed. This has been true for a long time, but here is what Apple changed before iOS 17, when a listener would come back to your show after either 15 days or five episodes that they didn't listen to. When they clicked the unpause automatic downloads button, the Apple podcast app would go and automatically download every single episode that they haven't played. It would catch up on everything. And so you weren't aware of this, but let's say you were a daily podcast. You've published 10 episodes in the past two weeks. The listener was on vacation for two weeks. They come back, they want to catch up with your show, they click the resume button and then boom, their phone right then and there downloads 10 episodes of your show and you get credit for 10 downloads. Again, they might not even listen to those episodes, but you get all those downloads. What's changed is that with iOS 17, Apple podcast will not download previous episodes and will only resume automatically downloading new episodes. And while that sounds like a small change, this has had a massive impact on the industry. Because of listener behavior, automatic downloads are paused and resumed all the time before when a listener would resume automatic downloads. Their phone would download a bunch of episodes and you would get credit for that. And if your show was monetized with the number of downloads that you get with sponsors, you would get paid for all of those downloads. Now those have gone away. And so now on Apple podcasts, there are going to be far fewer episodes downloaded to their phones that listeners don't listen to. And so having said all that, what I will admit and what has been interesting is that the response to this new information has been about 50-50 with the podcasters that I tell this to. So again, when people come to my community and they're like, what the heck, my show is shrinking, I'm like, no, Apple changed something. Some of them learn this news and actually become more upset. And they display a defeatist attitude because it's something out of their control. And they're like, well, I guess that's just the way it goes. Oh, I'm like, look, if that's you, buck up because you can absolutely control how many downloads your podcast gets. And if you don't believe that yet, that just means that you have not learned the skill of doing it. You can control it by getting better and learning the skill of marketing a podcast, of making a podcast that people want to listen to and they want to share with their friends and learning how to talk about it online so that people find out about it and remember that it's there. That's all 100% of your control. And if it feels like it's not that just means that you have not yet learned the skill, you have not yet access the information that can get you there. Other podcasters, however, when they learn this information about the Apple change, you can see their shoulders relax and they display a sense of relief because it was out of their control. And they're like, oh, okay, my listeners don't hate me. It's just a change that Apple made. And those podcasters reluctantly admit that it's actually better off this way because their download numbers are now more accurate. It more accurately reflects their listenership. And so those podcasters say it sucks that my download numbers went down because I thought that my listenership was higher, but I would rather the numbers be more accurate to the people that are actually listening to the show. And I encourage you to try to adapt that attitude as well because I have seen that the most successful podcasters, the one who actually do grow their show and achieve what they want with the show are the ones that have that type of attitude because, like I said before, they understand listenership ebbs and flows that this is a long game and it's okay to have ebbs and flows. And if you'd instead tie your identity and your sense of self-worth and your sense of success to the number of electronic devices that downloaded an NP3 that you put out, which that's all that downloads is. And if that's what you measure your success by, then I'm sorry, but you're in for a very hollow and lonely experience as a podcaster. If instead you tie your worth as a podcaster to the number of people you impact and the number of listeners you interact with who love your show, then I promise you your downloads will grow faster. It's counterintuitive, but I can say from experience that the less I look at my download numbers and worry about them and the more I focus on the people that I serve and the people that I interact with with my show, the faster my download numbers go up. Why? Well, because when I focus on publishing great episodes and telling as many people as I can about those episodes and interacting with these people about the content in the episodes, that's what's super fun. That's super fulfilling and that's what we get our juice from as podcasters. And I'll tell you, every single time a stranger tells me how much they've gotten from the show, whether that's on social media or at a conference or whatever it is, it is absolutely mind blowing to me and it is so cool, it is so fulfilling. And so there's sometimes when my download numbers go down, but the number of new podcasters I met went up and most importantly, the number of customers that I got went up because this is a business. Then who cares how many podcas downloads I got? Of course, that changes if I, you know, if I have sponsors on the show and I get paid per the download, it's a different game, but still my message here is if you are a podcaster who sees download numbers go down and you really, really experience a lot of emotional pain, I feel you, I get it, but that's what we need to work on. We need to tie your sense of worth and success to something else. And when we do that, this number, ironically, when you care about it less than you do now, will go up. So there you have it. Hopefully this episode gave you a framework that you can step through to diagnose when your podcasters numbers go down or when they are just not where you want them to be. If you step through that framework, you look at your premise, has your branding changed, your completion rate is good, has your episode packaging changed, is it effective? Has your marketing consistency on social media and email and other podcasts? Has that changed? Has the strategy on social media changed? Are you using an old strategy or did one of the big tech companies change something about these apps that we rely on? If you step through that checklist, I'm willing to bet you will find something that you can control so that ultimately you can get more downloads, which yes, I get it. We're here to grow the show. So with all this, you should be able to make your download numbers go up faster. And with that, my name has been Kevin Schmidland. I'm your podcast growth coach and for everyone here at Grow the Show, I'll see you next week.