How to Quantify Your PR Impact in Podcasts: Six Best Practices (2021)

Podcasting has quickly become one of the most popular media formats. Picture: Soundtrap.

The podcast medium has sailed from obscurity to being the hottest media format in a matter of years. New exciting podcasts are launching every day and by 2020, a staggering 55 % of Americans listen to podcasts.

Meanwhile, communications professionals are under increasing pressure to innovate and strategically apply the data being generated in today’s digital society. Many areas of online communication have taken huge steps towards being fully quantifiable, such as Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing. However, PR management within the realm of “spoken media” — to which podcasts belong — has been slow to adapt. The process of collecting, compiling and assessing data from different podcast campaigns has been practically impossible… Until now.

With new AI-driven media monitoring tools, PR managers can now measure the impact of their work — in real-time. With a few easy steps, each mention of your brand is automatically captured, analyzed and reported. Finally, the recurring question from C-suites on how to properly evaluate PR ROI can be answered.

But where to even begin? And how should a modern and effective podcast coverage be structured? To ensure you’re starting your podcast monitoring strategy in the most effective way, here are six best practices to quantify your podcast PR impact.

Six Best Practices for Podcast Media Monitoring

1. Set Your Goals!

First things first. In order to measure the effectiveness of any podcast campaign, you need to determine what you wish to achieve. Is your goal to enhance general brand awareness, highlight a certain topic or perhaps drive sales for your new product?

Either way, your podcast campaign goals should always be specific and quantifiable. Try and answer the following questions:

• What are you trying to convey?

→ the overarching goal of your campaign: Key messages and preferable outcomes, such as Lead Generation, a shift in reputation or increased Share of Voice

• What quantity will you measure?

→ think numbers here: Purchases through coupons, sign-ups, number of mentions, reach, PR-value etc.

• How will you collect and measure your data?

→ Here is where the fun ends if you plan to do this work manually. However, if you are using a powerful media monitoring software for podcasts, this is where the fun begins.

With All Ears, you have the possibility to analyze anything from message exposure to PR impact.

2. Automation is a Must

No team can manually monitor the entire world of podcasts, let alone be up-to-date on new shows, calculate their impact and report in a structured fashion. Thankfully, the new generation of media monitoring tools can automate your PR coverage to a stunning degree.

We recommend you start by implementing Automated reports and Email alerts. These are two must-haves in any modern podcast coverage strategy. From there, you have the perfect foundation for a streamlined monitoring workflow.

For example, ensure that your C-Suite receives an automated copy of your monthly podcast performance, which could include KPI’s such as: Number of mentions, reach, PR value and share of voice. Is your brand mentioned in a negative way? Implement Email alerts for these mentions in order to quickly respond.

3. Widen Your Horizons

Not every impact is found on the biggest and most well-known channels. Smaller podcasts — with often very engaged audiences — are also essential to the performance of your PR activities. Stay updated on current industry events and trends by covering relevant news and finance podcasts. In addition, benchmarking your media presence against competitors can generate invaluable insights on best practices and help you better position yourself on the market.

In essence, don’t just limit your podcast coverage to mentions of your brand — cast an industry-wide net that includes competitors, podcast influencers and relevant news in your media monitoring strategy.

4. Act Quickly When Needed

People change, and so must you. A successful PR management is able to quickly adapt its outbound strategy to industry developments. Thereby, new customers can be discovered while meeting the current audience at relevant touchpoints.

In order to be agile, you need to implement a certain degree of automation to your media monitoring (mentioned in paragraph 2 “Automation is a must”). By being alerted to negative mentions, you can respond immediately to critique or address concerning topics — before they turn into full-blown PR crises.

You should also invest time to regularly revise the effectiveness of your PR strategy. With tools like All Ears, each campaign can easily be tracked and its respective impact measured. In addition, it is a perfect opportunity to check if your media coverage is up-to-date. This regular revision ensures that your PR management is flexible and continually improved.

5. Benchmark, Always

The best business insights often come from outside your organization. And a certain type of actor is of special importance: Competitors. As much as you should benchmark your product or service against the competitive landscape, so too should you gauge your PR content against the best in your industry. Where are they mentioned? What is being said? How large is their share of voice? etc.

By continually benchmarking your performance, you can gain access to novel best practices, growth opportunities and much more.

6. Support Your Colleagues

When your podcast PR strategy is in place, the data will start to flow into your organization. Product reviews, positive mentions, critique, news and competitors — all will be made available.

For example: If one competitor is showing great success from their last campaign, share the content with your sales team. You should also utilize negative mentions about your brand to inform your product development and customer service team.

To achieve effective and continual information sharing, good reporting is key. Your colleagues, which are often not in the PR world, need clear and easily understood data to work with. Ensure that your reports are created with accessibility in mind and perhaps even tailored to the respective receiver. Should your C-suite receive the same report as your customer service team?

Want to Begin Measuring Your Podcast Impact? Let us help you!

All Ears is the world’s leading media monitoring service for spoken media. With innovative AI and user-friendly interfaces, we can help you to:

• Monitor everything, from your own brand and spokespersons to competitors and relevant themes.

• Automate your media coverage by implementing Email-alerts and automatic reports.

• Analyze your PR impact across different channels, themes and single keywords. Benchmark your podcast activities against competitors and see in which context you are being mentioned. You can even measure sentiment: if people are talking positively or negatively about your covered topic!

• Report — create good-looking reports with relevant metrics such as reach, share of voice, context analysis, and where your keywords are being mentioned.

• Share interesting mentions from thousands of podcasts across the world with colleagues and people outside your organization.

This is All Ears

The media landscape is changing rapidly: today, the majority of consumption takes place in voice and audio, and it’s increasing every year. 

All Ears was started to help people monitor, understand, and measure the new spoken media landscape. We are the first media monitoring and social listening service with full coverage of spoken media. We track and analyze millions of podcast-, Youtube- and TikTok channels.

Our customers use us to find out when and how they are mentioned, crisis management and for in-depth analysis of their media presence.