Solving the podcast problem

Pitching podcasts is a growth market – 37 percent of Americans have listened to a podcast in the last month, and that number is rising about 5 percentage points each year. Many of the 1 million+ podcasts out there are hungry for guests and content ideas.

But the very size and newness of the opportunity poses the largest problem for PR pros – how do you know which podcasts matter?

It gets worse: The only metric podcasters will currently give you is the number of “downloads.” Which doesn’t really indicate how many people have actually listened to the podcast. And even then, the only way to get the download metric is from the podcaster directly.

But there is a brand new tool that changes all that. It gives you the number of monthly “listens” for the podcasts that matter. Now you can sort your list of potential podcast targets by “reach,” just like you do your TV and online outlets. And better still, you can report a metric to your executives that they actually care about: the number of people who listen.

Here’s the info from this tool for one of my favorite podcasts – see how it reports “monthly listens”?

The tool is Podchaser Pro, and here’s how I found out about it. I gave a training on pitching podcasts for my Inner Circle back in September. One of my listeners told me that Podchaser was doing private beta testing of a podcast database that contained reach numbers – think of it as a media database that’s focused solely on podcasts. I contacted one of the co-founders and he gave me a demo and offered to allow my Inner Circle members to participate in the private beta.

Several members tried it out and liked it. And now that Podchaser Pro is live, they’ve become paying customers. Not only do they get the metrics they need to build strategic lists, but they also get contact info for each show (notoriously difficult to find for podcasts).

The Podchaser Pro team is offering my followers 50 percent off your first month to try this out (no contract, cancel any time, already a very economical rate). I’m an affiliate for them because I know they are solving a problem that many of my followers have – I get asked all the time about how to evaluate podcast opportunities.

Check out what they’re offering. If you opt in, one of their team members will use your organization or client to find podcast opportunities in any niche. So you’ll walk away with that one list, at least.

Try it out and let me know what you think.