The Complete Roadmap to Understanding Your Audience

How to Gather Your Podcast Listener Demographics

Demographics are important for any podcaster who wants to monetize, especially with sponsors. Any advertiser will want to know WHO listens, and whether or not they’re interested in targeting that audience. Once gathered, the podcast listener demographic information can be used on your website, in a media kit, or just in conversation with potential partners. Here’s how I gather info using surveys as well as some trickery to use if your audience is too small to survey, or if they’re not very participatory.

Step 1 – Create a survey.

• For this, I use Wufoo. Here are the reasons I love Wufoo:
• It’s inexpensive/free
• It’s incredibly easy to create the questions and even has templates for whatever type of survey you’re trying to make, like a demographic one, for example.
• It’s very easy to implement on a website with a WordPress Plugin, or you can just send people to a self-created and named Wufoo page
• You can customize the look, colors and fonts to match your branding
• They have really nice and easy to visualize reporting for the results.

If you want to sell your audience something eventually, it might be smart to also ask them what types of things they might want to learn in this survey for your own information.

Other resources for creating surveys include (none of these are affiliate links):

• Gravity Forms – included for free with Podcast Websites!
• Survey Monkey
• Google Forms
• Typeform

NOTE! Gravity Forms is FREE when you are a Podcast Websites member – so you get the plugin AND support on how to use it! Not a member yet? Book a call with James and find out what it entails now.

Step 2 – Make sure to include important info advertisers need.

Sponsors and advertisers don’t need their name or location, but they WILL need a host of information that will tell them who they are and how much money do they have to spend on the advertiser’s product or service. Here’s a list to get you started.

• Age (Are they broke or on a budget)
• Marital status (are they in a dual-income situation)
• # of children (are they spending all their money on feeding and clothing or are they interested in products for parents)
• Employment status (Unless this is obvious by your show entitled “accountants” your partners will want to know if they have a job or go it alone)
• Average household income (again, can they afford luxury products, services, or do they need help saving money)
• Education level (This is related both to the intellectual level of the listener as well as their income potential – would they see value in XYZ, etc.)

In addition, you may want to gauge their level of interest in products or services related to your topic of interest, depending on what you talk about. Or, if you have a general show about “tech” or “parenting” you could just ask them to check off a general list of interests, such as “gadgets, home, sports, music, entertainment, comedy, romance, sci-fi, and so on.

Step 3 – Get people to fill it out.

Sadly, this part is trickier than you’d think. If you don’t already have a HUGE group of listeners in a Facebook group like She Podcasts, you’ll have to ask people on the show to fill it out on your website. Make sure you create a script you can read from at the beginning and the end of your episode that asks people to fill it out and tells them how much it will help you “get to know them.” (This is not a lie, you are trying to serve them several things, not just get their cash for someone.)

If you DO have a group, I suggest pinning a post to the top and asking each new member to fill it out, or perhaps running a contest to choose one random winner a week to win a prize. Anything with an incentive so you can get to know them.

You’ll need about 250 responses – you can start with 100 as a good cross section but 250 is really more optimal. So really encourage people to fill it out! Tell them how fast it is, how much it helps, how easy, please do it, etc. Beg….you’ll most likely have to resort to begging because people are so busy. But whatever works.

Step 4 – Tally the results.

You can get a good report from Wufoo or any of the survey services out there online – but you’ll really want to know the percentage of people who are the MOST. So, for example you’ll want to be able to create a series of statements that sound like this:

80% of our listeners are female.
73% of our listeners have some college education, with 65% having a bachelor’s or higher.
52% of our users are Mac users
Only 32% of our users have children, but 75% are divorced.

Any statements you can make to be able to sell your audience to the advertising partner that will make them appealing – either their buying power, their need for your service, whatever stands out.

Step 5 – Create a media kit.

Download the “how to create a media kit” checklist from the Podcast Success Academy so you can present this information in the right order. Then, pitch your potential sponsors and advertisers and away you go!

There are a few other ways to see who your audience is, and these ways are MOSTLY accurate.

Facebook Audience Insights

If you have a Facebook page, you can take a look at the demographics under Audience Insights. Obviously, the exact people listening won’t be the EXACT people who like your Facebook page, but it’ll be a close enough match to count for your media kit. 

We’ve added a tutorial on exactly how to do this in the Podcast Success Academy!

Learn how to turn this on and read them by logging in or signing up for your free Podcast Success Academy membership now.)

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has a section within it that allows you to see your website demographics. However, you have to have the feature turned on to see them. Once they’re turned on, you are able to see age, gender, and general interests. This feature is so important for you whether you plan on surveying or getting sponsors or not. It’s almost vital that we know who we’re talking to as well as who wants to learn from us, too.

We’ve also added a tutorial on how to turn this on and read the statistics in the Podcast Success Academy!

Read your audience in Google Analytics by signing in or registering for free with The Podcast Success Academy and learning how, now.

Incidentally, we also have an article here on Google’s new podcasting strategy and how you can use it to get more listeners. 

Once you’ve gathered your intel, we’ve written a guide on how to get podcast testimonials as well, for that social proof. Head on over and get to know your peeps!