Podcast 360 Episode 4
Podcast 360 Episode 4 - Sharon Taylor of Triton Digital and Fatima Zaidi of Quill Inc.
Host: Sharon Taylor
Sharon Taylor: Hi, I'm Sharon Taylor, former CEO of Omny Studio and now SVP of Podcast Strategy and product operations for Triton Digital. You might remember me from last week's episode where I was interviewed by James Cridland of Partners. So be sure to check that out after today's conversation.
Fatima Zaidi: Hi, I’m Fatima Zaidi. I'm the founder and CEO of Quill and co-host a full service podcast production agency. We specialize in creating branded audio content for Fortune 1000 brands, and we also hone our hosting analytics tool for brands who are podcasting.
Sharon Taylor: Fatima! Welcome. It's great to talk to you. This is the part where you lay down your two truths and a lie. So can you share those with our listeners?
Fatima Zaidi: Absolutely. My first truth is that I was on a panel with Beyonce's dad. My second truth is that I love open water, shark diving. And my third hope is that I own and host a podcast on business client pet peeves.
Sharon Taylor: Well, it's a tough one. It's either Beyoncé or shark diving. I think that you don't enjoy shark diving. I really hope that you do.
Fatima Zaidi: I guess we'll see [later]!
Sharon Taylor: Yes, we will. Now it's time for listeners to get to know you better. I have three questions for you, and you'll have 60 seconds to answer each. After that, you get to pick one of the subjects that we covered and we can go back into more detail. Ready?
Fatima Zaidi: Ready!
Sharon Taylor: Great! Get that stopwatch.
Right now, is there a data point available in the industry that is most interesting to you and why?
Fatima Zaidi: There might be some internal bias in this answer, but the data point that I'm most fascinated by for the industry - and the one that I probably use the most for client pitches - is that 94% of people who start a 30 minute podcast episode end up listening to the entire episode. Whereas a 30 minute video only has a 12% completion rate. That, to me, is what really helps close the pitch and is the “Golden Nugget” [of information].
Sharon Taylor: Wow, that's fascinating
Do you think that podcasts analytics are doing their job? Or do you think that we need more insights to move the industry forward?
Fatima Zaidi: I think we're both in agreement here that the industry needs a lot of movement when it comes to analytics. I think the challenge is that we're also bogged down by the number of downloads and listeners and not really focusing on the metrics that matter, which is engagement, psychographic, demographic information, and [overall] making sure that you're reaching the right, qualified listeners who are engaged with your content. So, no, I don't think the industry is doing enough to move the data forward. And I think consumers are not doing enough to place emphasis on the right data points.
Sharon Taylor: You’re right. It is going to be hard to ask you to pick to go into one of those!
It feels like there's a new hot topic every week in podcasting. And right now, I think all the chatter is about YouTube and video in general. I'm interested in your thoughts on video podcasting.
Fatima Zaidi: My challenge with video is that when you're adding a screen to the content, you're removing the flexibility that podcasts consumers are looking for. In an earlier point, I mentioned you can be driving to work and listening to podcasts, but you can't be watching a Netflix show or reading an article. That is what is fascinating about audio format - you can be doing it while actively engaged in another activity. By adding a video screen, you're really playing in a whole other content field. When it comes to podcast downloads versus YouTube, the results favor podcasts. And this is what matters most to our clients. For me, I'm an audio format girl.
Sharon Taylor: Right, awesome. It’s been really [nice] to learn about you and [your] podcast, so thank you for sharing all that [information] with our audience. Let’s dive deeper into podcast analytics.
Podcast analytics: How do you gauge demographics, psychographics, engagement, etc whilst also protecting the download metric as the key indicator of performance for the industry?
Fatima Zaidi: I mean I think that it's one key performance indicator (KPI) of the many that you need to be measuring. I think it's absolutely fine to consider the download and unique listener metrics in terms of your KPI success set. But ultimately, I think not enough people in the industry are using the cost per minute of human attention and using listing time as the engagement metric. For example, if somebody is dropping off in the first ten minutes of your show, and it's a 40 minute podcast episode, that still constitutes as a download. This doesn't bode well to the success of your content if your average consumption rate is below 80%.
And so for me, I think the industry needs a bit of an overhaul. Consumers need to come to the table and focus on more metrics other than just “what is my reach” - but rather what is my engagement, and what is my loyal following, and repeat listeners, and binge listeners. A lot of hosting platforms don't provide those metrics today, and to me, is really the game changer of content, not necessarily [the number of] downloads.
Sharon Taylor: I agree with that. Your client base is largely B2B focus, in that you do a lot of branded content. Do you think that those types of analytics are more of what that client base is asking for? Or do you see that [these metrics] would be applicable across, let’s say, those shows that claim they have 10 million downloads and therefore have X amount of dollars in my bank.
Fatima Zaidi: We're in a unique position working with those Fortune 1000 brands in the B2B space. They're definitely a lot more bogged down by the analytics and ROI metrics. We couldn't get away with just providing them downloads and unique listeners. That's actually why we built Co-host.
I think yes, the engagement piece matters more. They want to make sure that because we're a full service marketing agency, we're reaching the right, qualified listeners that they're looking to target. We actually launched a feature recently which shows you what companies, industries and positions are listening to your podcast. This data essentially helps qualify the listener one step further. I don't think I should take all of the credit for the data analytics work that we're doing because we're just in a space where the clients are demanding it. And I think that needs to shift to content creators and other folks who are in this space, not just brands and not just B2B Fortune 1000 brands.
Sharon Taylor: I agree with that. And that's referred to as B2B analytics, isn't it?
Fatima Zaidi: I'm [not] in love with that name because it really singles out B2C companies. What we're thinking about doing is renaming it to companies and industries to include both B2C and B2B companies to realize that being able to see company level data can be beneficial across the board.
Sharon Taylor: As a startup, as long as you remove a lot of vowels from it, you can call the product whatever you want and people will clamor for the product is what I've learned.
Fatima Zaidi: Laughter
Sharon Taylor: But okay, can go into that a little bit more for people? So, if you understand who you are, what companies are listening to your podcasts, like what does that unlock for you if you have those analytics?
Fatima Zaidi: Currently how our clients are using this feature is they're exporting the data and they're giving it to their sales teams for two reasons. One, they can identify how many accounts in their CRM tools are also actively engaged with their podcasts. But if there's a company that's actively engaged with their show, they should be added as an NQL. So, that is actually the goal that we're working on right now with this feature and that is how do we integrate into CRM tools so we can actively highlight this data directly and use it for sales and lead generation.
The reason we actually launched this feature is we were so tired of hearing podcasting was a brand awareness tactic and we wanted to move into more KPIs that can quantitatively show you how a podcast can impact your bottom line to justify the creation of new production budgets. And we found that now sales teams are really engaged. And once you can justify sales and lead generation, whether it's a sponsor or advertiser for your podcast, or even your company, it becomes a lot easier to justify the value and ROI. It's like PR - how do you measure the tenuous ROI of something that you can't touch?
And finally…
Whenever you start thinking about adding more analytics onto things or starting to shift that narrative a little bit away from, you know, there's more than just the download. It [seems] very easy to introduce a lot of confusion, especially in buying agencies and people that are already a bit hesitant to get into the podcasting space. How do we push those conversations forward without displacing the download and making sure that more people enter the market?
Fatima Zaidi: It is a bit of an education. We have certainly turned away clients who have come to us as it’s just been a vanity project where they want to become famous or influencers and all they care about is the number of people that are listening to the podcast, and less about the value that they're getting from the content. And ultimately, I will say that if you fall into that camp then we're probably not the right fit from an agency perspective. You could probably pump, you know, thousands of dollars into Castbox campaigns and just get a download, whether it be the right download or not TBD.
I think it's a bit of an education and most brands that we work with and interact with, it's about making sure we're reaching the right qualified user. And there's so many different KPIs that we measure and we're not discounting downloads and unique listings. We're just saying that it needs to be added to a large data set that we're looking at to see whether or not the content is resonating with the consumers. Most people, not all, seem to understand this. And that's why I love working with brands. But I do think that, you know, maybe in my next life I’ll launch something that's catered more towards indie content creators to try to educate them on the importance of moving the industry forward with data.
Sharon Taylor: Yeah, cool. Either that or an influencer workshop.
Fatima Zaidi: Laughter. Yeah, I saw that.
Sharon Taylor: Well, it has been a great experience getting to know more about you and your podcasting career. And I know that listeners will benefit from this conversation. I guess it's just one more thing for us to do. I get to make my final guess for two truths and a lie there.
Fatima Zaidi: Here we go.
Sharon Taylor: I'm swayed a little bit by the Beyoncé one, but I am going to stick with my original answer. And I think that the shark diving was a lie.
Fatima Zaidi: Okay. So…drumroll.. listen to the episode to find out!
Sharon Taylor: Thank you to Fatima for taking the time to share with us today. You can find her sitting in the host chair on next week's episode where she has the opportunity to turn the mic around on another founder.
Follow Sharon Taylory SVP of Podcast Strategy and Product Operations at Triton Digital and Fatima Zaidi, founder and CEO of Quill Inc. @zaidiafatima, @quill.inc
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Podcast 360.
Shaping the podcast industry!
Executive Producers: Brittany Temple and Adell Coleman
Editor: Brittany Temple
Host: Amanda B. Nazareno
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