What use are location stats?

If you've ever logged into your podcast hosting service and noticed a new download from a new country, it can be quite an exciting experience.

Just to be clear, geographic stats represent where in the world listeners are located. It often will tell you the country, region and even city or town of where a download occurred.

It may be a place you’ve never heard of or somewhere that you’ve always wanted to visit. The mind races with ideas of who they are and the exotic surroundings around them as they listen.

Aside from the rush of your growing audience, what use are they?

Firstly, if you’ve planned your audience development strategy, location may be a relevant key metric. If you're a Realtor in Winnipeg, dreaming of a local audience, then you’ll want to keep track of the location of your downloads. Interestingly, if you get regular downloads from Berlin, it may mean someone will soon be relocating and using your podcast for insight on the local market. That kind of insight may lead to new opportunities.

Secondly, if you are a big time podcast host that has enough audience to tour as a live show, this data is key. Knowing which cities have high concentrations of listeners, means you know where to plan for the best ticket sales. But what does that mean for smaller podcasts, who aren’t booking theaters in major cities?

Consider you’re building a thought leadership podcast for your business as an example. You have a cluster of downloads growing in Boston, and want to see if you can grow that connection. Podcasting is ‘Glocal’, meaning there is an interconnection based on issues and interests regardless of location. So you have some very like minded Boston ‘glocals’ who have been enjoying your content. 

In the next step of my thought experiment, you discover that a conference you planned to attend is also in Boston. It’s a great opportunity to plan an informal meetup somewhere public, strengthen that relationship and also get feedback. It may only be a handful of people, but you share a real connection around your content.

I know a few podcasters who’ve done this and built great networks off the back of it.

Lastly, location data is also very useful for promotional purposes. If you’ve ever run a promotion on social media, it’ll typically give you the option to target geographically. If your podcast is finding its feet in certain places, then maybe you should promote them specifically in those regions. You might not know why it’s working there, but it doesn’t hurt to experiment.

So beyond the fun, location stats can certainly play a role in helping you measure your audience and be responsive to opportunities.