Everyone loves to talk about why branded podcasts are powerful, but fewer people talk about what actually works (and what really doesn’t).
So, in honor of International Podcast Day, we went straight to the source.
We asked some of the top brands in audio for their best advice: how they measure success beyond downloads, the mistakes they’d fix if they could go back to episode one, and the creative risks that paid off.
Whether you’re planning your first branded show or looking to take an existing one to the next level, consider this roundup your cheat sheet for 2025.
TL;DR:
- Success goes beyond downloads: Brands measure impact through reviews, feedback, client conversations, sales attribution, and long-term trust.
- Impact is often qualitative: Stories, emails, and real-life conversations matter just as much (if not more) than analytics dashboards.
- Perfection isn’t the goal: Authentic storytelling and natural conversations resonate more than overly polished episodes.
- Creative risks pay off: Whether it’s unscripted conversations, solo deep dives, or experimenting with themes, bold moves often drive the biggest wins.
- Podcasts are brand builders: The best shows support sales, partnerships, and thought leadership while creating evergreen content that lasts.
How do you measure the success of your podcast beyond downloads?
“Success is when a leader feels less alone, when a mom is encouraged, when someone chooses to lead with more love or more faith because of what they heard.”
“For me, it’s all about the stories. The emails, the texts, the conversations where someone says, ‘That episode was exactly what I needed,’ or ‘It gave me courage to take the next step,’ or even, ‘I listened with my daughter, and it sparked a conversation we’d never had before.’
Just this week, someone told me she hasn’t missed a single episode because she learns something from everyone. Wow—that’s humbling and energizing all at once.
That’s the kind of impact you can’t measure on a dashboard. Success is when a leader feels less alone, when a mom is encouraged, when someone chooses to lead with more love or more faith because of what they heard.
At the end of the day, if even one life is changed, then the podcast is doing what it was created to do.”
–Lisa Nichols, Technology Partners
Podcast: Something Extra with Lisa Nichols
.png)
“Consider podcast chart rankings, podcast reviews & ratings, consumption rate, unique listeners growth, and awards recognition.”
“We also consider podcast chart rankings, podcast reviews & ratings, consumption rate, unique listeners growth, awards recognition, and, of course, downloads. While somewhat controversial, we also track Listen Notes, Listen Scores & Global Rank.
We are starting to track DTC sales attributed to consumer emails that feature the podcast. Additionally, we have just started tracking the number of consumers who reach out to our consumer care team if they learned about Orgain through the podcast.”
–Keith Hine, Orgain
Podcast: The Good Clean Nutrition Podcast
.png)
“We measure success by the influence the podcast has on our pipeline and closed-won deals.”
“We measure success by the influence the podcast has on our pipeline and closed-won deals. Other indicators of success have been receiving industry recognition. This past year, it won a Silver Stevie Award and has been recognized twice in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SaaS Management Platforms.”
–Nicole Wood, Zylo
Podcast: SaaSMe Unfiltered: The SaaS Management Podcast
“While downloads show us reach, reviews, feedback, and conversations with listeners tell us whether or not we’re truly making a difference.”
“Downloads are incredibly helpful, but words fill in the gaps that numbers can’t. And sometimes the two don’t line up!
Our episode with the lowest consumption rate, for instance, is also the one that clients most often mention as transformative for their teams across a wide variety of industries. So we don’t mind that the consumption rate is lower because we know the impact it is having is hugely valuable.
We’ve also received hundreds of written reviews and had countless conversations with clients about how they’re experiencing and being helped by the show, all of which gives us a pulse on the impact we are having. And at the end of the day, our goal is to provide real value, and while downloads show us reach, reviews, feedback, and conversations with listeners tell us whether or not we’re truly making a difference.”
–McKinlay Otterson, The Arbinger Institute
Podcast: Leading Outward
.png)
“For us, success is tied to impact: Are we building trust with our audience, sparking interest in what we offer, and creating conversations that lead to lasting relationships?”
“While downloads are a helpful metric, we really focus on whether we're genuinely helping people who need support find us when they're ready. We look at whether listeners are taking the next step – visiting our website, engaging with our content, or ultimately becoming customers. For us, success is tied to impact: Are we building trust with our audience, sparking interest in what we offer, and creating conversations that lead to lasting relationships? That kind of engagement gives us a much clearer picture of the podcast’s true value than download numbers alone.”
–Tatiana Diakonova, amicable
Podcast: The Divorce Podcast
.png)
“[Our podcast] is about extending the CES brand year-round, including reinforcing thought leadership and creating a trusted touchpoint with our audience.”
“For us, success goes far beyond download numbers. CES Tech Talk is about extending the CES brand year-round, including reinforcing thought leadership and creating a trusted touchpoint with our audience.
We look at how episodes resonate and engage, especially when they tie back to CES themes, showcase exhibitor innovation, or spotlight community voices. That kind of feedback helps us shape our content strategy.
The podcast also creates cross-functional value. It’s not just a marketing tool — it supports sales, provides programming with a platform for thought leadership, and helps foster partnerships and executive engagement.
Finally, we measure success by whether we’re creating strategic and evergreen content — conversations that are both timely and lasting, making tech insights accessible, human, and relevant long after an episode airs.”
–Nicole Vidovich, Consumer Technology Association
Podcast: CES Tech Talk
.png)
“How often our customers and others in our ecosystem tell us that they have made our podcast required listening for their new hires.”
“We are still learning about podcasts as a branding opportunity, but one of the things that helps us know we are finding success is how often our customers and others in our ecosystem tell us that they have made our podcast required listening for their new hires, or that they have used episodes to facilitate user group discussions!”
–Leslie Jenkins, HITRUST
Podcast: Trust Vs.
.png)
“We look at engagement of the social clips, plus we measure media mentions.”
–Allan Grego, Moneris
Podcast: Just Good Business
.png)
“Positive feedback from ICPs. It's a long-term brand builder.”
“Positive feedback from ICPs. It's a long-term brand builder, so we're not expecting inbound pipeline from a single episode. Often, we'll have an inbound lead who tells us they've been listening to the podcast for a while. Or, we might get a comment or DM on a LinkedIn post from an ICP that we're now on their favourite podcast rotation. It's great anecdotal evidence we're doing the right things!”
–Patrick Cumming, KlientBoost
Podcast: KlientBoost Kitchen
If you could go back to your very first episode, what would you do differently?
.png)
“I’d focus less on perfection and more on storytelling”
“If I could go back to our very first episode, I’d focus less on perfection and more on storytelling. Early on, we were so focused on the technical details, such as sound quality, structure, and timing, that we sometimes overlooked the power of making the conversations feel more relaxed and human.
I’d also build in a stronger strategy from the start around evergreen content, making sure episodes could live on well beyond their release date.
The good news is, every episode since has been a learning experience. We’ve grown into a podcast that feels more authentic, conversational, and aligned with CES’s role as a year-round hub for innovation.”
–Nicole Vidovich, Consumer Technology Association
Podcast: CES Tech Talk
.png)
“I would spend more time before launch developing the content to ensure we had a structure, theme, and more niche topics per episode.”
“I would spend more time before launch developing the content to ensure we had a structure, theme, and more niche topics per episode. That would have made it easier to identify guests and ensure episodes were more closely aligned to our overall content strategy.”
–Nicole Wood, Zylo
Podcast: SaaSMe Unfiltered: The SaaS Management Podcast
.png)
“I was actually trying way too hard to be funny and not enough to be natural.”
“As the host, I was actually trying way too hard to be funny and not enough to be natural. It was giving cringe game show host vibes. We started getting a better response and more engagement when I just dropped trying so hard and focused on having natural conversations.”
–Patrick Cumming, KlientBoost
Podcast: KlientBoost Kitchen
"We didn't really know we could go beyond our own networks to source guests.”
“In our first season, we didn't really know we could go beyond our own networks to source guests. It wasn't until our second season that we realized we could brainstorm with our producer and that we would be able to attract authors and influencers we didn't already know personally. “
–Leslie Jenkins, HITRUST
Podcast: Trust Vs.
.png)
“Make it less about our business and more about our listeners' business.”
–Allan Grego, Moneris
Podcast: Just Good Business
What’s a creative risk you took with your podcast that really paid off?
.png)
“Doing a podcast at all took a big leap of faith!”
“Does 'doing a podcast' count? We really started not knowing much about podcasts, and we often hesitate to invest our budget in things we can't directly measure, so doing a podcast at all took a big leap of faith!”
–Leslie Jenkins, HITRUST
Podcast: Trust Vs.
.png)
“Leaning into authentic, unscripted conversations instead of overly polished, corporate-sounding episodes”
“One creative risk we took was leaning into authentic, unscripted conversations instead of overly polished, corporate-sounding episodes. At first, that felt risky...would audiences expect something more buttoned-up from CES? But it paid off in a big way. Listeners responded to the real, human side of tech stories and the accessibility of thought leadership when it feels like a conversation, not a presentation.
Another big risk was experimenting with topics beyond the show floor, like diving into cultural and societal impacts of technology. That expanded our reach, gave us more evergreen content, and really reinforced CES as a year-round hub for innovation and ideas.
In both cases, stepping outside the “safe” format helped the podcast resonate more deeply with our audience and extend the brand in ways we didn’t expect.”
–Nicole Vidovich, Consumer Technology Association
Podcast: CES Tech Talk
.png)
“Shifted the focus of our interviews to be more 'newsy', less about the company or our partners, and more about current events and their effect on Canadian business.”
“We recently shifted the focus of our interviews to be more 'newsy', less about the company or our partners, and more about current events and their effect on Canadian business. We also added a video component, which has increased the shareability of the content in the form of reels.”
–Allan Grego, Moneris
Podcast: Just Good Business
.png)
“I started doing longer solo episodes where I would just go super deep into a topic.”
“I don't know if it's a huge creative risk, but I started doing these longer solo episodes where I would just go super deep into a topic. This felt like a divergence against the typical host and interviewee dynamic most podcasts have. We still do the interview episodes, but the solo episodes have been some of our most downloaded as we're able to focus on 100% providing value throughout.”
–Patrick Cumming, KlientBoost
Podcast: KlientBoost Kitchen
.png)
“One of the biggest risks we took was stepping away from rigid scripts and instead using discussion points only.”
“One of the biggest risks we took was stepping away from rigid scripts and instead using discussion points only. We encourage free-flowing conversations that are honest, authentic and a little unpredictable – which can feel risky because you’re giving up some control. But this approach has paid off tremendously: the episodes feel more natural, guests are more comfortable opening up, and listeners consistently tell us they connect more deeply with the content because it feels real. That authenticity has become a cornerstone of our podcast’s identity and one of the key reasons our audience keeps coming back.”
–Tatiana Diakonova, amicable
Podcast: The Divorce Podcast
.png)
“Create a branded Orgain podcast when we had absolutely no prior podcasting experience internally.”
“I would say simply taking the leap of faith to create a branded Orgain podcast when we had absolutely no prior podcasting experience internally or with our nutrition communications agency at the time was a bold move. We learned along the way by simply doing, immersing ourselves and speaking to podcasting experts. I am glad we did, as the podcast has exceeded all expectations and is highly valued by Orgain leadership and by its followers.”
– Keith Hine, Orgain
Podcast: The Good Clean Nutrition Podcast
Happy International Podcast Day!
At the end of the day, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for branded podcasts. What these brands prove is that success comes from a mix of strategy, experimentation, and a willingness to learn as you go.
Some wins you can measure on a dashboard—others show up in the stories, feedback, and long-term trust you build with your audience. And often, it’s the creative risks that turn into the biggest rewards.
For more branded podcast know-how, subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, The Branded Podcaster, where we share expert-backed tips and industry happenings.
.webp)
