Have you ever been asked questions like:
- “Is the podcast driving leads?”
- “What’s the ROI of the show?”
- “Who are our podcast listeners?”
- “Are we hitting the right audience?”
If so, don’t worry, we have too.
As marketers, these are common questions we get about all campaigns and initiatives we run. But with podcasts in particular, it can be more… well, challenging to answer compared to other channels.
For too long, we’ve had to settle for presenting the total number of downloads the podcast has received and, if we’re lucky, unique listeners. But this just doesn’t cut it. We like to call downloads a vanity metric. Yes, they’re helpful to track and benchmark your show, but they don’t answer any of the questions above.
So, what do we do?
Luckily, over the past few years, podcast analytics tools have taken a giant leap in working to better understand audiences and how a podcast is generating impact for a brand. And some of the insights we’ll be covering today are podcast demographics, psychographics, and firmographics.
In this blog, we’ll be diving into:
- What demographics, psychographics, and firmographics mean in podcasting
- The importance of gathering these insights (but I bet you already know)
- How to effectively action the insights
What are podcast demographics, psychographics, & firmographics?
1. Podcast demographics (who they are)
Podcast demographics encompass the statistical characteristics of your podcast audience.
This includes attributes like:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Education
- Income bracket
- Household makeup
In a podcast-specific context, these insights help you answer whether or not you’re reaching your intended audience segment.
2. Podcast psychographics (what they care about)
Podcast psychographics speak more to the attitudes, values, interests, hobbies, and preferences of your audience.
This includes areas like:
- What excites them?
- What hobbies or interests do they have?
- What social media platforms do they use?
- What are their content and topic preferences?
In a podcast-specific context, these insights help tailor content topics, tone, and guest selection to match listeners’ interests and preferences.
3. Firmographics (where they work)
Podcast firmographics are the business-specific traits, like the company name or the industry, and details about the listener, like their seniority level and job title.
This includes attributes like:
- Job role
- Job seniority
- Company size
- Company name
- Average revenue
- Company industry
- Company location
For example, this could look like discovering that the VP of Finance at a mid-sized SaaS company or the Head of Legal at an enterprise healthcare brand is all listening.
In a podcast-specific context, these insights are critical, especially for B2B brands to uncover whether you’re reaching your ICP (ideal customer profile) and even tie the podcast back to sales pipelines.
Demographics tell you who your audience is.
Psychographics tell you why they listen.
Firmographics tell you if they’re the right fit for your brand.
Why these metrics (really) matter
If you’ve been working with your brand's podcast for a while, you know one thing is for sure: there are limitations around podcast data.
Traditional podcast analytics like downloads, followers, and subscribers just don’t give us the insights we need to justify the cost and resources of a podcast. But demographics, psychographics, and firmographics do (new listeners and consumption metrics also help with this, but we don’t have the time to dive into everything).
Here are some of the biggest opportunities you can uncover from tracking these audience insights:
- Better content strategy: Create episodes your ideal audience actually wants by understanding their interests and which podcast content they engage with.
- Stronger targeting: Refine your growth and distribution strategy by nailing down exactly who your ideal listener is.
- Internal alignment: Help sales, product, and comms teams understand who’s tuning in.
- Proving ROI: Validate that your podcast is reaching high-value audience segments.
Where to find these podcast audience insights
Before CoHost was… CoHost, we were only Quill, a podcast production agency. Our team was getting frustrated with not being able to provide our clients the metrics they needed to understand who’s listening, prove brand impact, and justify production budgets.
The analytics and insights we needed just didn’t exist. So we built it. Thus, CoHost was born.
And I don’t mean for this to be a sales push. I truly believe in the product we’ve built and the podcast data we provide brands. So, let’s dive into the insights you can gather through CoHost:
- Demographic insights: Listener age, location, income, and family makeup.
- Psychographic insights: Listener hobbies, interests, social media behavior, and lifestyle.
- Firmographic insights: Company name, industry, size, location, job title, and seniority level.
Even use firmographic filters to compare how specific episodes attract different types of listeners. For example, whether VPs of Marketing engage more with tactical topics or trend-focused interviews.
Use cases: How marketers can leverage this data
Let’s dive into practical ways B2B marketers can turn podcast listener insights into data-driven decisions across content and growth:
1. Better targeting for growth campaigns with firmographics
Scenario: You’re launching a paid growth campaign to promote your branded podcast on LinkedIn and across podcast listening apps.
How audience data helps: Let’s say CoHost reveals that 60% of your current audience works in SaaS, and most are mid-level product managers at companies with 200–500 employees.
Instead of broadly promoting your podcast to “tech professionals,” you can refine your targeting to reach similar job titles, industries, and company sizes.
That means:
- More efficient ad spend
- Higher chance of acquiring qualified listeners
- More alignment between your podcast and overall ABM or demand gen strategy
2. Tailoring episode topics to match demographic & psychographic profiles
Scenario: You’re planning your next podcast season but are unsure which themes will resonate most with your audience.
How audience data helps: Your CoHost psychographic data shows a strong interest in remote work, entrepreneurship, and AI. Demographics and firmographics show your audience is primarily 25–34-year-old marketers in North America.
Armed with this information, you can:
- Invite startup founders or remote culture experts as guests
- Develop a mini-series on how AI is transforming marketing roles
- Use an informal, energetic tone to match the preferences of younger, innovation-focused professionals
3. ABM strategy support & reaching the right target accounts
Scenario: Your sales team has a list of 100 target accounts they’re focused on this quarter.
How audience data helps: You can use CoHost’s firmographic data to see how many listeners come from those target accounts, or which companies listening match the same size, industry, or buyer titles.
If you realize you’re not hitting the right target listener account, it’s a sign you might want to adjust:
- Distribution channels (e.g., paid promotion on niche sites)
- Episode themes (e.g., content relevant to pain points in that vertical)
- Guest selection (e.g., invite execs from those accounts to build affinity)
You can even send podcast clips or blog recaps to sales as warm follow-up content.
4. Smarter guest outreach and positioning
Scenario: You’re sourcing guests for an upcoming series and want to boost credibility and discoverability.
How audience data helps: Firmographic and psychographic insights tell you your audience includes B2B marketing execs who care about customer retention and RevOps.
You can:
- Invite guests who reflect that expertise (e.g., a CMO at a retention-first SaaS brand)
- Improve guest promotion by showing them their target audience is already listening
- Use language that mirrors audience interests in outreach (e.g., “Our audience is deeply engaged with retention metrics and marketing ops content”)
All of these use cases also only contribute to proving podcast ROI to leadership. When they ask, “Is this podcast actually worth it?”, you’ll have the answers.
Uncover who your podcast audience is
At the end of the day, understanding your podcast audience isn’t just about collecting more data; it’s about asking better questions and making smarter decisions because of it.
Demographics, psychographics, and firmographics move your podcast beyond surface-level metrics and into real insight (music to a marketer's ears).
They help you see
- Who is listening
- Why they care
- Whether they’re the right audience for your business
And when you have that clarity, everything improves: content planning, distribution, stakeholder buy-in, and your ability to connect podcast performance back to real business impact.
Your podcast already has an audience. The opportunity now is to truly understand them. If you’d like to learn more about how CoHost can boost your show’s podcast analytics and audience insights, book some time with our team.
