In a 2025 YouGov survey, 66% of South African respondents reported listening to podcasts for at least an hour a week, the highest proportion among the markets included in the study. According to Imarc, South Africa’s podcasting market is poised for significant growth over the coming decade, driven by rising smartphone adoption, improved internet access, and growing demand for local content. A 2022 report by Edison Research found that weekly podcast listeners in South Africa consume an average of four episodes per week.
No such thing as a podcast? Podcast listeners may recognise the nod to No Such Thing as a Fish https://www.nosuchthingasafish.com/, but the question remains: what exactly is a podcast? It sounds like a simple question, but according to Gavin Kennedy, founder and CEO of Solid Gold Studios, there’s no right answer. The problem, he says, is that we use the same word to describe several fundamentally different things. Broadly speaking, he sees podcasts falling into three categories:
Type A: hobby podcast
Primary goal: Created for enjoyment, learning, networking, or personal interest.
How success is measured: The creator enjoys the process and builds connections or knowledge. Audience size is secondary.
Type B: media podcast
Primary goal: Build a large audience that can be monetised through advertising, sponsorships, or subscriptions.
How success is measured: Audience growth, downloads, listenership, and revenue. In this model, the audience effectively becomes the product sold to advertisers.
Type C: business podcast
Primary goal: Support a broader business objective, such as building trust, demonstrating expertise, educating customers, or strengthening relationships.
How success is measured: Business outcomes rather than audience size. Success might look like stronger client relationships, enhanced credibility, lead generation, or improved customer retention.
“The mistake people make is assuming all podcasts are trying to do the same thing,” says Kennedy. “The goals, the audiences, and the measures of success can be completely different.”
He says most companies default to Type B thinking, even when their needs align with Type C. This leads to wasted effort and disappointment.
‘What’s your business strategy?’
That’s the question Kennedy says businesses need to answer before they think about how to approach podcasting as a potential business tool.
Most businesses are not media companies. Yet Kennedy says many organisations approach podcasting as though they are trying to become one.
“They look at downloads and audience size because that’s how media businesses measure success,” he says. “But if you’re an accounting firm, an engineering consultancy, or a software company, that’s probably not your objective.”
In the podcast-as-media-platform model, mass audiences are the aim. But for many businesses, a handful of highly engaged listeners may be far more valuable than thousands of casual ones. A podcast aimed at prospective clients, existing customers, or industry stakeholders may never generate blockbuster listenership, but it can still strengthen relationships, demonstrate expertise, and build trust over time.
The question, Kennedy argues, is not “How many people listened?” but “What was the business outcome?”
In a nutshell, measure the podcast against the reason you started it, whether to deal with product FAQs or to court a specific set of high-value clients (Gavin says you only need 15 listeners if that’s your aim). That means businesses need to decide what kind of podcast they are creating before deciding how to measure it.
Kennedy’s advice is to start with the outcome, not the format. Before investing in microphones, studios, and distribution, businesses should ask a simple question: what are we trying to achieve? Kristia van Heerden, co-host of The Fat Wallet Show, would add another: do we have anything worth saying?
Why authenticity matters
Launched in 2016, The Fat Wallet Show ran for 256 episodes and built a devoted following of listeners looking for practical, jargon-free financial guidance. As Van Heerden and her co-host Simon Brown consider a reboot of the show nearly a decade after its launch, she has a clear view of what made it successful.
Having a clear purpose is one thing. Giving people a reason to spend an hour listening is another. “If you don’t have a point of view, then you shouldn't have a podcast,” she says. “A podcast is very revealing.” Unlike many forms of content marketing, long-form audio exposes inconsistency and insincerity over time.
“If you are full of shit, people are going to know it, and they’re not going to listen,” Van Heerden says.
The Fat Wallet Show taught her that impact matters more than audience size as a success metric. Part of the show’s “lightning in a bottle” was the organic community that grew from it, with every episode structured around listener questions, personal stories and interactions with the Facebook community (set up by a listener).
“We’ve had material impact on people’s financial life in a very tangible way,” says Van Heerden. She tells of a listener who would email her every year to update her on his net worth. “Every year he’s worth a million rand more, and he’s like, ‘This is because of you.’”
She’s quick to admit that luck played a big part in the podcast’s success, but she says The Fat Wallet Show didn’t appeal to people because it was entertaining, but because it addressed questions people genuinely needed answered.
“We talked about things like divorce, retirement, having children, starting over financially,” she says.
Since then, the medium has matured. The reboot will move from audio-only to video, as Van Heerden says audiences now expect this, and the episodes will be themed, rather than dealing with any and all questions sent in during the week. This will improve searchability and cater to custom listener needs.
The power of specificity
While The Fat Wallet Show succeeded by helping listeners navigate life’s biggest financial decisions, 1% Better: Hidden Stories in Sport has found its audience in a very different niche. Co-host Xylon van Eyck believes podcasts are particularly powerful when they serve a clearly defined community with a genuine appetite for deeper knowledge.
“Our audience are high-achieving people,” he says. “They want to be the best version of themselves, and when it comes to their sport, they want to get the maximum out of it.”
The questions themselves reflect the specificity of the audience. Van Eyck says he and his co-host (a medical doctor and human performance specialist) receive a range of questions covering everything from shoes and nutrition to sleep and stress management. “There’s no time limit, which is wonderful,” says Van Eyck. “The long-form nature is a real luxury.”
While niche audiences may be smaller, they can create value in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Van Eyck is quick to dispel the myth that most podcasters are making a living directly from their shows.
“Most people’s audiences aren’t as big as you’d think, and most podcasters aren’t earning a living from it directly,” he says. “That said, there are a lot of indirect benefits.”
In his case, the podcast has opened doors to elite athletes, researchers, and industry leaders, while strengthening his professional network and personal brand. Last year, it even earned him a VIP invitation to the final stage of the Tour de France.
“Those kinds of networking experiences are almost unquantifiable,” he says.
Like Van Heerden, he believes audiences can quickly spot inauthenticity. “Podcast audiences are pretty savvy,” he says. “Inauthenticity will expose itself over time.”
Van Eyck’s advice is not to underestimate the persistence required. Building an audience is often slower than aspiring podcasters expect, particularly in specialist niches.
“Most podcasts fail because it’s such a long grind,” he says. His show has published a new episode every Friday for two years without missing a week. Consistency, he believes, matters far more than perfection.
6 podcasting lessons from people who’ve done it
- Define success before you hit record: Audience size should not always be the goal. Decide whether you’re trying to educate customers, build authority, strengthen relationships, generate leads, or create a media business, then measure accordingly. As Kennedy notes, use your business strategy to lead your podcast strategy.
- Don’t start a podcast because you think you should: A podcast needs a genuine point of view. If you’re only launching one because everyone else seems to have one, audiences will notice.
- Go deeper, not broader: The most successful podcasts often serve a specific audience exceptionally well rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
- Solve real problems The podcasts that build loyal audiences tend to answer questions people genuinely care about.
- Go beyond the “usual suspect” metrics: Some of the most valuable outcomes of podcasting are difficult to measure: stronger relationships, new opportunities, industry credibility, and unexpected conversations.
- Commit to the long game: Building an audience takes longer than most people expect.
Podcasts for people… and machines
While conversations around podcasting tend focus on human listeners, Kennedy believes the medium may become increasingly important for another audience: artificial intelligence.
As search engines and AI assistants move beyond simple keyword matching towards contextual understanding, podcasts create rich stores of information that can help systems understand what an organisation knows, believes, and specialises in.
Kennedy says the transcript of a podcast episode contains far more context than a typical webpage or marketing brochure. Over time, this content can help shape how AI tools interpret and surface information about a business, its products, and its expertise.
The implications are still emerging, but Kennedy believes organisations should start thinking of podcasts as more than a communications channel. They are also a way of creating a searchable body of knowledge.
“Even if no human listens, the content may still create value by helping machines better understand the organisation behind it,” he says.
