Finding Sponsors for your Podcast

Business Brain, episode 548 for Casual Friday, May 10, National Small Business Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we analyze them so that we can use them to tune our business brains together. Each and every episode that we all sort of gather here together. And here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm.

Dave Hamilton and I'm out here in Northern California. Shannon Jean, Small Business Day. That's amazing.

I didn't even know that was a thing. Yep.

A salute to all the heroes and you know, of small business owners. And you know, I posted that comment not too long ago. How you know, our we have a small business where it's a Business Brain T shirt. And on the back of that shirt there's a bunch of terms that I associate with entrepreneurs, small business owners, and I use the word hero because I really think the hero framework is terrific, you know, for us as we're battling through things. And I think you should put yourself in that seat as you fight these battles. Yep. And I actually had quite a few people pushed back on that and said, no, it's not applicable. Da, da da da. Too much. So I did another post the next day where I said, no, this is why this works, and kind of broke it down. But much respect to everybody out there trying to create something from nothing. It's the Teddy Roosevelt. The person in the arena is the true hero, not the critic and the person on the outside. It's the person that's taking action and getting it done.

Getting it done. Yeah.

Happy Friday.

Happy Friday to you and Happy Casual Friday to you too. I realized if you're watching the video that I had it, it said Friday, May 9, 2024, which doesn't exist. It's actually no. 10th. Yep.

That's May 10th. That's great.

Yeah, it's fixed now, so it's all good.

Perfect.

Everything. Everything's going to be okay.

Yes.

We're building the airplane as we fly it usually. And Steven, Steven has a note for us which I found is perfect, in fact, for National Small Business Day. He says, hey, guys, I recently discovered your show. Your many years of production experience and practice. Being in front of a mic is self evident as you both make it sound easy, which I am quite certain it is not. Beautifully done. Some feedback from a fellow entrepreneurial introvert, Dave. Thank you. He says you did that episode on Leave Me Alone Money or passive income, he says, is an old friend for me. Enough money to never, ever need a boss or to have your time or personal freedom controlled by your livelihood. At the same time, the passive income does not mean you revert to couch potato or sloth status. You simply have bought back your time with your family, those important in your lives, or time to pursue other endeavors. I always try to seek a balance. Stephen continues. I cannot remember where I first heard this phrase, which resonates and keeps me helpful. Keeps who? Helps me keep things in perspective. Otherwise, I would credit the originator. And he says on your deathbed, you'll never wish you had spent more time at the office. What keeps me young, Steven says, these days I manage my managers and patient with their occasional mistakes, and lavish is my praise when they knock it out of the park. I monitor and encourage and provide input and guidance as needed. However, I let them run things as they see fit, which is difficult for a once chronic micromanager. In a number of instances, some do the job better than I ever could. In other situations, not so much. However, it's not me having to do all the tasks any longer. It is highly skilled individuals for which I am grateful to them all. Much happiness, success and prosperity in all your pursuits. Thank you for that, Steven. That's.

That, that's awesome.

Yeah, it is inspirational. It is aspirational and. And it really sums up so many of the things we've talked about on this show for so many years. Right. Like the idea of letting go and letting people who could do things 80% as well as you is what gives you your time back to either move on to other things or to expand your existing business like it's the only way you get your time back.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And being able to give up and understand that especially in the beginning, there's going to be a dip in productivity, maybe quality, whatever. But then it'll scale back up and you'll be able to step away. And it's hard to do, especially the first time, maybe even the second time. But once you do it, and I wish I was better at it, and people ask me about it all the time, but it's difficult. And who doesn't like to be the center of things? You know, this revolves around me and I'm important. I'm the hero.

I'm the hero.

That's right. Stepping out of that and giving up, you're like, okay. And I, I was forced to do it because I'm just no good at so many things. You know, I'm. I'm pretty good leader. I think I'm a deal guy, you know, I get things started. I'm the action bias to action. I'm just like, go, go, go, let's go. But eventually, you know, your business kind of gets into management mode, right, where you' infrastructure and all stuff. And you know that that's.

It's not your thing.

Doesn't. It does. Doesn't interest me quite as much. And so, you know, it's t. You have to get out of the way if you want to, then let that go and everything. And I've failed miserably at it, but I've. I've been successful at it enough where.

You know, I continue to fail miserably at it, like, and it. And I just work at it and it's fine. Yeah. You know, I let my, I let my team know I'm. I don't believe I am the best manager and we can all kind of help each other here. You know, I can help you with the things that, that I am good at that you need help with and you can help me be a better manager. And, you know, it's.

Yeah.

Like.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It's just how it is.

Yeah, it's how it is. And we all have to learn and that, that being honest and having great communication is, is the way you get over a lot of that because your people aren't really used. Usually they're not expecting you to say something like that.

Right.

So.

Right. Especially not on day one. I mean, I tell people, and I know I've said it on the show before, but, you know, we're here. I tell people, look, I can be a chronic micromanager. I don't like that part about myself, but I know it exists. And now you know it exists. And so we're going to make a deal that if either one of us notices me micromanaging you, that is a conversation that, that is what needs to be the catalyst to a conversation. And you can bring it up or I can bring it up, and there's never going to be an issue with you bringing it up because something's going on. Something's going on that's causing me to, you know, revert back to my old ways. So. And it might be something with me. It might have nothing to do with you, or it might actually have something to do with you. And that's also okay because we're going to talk about it and we're going to fix it. So.

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I think, I think that's terrific. And having that freedom has allowed, like, allowed me to start this show with you and say every Tuesday we're going to do this. I'm going to get. And we've done it for 10 years, and I think it's great. And, you know, talking about business, and I consider this a business. It generates. It generates revenue for us.

Yes.

And it has for a long, long time. And one of the. I would say the number one question I get about this business and the podcast is how do you get advertisers? How do you get sponsors? And, you know, we've had Amazon Pharmacy and Shopify and textexpander. I mean, if you go to businessbrain show sponsors, you'll see a list of a bunch of great, great sponsors that, you know, gusto payroll and all these people that have really helped support us over the years. And so, Dave, you're an expert on this. You own a podcasting marketing agency, or how do you phrase how you think of it like that?

Yeah, we. We. I say that at Backbeat Media, which is the company you're talking about, we represent a group of fiercely independent podcasters, of which I am one.

I like that.

Yeah. Yeah, but it is. Right. It rolls off the tongue. It's catchy. But it's also true. We really like to represent shows that have their own voice, that are their own hosts, and we try not. It's not our goal to homogenize them. I mean, there's parts of them that we will certainly group shows together when we're pitching sponsors and all of that. Obviously, that makes sense. Yes. Right. Economies of scale and all of that. But, you know, we leave it up to our hosts to. To do their shows the way they want to do them. But, yeah, we're. We're a boutique rep firm, is. Is sort of what the industry would call us. We. We don't try to have thousands of shows. You know, we have dozens. And maybe we'll get into the triple digits of shows at some point, and that's. That would be fine. But, you know, we're not looking to have thousands of shows. We'd like to manage the show. We'd like to know the shows that we manage.

Makes sense. Yeah. And so if. If you had a. A podcaster that had a relatively new show.

Yep.

And they were trying to figure out, how do they get to that point. And when we started 10 years ago, I never forget, you said, oh, we're just going to start recording. We're not going to release episodes. You're just going to get used of the microphone. I'm still getting used to. Used to it. And yeah. And so I Thought that was great. Helped me a lot. And. But what would you, what advice would you give, you know, relatively new podcaster of how to get, how are they going to get to that point where they're going to try to attract advertisers, sponsors that want to come and be on their show?

Yeah. So the first thing to do is don't worry about sponsors, worry about your listeners. Go and develop your voice, develop an audience and get some consistency. And there's a couple of litmus tests that we use when we're onboarding a show, and I think sharing a few of these might be helpful in painting this picture. So one of them, and this is the worst one and the one we ignore the most, but one of them is number of downloads per episode. Regardless of whether we're going to ignore this, when you and I talk or not, you need to be able to calculate this number. If you don't know how to figure out how many downloads a specific episode has gotten in its first 30 days, either go figure that out or reach out and we will help teach you how to do that.

Why, why is that so difficult? Because I, I still frustrated with trying to figure that out as well. Why is it so difficult?

It, well, it's really, it's not difficult. You can use POD Tracks analytics. I'll put a link in the, in the show notes. They, they make it very easy to do this. The reason it's important is if you're going to embed, you know, host read ads, which is still the gold standard in the industry, which is what we do here, you know, you'll hear us stop and say, hey, we want to take a minute and tell you about, you know, Gusto or Shopify or whatever. And we tell you the thing, we say Visit, you know, shopify.com businessbrain or whatever, you know, whatever that works out to be. Those host red ads embedded in the show are the gold standard still. And sponsors want to know and will buy based on how many downloads that episode will get with their spot in it over the first month or so. You know, is it 30 days? Is it 45 days? Is it 60 days? Those that those numbers are malleable. But in general, you need to be able to look and see how many downloads each episode is getting and you can start to identify patterns. So podtrax analytics are great. They're an easy way to do it and they don't like, share your data.

That's awesome with the world.

So that would be question number one. And we often say a show needs 3,000 downloads before we'll have a conversation or before we'll bring you on. We'll have a conversation at any level. But before we really want to start pitching you to sponsors, it needs to be at that 3000 level. Now that's not true. We will bring on shows and sell sponsorships for shows that are below that 3,000 level. The reason we use that as a litmus test is that's a very easy way for us to, to identify shows that are committed or identify hosts that are committed to producing their shows and shows that we believe are going to last. Because when we bring a show on, we're going to work to, to pitch you to sponsors and ad agencies and.

You know, you don't want somebody that's going to, that's going to stop.

Just going to stop because you know, we're putting in, we, we work on a revenue share model, which is how most agencies and rep firms like us work. And so we're putting in the work up front and we get paid on the back end. Right. We get paid when you get paid. And so we want to know that there's some that, that we believe in the longevity of this thing at least for three to six months, you know.

Yeah.

Hopefully longer.

I think. You, you told me one time most podcasts don't have more than 10 episodes, correct?

Is that, that's right. Very few podcasts make it to double digit episodes. Right.

Amazing. Yeah. Okay, so that's the second.

So that, but, but that's the other thing is like how many episodes have you done? What? There's some sort of nebulous factors that you can look at and say, okay, well maybe the show's only like, I talked to a woman today who's got a show that they, you know, do about 2000 downloads an episode, 1500 on some. But she is like, it's obvious from all the other data points that exist out there. As you kind of pull in all these, all these heuristics, she's committed and she's going to keep doing it. It's like, okay, great, now let's talk about that. And, and then, and then at that point we can put it together and start pitching. And, and, and that's how ads, that's the way to get ads on your show is, is find somebody that will, that will work with you. You can do it on your own. I did. I mean, it's how. Kind of how we started Backbeat Media. Right?

Like, yeah, right.

Yeah.

And so some platforms have ad programs that put Ads automatically in your, in your shows. Right. Those ads make a little bit of money.

You can make a little bit of money. The problem with those ads is they are generally paying far, far less per download. If when you break it down that way, then the, you know, specifically sold targeted ads to your show. And, and, and then you've also got to give up some of your data to do that. And our fiercely independent podcasters don't like to give up audience's data. We don't give up your data as audience members of business brain. And hopefully you appreciate that for us because we could make a little bit more money if we did, but we opt not to because we wouldn't want that done of us. So.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, makes sense. No, that's cool. So, number one, be. Start. Be consistent.

Yes.

Build up the downloads.

Be consistent. Release. Release on a schedule that people can rely on. This is the best way. Well, it's the best way to keep listeners. And releasing on an unreliable schedule is the best way to lose listeners. So.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. You want them to come to. Oh, every Tuesday at noon, this comes out. And yes, we did Tuesdays at noon. Well, noon Pacific time forever. Then we broke our show in two because we were trying to get smaller bites of, you know, content to people, which took. Did really well. So now we do Tuesday and Friday at noon Pacific every, you know, or nine o'.

Clock.

9:00Am Pacific Time, I should say at noon Eastern. That's right. Eastern time. That's right. And then we started streaming and, you know, I never knew why anybody would want to watch us, but, you know, 342 people on X, I don't know how many on LinkedIn, but. And that's helped our show as well. You know, we're up about 17% since.

Yeah. As of last week. And it might be like. Yeah, it might be increasing.

Yep. Might be more so that. That's awesome. So find a good agency. Get. Get a company that will respect what you're trying to do. Focus on quality of your content, being consistent. Don't worry about sponsors. Just get out there and start sharing. And I always tell people, people say, well, what do I talk about? It's like, well, talk about whatever interests you because you'll be better at it. And this is.

And you will find an audience. Like I always say, podcasters attract audiences like them. And this is true. Right. If you're talking about something that you're passionate about, you don't necessarily have to be an expert, but don't lie to yourself or your listeners about your relative level of expertise. You could start a show and say, hey, I, you know, I've thought about if I ever go to get my pilot's license, I am definitely doing a show about what it's like to get my pilot's license now.

Great idea.

I have some baseline knowledge. I've spent a lot of time with Flight Simulator. I've even flown planes before. But I don't have my license, so I'm certainly not an expert. But I could do a show every week after I finish my lesson and, you know, like, all of that stuff. And then of course, my lessons wind up being tax deductible because here's the show money and like, all those things. But that's not my rules. Those are the IRS rules. I'm just following them. Yep, yep, that's great. But like, you know, being you can be a beginner because your listeners do something relatable, that's really. If you want any guidance or be relatable, don't. If coming across as the end all be all expert of something and never admitting I don't know alienates people.

Yeah, that's not the way you're going to build an audience. No, I want to just talk about. We could have had this conversation sitting in a bar, having a beer. And that's, to me, the measuring stick or yardstick of should we talk about this? And do I want to learn more? I talk about what I'm doing. Like, I'm using loom more. So we talked about that at the last episode on Wednesday, and then we started talking earlier when we were doing our pre show. I was like, you know, everybody's asking me how we get sponsors. Let's just do that because that's kind of interesting. So talk about what interests you, and you will attract other people that are interested in what you are.

Yeah. Shoot us a note. Feedbackusbane show, like, I'm. I'm always happy and I want to make sure I didn't misspeak earlier just because there might be a reason that it's not time yet for us to take your show on or that we are never going to be the right folks for your show. I refer people to other rep firms all the time because we don't take on everyone. It has to be the right fit. But I know everyone. I've been doing this since before podcasting was a term that was coined. Right. We started BackbeatMedia on the web and.

That's. Right.

I should share. Backbeat Media wasn't Our idea, we started Mac observer and then our first full time hire was a sales rep. Because I realized sales needs to be a full time job. Fine. Okay, great. And then about eight months in to starting the Mac observer, four of our competitors, other people who had websites that were sharing Apple Mac news, because back then it was all the same because there was no iPhone or ipod. Right? So they came to us and they swear to this day that they did not conspire, but I don't believe them. They came to us and said, you guys seem to have your stuff together. Will you do for us what you've done for yourselves? We just want to publish our web. We just want to publish our content. We don't want to worry about sponsors. And there were a few other things, like hosting, because back then there was no dreamhost. So we managed hosting for a while and things like that. And we were like, well, wait a minute, if four people want this, maybe we should spin off a business. And that's how Backbeat Media was born.

I love it, man. Yeah, it's so Great. Go to backbeatmedia.com that's correct if you want to learn about Dave's podcast marketing agency and share your questions with us. Feedbackusbrain show. And if you're just getting started, just keep going, be consistent and keep recording. You'll do great.

You'll do fine. You'll do terrible at first and you'll do terrible again at moments along the way. Of course, we, we release episodes that I'm like, oh, man, that would have been better.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's not how it works. Like, you just got to do it. Yeah, go do it. It'll be fine. Yeah. And then tell us about your show. We'll share it here. We can all share each other's shows. We get more listeners. It all helps everybody keep living that charm life. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.