MBA2125 Q&A Wednesday: How do I secure sponsors for my podcast?

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Hey oh welcome to the $1. Just the boost you need to build a business you want every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over@omar100mba.net Today's question is from Alex and Alex asks, hey Omar, love the podcast and I actually like your sponsor reads. That leads me to my question, how do I secure sponsors for my podcast? I've been running my podcast for about 13 months now and I've had slow and steady growth and I like to monetize it by adding good sponsors that are a good fit for my audience. What are the first steps? How do I get started? Appreciate the help Alex. Well, we'll take a deep dive in today's lesson on how to secure sponsorships for your podcast. Specifically, there are several different choices and different options depending on the size of your podcast in terms of your audience, how many downloads you get as well as how to package your offering to make it a no brainer for your sponsors. This is something that we've been working on for years because we've been running the podcast for eight years and we refined our process and I want to share it with you. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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In today's Q and A Wednesday, Alex asks, how does he secure sponsors for his podcast? So the short and sweet answer is actually build an amazing show. I know that sounds a little bit annoying, but that's the reality. If you build a show with a great following that starts to get traction, that people know about, that ranks well or does well in your niche or gets written up in articles, sponsors will find you. And the best way of getting there and getting to that point is making sure your show is as good as possible. Whether it's the sound quality, the content, of course, if you have guests, the quality of our guests, and your interviewing skills, bringing something new to the genre or your category, differentiating yourself and niching down, these are ways to really improve the quality of your podcast so that it can get shared and get noticed and really have sponsors come after you. That's kind of the best situation to be in. But I do understand that it's crowded out there and it can get really competitive. And maybe you want to start securing sponsors as you get to that point, as you start growing. And I get it. So let me start with kind of the easiest solution to getting sponsorships, and that's working with an agency. There's a lot of agencies out there that will reach out to you if you're growing, or you can reach out to them if you are getting a reasonable number of downloads per episode. Most of these agencies have a minimum requirement of downloads per episode to kind of engage with them and have a contract. Some of These start at 5,000 downloads an episode, some about 10,000 downloads an episode. Things have changed over the years when I got started eight years ago, so I'd look into that. But there's a lot of different agencies like Midroll, Megaphone, Authentic Earwolf, and more. And some of the top podcasts use these agencies like the Oprah Winfrey show, this American Life, the Daily, the Office Ladies, Revisionist history and our podcasts. So we use Midroll as our agent, and they secure all of our sponsors, okay? So we work with them, they take a cut. It's a reasonable cut. So for us, it's worth it because they do all the legwork and the finances, and they just send us the money every single month for the sponsors that we've secured. They do all the negotiation. We just focus on having a great show, and as the show grows, so does our revenue. So you can just have a goal where it's like, hey, I'm going to get to that level of downloads, and once I do, I'm going to reach out to one of these agencies and they're going to do all the work for me. Now, there are people that take a different route. There are podcasts that just do their own sponsorship bookings, meaning they reach out to businesses, they reach out to partnerships, and they secure their own sponsors. And this is totally doable. I know a lot of podcasts that do this. In fact, I would say most podcasts do this. And basically they sell their spots on an episode. They might sell, you know, a fee to be a sponsor for one spot, like a mid roll or one spot for a pre roll or a combination of both. And they, you know, secure the whole epis and the going rate for a mid roll, which is 60 seconds, is $25 per thousand downloads, or per melee is what it's called. So say, for example, your show gets 3,000 downloads per episode, then you can charge $75 per spot. Most podcasts, they create a rate card like a PDF, and you can use canva to make this happen. And they send out this rate card to those who are interested in sponsoring your show. Some people do cold outreach to companies sponsoring podcasts. So if you hear a sponsor on a podcast and they're spending money on podcast advertising, you know that they might be interested in advertising maybe on your show. If your audience is a good fit for their product, reaching out to their marketing team and saying, hey, this is my podcast. These are my numbers. This is my audience. Here's how much it costs, there's a good chance you can strike a deal. My advice is have a minimum number of episodes that they book, because a sponsor is going to need more than one episode to. To actually get a conversion. So you need some repetition. A lot of people kind of have a minimum of 10 episodes or something like that. So that way there's some continuity. Now, when you're selling your spots, it's not just the spots on the podcast you're selling, you're selling. Also mentions on the show notes page, links, backlinks to their actual product or service or whatever the call to action is. Maybe you can include shoutouts on social media on your profiles. That's kind of a nice added bonus. You're adding a lot of value to this sponsorship. Now maybe you want to mention them in your newsletters. This is another great advantage and a lot of people would love all that exposure to your audience and not just a read right on the episode. Now when you're reaching out to these companies, my advice is try to lock in a long term deal, three months, six months, a year, because one, they're going to get a better return on investment because your audience is getting more and more familiar with their brand and their product and they're going to get more conversions. Two, it's just as much work to secure a sponsor for one month than to secure a sponsor for one year. And it's better for you to book out your whole year with a sponsor for at least, you know, a mid roll or pre roll and then you can really just focus on your show. So I highly recommend trying to lock in longer deals, even if it's just a month or two months or three months at this is going to allow you to kind of just focus on the show and not have to sell sponsorships over and over and over. If your podcast is not hitting no 10,000 downloads, which is actually quite hard to hit that milestone, and you can't go the agency route, you may not want to do the sales activity of reaching out to companies and striking deals and locking contracts. There is an alternative, and that is doing partnerships or affiliates. That's when you become an affiliate or a partner of a company and you recommend them on your podcast as a read, as a mid roll or pre roll, and when they convert with your link, you get a commission. Depending how responsive your audience is or how much they really value your opinion, this could be actually more lucrative than sponsorship reads that are paid in advance because this is reoccurring commission for most affiliate read programs, meaning you might run an ad and somebody hears that ad buys the product, and month over month you're getting commission just from one purchase, even when that ad is done and gone. So think of the tools that you use to run your business, think of the things that you would endorse, look them up, find out if they have an affiliate program, sign up for their affiliate program, reach out to their marketing team or to their support team and say, hey, do you have any copy or any text I can use to to do a podcast read? Even bullet points would be helpful. And that way you can use that information to form your own. Read and share your affiliate link. Now, some of these companies, a lot of these companies I found, will actually create a unique link for you. So that way it's easy to read on a podcast if you just tell them, say, hey, I'd love, you know, an affiliate link that's kind of easy to read out and not just like some string of numbers at the end of their URL. For example, company x.comma that's an easy thing for people to hear and to remember and go to. So I would reach out to company X and I would say, hey, can I get a nice pretty URL that I can easily say on a podcast and that forward to my affiliate link. Most people will be very accommodating because literally it'll take the IT team three minutes to do this. And in return, they're getting free exposure on a podcast and you get to get the reoccurring commission for each sale that's made with your URL.

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To wrap up today's lesson, you have a few options. Let's recap to securing sponsorships on your podcast. One, you can use an agency for getting enough downloads. Two, you can secure your own sponsorships and make your own package deals and reach out to partners that would be perfect fit for your business people that would be happy to sponsor your podcast. Create a rate card. You can go to Canva, make a nice infographic one pager showing your potential sponsor a little bit about your audience, your demographics, your download numbers, your success, maybe some reviews, your favorite reviews that you've gotten so far. And of course, the prices for the packages that you sell. And option three is to use the affiliate model, where you promote a product using your affiliate link and then you get a commission when a sale is made. There's one option that's not really sponsorships, but that's promoting your own products or services. This is often overlooked if you have a product or service, especially if you're just launching something new or you have an offer or a sale or some sort of, you know, relaunch. Put some spots for your business and promote it. Promote those products of yours and leverage the existing audience you have in your podcast to make sales on your products. We've done this several times and this really helps us gain new customers because we're gaining new listeners all the time on the podcast. That wraps up today's episode. Thanks so much, Alex for asking today's Q and A Wednesday's question. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me at omar@100mba.net and I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. If you love the show, Leave us a rating and review. Open up your favorite podcast app. Let us know what you think of the show. We read all our feedback. Thank you so much in advance for popping us a rating and review and supporting the show by showing other people what you love about the podcast. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. There's another option when it comes to sponsorships that can help you grow your own show, and that's sponsorship swaps. Find other podcasts that maybe are the same popularity around the same rank as you on podcast apps, have the same kind of number of downloads and say, hey, let's swap spots for spots. So you say, hey, I'll promote your podcast for five episodes and you do the same for me. You guys can exchange copy or bullet points, and that way you can leverage each other's audiences to bring in new listeners to your show. This is a good way to fill in any empty spots you have in your sponsorship schedule. Support other podcasts that can get exposure, and then in exchange, your show gets exposure to a new audience and you get new listeners, which then gets you more downloads, which then allows you to have better sponsors and better deals. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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