Affiliates, Sponsors, And Partners: Find The Right Market That Drives More Listeners To Your Podcast

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Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I'm going solo today to talk about advertising, partners, sponsors and affiliates. So how do you choose? How do you decide which is the right one and what's the differences between it? Because sponsors and partners sound like the same thing, but they're actually very different. So in this first part, I want to talk about the fact that we might be looking at them as a choice of someone else we might be working with, but we might also be looking at them as a choice of who we might be working with. Right. So who do we want to be if we're our own sponsor or partner or affiliate? Right. So what if we're doing it for our own products and services? So I want to look at it from both directions.

So first things first, let's define some of these. So a partner is someone who's going to come in with you. They might partner on the whole show altogether. They might look at it and say, I want to be a top level sponsor partner with you. I'm going to, we're going to do a special series. We're going to look at that series and we're going to decide topics and guests and we're going to have a bigger partnership and how this is going to work and how it's. That's going to happen. And then that partner has more of an obligation than just paying you money to sponsor the show. They have an obligation to promote and do things on the other side. Like that's also part of the process. So it means that you might not get as much upfront money, but you should be getting a large boost from their audience. So we have a couple of clients who fall into that realm right now where they have sponsors who are not only subsidizing the cost of the show, but but they're pushing them out to their much larger community, a much larger audience. And usually that's in the form of large email groups or large email lists or larger Facebook groups or other things like that. So that is an ideal way to work. So Tom and I did that with Hewlett Packard, it works out really well. Right now, Hewlett Packard's on their pushout. We did our job, we pushed out the 25 episodes, we produced the series, we did all of that work there and now it's on hp. And they've been doing a advertising program, they're doing a LinkedIn advertising. They're doing these cool, I'm going to call them, sketch videos that they're doing in Germany for promoting the show itself. So it's a really interesting strategy about how they're pushing it out to their community and how that's working for them. And we're going to be able to see some of the results of that. So that's an interesting way to go about it. We have other clients who do it where the show is completely partnered and sponsored. And I just interviewed someone on a show called women of YouTube and her sponsor is Tubebuddy, which is a program that helps you, I'm gonna say, optimize your YouTube listing, which may be of interest to some of you. So you should go check out TubeBuddy. But women of YouTube started with the sponsor from the beginning. It started actually as a panel discussion and then they said, let's make this a show, let's do this again and again. And so they feature women who are YouTubers and they have TubeBuddy as the ongoing sponsor of it. So Tubebuddy actually sends guests in to be submitted. Of course the host has the final say in the. And you always do. Of course. It's your content, it's your quality. You need to say when this isn't good for the brand. So you need to be a part of that process. And that's where the partnership comes in. So they do submit lots of guest ideas and people that make suggestions and bring them up for to be featured on the show. But the host decides at the end which ones are good and which ones aren't and which ones are a fit and gonna have the most interesting stories to tell and be the best to the community. You're the keeper of the community, remember that all. You're the curator there. So you want partners that you feel it is in alignment with your mission. And that's the part that I want you to be really clear on. It's like you don't want to get into a longer term partnership and that's what you want. In this case, it's not them sponsoring you for one month. It's a 25 episode series, it's for a year, it's a long period of time where you have this partnership with them, so they're in it with you. Understanding that this is a marathon and not a sprint. And your missions both need to be aligned in that process. So we really want to make sure that we bring in partners that we feel comfortable with, that our view and their view have a similarity. Also that our audiences are really well matched. So this is easier when you're doing a much more niche show for you to be able to actively get these types of partners. Now, this is the exception to the rule where I say you really can. As long as you have outside authority, as long as you've been a speaker, you have good authority, you've gotten a lot of media, you've got a good platform underneath you. This is where a partner can come into a show from the very beginning. It's not always as easy to get sponsors and affiliates to come into a show that hasn't proven itself yet, but because the discussion isn't on how many downloads, how many plays do you have, it's on what is the value of the show overall and what is it bringing to your brand and my brand in partnership together? It's a different conversation. And you can utilize that from the beginning. But here's the thing, they're not just going to randomly find you and say, let's start a show together there. I mean, it did happen to us with Hewlett Packard, but remember, we had five years of shows, we had 600 episodes. So, like, it's a different place when you're in that. But if you're starting your show, don't expect them to just randomly find you because you made new and noteworthy that week or you made the top 50 and you're like, well, that's where I am. No, you have to work hard to get these partners. You have to go out and seek them, find those that really make sense, and then go talk to them, have that partnership conversation saying, I'm starting this show. Here's what I need with this show. I need a little more broader audience. I could use some growth. I think our missions are aligned. Let's discuss that. And I think our audiences are aligned. So I'm going to help you grow your audience and you're going to help me grow mine. In terms of the listenership and in the partnership, we're going to sell a lot more products to services and goods together, right? So this is a win, win for all. And they don't have to create content. So now sometimes you have to give up the authority of Your show, meaning it won't be on its own separate website. That's a decision making when you're in the process, in the early stage of something, when you haven't started it yet. If you've already started it and you have your own website, then they're likely just to create a feed for it on theirs and you'll have a page on their website. And that works great with a partnership situation. I strongly recommend, if you have a choice, if you can hold your ground, to keep it owned by you. Otherwise, remember, all that blog power, all of the content is their power and you've let that go to them. So that makes that separation later, if the partnership doesn't work out a whole lot harder and you won't have all of those great back episodes anymore that are yours, they would belong on their site and you'd be starting from scratch again. Although you still have the feed, hopefully. So when you're striking a partnership deal, I recommend you have main location being on an independent website. If they don't want it on your business site, an independent website, that's for the show itself that you also keep and make sure that you are the. You own and have full access to the feed and they do not. They are your partner, they are not you. And at the end of the day, we need main core ownership of the feed itself belonging to you. This is where our radio shows get into trouble. And the people who do that, where the radio controls your feed. And so when someone else is paying for your show, sometimes they think, oh, I'll have my producers control it for you. And at the end of the day that's a bad way to go if things go wrong. So you want your feed and the website to be in your control if at all possible in your partnership. And that will make for a better partner and a better separation should it have to come to that in the future. Remember again though, this is an issue is that in our particular system in Poditize we have drop in ads, right? Remember, we get to say ad spots and mentions. So if we were doing it from that perspective, I don't recommend you talk about your sponsor throughout it unless you're doing like we did with Hewlett Packard, where it's a series. So we talked about Hewlett Packard in the process of the series and we mentioned that that's what the series is because it was named for them. But it wasn't our entire show. So we weren't really worried about it taking over it. We were, it was a limited Edition series that was sponsored. But you don't want to do that for your whole entire show. You want to be able to put your ads in and your sponsor mentions and all of those things in a separated way. Now you can still do it in an intro or outro, but I highly recommend you take a look at using pre roll and post roll as your little do. You do your regular. You have a little regular little intro with music and then you say and today's episode is sponsored by our sponsors name. Give them a little love because they make this show possible. You can say something like that or you make a little one line mention about why they're so great and applicable to your listeners. You can do that at the beginning and at the end you ask them to show some love to your sponsor and thanking them for making the show possible. So you can do both of those mentions if you put them in an ad spot in a pre roll and post roll one day. If it all ends in a year, you can take it out of your entire show catalog and then be able to take in a brand new sponsor and capitalize on the back catalog and the new episodes. And you should be able to command a lot more. But it's going to be muddy water if one day you have to switch from one partner to the next. Now you've got old partner ads and new partner ads and mentions like throughout your show. You don't really want to edit all of those out if you have a bad divorce in terms of a partnership. So let's be looking at that from a pre planning standpoint and really make them separated mentions and do them after the fact after and record your show in its entirety. Remembering of course that you're partnering up. So the content should be exactly what they want to hear anyway and the sponsorship or the sort of sponsored ad portion of the partnership is secondary. So it's happening in a second place.

So now let's talk about that difference in sponsorship versus partnership. So partnership is a little more depth and involved. Sponsorship is I'm putting my name on the show. I'm saying I'm sponsoring the show from a brand. I want my brand to be aligned with your audience or be visible to your audience, heard, seen, whatever it is that you're doing. So this is why I'm going to sponsor your show. This is the mindset of this, that type of advertiser. The thing is, is that most advertisers, most sponsor style advertisers have a bigger campaign plan than your little show because a lot of you don't have the types of listeners that they're looking for. So your average sponsor is looking for. And this is average, not top sponsors and not like, you know, low level, just let's try this out kind of sponsor. But your average sponsor is looking about for 20,000 downloads per episode. This is why most don't qualify, right? There's less than 2% of the marketplace that qualifies at a 20,000 per episode plan. Now, on our system, of course, you 20,000 per month and you would still be able to absolutely accommodate one of those types of sponsors. But you're running run of show, you're running across all your episodes in order to capture that 20,000 number. And so then you have to really remember they're looking at 20,000 per episode. So they're X expectation is that that's a minimum of four per month. So their expectation is close. Between 80,000 and 100,000 listeners per month are the ears that they're expecting to get to. This is an average sponsor. That's their expectation. So again, most shows don't rise to that level. And that's where sponsorship becomes harder to come by. Now, some sponsors are getting really smart and they say, I don't care if there are only a thousand listeners, if they're exactly the most perfect right listener for they're in the tech industry, they're in the health and wellness world. They're looking to get. They're looking for anti aging and they're over the age of 50 and the show is completely focused on that. And so I don't care about the number of listeners there are because that conversion rate should be high on that listenership. So there are some sponsors that are starting to get smart with that. But you have to remember that they don't know your show. So even though they may be more savvy about how podcasting advertisement works and how sponsorship conversion can work, they may not be familiar with you. And a lot of them don't trust your numbers. And especially because most podcasters refuse to do anything but put out a one sheet that has their latest numbers on it. They refuse to prove it. They won't open up their stats and share their stats directly. That is a decision in your process. Do you really want to do that with just a random sponsor who isn't a partner, who isn't in it with you, or who hasn't signed with you or for a long term? I understand that hesitation as a podcaster, but that lack of transparency is still holding back the sponsorship community and the Lack of trust on that is now I just want to dip my toe in the water and say, hey, let's see how it goes the first couple months in terms of conversion. And that in and of itself is a red flag for me. And that's because most sponsorships because listenership and the way that people listen to shows and it takes them some time and we have back catalog listening and binge listening going on. Especially if you're not utilizing a system like ours where you're putting ads across the entire catalog, but you're only putting ads on your most recent. You need to have a program with a sponsor that's at minimum of three months. I highly recommend six months if you can get it, but minimum of three months because you just won't see enough return on investment for them to get them to commit to the next month and the next month and the next month. And you also probably won't have enough significant growth month over month in your show unless you had some random greats spike all of a sudden because of some marketing that you were doing on your end. So keeping that in mind, the sponsorship is also you want to push into getting them to understand more, pushing them a little bit to that partnership level and sort of testing the waters to see if they'd be a great partner. And if they're not willing to have that conversation, they just want to do this blanket advertising kind of thing, then really they're probably well fit to go to one of those advertising service companies, those podcast advertising service companies where they write out one $10,000 ch month and it goes on. And each of the podcasters within that network gets 100 bucks or 50 bucks or some of them, I hear, you know, make 500. But that's about the high that I usually hear from any of those ad agencies because remember, they're paying on plays per million, right? So plays per thousand rather. So they're paying on for every thousand plays of the show or downloads of the show that they pay you. Usually it's 20 bucks that is paid to the agency and you get a cut of that. So 10, it's usually 50, 50. And so we see about 10 to $12 as the average amount you make. So again, you got to be up there at 10,000 listeners. And most of those advertising companies force you to work into their hosting company. And they don't do run of show ads, so they can't do your entire show catalog. They're only capturing your most recent episodes. So keeping that in mind, sponsorship may not be the right Thing for you. Now, the last one in the group is called affiliates, and affiliates are clearly you're representing someone's product you signed up for, maybe their affiliate program. And for every product you sell, you, maybe you get 10 bucks, maybe you get a hundred bucks, maybe you get a lot more than that if you go for the high end. And that's what I'm hearing is working better. But you should know the conversion rate, you should know the activity level, and you clearly should know your audience before you attempt to do affiliates, because otherwise, your audience starts to feel oversold, too. They start to feel that you'll hawk anything. It should be something you're proud to use, you're proud to sell. You've clearly vetted it, because if it goes wrong in the sale of that affiliate, it comes back to you. And so for the 10 bucks you received on something or 100 bucks you received on something, it would be a shame if it wasn't worth it to your audience. So really make sure that you vetted them. I like to affiliate my own products first. Right? Like, you can test the conversion rate affiliate webinar and treat it like as you would an affiliate mention. Right? Do it as a separate ad, bring it in, make it its own special thing, and then make sure that you're seeing that conversion rate, you're tracking it, and then share that as a case study, as numbers as. Here was the audience I expected it to go to. Here was the outcome I wanted. Here is the results of that. Here is the ad that I put in, and here is the results of how many people showed up on the webinar, how many people paid, what happened in this process. I feel like we could model this too, because your product is really great. I use it myself, and I think that my audience will respond in the same way that they respond to me and my product. So that would be a great way for you to go and reach out and start an affiliate relationship. Now, I was just talking to a podcaster today and interviewing her. She's got a great show. She's got over 200 episodes. She's been on the Ron Burgundy show herself. So she's got, like, big profile. And she said she really was starting to feel that affiliates weren't worth it in the beginning. And so over time, she sort of, you know, held back. There was just a couple key few that she felt were really relevant to her audience, and she left them in over time. And then all of a sudden, she just hit a tipping point and started making thousands of dollars and off of those affiliates. And what she discovered happened was that she had done a topic that was highly related to the use of that product. So she helped them learn how to use it, essentially. And then it was an easier when she had mentioned it on the show as one of the tools that particular show was the one that was tracking. Now she made the mistake of not using different affiliate links for different shows. So she couldn't actually in the beginning attribute it to that one particular show. So if you're going to do that kind of thing where you're going to do specific mentions, where a whole show is focused on highlighting the use of that resource or that tool, that software, whatever it might be that you're affiliating, make sure that you use a special link in that particular one so you can track the difference between casual mentions of it as affiliate ads and a specific episode focused on how to use a particular tool. You may find there's just a difference attraction. So don't do it everywhere because there's lots of URLs to remember and everything. But doing it in that one particular case may make a lot of sense for you. So this is the difference between as we talk partners, sponsorship and affiliates.

Now let's talk about what happens when you're the partner, the sponsor, the affiliate. Like you're all of the above, right? So here's where I see it go, right? And here's where I see it go really, really wrong. So a lot of people will put their corporation or their business, their company as the sponsor partner of the show. So it's on the COVID art, it's mentioned as it. And they talk about it like it's a separate entity. And the reality is, at the end of the day, people aren't stupid. They're smart enough to know that when they go to their website and they see you as the CEO or the founder of the company or related to the company they like. So you're your own sponsor and you're your own partner. That's just a little sneaky and it's not upfront about it. So I like the more concerted mention. Like you don't see Potitize mentioned on Feed your brand as the sponsor of it. What you will hear on occasion is an ad for a program that we're running or a special webinar mini workshop, anything like that. You'll hear that. And of course Tom and I mentioned it just like I just did now today saying if you're using our ad mixing system, this is how you use it. And this is what you would do. We're talking about it, but we're integrating it in a natural way that says, yes, this is what it is. You don't have to be one of our clients to benefit from the information I'm providing here. Right. If you are, I'm giving you a little bit special insight and information. And what it does is it invites the audience to come and say, well, I kind of want to know more about that potatoes thing. And so it is a different way of just being really transparent about it. This is who we are. This is what feed your brand's about. This is what the company is. We're not labeling it on and saying sponsored by potatoes as if it's a third party sponsoring us. I think that, at the end of the day, has served us extremely well. I've seen it done with other people in that same way where they just talk about their products and services and the name of their company comes up in conversation, or the name of their website comes up in conversation. And for many people, their podcast and their website are the same thing. Ours are not in this particular case, but for many of them that are. So that makes a clear. A very clear mention. Even though the name of my show might be something different, the website URL that I'm sending you to would be Potatoes Calm. And, you know, and that's how you find the podcast. There are many people who do it that way. So at the end of the day, they know clearly the two different things. They know your show name because they're subscribed, and they know your website name because that's where you're telling them to go. So clearly, the partnership is already clear to your listeners over time. If you're not being clear about it, you're being fuzzy and not telling people that you have a company, that you have a business, that you have clients, that. These are some of the good case studies that you're doing. You may not be doing a really good job of being clear to your audience that you have a business that they could utilize. You're failing to tell them about the opportunity of work. And that's a problem in and of itself. So we're not. I'm not saying you should. Shouldn't mention your company, and I'm not saying it should be all about your company. There's this happy middle ground between the two, where your company, the reason your company has value is for the same reason you're sharing all this value with your audience. Right? Those two things are integrally mixed. And that's giving you great content to give to people, value that you're adding to people, but also opportunities for getting more and accelerating. That's how we like to look at it from that sense. That's a better way to make your business your sponsor and your partner. Now, affiliation in that sense is that of course you're selling a program and you're checking the conversion rate against it. You're just treating that program like an affiliate because you're treating it that way so you can track how it's doing. Because if you just then sent everybody to the main website and didn't send them to a specific link so, you know, poditize.com masterclasses or something and you didn't send them to there, you wouldn't be able to track the results of the mentions on the show or the show that was about that topic. And you wouldn't be able to clearly track that and be able to utilize that should you want to affiliate something later. And you know, there are clear things like our business is really clear. We do a lot of business ourselves, but we have some plugins that we use, we have some equipment that we use, and every so often we will utilize them, mention them, they become relevant in an episode. And we do get affiliate kickbacks on those, but it is not for our purposes. It's not because we get thousands of dollars and it really matters to us for our purposes. It's tracking the usage of it. Are people getting value from that? And should we find a new tool, should we find a new piece of equipment, should we find something new? Or is it a value? That's why we use the affiliate link. We don't really use it because we care about the revenue from that. I mean, some people clearly do. It's a large revenue driver. If you look at some of the big podcasters out there, you'll see about 10 to 20% of their revenue will come from affiliations. And so they'd be loathe to take that away for themselves. I just feel that unless you're really. It's really integral to what you do as a core business, you can run into trouble of doing affiliates from an outside company and from an outside brand, because what if their brand integrity isn't the same as yours? Their delivery system isn't the same quality as yours. So we've already run into trouble running webinars with some people that just don't have an integrity level that matches ours. So why would I want to do that with an ongoing sales of a product that isn't mine that I not in control of unless I'm absolutely certain because I'm using it every day, that it is a value, that it is working for people. So, so think about all of those things and start to look at really this alternative monetization idea that a promo, a sponsor, an ad, how we look at them does not have to follow an influencer or a straight old school ad model. Right? We can look at it from a standpoint on creating deeper relationships and partnerships, getting broader reach within an industry, creating a sponsor rich environment by how we mix ads on our show, by how we utilize ads on our show and always keeping ourselves open to the future of it not working out and us needing to remove those things of it being an experiment that just isn't right for our brand, that just isn't right for our show. So I always like the model of being able to keep us open to the opportunities. So how we add in our sponsorships and how we add that in, please think about adding it in later and don't think about the excitement of it and constantly mentioning it on your show and bringing it in. You may regret that one day. I can say most times you will regret that. You will definitely regret that one day. So me thinking about that and pre planning in that process. So that's all I have today on sort of this advertising model and looking at advertising from a different perspective and maybe a tighter relationship and community building perspective, always with our audience first mindset. So thanks everyone for listening to Feed you'd brand. I'm gonna go address some questions from my community over on Facebook and within my Potitize community. But I'll be back next time with another feeder brand topic for advanced podcasting. Look forward to talking with you soon. I'm Traci Hazzard on Feed.

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