Effective Ways To Make Your Show Attractive To Sponsors

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey there. Welcome back to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard with my co host, Tracy, and today we want to talk about effective ways to make your show attractive to podcast sponsors. Tracy, that is a pretty important, but I think a pretty big topic, isn't it? We want to make sure we don't go off on all kinds of tangents, but it is really important.

Yeah, so I've read a pod news report that was talking about how like 68% of podcasters want to make money off of their show, and their number one way is via advertising. And the reality is that 90% of those 68% don't have a show that will ever be capable of taking podcast sponsors. And I don't mean that to be mean. It's that you didn't strategically set your show up properly from the beginning. So in order to fix this, you're going to have to do a tremendous amount of work on the other side of that. And that's really where we get into this place of if this is your goal, even if you think you could change your mind later and say, I'm never going to take sponsors. We never take sponsors on any of our shows except for one. So like, out of all the six shows I've done, only one ever took sponsors. But it was formatted and strategically made for that. That was its purpose. And so thinking about that as like, if you're gonna set up your show and this is your goal, then you better make sure you're not doing some no no's. Like, you're doing some things that are going to make sure that those sponsors won't like it later. And now you're gonna have to clean up and fix your show to make that happen.

You end up setting up some obstacles for you to achieve your goal unknowingly a lot of the time.

So for those of you who are like investors out there or go out there and are selling companies, buying companies, you've heard of something called hair on the deal. You probably heard that term before. And that's what this is. This is stuff that is going to get in the way of making easy objection for someone to say, nope, don't want to sponsor you.

Well, if that's your goal, you definitely don't want to do it. I do think we should preface this conversation saying that the vast majority of podcasts that are business oriented, related to a business and service to a business in any way typically can make a lot more money selling what they're in business to do or something related to that a whole lot faster and make a lot more money than you can with third party sponsors. But if it's your goal and you have an audience that grows to be large enough that it would be attractive to third party sponsors, you need to pay attention to what we're going to share with you in this episode.

Here's the thing, some of this advice you're not going to like, I'm just going to be straight with you about it. You're not going to like it and it's going to fly in the face of other experts on what they tell you to do. It is not the same advice that we would give social media influencers. If you are trying to be a social media influencer, it's a completely different model here. Podcasting and social media don't work in the same way. Sponsored posts, sponsored products, affiliates is just different model than it is here in Long Tail content in podcasting. So the advice we're giving you here doesn't apply in those other places. Please don't take it that way. Our number one area is that if you make this all about you, you will have to work 10 times harder.

That I think is going to be hard for a lot of people to accept or realize that they're in the way themselves potentially. Right? Right.

If you make it the Tracy show, I have to do all the heavy lifting and I will have to do 10 times the download numbers, 10 times the proof that my show is worth advertising on because I haven't let the market, the topic, the keywords do the heavy lifting for me. I have to prove my value in a particular niche, a particular area. So you think you're being general and you think that it really is all about you and that's the way social media influencer ship works. It's like I want Kim Kardashian to advertise my stuff because it doesn't matter because whatever Kim says sells. That's a different model than trying to build this thought leadership, this expertise in a niche in an area you don't have to work as hard. I have to get millions of Listeners to compete against Joe Rogan. But I don't have to publish a podcast in the podcasting space, in the real estate space, in the financial management space. I don't have to do it. So let the market, let the topic do the heavy lifting for you. And that means get your face off your cover art and your name off your show. And I don't know how many times I've said that for a hundred other reasons, and no one likes to hear this, and I still see that happen again and again. You are making your work harder for you. Everything that you want to accomplish is going to be twice as hard. So we don't see. And the statistics say this. When I look at the shows that have been sponsored, true sponsorship, not that sort of generic sponsorship you get because you enrolled in a platform and then they just drop ads on, stream them on the front. Someone who truly sponsors a show.

Yeah, the difference is what you're talking about is programmatic ads that. We're not talking about that because they'll put those on any show and pay very, very little for it. No, we're talking about specifically sponsoring your show.

Right. And so when we talk about that, when we look at the numbers, what we clearly see is that your numbers have to be 10 times higher. They have to be so much higher than the average show. On another hand, you're not even like matching to within your niche. Your requirement is set up there at a high network level. So that means you're going to have to do a lot more marketing, a lot more advertising, a lot more listener gathers. You have to have a listener program, a listener increase program. You're going to have to keep that up. And that is a lot more work than being just a great show to be associated with. That's a whole lot easier to ask. Look, we had great sponsorships and we had great download numbers, but it was not millions in. When we did our 3D print show, we were at maximum 100,000amonth. And that's total downloads across all episodes in that month, which is another key factor I'm going to talk about in a minute. And that's the structure of your show, where it's hosted and what you do with it matters. But in this particular case, a hundred thousand downloads a month to reach someone who's actively interested in 3D printing. We used to convert at 37% for calls to action from our sponsors. They loved it. It was the cheapest, best converting advertising they could get. And they didn't need millions to get the results that they wanted. That's what you're looking for. That's what we'll do better. And so in that, get your name, get your face, keep your value structured into that category and industry and let that do the heavy lifting of value for you. You want to go on to the next one, Tom?

Let's do it. Let's hear what the next one.

Let's talk structure.

Let's talk length, length of episode. Well, that does have a big impact on your attractiveness to sponsors because you think if you have a show called five minute Marketing, you got a lot of real estate, lot of time there to have a lot of sponsors.

No, your, your sponsorship ads would be longer than the episode.

They could be.

Right. There's a reason Joe Rogan's show is 90 minutes to two hours. You can put more ads in there, they can make more money. Any YouTube influencer will tell you that if you want to increase your income on YouTube, have a longer show. This is the same case in podcasting. You don't need to have an hour long, two hour long show. You don't need to do that in the beginning, but have a reasonable length show for the amount of ads that you would like to take in the future. So we like 45 minutes to 55 minutes, like right around there. It's perfect to run three ads in a show. So you could have three sponsors in every single show. That's a pretty good amount without overwhelming your listeners.

But if you've got a 15 to 20 minute show, probably realistically don't want to burden your listeners with more than one ad spot.

Right. Or if you do what we call post roll ad spots. So right before your outro, it's really kind of a giveaway where a lot of people skip. So it's not as highly valued. So really the only spot you have is that pre roll or right between.

Intro and something in the middle where there's still content left. And it's obviously not the end of the show. But there's only so much space, right?

Yeah. So length really matters. And then show style format as Thomas just talking about like having natural breaks in where these ads can go mid roll ads do really well. Like they're some of the best. So if I want to do a mid roll ad, I've got to have a natural break in my show. My show, the binge factor structured like this, even though I never take ads on it, but it's structured like this. And that is this idea of I do an introduction to my guests. There's A natural break for an ad, then the guest interview would happen. Then there's a natural break after that before I do my closing comments, which everyone wants to hear because it's my takeaways, so they're going to come back for it. They'll listen through that last ad. So I have natural places to have two mid roll ads and I could still run a pre roll and post roll if I wanted to make an announcement or do something separate. I have those as places with the understanding that there may be people who skip both those spots, but it's structured to have that in place. And one other thing that I really want to suggest here is that for those of you who use potitize, for those of you who planned, there are spots already. Marking those spots at the time you record your episodes or edit your episode is essential. You should know exactly the timestamp that those spots happen in. Our system automatically captures that for you. So it's like you just program it in, it's there, it stays for it. When you're ready to use an ad system, it's all set and ready. And it is so much less work to pick up your socks at the time you drop them than it is to like pick up every sock off the ground later. Right. I can't imagine going back and doing a hundred episodes. And we've seen people who have to do that because they weren't thinking about this ad spots. And I want you to prepare from the beginning. If you know that that's the spot, you want it in market. Because it doesn't matter whether you're going to have an editor insert them for you or you're going to do them through an ad insertion system like we have on potatoes like these. Spot marking matters.

And just to plus what you were saying, Tracy, I mean it's as you go one episode at a time, really at the time you're setting it up and scheduling it to publish or gonna go and publish it immediately. That's when you would mark the odd spots in the system doing that one episode at a time. And if you have a new show you're launching, you do it from the beginning, from episode one. You never have to think about it again. You may not have anything, any ads you wanna put in there for a year, fine. But when you're ready to, you don't have to go and have that pain of oh my Gosh, I have 50 episodes, 75 episodes. Whenever it is that I have to go back and mark out spots before I can do it, it becomes an obstacle to getting it done. Now, if you've had a show for a while and you never had ad spots, yes, you're going to have to go back and mark all those spots. But it is a one time pain. Just a little easier if you do it as you go.

And we can help you with that. So if you're one of our clients who's on the zoom, call with us and this is your problem, we've been marking you all along. But if you.

You pro. Yeah, you probably don't even know it because as our audio team always does naturally give us some timestamps for here would be good spots for ads if you want to do it. And we likely have been marking it for you even if you haven't been using that.

But if you came in and you had already had a hundred episodes or something, we likely didn't do those. But we can. So just contact us and we'll be happy to help you with that. So those are important. But this is really thinking about this. The next most important thing as a part of this like show structure that we're talking about is being careful about whether or not you make the determination of being explicit. It is a determination, it's a choice that you're making. And so whether or not you have editing, take out that, beep it, whatever you want to be naturally you. And we get that. But do you want. Will sponsors want to be associated with it? Maybe if you're in the crypto space or you're in a space where you're speaking to adults and it's not going to matter, that's okay. But for the most part, we find that sponsors don't want to be associated with certain types of topics. Certain types, they call it negative brand association. They don't want negative brand association in certain areas. Violence, guns, swearing, porn. So even having topics and discussions on that may be a consideration that you block those episodes from advertisements. That's something that we built into our system for just that purpose so that you could continue to have the conversation. Especially if you're conversing around it. Like we did an episode on 3D print guns. It was an important episode to discuss what they were about. But we wouldn't want to put an advertiser in a position of thinking that they were associated with that. Even though the topic wouldn't have a negative, it would be a positive, they had been associated with it. But it's a different premise and you may need to think these things through. So think about controversial topics that are going to preclude you from sponsors. Not that you don't go and address them, but you address them and then you block them from ads.

It's a really good point, Tracy. I think when they launch their podcast, especially when they realize, wow, podcast is this wonderful safe haven of free speech. And you're right, you can say anything you want. It's your show. You can take those topics any, down any rabbit hole you want, talk about anything. But when it comes to being attractive to sponsors, you may have to realize there may be some sort of third rail topics here that could get in your way.

And then the last piece of this sort of style section of like how your show is structured and everything is. You had better be darn consistent and constant about it. Oh my gosh, skipping a week destroys your statistics.

When did we just talk about this? Recently, Tracy. We had a podcaster who is all about, well, I definitely, I want to find some sponsors. It's not worth it to me to keep podcasting unless I have sponsors.

And then they stop their show for a month.

They stop their show because they want to wait until they have sponsors. That is the worst thing you could do because you're showing that sponsor you're not serious, you're not consistent, you're not reliable.

Right? And you've destroyed your stats in one month. And in our new scoring system in Pod Lister, this is going to be magnified even more. Having inconsistencies in your show and not planned purposeful seasons, that's a little bit different model. But having inconsistencies in your show like that are actually more harmful than your download numbers because this is such a critical factor to ongoing value creation in your community, in your topic and staying a part of the thought leadership in everything that you want to accomplish is accomplished by consistent and constant. That being said, if you want to boost yourself up and get ready for sponsors, what could you do tomorrow to make that happen faster?

The single most direct and simplest thing you can do to guarantee you will double your monthly download numbers leading up to in advance of taking on a sponsor or pitching a sponsor. This is so simple and it's so often overlooked. Double the number of episodes you publish within a month. Go instead of doing one a week, two a week, because guess what? You have X amount of subscribers who are listening to you. Every month you double the number of episodes you publish that instantly in that next month doubles the number of downloads in your show. It is just simple Math. X times 2 equals twice what you were doing. X being what you had before.2x. So it's so simple.

And this is our key. When we had a hundred thousand downloads a month, we were beating out everyone in the 3D print category because they were doing one show a week and we were doing five. So we had 20X. That's why we had a hundred thousand downloads a month.

Downloads a month, even though we had probably about 10,000 regular listeners really between everything we were doing. But the sponsors don't really scrutinize how many listeners you have because guess what, there's no way to actually really prove that. There is no metric in the podcast ecosystem for how many subscribers do you have in order to determine that. You really have to estimate that. And you can make an educated guess on that to analyzing the data. But what is really of more interest to a sponsor, it isn't how many listeners, but how many impressions. How many times are my ads going to be played for listeners? And that is closest to the number of downloads you get per month.

But it's also a sign of you get to say, not only are my downloads at this and show them it. Be transparent about it. Share your stats, show your screen when you're talking to a sponsor. Be honest about it. Show them where your downloads are, but show them the increase. Right now you've had a I double.

Down in that run up to you pitching you to sponsors. You say, hey, look at the trend. They're not going to scrutinize it and realize, oh, you published one a week back then and now you're publishing two a week. And that's responsible for the trend. They're not going to look at it that specifically. They're not going to understand that. They're just going to see the increase, the trend up and the number of impressions, the number of opportunities for people to hear their message. So it's, this is one of the.

Great ways to prep up your podcast and get it ready for sponsors. So don't take a hiatus, go double down. Like, that's what we're saying here. And this is why a lot of this stuff we're talking about is not popular. You all want to hear like, I'll just wait till I get a sponsor. I can't tell you how many times people will say that to me. And I'd be like, you're not serious. I wouldn't sponsor you in a minute.

And the ones that you hear about, and even we have our own story. Story is one way to describe it. Case study on our primary podcast, we took ads at 3D Print Podcast. We did it for years. We had over 600 episodes and it had a certain amount of inherent value, a certain amount of steady plays, a certain amount of Google search value that Hewlett Packard saw. Cause they were trying to knock us off the first page of Google search for certain terms. It couldn't do it. We hadn't been publishing in over a year. And they came to us and said, hey, can we sponsor your show? And Tracy's like, you realize we're not publishing anymore, don't you? They said, yeah, we know that. But we came to the.

But we never once had a conversation on download numbers. They never once asked for that.

They knew they couldn't get us off the first page of Google search for certain terms. So they sort of took the approach, instead of beat em, let's join them. Would you do a 25 episode special series? Can we sponsor you to do that? And it was a number that was worth our while. And we said, yeah, okay, we'll do that. So we revived the show, did a special series, and they got tremendous value out of it.

And luck would have it that we were about to drop the series when the pandemic started. And so it was actually really perfect timing for them. And we dropped it in June of 2020. And they had tremendous amount of webinar traffic from it, which is exactly what they needed and wanted at the time. Because they couldn't sell their printers anywhere else. So they were all prepped up. But we made a choice there. And this I was very straightforward and honest with them about the results that they would get. We had this 25 episode series. We could drip it out over 25 weeks, or we could drop it all at once, or we could drop it in a certain time period. So what we determined to do was drop about three to four episodes a week. And we did that for a month and a half. And we did it that way because it allowed them to promote the episodes in a pace that they could handle. But it boosted that immediate download numbers and got a lot more visibility to the webinars that were happening at the time. So there was a lot more great traction. But we made a choice based on an understanding of when we drop more, we get more.

And my only reason in bringing that up is to point out there are benefits that come from preparing, doing this and having normal regular publishing and sponsorship over a period of time that can pay off and still benefit you even after you've really stopped publishing regularly. But you can't count on that early on, that was a benefit of doing what we were suggesting to you here in this episode, all those preparations and steps providing all that value to sponsors, and then there's a certain amount of equity that builds in your show through your website and as a podcast, that has real value people will pay for later.

And that's a really important structural piece as well. So to end this sort of section of structurally how you're doing it is that by having multimedia, by having video, audio, blog and social share, you're covering the gamut of the industry and topic areas and you're creating residual values in each one of those pieces and areas as you've known before. Because we put out that Google for content creators, we put out their stats on that blog and podcasts last longer than video. Video lasts longer than any version of social media. Like all of those pieces in there go hand in hand with long term value creation. But I'm going to suggest also to you that structurally, when you do not have a blog component, and I mean a real blog component and a real website component, not some kind of pod page, not some kind of podcast website, not a website page, that is at your hosting company for your podcast, that's not a real website, but you have a real website that's topic focused, that's not too business focused. And keep that in mind. So it's not all about selling your course, it's not a landing page. It is about this topic area and being a thought leader in a space. We've talked about companies that have that. You can be a company there, but you can still have a valuable website. We had has design and we had our podcast in that site and it was valuable in and of itself. And we weren't overly selling our services. They were available there, but it wasn't front and center. The content was front and center. When you do that, you make yourself more conducive to sponsors as well. But more importantly, you have a way and you can create a simple mechanism for a click through following and making sure that you're tracking the conversion rates of what's happening on your ads. So you're already set up to be able to create forwarding URLs, create all the things that you might need, create tracking links to be able to do that structurally, to help your sponsor understand the value that you've created for them from the audio show. Those that do audio only, you got to rely on a sponsor who knows what they're doing. And that's difficult right then and there.

Great point, Tracy. Thank you for adding that.

So the last thing the third section of it is like, how am I gonna tee up these sponsors? How am I gonna invite that conversation when I am ready, when they're ready, when they're starting seeing me? There's no reason you can't start early. Tom and I interviewed MakerBot really early on in our 3D print show. We interviewed them extremely early. We didn't ask for sponsorship from day one. We said, hey, we're here to talk about the industry. And if we didn't talk about you and talk with you and interview your team and get to know what you're working on and doing and be an opportunity for you to discuss with this community what you're working on. We didn't create a place in an environment for that. We didn't create the opportunity for us to have the conversation about sponsorship later. And we never had to have the conversation of, would you sponsor us? They would come to us and go, hey, we're thinking about podcast sponsor. And you're the only podcasting company that we've gone to. Like, you're the only podcast we've come to first. Because we had already served them by having the conversation.

That's what I was just about to emphasize, Tracy, and put some air quotes around serve first, provide value first. And then obviously we were the first company they thought of or the first podcast they thought of, because what happened, they got a lot of value out of that one episode. They got a social media boost. They got people inquiring about their products they were selling because they were.

They were seeing links through from the blog post to their site for inquiries.

And they say, wow, that's what we got from one episode. What happens that was free. We are on all of their episodes in a given month or two. That's the natural thing that they realize. And if it doesn't happen that way, where they come to you, it is. You've certainly warmed them up. They know who you are. They're going to take your call, they're going to respond to your email because you provided them value before it makes that segue conversation into, hey, you know what? We have an opening for sponsorship on our show coming up in March, and it's a unique opportunity. Would you be interested in that? Now, they don't have to know that you don't just have one spot available, that in fact, you have all your spots available because you don't have any other sponsors. They don't have to know.

They honestly won't listen to your show. Chances are good.

You want to be careful to remain in integrity. But you don't have to volunteer every piece of information about your company that you've never had a sponsor before. You need to sell it is just what I'm trying to say. But that's a whole nother episode.

Also demonstrate the value you gave them. So you have this episode and say this was in the top 10% of my episodes. So. So you got traction from that. Use your Google Analytics from your website of how many people click through from that page on a regular basis of where you're ranking on the first page of Google from the blog post for that episode. There's so many pieces of valuable information you can already demonstrate that you've given them from that free publicity from being a guest on your show that it makes it easier to have the conversation for the value. It doesn't make it such an unknown. And we were dealing at a time when no one had really been advertised. From the point that you've demonstrated value to a single potential sponsor, remember also that a lot of those sponsors aggregate at conferences. So supporting the event to organizers is absolutely essential in creating value with event organizers and then showing up at those events and maybe doing more publicity on site and being the podcaster on site and doing some of those things are a great way to network and show value to a community and seem like you are the media player within that community. So when they think I'd like to sponsor, they're going to logically come back to you. But also they're ripe to that conversation in the future because you built that networking opportunity. Whitetail Rendezvous was one of our clients a while ago they stopped their show, but it was all in deer hunting.

And specifically white tail deer hunting. And before this show came to us for support, I didn't even know that was a thing, but it is. And there's a huge community of hunters in North America that really focus on hunting white tailed deer.

Right. So there's all this equipment, there's all this strategy, there's all these kinds of pieces as they would go to the trade shows and then they would network with all of those people there and then they would feature some of their products and stuff on a show and the next thing you know they would get a sponsor. And so it really led to a flow through that was really logical. And here again going back and tying to what we said at the beginning, when we are looking at a show that is focused in a topic area that's a great interest for a sponsor to reach, it does all the heavy lifting for em. Then it was like then the Joe Hunter show, like it wasn't about him, it was about whitetail deer hunting. And that makes a huge difference in being ripe and ready. And they were taking ads really early.

On and very successfully for sure. That is such a really good point. Is that one thing I think everybody needs to understand, if you've got a show that has enough listenership in a niche area where your audience is easily. I was going to say defined, but that may not be the right word. Is identified. Identified. Yeah. It's very clear what your typical listener's interests are then. Believe me, there are so many companies in on this earth, and especially in North America that are dying to find ways to reach more of their ideal customers. And if you can demonstrate that their customer is listening to your show, they're in, they're going to do it.

They might even take the risk without even clearly knowing it. Right. Like obviously our Show's all about 3D printing. We have listeners, they must be that. But they didn't care whether they were 14 years old or 40 years old or 90 years old. They didn't care because their interest is what mattered.

One example, we have a customer that has a sports related podcast. And we knew of this clothing brand that was having success advertising on podcasts. It was a men's clothing brand and this sports podcast predominantly had male listeners. And we matched them up and for about a year they sponsored that podcast and we just matched them up because it made sense, it was pretty easy and they each got value out of it. And that's a wonderful thing. More and more companies are realizing the opportunity in advertising on podcasts. But you still have to have enough listenership. I mean, I think that show had about 30,000 plus plays a month or something like that.

But you don't have to have millions.

You don't need that many. But no, you don't have to have hundreds of thousands or even millions. There are niche advertising opportunities for smaller companies and everybody's looking for how do we get found by more of our ideal customers? How do we raise awareness of our brand to more of our target profile customer?

Here's the other key that I think you all are overlooking. Like when you have big name sponsors and you go for that millions of listeners. Coca Cola is not out there saying, Amazon's not out there saying, hey, we sponsored the Joe Smith show. Like, they're not out there saying that. They're like counting on your show to do all the work. When you get a small sponsor who's proud of being partnered with you, who is using that, they're more likely to promote your show on their social media. When we had HP sponsor, they posted our episodes for six weeks straight at Hewlett Packard level. We got exposure to our show. So what we found was months later, we were still getting binge listeners listening through our whole 650 catalog like it was crazy numbers that we saw boost afterwards. So you're going to get listeners from doing sponsorship partners, but it works better when they're smaller or when you have a specialty partnership and not just a generic. And so again, this goes back to this idea. That market, that industry, that niche can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. And prepping into that and diving into that can be really, really valuable.

Be prepared. That's the message today, isn't it, Tracy?

Yep. Think about this. Prepare. And if you don't want it later, what a great thing to say. Look, I had my show is perfect and now it's perfect sponsorship for me, like, it's selling my stuff. It's all prepared. They're the same kind of ideas and models and just a little bit different. So now you could say I don't want to take outside advertisers because I can advertise my own stuff in such a better way.

All right, well, I think it's a good place to wrap this episode up, Tracy. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll be back next time with another great topic. This has been Tom and Tracy on feed.

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Sam.