In this article, we’ll look at how to get podcast sponsors.

The appeal of being able to sell commercial spots on a podcast makes sponsors incredibly appealing to podcasters.

Even small, new, or recently shows can land sponsors. While it may seem like bigger shows do better with getting sponsors, we have found that even new and smalls hows can get sponsors with lucrative deals.

That being said, we know that sponsors are more likely to bite if your show has some good stats, for that reason we’ve also created an article that teaches you how to grow your podcast.

Here’s our article, “How to promote your podcast” which will help you grow your show and appeal to sponsors.

How To Get Podcast Sponsors:

Find what makes your podcast unique
Create a pitch sponsors will respond to
Develop a good track record by starting with sponsorship trades
Invite your guests to become sponsors
Let your audience know they can be sponsors
Cold pitch as a last resort
Use a broker

Other Ways To Make Money With A Podcast

Before Going After Sponsors – Know Why You’re Special

Just about every show I’ve ever seen lands sponsors by pitching.

If you’re open to pitching, you’ll likely land a sponsor. On the other hand, if you’re against sending pitches, it’s almost guaranteed you won’t do well landing a sponsor.

Throughout this article, we’ll look at the different people/companies you can pitch and how to approach your pitch so it gets your podcast a paid sponsor.

In general terms, a pitch needs to include a few key elements. Take a look at these bullets and take a moment to consider how your show gives your sponsors these perks.

How does your show connect with sponsors?

How will your show attract the sponsor’s key demographic?
Who is your audience, how are they in line with your sponsor’s ideal customer?
What does your show offer that Facebook, Google, or some other kind of ads don’t?
Where will your commercial spot go on your podcast? *More on this later*
How much will each ad space cost, and why do you charge that price? *More on that later too*

These are just some of the key questions that sponsors will ask before buying a commercial spot on your podcast. Knowing your answers will make your sponsorship sales happen faster.

Before we move on, let me throw this out there too. Your ability to land sponsors will also be impacted by the professionalism and quality of your website. If you’re curious about what a podcast website looks like, be sure to check out our page, “podcast website design.”

Here are the key data points all podcasters seeking sponsors should know

*Podcast listeners tune into an episode for an average of 20 minutes (that easily outperforms YouTube and most social media sites for prolonged attention).

*The average podcast listener earns $75,000 – $150,000. That means the average listener has expendable income and can afford to buy a sponsor’s products.

*Most podcast listeners are middle class, educated, and have an expendable income to make larger purchases.

*Podcast listenership is growing exponentially year-after-year.

*Advertisers are now investing hundreds of millions of dollars into podcasting. Projections show a fast growth of investment into this medium (clearly it’s working for a strong return of investment).

*Marketers and entrepreneurs have been touting podcasting as one of their best ways to invest time and dollars to acquire new customers

*Large companies like Slack, eBay, Netflix, and even Umpqua Bank have gone all-in with podcasting and not only ad space – but also produce their own podcasts.

*Wired Magazine touts podcast listeners as, ‘the holy grail for advertisers’ for a good reason.

Those are just some of the juicy stats that any good pitch can use to entice sponsors.

If you’re interested in learning about more key stats or want sources for your own pitch, check out these links from these trusted sources: Edison Research, Nielson Research, TechCrunch, Forbes, Wired Magazine, Statista, Hubspot, and Buzzsprout.

Now, before you and actually craft your pitch – let’s go into the different types of companies and people you can pitch.

The different people, places, and companies that you can pitch. *Once we review who and why you should pitch, we’ll share with you a general pitch that you can tweak and use yourself.

How To Create Your Pitch To Land Sponsors

Now that you know why you’re the ideal person to pay for sponsorship – it’s time to craft your pitch.

Creating a pitch can take time because it requires research.

Before you can pitch, you’ll want to gather some information.

Here is what you’ll need before you can even send out your pitch:

1) A list of ideal companies, entrepreneurs, and brands to pitch. To make a robust list, here are two key questions you’ll want to answer. What companies and brands would like to have access to your audience? What brands, services, companies do you currently see as a fit for your show and audience?

2) Using that list you’ll need to go and find the information of the decision-makers. To do that I like to use a free tool called Email Hunter. This tool allows you to scrape websites (it’s a simple Chrome extension) that allows you to click on it and see the database of emails associated with a website.

3) Grab the email of the key people and now it’s time to craft your pitch.

Here’s the formula on how to craft an enticing pitch

Step One:

Start with a simple compliment. Create some kind of connection.

Step Two:

Share who you are and how you’re outreach is meant to help the reader.

Step Three:

Talk about your audience, benefits the reader will have by speaking with you. Think about the other person and really dial into their desires. Any assets you have that can appeal to them, mention it here.

Step Four:

Ask to meet by phone for a short 10-minute call that will be beneficial to the reader.

Step Five:

Wait for a week or two. If you don’t get a response, reach out again with a simple, “hey not sure if you saw my email. I’d love to chat.”

That’s the recipe.

The key to landing the sponsors is to be diverse in who you’re reaching out to. Don’t just cold pitch companies, instead consider pitching other people – more on that below.

Before I dive into other potential sponsors, let me suggest that you can land sponsors early on with lucrative trades.

It’s something we did early on to get free trainings, education, access to masterminds, services for social media, copywriting, website creation, graphic design, and much more.

Let’s look at how to do trades for sponsorship spots and then we’ll look at other sponsors and how to pitch your potential podcast sponsors.

Best Tip To Land Sponsors: Consider Doing Trades Initially

If you’re newer to podcasting, don’t have an email list, or want to avoid all the red tape that goes into sealing the deal with sponsors – consider doing trades for sponsorship spots.

In my experience, doing trades with companies can yield fast results that give you access, perks, benefits, and winnings that rival cold hard dollars.

Trades are easier to work out then payments and they can give you a leg into the sponsorship world with lower stakes. Once you’ve done a trade or two, you’ll also have more data to help you sell sponsorships for your podcast.

Here’s how you might construct a trade for sponsorship on your podcast

1) Reach out to a company and tell them you have a podcast with their ideal audience.

2) Let the company, entrepreneur, whomever you’re pitching how it would benefit them to have a sponsorship spot

3) Ask if they’d be open to doing a phone call to speak further

4) On the call inform your potential buyer that normally you’d charge X for a sponsorship package (quote more than their product). But, you really like their product and are open to some kind of exchange where you give them ad placements on your show.

5) Wait and see what they say.

6) Go back and forth until you iron out a deal you like.

This may sound harder than it is, but it’s not. It’s something I’ve done many times and it’s something many podcasters who I work with and who I’ve interviewed say works well.

In one case, I reached out to a microphone company.

This company happens to sell microphones for $500-$800 apiece, plus you need special wires and mixers that make the whole setup cost about $1,000.

I didn’t want to go spend that on a podcast setup, so I used my same methods to land high-end guests for my podcast to reach the company owner.

Once I had the info I needed, I called the company owner and followed this script.

1) Say hello, do some brief necessities. Then move on to tell him who I am and why I am reaching out. “Hi, my name is Luis Congdon. I run a popular podcast, it’s called ThrivingLaunch. It gets around 2,000 or so listeners a day, plus I have an email list of highly engaged business owners who want to podcast. I’d like to talk about how I might interest your company in getting sponsorship on my show in exchange for some equipment.

2) Let the owner talk.

3) Share some more key facts about our show and audience (you must know what makes your show tantalizing – so be sure to know the answers to the questions I asked at the top of this article).

4) Sweeten the deal by making an extra offer. “We could even work out some deal where you send us extra equipment and we’ll give out as another way to get you more buzz and as a way for me to do shout outs on social media.”

5) Let him talk. See what he says.

6) Seal the deal – give him my address and receive the gear.

Funny enough, by the end of this call the owner of the microphone company sent me to another audio equipment store and they gave us products too.

In total, we got around $3,500 of free product from one 20 minute call, which allowed us to give away some gear to our listeners and email subscribers (which is always fun).

Before you ever email or call anyone, be sure you know the answers to the key questions.

Who is your audience
Why are they good for me
How does this help me?

Be sure you know how you would respond. The other possible questions you could encounter vary, but these key questions are the most important ones.

For a more in-depth look at a specific example of someone who’s doing trades in exchange for hotel stays, retreat packages, and month-long stays at resorts all over the world, take a look at our interview with Erica Dunn.

Here’s that interview, “Podcast Sponsorship” this interview is worth a lot for anyone who wants to land sponsors for their podcast.

Learning how to do barters is much like learning how to get paid – the difference is that most companies will gladly give you a retreat package, a hotel stay, microphones, or anything else because it’s cheap to give you that.

Once you get into dollars for airtime, companies will ask a lot more questions. If you can do some trades, you’ll be much more equipped to get paid sponsors for your podcast.

Let’s dive into some low-hanging sponsor opportunities for your podcast.

Invite Your Guests To Become Sponsors

Many of your guests will be strong candidates for becoming paid sponsors.

Asking a previous guest if they’d like to buy a sponsorship spot on your podcast can be quite simple.

The process you can use to land sponsors on your podcast:

1) Interview your guest. Make sure it’s a great interview with a solid follow-up process (check out my Paid To Podcast Guide to learn more about this process)

2) After the interview has aired and you used a strong protocol for following up post-interview – check in with the guest and mention sponsorship spots.

3) In your email about sponsorships be brief and say something like, “I am offering sponsorship spots and thought of you. My audience is perfect for your services and I am offering a special to past guests. Let me know if you’re interested.”

There is no reason to do a hard pitch with past guests. A short and sweet email where you mention what you’re up to will be sufficient.

If the guest bites, you can do a call and send them more information to get the ball rolling.

Send Out Emails Telling Your Audience Sponsorships Are Available

If you’ve optimized your website in the ways I’ve described in my Entrepreneur Magazine column – you likely have an email list.

When it comes to landing sponsorship spots for your podcast – that email list can be very lucrative.

Instead of having to cold pitch companies, or even guests, one of the first places to look for sponsors is with your email list.

Reaching out to your email to sell sponsorship spots on your podcast can be quite simple.

How to find sponsors with your email list

1) Type up an email sharing some juicy info about your show. *Who has been on it? What are some enticing stats? Who is the audience? Who would benefit by buying sponsorship spots?

2) Tell your readers you’re offering a special rate to your subscribers

3) Encourage your readers to go to a landing page or a Google Forms that you’ve created where they can apply to become sponsors (and if you want to keep it super simple tell them to reply via email)

One of my friends and successful podcast hosts emailed his list and had readers bid on podcast commercial spots.

In the end, before even releasing his show, he made $2,000 from one reader who knew there was immense value in buying ad space on Ravi’s new show.

You can try that method out if you like too (if you’d like to see the exact step-by-step method it’s all outlined in the Paid2Podcast course).

Cold Pitch Companies Is The Last Option

Cold pitching companies is the hardest way to land sponsors. Trust me, I know.

The success ratio for this is quite low.

I’ve managed to land sponsors who paid me for sponsorship spots – but for us here at ThrivingLaunch we’ve found that going after sponsors via your email list, guest list, and with trades is the most assured method.

Just like most of us are leary of cold outreach of people who knock on our door selling vacuums or anything else – companies shy away from buying sponsorship spots from random people.

That being said, if you really want a sponsor, you will need to do pure cold outreach – I just want you to know it’s tough and takes time to learn and understand.

To find companies that will likely respond to you, you’ll want to use tools like Email Hunter and Contact Out – these two tools will help you find a ton of data on companies.

Once you gather the key data, you’ll want to send enticing emails.

In my experience, I have found that if I pitch past guests, people in my network, my email list, and even do trades with some companies – I have been able to then charge a fee for sponsorship spots.

Cold pitching works, it’s just tough and requires a paint by the numbers process – or it demands you either have lots of time or a team to help you.

To cold pitch companies, use the methods I’ve outlined above. Use the pitch template I gave you and follow the steps I shared with you earlier.

Where To Find Podcast Sponsorships (Using Brokers)

When you first get into podcasting, it’s unlikely you’ll get sponsors seeking spots on your show. And even when your show gets some traction, you’ll need to pitch or use sponsorship brokers.

With a newer show the best way to get sponsors is through the methods mentioned above (cold pitching, inviting guests to buy sponsorship spots, and letting your fans know about the opportunity).

Once your show starts doing some decent numbers (1,000+ daily downloads), you can start to look at sponsorship brokers. While these guys will take a percent of your deal, they’ll make acquisition and contracts much easier – thus leaving you to focus on creating, promoting, and growing your show.

For newer, smaller show here are some sponsorship brokers to check out:

Podbean
Blubrry
And try Googling, there might be more out there for you but these are the ones that are trusted

For bigger shows (think 50,000+ downloads a month):

Your podcast hosting service (Podbean and Blubrry)
Advertisecast
Midroll
Podgrid
And here’s a list of others that can help you sell sponsorship spots

As you can tell, the options of sponsorship brokers are small for new shows, and even big shows have limited options too. But even if you have a big show, you’ll to consider the essentials of landing sponsors.

The Key To Landing Sponsors For Any Podcast

If you can land a few sponsors and give them some kind of valuable return on investment, it becomes easier to land more sponsors.

My suggestion is to start small. Make your fees reasonable, and then raise them as you get more sponsors or as you provide results that companies can find value in.

If you want more tips for landing podcast sponsors, check out this other article that offers some other insights on how to get podcast sponsors.

Get The Paid To Podcast Guide

How To Get Podcast Sponsors, And Where To Find Them