So, you have the podcast and you have the listeners – the next obvious step is to start making some money from it. However, before you can start thinking about monetizing your podcast you need to make sure you have a proposal which will knock any potential sponsor’s socks off.
To be well equipped to write that all-important pitch you need to know your podcast inside out – your audience, the hard stats and your value as a marketing channel. To make it as simple as possible for you, we have pulled together a checklist of three points which will guarantee you’re ready to start reaping the rewards from your podcast!
Know your audience
Being able to define your podcast’s audience is absolutely fundamental to gaining a sponsorship deal. Do you feel confident in your ability to speak about your ‘typical’ listener? Where they are, who they are and why your sponsor should be speaking to them? These vital demographic and geolocal stats will help you identify the sort of sponsor to target, and give you the tools to highlight the power of your podcast.
If you aren’t a technical whizz you might be wondering where to pull this information from. Spreaker’s updated CMS system grants easy, manageable access to this sort of data and in turn knowledge on your podcast’s impact and reach. This information should then be used to find an effective way to summarise your audience in one phrase – THAT is your sales pitch to your sponsor.
Choose your advertising format
Once you can define your audience you will be one step closer to understanding how best to reach them and their value to advertisers. Advertising can be completely personalized to your listeners with a range of formats to choose from. The two most common types of podcast advertising are a 15-second pre-roll spot or a 60-second mid-episode spot, which are as self-explanatory as they sound! John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire explains that pre-roll comes before your content and is where you would discuss the sponsor’s product or service for 15 seconds, mid-roll instead, (which in general offers more flexibility) will come halfway through your podcast and last for 60 seconds.
Although these are the most ‘common’ forms of advertising, you can pretty much create the advert format which works for your podcast, for example, try a longer mid-roll length ad of 90 seconds or one at the end of your podcast for 120 seconds. Experiment and see what works best with your audience, always taking into consideration factors such as podcast length and style. To begin with, we would always advise to start simple, it will inevitably make it easier to sell-in to potential sponsors!
Show your metrics!
If you have some impressive figures why aren’t you shouting loud for all to hear? Your metrics should be on clear display so that your sponsors know just how valuable your podcast could be to them. How many Twitter followers do you have? What’s your social media pull? How many chapter clicks are you getting on a monthly basis? Once again, you can pull this information utilizing Spreaker’s CMS system – gaining access to your plays, downloads and much more.
Also, if you are yet to take advantage of podcast chapters they could be just the tool you’re missing to gain that extra level of insight into your audience. By breaking down your podcast you can understand what interests your audience, giving you the power to be able to target them more specifically. Furthermore, they are a nifty way to add links to offers and vouchers that might be of interest to your listeners.
Now you have a guide for finding the information which is already at hand you can get cracking on that pitch! But remember to continue to ask yourself: What can I offer a sponsor? What is my USP as a person and podcast? What makes my podcast an appealing marketing channel to sponsors? Knowing the answers to these questions is the key to monetizing your podcast!
