← Grow The Show
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- [00:00]
Kevin Schmidlin
Have you ever wondered how to get sponsors for your podcast, even if your podcast audience is small? Or maybe you've assumed that sponsorships are only for shows with thousands of downloads? Well, today you're going to learn that that is not true. Imagine instead if you could secure lucrative sponsorships, no matter the size of your audience, and turn your podcast into a brand deal revenue generating powerhouse. You are listening to Grow the Show, the podcast that grows and monetizes your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidlin. I am your podcast growth coach. And today on the show, we are tackling one of the most common questions that I get from podcasters. How do I get my first sponsorship? And we're not just talking about the big brands you hear on every major show. We are diving into strategies for landing sponsorships that are tailored to your niche. So to help us do that, we welcome back to the show Justin Moore, a sponsorship expert who has helped creators of all sizes to secure brand deals worth millions. He's here today to break down his proven system for getting sponsorships, no matter the size of your audience. So in this episode, you're going to learn why you don't need a massive audience to attract sponsors. You're going to learn how to craft a pitch that brands can't resist. And you are going to understand the eight step sponsorship wheel that Justin has created that virtually guarantees success. Plus, we're going to uncover why the traditional CPM sponsorship model doesn't work and how you can charge what you are truly worth as a podcaster. So if you're ready to start monetizing your podcast and secure your first sponsorship today, stick around to this episode of Grow the Show. Justin Moore, welcome back to Grow the Show. Today we are going to help podcasters get their very first sponsorships. Are you ready?
- [01:53]
Justin Moore
Let's go, man. I'm excited.
- [01:54]
Kevin Schmidlin
Me too. So, dude, it's been so fun to watch your ascent online and it's been so cool to see how you have impacted so many creators already with the guidance that you provide on sponsorships. This is the one thing that every single podcaster that I have interacted with. Business show, not business show newbie. They're all like, how do I get more sponsors? And so today, what I'd love for us to do is walk through how you help other creators do that. So my first question is, before we get into the steps, before we get into what you need to do, are there any mindset shifts that we need to have as podcasters before we go out and start talking to brands?
- [02:36]
Justin Moore
I think a big misconception for a lot of podcasters is that the only way that I can collaborate with brands is on a, what they call a CPM basis, where they think, okay, this is how many average downloads or listens I'm getting on my show. And I hear people talking about, like, it's a 25 or $30 CPM, and if I'm only getting a thousand downloads on my show, like, it's not worth it for me to actually work with sponsors. If I'm getting paid 25 or 30 bucks, it's not worth the hassle. And so one of the core tenants that I. That I talk about is that pricing on CPM sucks. Don't do that. Especially if you're a niche show. Especially if you, you know, have a B2B audience, let's say, you know, I work with a lot of podcasters who have very, very specific niche audiences, and they are not getting millions of listens. They're not getting even hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands. It may just be couple hundred, couple thousand listens. And they're forging really lucrative partnerships with these very specific brands who have a hard time marketing to the audience those people speak to. So that's the very first mindset shift, is understanding that, like, sponsorships can be for you if you approach it differently.
- [03:43]
Kevin Schmidlin
Excellent. Sweet. So can you tell me the difference between inbound sponsorships and outbound sponsorships? What are those two different things, and how are they different?
- [03:55]
Justin Moore
Well, I think inbound sponsorships is the holy grail for most podcasters. Basically, what this means is that you're building your show, you're growing your audience, and the idea is, like, if I build it, they will come. It's the holy grail is like, you get an email that, like, pops into your inbox, and it's like, oh, we love your show. We would love to sponsor it. Right? And I think a lot of actually podcasters think that that's the only that sponsorships happen. They have actually never thought that, oh, wow, I can actually reach out to a brand or a sponsor, a company, and potentially propose a sponsorship. And. And that's what an outbound partnership is. And this is like a game changer. I think, for. For a lot of people is you're not just limited by, you know, the opportunities that are coming to you. Maybe you did reach out one time, and you reached out to a sponsor, and they said, oh, we only work with people who are getting, you know, minimum, you know, a thousand downloads per episode or 10,000 downloads or whatever, whatever it is. And then you thought, well, I guess that's what every brand's policy is. And then you stop doing it. And, you know, yes, of course, I'll be the first one to admit there are some companies that have those thresholds, but that's that in my experience, that's the minority of companies.
- [04:59]
Kevin Schmidlin
What I really want to make sure that we have time for is to step all the way through the sponsorship wheel, which is your entire process, end to end, for getting fulfilling and then making happy sponsors. I would say. So I would love to just step through one through eight. The wheel from the perspective of a podcaster who, again, let's assume that they have an audience of between 1 to 10,000 folks, right? So maybe they're getting 500 downloads an episode, they've got a semi decent following on social media and email, and they want to get some outbound sponsors for the first time. What is step one? What's the first thing that we need to do?
- [05:40]
Justin Moore
So step one is pitch. And there's two primary components of good pitch. It's like, what do you say and who do you send it to? Right? This is. This is the paralyzing factor for most. For most podcasters. And I have a framework that I call the rope pitching method for what to say. Right. And so R stands for your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand is either currently running or has run in the past. O stands for organic, meaning that you can tie your pitch back to an organic episode that you've already posted that illustrates that your audience has an affinity for their brand. P stands for proof, so you can show how you've helped other brands achieve results. And E stands for easy to execute. When they say, hey, yeah, this is interesting. What did you have in mind?
- [06:21]
Kevin Schmidlin
Excellent. Okay, so let's say that we have sent this pitch, we have heard back from a brand. What's next? What's step two?
- [06:29]
Justin Moore
So step two is negotiate, and this is where you're actually hammering out all the deal points of how the collaboration will come to life. So let's say it's a certain number of podcast integrations, or you're gonna be, you know, doing a back catalog ad for, you know, a certain duration. What is the usage rights? This is something a lot of podcasters don't think about. Like, are you allowing them to use that read in other ways? Because essentially you're kind of giving them an endorsement. So are they gonna take that and say, hey, Kevin from Grow the show says, our podcast, our SaaS tool is the greatest since sliced bread. And they run a bunch of Facebook ads. Are they allowed to do that? Have you talked with them about that? Is their exclusivity? Like, are you not able to talk about any of their competitors for a certain duration that could represent direct dollars out of your pocket? So these are all kind of deal points that you absolutely have to negotiate ahead of time.
- [07:20]
Kevin Schmidlin
At what point so far do you tell the brand how much your sponsorship costs?
- [07:26]
Justin Moore
Okay, so I have a very, very simple exercise that I want everyone listening to go through. The first is, okay, I want you to open up if you have a media kit, okay? Or you have a place on your website where it's like, hey, book a spot on my show. I want you to drag that page into the trash immediately, and I want you to douse it with lighter fluid, put a match on it, and dance around it maniacally, okay? Because what you're doing by providing pricing to a brand ahead of time is you are leading the witness. You're basically. And you have some packages like, oh, pick a, B, C, D, E, whatever. This is a group of five integrations, whatever. The analogy I give Kevin is that let's say you went to the doctor's office and you have an ailment. You go into the waiting room, the doctor enters, and you open your mouth to tell him what's wrong with you. And he goes and he writes on his prescription pad, a random prescription, hands it to you and walks out. That's what you're doing when you give a brand prefix packages and prices where they haven't even told you what their objectives are. This is what you're doing. And so the better exercise is to. On your media kit or on your website, you have a form that says, contact me. Let's have an initial conversation. I want to ask some questions. I want to learn about what your goals are. What are your success metrics as a brand? Then I'm going to put together a proposal for you that outlines how we can bring this partnership to life. And here is what you're going to say to them on at the very end of that call, because inevitably they're going to be like, kevin, okay? So at the end of the day, just kind of give us a rough ballpark, like how many. How much you charge, right? They always ask this, right? And what you're going to say is, you know, this conversation has been so helpful. I would love to put together a kind of a bespoke proposal for you. Usually what I do is I Put together three to four different packages to give you a sense of what we could do. Do you have a sense brand? Do you have a sense of what I should set those three to four tiers at from a budget feasibility perspective? And then you shut up, you don't say anything. And this is very different than saying what's your budget? Because if you say, what's their budget? They're going to hem. They're going to haw, they're going to not want to tell you. Because if they say 10k, what's your proposal going to be for? It's going to be 10k and they have no wiggle room. Right. And so instead, if you ask for a budget range, they now have the ability to give you a conservative estimate. And you know, if they end up needing to shrink the budget for whatever reason, there still is an ability to move forward with you at that, lower the lower package. And so, and the game changing thing here is that when you ask this question, Kevin, I've done this across hundreds of negotiations. About 75% of the time they will tell you, it's shocking. They will tell you the range. They'll say a thousand, two thousand, three thousand or 100, 200, 300 or 20, 30, 40,000, they're going to tell you something. And then 25% of the time they're going to say, we don't know. You tell us. We've never done this before. And my advice in that scenario is when you come back to them with your proposal, package one, which is the lowest amount has to be your hell yeah number. It has to be the number where if they choose that, you're going to say, hell yeah, let's do this. I'm excited, not, oh man, I got to do this now. You never want to be in a situation where you're resenting a partnership. So. So again, I understand this is not a super scientific. And of course I've got a whole rabbit hole of like, more quantitative ways to kind of measure pricing and things. I have a calculator and all that. But like, this is the method that I found to be the best one to do to kind of suss out how you can help the brand win.
- [10:46]
Kevin Schmidlin
Incredible. Okay, so let's say that we have done this. We said option one, option two, option three. The brand enthusiastically selects option two. Now what?
- [10:58]
Justin Moore
Now is time to memorialize everything you just agreed to over the phone or over email into an agreement. I think a lot of people get pretty intimidated by this. They, they hear, oh man, lawyers aren't lawyers Expensive. I need a contract. I don't have a contract template. Like, I guess. I don't know. I guess I'll just. Whatever they send, even though I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just going to sign it because I want the money. You know, even though something seems a little suspicious about this, I just. I don't know. So my advice in the. In these scenarios is that, well, first of all, I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice. You should always hire one. But there's a lot of tools now, obviously, like AI tools that can help you interpret in plain English, like, what some of the clauses are. You can basically say here. Here is my understanding, based on the email thread, of what I think should be in this agreement. Can you read this document and tell me, is that accurate, or is there things that aren't accurately documented here? And then you just basically ask them to change it. This, this is the biggest thing, Kevin, I think, is that a lot of podcasters think that they're not allowed to, like, go back to the brand and say, hey, I actually need some clarification in this particular clause because it seems confusing to me. Please update it to language that is more clear. And nine times out of 10, the brand's gonna be like, sure, no problem, we'll do that. Right? And so that's the first thing. The second thing is that if you do not have a contract template for yourself to do these deals, it is a worthwhile investment to go out there and hire a lawyer for two hours and say, hey, create a boilerplate contract template for me where the first 10 pages of this I'm not even gonna change. It's just all the stuff to protect me. And then the only thing that I change is the very last page, which is like the addendum or the statement of work, scope of work. Right. And so that's where you go in and you say, it's going to be this number of ad reads. It's going to be some social media amplification. It's going to be this usage rights, whatever. You change those. That is a worthwhile investment for you as a podcaster.
- [12:43]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah. Okay, that's one that is certainly scary. And so it's good to know that you can kind of like do that work once and have the boilerplate, and then it's. It's kind of done. You update it each time, you know, based on terms, but that's a relief. Okay, so contract is buttoned up, signed. What's step four.
- [13:00]
Justin Moore
Okay, so step four is a concept and this is actually something that I think not a lot of podcasters think about because probably maybe the brands that you've worked with, maybe in the past have never asked you for that. They've never said, hey, send us over some ideas of how you're going to bring this partnership to life or kind of what are you going to say or what are you going to show when you do this, this integration? And again, because I ran the agency for so long, this is the one area, like if you just did this, if you just sent them over two or three sentences or two or three paragraphs of like, hey, here's kind of what I'm planning on doing and allowing for them to be like, actually that's not what we had in mind at all. Allowing them to just get that one sanity check. You're going to save yourself so much strife throughout the execution of this deal. And so you doing this proactively is also going to be super impressive to the brand. And honestly, you need to be asking them for, hey, can you just give me like a one pager of like, what are the kind of two to three primary talking points? What are the main things that you want me to talk about? And a singular call to action. Don't make me do go follow the brand on there on Instagram and go click the link in the show notes and do this and use this coupon code. And no, if you give them multiple calls to action, people are going to do nothing. So it's your job as a podcaster, actually ask the brand, can you distill into a singular page the most important things that I should be covering and that exercise is worth its weight in gold.
- [14:21]
Kevin Schmidlin
Has there ever been any friction in the concept phase? Like after the contract is signed and you disagree on concept, what does that look like? Like, what do we want to watch out for there?
- [14:31]
Justin Moore
So I mean, it's a great point. And absolutely sometimes like you may be envisioning that you're going to bring, bring it to life in a certain way and then you tell the brand and they're like, no, no, it needs to be a robotic ad read. And you have to hit every talking point and you have to do this, this, this, and better to find that out at that moment than after you actually generate it. So yeah, there's been deals that have dissolved that I've worked with creators where they just decided to part ways with the brand. Cuz once you got to the concept phase, you realize like you Guys had very different visions of, of how this was gonna go down. And again, like, that's best case scenario, actually, there may be a little bit of animosity, but better that to happen than. Than the opposite.
- [15:09]
Kevin Schmidlin
I know that in my past life of my show about Philadelphia, I worked a little bit more with sponsors, and every once in a while, what they want you to do is kind of sucks, right? Like, they'll be like, can you say this thing? And it's like, totally or like, not something that you would say. How do you handle that conversation with the brand?
- [15:26]
Justin Moore
Yeah. So this is where you need to lean into your own expertise as a host, as a producer, and say, hey, I've been doing this a really long time. And actually I could actually point to specific times when I did something like that. And hey, here's the episode. And look. And the performance was significantly worse because when it sounds like a robotic ad read, people just kind of tune out or they skip in their podcast player. And I really would suggest that we don't do that. Here's what I would recommend we do instead. Here's how I can do. I can approach that or I can say that in a slightly different way that I think will come off a lot better. What do you think? And so instead of just saying no and crossing your arms, you're actually providing an alternative solution. I think this is business 101. When, you know, if you ever do something like that, you know, your boss tells you to do something crazy, you know, instead of just coming to them and saying no, you have to come to them with an alternative proposal.
- [16:14]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so we are now in agreement on the concept. It's time to go. What's the next step?
- [16:20]
Justin Moore
So the next step is, okay, time to produce this thing. So that's step five. And this is where you are ensuring that you're not calling an audible when you're actually creating the content. A lot of people do this where they get something approved, and then when they sit down to actually create it, once they actually say the words or they actually start shooting the videos or write the newsletter or whatever, they just realize, like, actually, this doesn't sound too good. I'm going to just go off script and I'm going to do it a different way. I'm going to say it differently, I'm going to film it differently. I'm going to do something different just because they think it, it sounds better. And then the brand gets it and they're like, what happened here? This was not what we approved at All. And this seems stupid, but this happened all the time. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to pick a number. 50% of the time. This happened to me when. When I did 40 to 50% of the time, we would get assets back from the creators that we had hired. And something was materially different about how they brought it to life than what they had said they were going to. And this is. It's just. It's chaos at that time because now it gets a lot of people. It' There's a lot of animosity because we're asking them to go, hey, like, you need to actually change this, or you mispronounce the name of the brand. You know, you said you. You just didn't do it. You're gonna have to, like, redo this. And then they get mad and it's a big nightmare. And so just like, stick to the script. And if you get into it and you realize that you can't do it how you said you were gonna do it, it's better to just pause and go back to them and say, look, I know you approve this, but I went down to sit and shoot this, and it just still doesn't feel quite right. It's better than to slightly delay the campaign, to go back and double check with the brand than it is to just go off script and deliver something that isn't approved.
- [17:56]
Kevin Schmidlin
So we've produced what now?
- [17:58]
Justin Moore
Okay, so here's the round that no one likes, which is step six is feedback. And this is where you've delivered the draft of the integration to the brand for approval. And they come back to you and they say, this sucks. Well, they probably won't say this sucks. They'll say, well, you know, yeah, actually, now that we see this, I know we said this, but we actually want that. Right? And you're like, ah, you want to pull your hair out, right? And there could actually be a lot of contention introduced into this section because, you know, sometimes the brand will actually ask for things that weren't in the agreement or they weren't in the brief or they were like, hey, I know that we said we wanted it this way, but actually, our boss just came in and they said we actually need it this way. And I'm so sorry. Is there any way that we can, you know, do a quick voiceover change or do this type of thing? And the worst thing to do in this situation, Kevin, is to cross your arms like a curmudgeon, be a devo, be a diva, and say, it's gonna be $5,000 more money to do this or $500, whatever, you're nickel and diming them. Because the point partnerships, and this is like a universal truth that I teach is that it's not just about this one deal, it's about the relationship. It's about increasing the lifetime value essentially of this relationship. And so you want to get hired over and over. And so if you can just be like, yeah, sure, no problem, I got you. This is gonna take two minutes. I'll go into my studio, I'll send it to you. It's not a big deal. If you can have that kind of attitude when it comes, when they, when they bring feedback to you, man, you're gonna go so far. And of course like there are gonna be some times where they come back to you with things that are just completely above and beyond. You're gonna have to redo the entire thing. In my world, you know, coming, Starting as a YouTuber, this is where the brand would come and be like, actually we just don't like that color shirt you have. Can you reshoot it with a different color shirt? Like that's the type of thing. And we've gotten that before. You laugh, but like, seriously dude, we've got. That's the, that the color you're wearing is the color of our competitors logo. Like that was, that was what we got. It's crazy, dude.
- [19:46]
Kevin Schmidlin
Got it.
- [19:46]
Justin Moore
But it's just like again like that's never something they brought up. And so it's like that's when you kind of have to say, okay, this is clearly outside of the, you know, agreement and the approved brief and all that. Like you're going to have to compensate us more money. And of course there's like, you know that you can have that conversation but just generally approaching it as like, you know what, I got you, we'll figure this out.
- [20:04]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah. Okay, next step. This is one that everybody I would assume does or do they, they do not.
- [20:11]
Justin Moore
Step seven is publish. And man, there's so many mistakes that I see people making in this is like publishing v6 of the asset instead of v7, which was the approved one. Right. Sometimes you go back and forth so many times that you just kind of forget which is the approved asset. Right. Or you publish it. And the link in the show notes is not clickable. They didn't put the HTTPs, you know, colon forward, slash, forward, slash on it. So it's there but you can't click it. That's a big problem. If you're on your Player, you may just abandon it as a listene. You just, I don't know, I don't want to type this in right. Or the promo code is wrong or there's no, you know, disclosure in the show notes that this was a sponsorship. There's just like a litany of things or this is, this is the craziest one, dude, where I think a lot of people listening might be guilty of this. I'm not going to call anyone actually I am going to call you out where you publish the asset. And let's say it's a, it's a multi platform. You have a video podcast on YouTube for example and there's a bunch of questions. People put a bunch of questions in the YouTube comments, let's say asking about the product or be like, hey, like I'm about to sign up, like it's asking this thing like what do I do here? And the, for some reason the podcaster, they put their phone on DND and they literally just don't check the comment section for a week. And the brand is refreshing the page here and there. There's like these very obvious low hanging fruit questions that you can answer quickly that would lead to a conversion, lead to a sign up, lead to a sale and it would be weird if the brand jumped in there and started answering those questions. This is low hanging fruit stuff, this is easy stuff that you can go in there and just engage with your early comments, with your early feedback from your audience about the brand especially. And that goes a long, long way. You may not think that this is a high stakes sponsorship for the brand, but it might be. Maybe they haven't done a ton of deals before and so at the very least you got to engage with those early, early listeners.
- [21:55]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah. And then the final step, the one that I certainly have skipped in the past, but you're saying nobody should skip.
- [22:02]
Justin Moore
Is what step eight is analyze. And this is the one that I think people mail in the most. You know, maybe the brand or the company asked you for screenshots maybe of your, you know, Spotify Insights dashboard or transistor or whatever. Or maybe it was YouTube insights or something and it seemed like they were okay with that. They're like, okay, thanks, you know, because they're doing their own internal reporting. But the game changer is when you actually take it upon yourself to put together what I call a post campaign report where you're not just giving them the quantitative insights from that activation, but qualitative. You're saying, hey, I actually analyze all the comments, all the DMs that I got from this, all the emails that I got. Because again, they're not seeing the DMs, they're not seeing the emails. They can only see the public facing stats and comments and engagement. Right. And so you're actually saying, hey, look at all this other stuff that I got that you didn't see. And there's actually a common thread in here. You're not just showing everyone saying, oh my God, I love that brand. You're actually also saying, hey, there was three people that said that they tried your tool six months ago and they hated it. And it was for this reason. I actually think that that should be the next content activation. We should actually address that objection head on. Think about yourself as a regular consumer, Kevin. Right? If you're on Amazon, ready to hit purchase on something before you hit that buy button, you're thinking, is this going to work for me? Is this a good price? What do other people think about this? Has it worked for them? This is the same process that your listeners are going through when they're listening to your sponsorship. And so it's your job proactively to think, can I overcome this objection? To get them to actually think that this sponsor is going to be a, a useful solution for them. And so if you are seeing those types of objections, you didn't do your job. And so, yeah, now it's time for you to pitch that to them in this post campaign report for the next activation.
- [23:43]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah. Okay, so we've made it all the way through the wheel, but it is a wheel, not a ladder. So it sounds like when you're done with step eight, you go back to step one. Is that true?
- [23:54]
Justin Moore
100%. I mean, this is what happens is podcasters, they get a sponsor, they complete the deal, and then they literally never talk to the sponsor again. Mainly because they're scared of going back to the sponsor and saying, hey, how'd it go? Because they're worried that the sponsor is going to be like, it sucked. We hate you, never talk to us again. Reality. They're almost never going to say that. They may say, well, first of all, if they say it went awesome, great. Now it's your turn to pitch them on a renewed deal, right? At the very least. But if they say, hey, it just went okay, it went average, now it's your job to dig in and say, okay, why is that? Here's why I think that is. Do you have any ideas about why you think that is? I was talking with Nathan Barry, who's the CEO of Kit, the email marketing tool, and about this very thing. And he said, you know, if we did a deal with a creator and that happened, it was just kind of average. It didn't drive a ton of leads. But if they came back to us and said, hey, I got five or ten messages from people saying, ah, you know, I'm on mailchimp and it sucks, I hate it. I've been on there for so long, but I just have so many tags and sequences and all that. I just don't want to deal with it. If we got that feedback, we would then go back to that creator and be like, oh, we actually didn't tell you that we have a concierge migration team. Let's talk about that in the next activation. He said we would absolutely hire that person again because they gave us market insights. So again, if you can have the humility and the low ego as a podcaster to circle this feedback to the brand, you're going to completely differentiate yourself and get those additional renewals.
- [25:20]
Kevin Schmidlin
We'll get back to the show in one second, but real quick, I am sharing everything I'm learning about how to use a podcast to grow a business here on the audio feed, and you are more than welcome to continue using this show as a resource in your podcast and business growth journey. But it can be hard to sift through all of these episodes to find that one piece of knowledge you need in order to achieve a breakthrough with your show. If you'd rather have a roadmap, expert guidance, and several tools to help you achieve growth even faster, then I invite you to join us in the Grow the Show Academy. The Academy is my online community where I've gathered all the tools, templates and training that you need to take your podcast to the next level. You'll gain access to strategies that are working today, along with live coaching from me, a community of podcasters who have joined forces to grow together all of my AI chatbots and tools that power the production and promotion of my show, and regular community events like masterclasses and Expert Q&As. So if you're ready to take our relationship to the next level, work with me directly and speed up your podcast's growth and monetization. Join us in the Grow the Show Academy. You can join month to month and cancel anytime to get more details and hop in, you can go to growtheshowacademy.com or just click the link in the Show Notes. I'll see you on the inside. All right, back to the show. So I Know that a lot of podcasters listen to big podcasts and they hear the same brands over and over advertising on those shows, like Casper Mattresses or like Squarespace. So a lot of them will go to those places first. They're like, oh, I've heard Casper sponsor a million shows. Let me reach out and see if they'll sponsor my small show. Is that a recommended first brand to reach out to?
- [27:02]
Justin Moore
I would say no, because those larger swings, oftentimes those are the brands who are operating at scale. Those are the ones who are looking for the minimum listenership numbers. Because. So I ran an influencer marketing agency for about seven years. So I can speak very credibly to how this works, is that, you know, these brands are looking to spend, you know, sometimes in the heyday, for example, Audible was spending a million dollars a month.
- [27:23]
Kevin Schmidlin
Wow.
- [27:24]
Justin Moore
On podcast advertising. And this was across literally hundreds, thousands of shows. And so it was just line items. It was like, okay, does it have the minimum listeners? Does it have the demographics, the audience that, you know, we're targeting? Okay, perfect. That's another row on the threshold on the spreadsheet. And it's going to sum up into this like, number, Right. And then a cumulative CPM across the million dollars that we're spending. Right. And so if you're not hitting those thresholds, sorry, replace you with another row. And so it's a much better approach to think, okay, what are the tier two or the tier three companies or brands, the smaller to medium sized businesses who may not even be doing podcast advertising yet. Maybe they're doing Facebook ads, Maybe they're doing YouTube partnerships, something like that. But podcasts is not something that they've considered. And maybe it's you actually reaching out to them and saying, hey, I'm curious, have you ever considered doing podcast advertising? Guess what? I can do a dynamic ad insertion of my entire back catalog for you. Let's talk about what, how, you know, potentially if that could move the needle for you. And so I think there's just like, you know, this mindset of creativity is something that I teach a lot when trying to reach out to some of these smaller brands, it can really be meaningful.
- [28:27]
Kevin Schmidlin
Another question that I get all the time from podcasters is, at what point is it okay to start looking for sponsors? When is it time to try to monetize the show in this way? What do you say to that question?
- [28:38]
Justin Moore
All right, so I have a framework that I call the sponsorship continuum. So let's say you're in the very beginning of your podcasting journey. Okay. And you're getting, you know, hundreds of downloads on average. You know, as we mentioned, if you go out to, you know, squarespaces of the World and you say, hey, let me talk about you on my show, they look at your numbers and they're like, sorry, not really going to move the needle for us. And so you get all dejected. It's the long night of the soul. You know, it would have been a better pitch. Thrust of your pitch, Kevin, is that if you said, okay, look, I'm going to go and I'm going to analyze this tier two brand or this tier three brand. I'm going to look at their overall social presence. I'm going to look, hey, did they have a podcast for their own business? Own. They don't. Are they posting on social media? Oh, they're, they're really not. Oh, do they have a blog? Not really. Right. And so you think, okay, I'm going to approach them and I'm say, hey, I love your brand. I've been using it for three years. In fact, I actually think you could be telling your brand story in a more compelling way. I noticed that you do not have a podcast for your brand. I would actually love to create one for you. I will be the host. I will interview your, you know, our head of R and D. I'll enter, I'll bring some of my friends on, who are your target customers. I'll create an episode a week for you. And by the way, go look at my podcast because that serves as my portfolio. So this is a very different strategy. And a lot of people don't think that that's a sponsorship, but that absolutely is. You are helping the brand accomplish a more, more ambitious objectives. And so this pitch in the beginning is very, very meaningful for these brands when you're reaching out to them, because it's about repurposing of the content for them to use it on their website for a podcast you create for them on social media, maybe for paid advertising and so on. Right now, let's say you grow as a podcaster. You're getting a thousand average listens or 10,000 average listens or something. Right. Maybe the thrust of your pitch now can be, yeah, maybe some. A combination of consulting content that you're going to use for the brand's going to use. And yeah, maybe it starts becoming meaningful for you to do a shout out or an integration onto your podcast now. Let's say you've grown. You're. You're really achieving serious scale. You're getting you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of listens per episode. Of course, the throttle cost of your, you know, pitch when you reach out to a brand can be. Let me talk about you on my podcast. Right, so this sponsorship continuum I think is really helpful for you to orient yourself, depending on where you're at in your podcasting journey, and figure out who and what to pitch.
- [30:48]
Kevin Schmidlin
So a couple follow ups there. The example numbers that you were giving in terms of downloads, you know, I would say that the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of podcasters are in the low hundreds of downloads per episode. Most people are under 200.
- [31:00]
Justin Moore
Yep.
- [31:00]
Kevin Schmidlin
Some people are two to a thousand. And then there's like kind of another tier of 1 to 5,000 maybe. And it's just, there's just not a lot of folks. So most of the people who are watching this, listening to this, hearing us right now, are going to be, are going to be in that lower. So if there's a podcaster who's listening is like, I'm not going to make another podcast to monetize my podcast. What do you say to them?
- [31:19]
Justin Moore
So what I say to you is that, you know, two things. Number one, I would. A lot of people, I think, also have supplemental channels, you know, such, such as social media channels, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, things like that. If you're a podcaster sitting here listening to this and saying that the only asset that I have to provide to a brand is a single podcast integration or, you know, Multiple podcast integrations, 2025 has to be the year that you think I have to diversify into at least one other platform if I want to do sponsorships. It's just frankly not going to be a compelling pitch if that's all you have to offer to a brand. Right. And so the numbers that I was throwing are about, you know, thinking about the holistic amplification that you can offer to a sponsor. So not just an integration on the podcast, but also doing some cut downs of a, you know, let's say an audiogram or a clip of the podcast, if it's a video podcast on social media and let them repurpose that on their platforms and things like that. So really what I was talking about in terms of those numbers is kind of what the overall footprint looks like for your podcast. But you're right, yeah, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know what, I'm not even anywhere close to that, that's a problem because it's going to be really difficult for you to stand out in kind of the proliferation of all the podcasts that are going to exist out there.
- [32:31]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah. Something that we've been doing in the grow the show sphere over, like the past six month. Ish. Is that we're going away from measuring success in podcast downloads and instead measuring our total audience size across social media and email and podcast and YouTube if you're there. Because what we found is that a podcaster, if they look at their downloads per episode, first of all, that doesn't tell you how big your audience is. It tells you how many people downloaded your last episode. Right. And what we found is that that number is about 10 to 20% of their total audience size. So just to highlight what you're saying there, you know, if you take into account your entire content ecosystem, you're able to reach more people. And so you'll be able to get sponsors, get brand deals, because you can say, look at all these people that I reach. So the next question that we always get is, okay, this is cool. I never thought to do outbound sponsorships before. Where do I find brands to reach out to? Who do I find? Who do I get?
- [33:31]
Justin Moore
Okay, so there's a couple quick, low hanging fruit ideas. The first is start following all your friends, other podcasters in your niche, and see, hey, are they getting sponsors? Because if they're getting sponsors, then chances are that brand already sees value in doing podcast advertising. So, hey, guess what? Now it's your turn to reach out and pitch them this funny. There's this funny phenomenon where, you know, you know, people, podcasters see one of their friends getting sponsored and they're like, I've never seen that person use that brand. How dare they? I'm the one who's been, you know, a huge fan of that brand forever. Like, I'm so salty, right? And I always say, like, look, the very first thing a brand thinks after they have a successful collaboration with a podcaster is how can I find 10 more podcasters just like this to throw gasoline on this fire? Right? Because this is. This is perfect. This is exactly what I need. And so that's your cue to, you know, slide into their inbox and say, hey, I saw that awesome partnership you just did with my friend. Are you looking to amplify this campaign? Here's a couple ideas. I have this type of thing. So that's the first thing is I call it your niche neighbors, right? My friend Shelley coined this term, is like, go find, you know, other friends who are doing a similar thing. And okay, so that's Number one. The second thing I think might be a bit surprising for folks to hear, but it's that, you know, a lot of people think like, well, let me just make a list of all the brands and companies and tools that I use and love. That's perfect. I want to go out and reach out to those brands. So that's a terrible pitch, because if you reach out and you're like, I love your brand. I've been using your product for 10 years. That's an instant delete. Because that's what every single podcaster says when they reach out to them. Right? Instead, you have to be involving your audience in this process to learn more about them. I call it this psychographic research, this psychographic survey that you need to do. You need to say, okay, look, I can see in my Spotify insights or my transistor, wherever I see, I can see some insights. I can see ages, I can see geographies, I can see rough information about my audience. But that's not really enough. You need to know what is keeping them up at night. What problems are they having? What brands and products and services are you using and loving? Right now you need to be asking these questions with a link in the show notes, right? Or, you know, so if you have an Instagram on Instagram stories, if you have a YouTube on your YouTube community tab, doing some survey polls, start learning about getting a richer texture about who is in your audience. Because guess what? If you ask that question around the brands and products and services that they're using and loving, wow. You might realize I've got a 30 or 40% segment of my audience. You know, maybe it's small businesses that are having issues with HR or they're having issues with bookkeeping or something. I don't really talk much about bookkeeping on my show. But you know what? I didn't realize that this is a big problem. I should go out there and forge a deal with a bookkeeping tool. And you know what? It shifts from? Hey, bookkeeping software, I love you, please pay me. And it shifts to, hey, here's a big pool of my audience. They're saying they already wanna hear about your brand. That is a totally different pitch. Because at the end of the day, that's what the brand cares about. They don't care about you. They don't care about your. They care about that you serve as the conduit to reach a big pool of prospective customers.
- [36:28]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah, we, we here at Grow the Show, we say there's one way to monetize a Podcast, and that is to get your audience to buy something. It's either something that you are selling or it's something that another company is selling. And so sponsorship is just, you know, a flat rate. Sponsorship is just a brand paying you in advance for your audience to buy their stuff, which totally checks out with what you're saying here.
- [36:50]
Justin Moore
Well, to clarify there, it's not just about buying your stuff. There's three goals that brands will have when they want to hire you as a podcaster. Conversion is only one of them. So I call it my ARC framework. Arc. So A is actually awareness. That is actually something they will buy. They're trying to buy awareness. R is repurposing. So they're trying to actually, you generate content that they can repurpose, similar to what we were talking about earlier on their site, on their social media for paid advertising. And then C is conversion. So this is a really important distinction here because I think a lot of podcasters think that that's the only reason a brand will hire them is to drive sales.
- [37:23]
Kevin Schmidlin
I mean, they might think that because that's what I've been telling them. So this is awesome. Okay, I'm gonna just kind of go off script a little bit here. So, I mean, that makes perfect sense. We touched a little bit upon repurposing earlier. So the awareness one is interesting to me. I mean, as a direct response guy, like, I. I'm a direct response marketer, so I'm just like, how many sales did this bring in? But I think about like the big brands where it's just like Coke on a billboard. That's probably, they're probably not measuring how many people bought Coke from that. Is that what we're talking about? Where brands, they just want people to be thinking about them? Is that what an awareness campaign is?
- [37:58]
Justin Moore
A hundred percent. So the way that this would work for a podcaster is, okay, this is, you know, I have a podcast creator wizard podcast, you know, and I have a badge on my cover art powered by brand. That is an awareness campaign for a podcaster or at the very beginning of the podcast, you know, thank you so much to our sponsor. This show is brought to you by xyz. And then I don't say, I don't talk about the brand at all. Again, I may not even have anything in the show notes other than the, you know, disclosure that it was a sponsor thing. Thing. Right. You know, tactically, if it is a conversion focused campaign, the way in which I execute the sponsorship is going to be different. I'm going to say, click the, you know, Justin 10 coupon code in the show notes and get 10% off your first purchase. That is a conversion focused integration. And so again, like, this is important that you split hairs here as a podcaster to understand what the brand's actual success metrics are. Because if they say awareness, look, dude, my podcast, I am a person who is getting hundreds of listens on average. I'm not in the thousands, I'm not in the tens of thousands. And yet I am forging awareness focused campaigns back catalog kind of dynamic insertion type deals for my own podcast because I serve a very, very specific niche. And again, I'm not selling these sponsorships on cpm. It's just a game changer to understand the distinction.
- [39:14]
Kevin Schmidlin
I'm really curious now. I likewise have a coaching business, a course business, and I have not, not. I have had a couple of inbound sponsorship deals for Grow the Show, but I've never done any outbound stuff because I've always told myself I want to prioritize making sales to my coaching business. And it wasn't until I listened to your public coaching call with Jay clouse, that's on YouTube, which is unbelievably good, where you changed his mind about sponsorships in a different way. But I was like, I want him to change my mind about sponsorships. So that's kind of where I'm going with this question. That's like my secret motivation behind the question. But my question for you is, how do you prioritize just from a business owner perspective, like, I should go get more sales, right? I should go get more coaching sales and clients versus I should spend my time getting some brand deals.
- [40:04]
Justin Moore
Dude, I'm so glad you brought this. This is one of my favorite things to talk about, especially for podcasters. The short answer is it's not about you, dude. It's not about getting you more cushion clients. It's about serving your audience and serving your customers. There are three ways basically that you can serve your audience and customers. The first is with your own products. I call it your psa, your products, your sponsors, and your alliances. So going back to that psychographic research that we were talking about, we're going to learn some things about our audience. And you know what we're probably also going to learn, Kevin, is that we're going to learn that our audience and customers have problems that we are never going to be able to solve with the things that we directly sell.
- [40:43]
Kevin Schmidlin
Totally.
- [40:44]
Justin Moore
Yeah. You may have a coaching to help them, you know, grow their business, but you may discover that they're also having personnel issues or they're, they're having issues hiring remotely in other countries or they're having, you know, for, to grow their business or whatever. They're having issues. Whatever, whatever you discover. And you're like, I'm never going to create a product for that. But you know what my job is? My job is to help improve their lives and their businesses. So it's my job to go out there and find sponsors that will help them improve their life and their business in that area of something that I'm never gonna be able to serve them. By the same token, you better go out there and find some other coaches, some other course creators, some other people, alliances in this industry who can serve them with that other thing that you're never gonna do with business mindset coaching or strategy coaching or branding or whatever, design services or whatever. Because I think a lot of where this comes from, it's a scarcity mindset. It's like, okay, well, if I tell someone about another sponsor, if I tell my audience about another person's coaching or whatever, they're going to have less money to buy my thing. There's an infinite amount of money in this universe, dude. And if you introduce your audience or your customer to some other coach and their business is now humming and has grown as improving, what do you think their opinion of you is going to be? Wow. Kevin was the guy who introduced me to that other person and now my business is awesome. And the next time they think about growing their show or investing in their business business, they're going to be more likely to hire you. It's a trust building exercise. So it's actually your job as a business owner, and this is how I approach it in my business, is that I don't care where, where it comes from. I don't care if it's my own products, my own coaching, if it's a sponsor's thing, if I'm telling them about a friend, it's not about me. At the end of the day.
- [42:22]
Kevin Schmidlin
Whoa. You just blew my mind. Thank you. That's awesome. It's funny how in life, like, I feel like I'm a good guy, I'm a good person, but there's just so many ways where you don't even realize that you're not thinking about others. Wow. So that's amazing. And it just reframes it. Oh, like my product and my show will be better if I do this. Because you're right, there's been places where I'm like, man, I guess I got to create a course module about this thing that I really don't know about, which I haven't done yet, right? I haven't done that yet, but I didn't even think to be like, oh, I need to find an alliance or a brand to partner with. That also reminds me, you're so right about when if you recommend a product or service to somebody and they like that product or service, they associate that with you forever. Case in point, later today, Kevin Shen is getting into town here in Philadelphia, where I live, and we're going to hang out all weekend. He's crashing here. I came across Kevin Shen through Jay Clouse. And so every time I look at my awesome studio that Kevin helped me with or I hang out with Kevin, who's become a friend, I think, man, I'm so glad Jay Clouse mentioned this. So totally, unbelievably good. Justin, thank you for sending me an advanced copy of Sponsor Magnet. Sponsor Magnet is your new book and I freaking devoured the thing so fast. It is. I'm not just saying this because we're on there. The I haven't felt this way about a book meaning like, oh my gosh, this is going to change the lives of so many podcasters. Since I read make noise in 2019, which is a book that I've recommended 8,000 times on this feed, the stuff that we're talking about today is the stuff that I get so many questions about and every single podcaster under the sun. Well, most podcasters under the sun are chomping at the bit for this information. So when is this book going to be available for folks to read?
- [44:07]
Justin Moore
Dude, so sorry, I'm a little emotional right now. You're one of the first people to read it in its entirety and it's like a really nerve wracking thing to put something into the universe and not really know how people are gonna react to it. So for you to say that is like so deeply fulfilling to me. So I really, really appreciate that, dude. That means so much to me. So the book, it's available January 21, 2025. You can pre order it now, but@ sponsormagnet.com, there's gonna be a massive amount of free resources as bonuses. They're gonna come with the book like my sponsorship tracker template that I built in notion that is super robust. Like I have a bunch like 15 different scripts to help you make more money on your negotiations. So, hey, the brand said this. What do you say in response to that? They Say, hey, join our affiliate program. What do you say in response to that? You don't just say, oh, I'm only focusing on paid partnerships right now. Don't say that. You gotta say something else. You know, there's all sorts of checklists and templates. You're just like a. There's a laundry list of stuff. But honestly, at the end of the day, I feel so deeply in my core that if you read this book, you will make more money working with, on your sponsorships, like, guaranteed. I poured everything that I know around brand partnerships into this book. And so I'm so, so thrilled for it to be out there in the universe.
- [45:19]
Kevin Schmidlin
Yeah, I can't wait. It's, it's the type of thing where I'm like, this could actually make a serious impact on the whole ecosystem of podcasts. It's going to help me because more podcasters are going to now have money that they can join my program and they can hire my friends to produce their shows. You know, like, it's just gonna be, do such great things for the economy. So thank you for, I am sure it was hard to do. I've heard that writing a book is really difficult. So just thank you so much for taking the time to put it together and for being with us today.
- [45:44]
Justin Moore
Absolutely, man. Thanks again for having me.
- [45:46]
Kevin Schmidlin
My pleasure. I have two things for you before I let you go. Number one, real quick, if you've ever gotten any value from the show, please, if you haven't yet, leave us a five star review. I get a notification every single time reviews come through and they almost always make my day. So please, please, I would love to hear from you. It really, really helps us. And then the second thing is if you are a podcaster who needs help with production, if you are struggling with all the time it takes to make these things and you haven't yet, definitely set up a conversation with Podcast Boutique. They are the team that I've been working with for five, six years. They're my most trusted production agency and recently they added an incredible service that you're gonna wanna hear about. They call it Record and Forget. I've been using it for months. It is amazing. You just record your episode and send it to them. They do the content editing for you. They create titles, show notes, they can make it into an amazing YouTube video clips and of course, high value production. So the content editing piece is the thing that I know people have been asking for for a long time. It is unbelievably good. All I do is record. I send it off to them, they handle the rest. And by the way, they are also closely in lockstep with me. So anytime I discover something that is working to grow and monetize a podcast, I immediately share it with them. We work to implement it with my show, and then they implement it with the other shows that they work on. So if you're spending time yourself doing any of the editing or post production, or if your current post production team isn't cutting it, maybe they're an internal team that doesn't know what they're doing, or they're an external team that's either too expensive or does not keep their promises, which is very common. Check out Podcast Boutique. You can go to podcastboutique.com, let them know that I sent you. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.