Effective Strategy
Think about podcasting as an entry point for new business categories. Educate yourself about the top brands advertising on podcasts, public radio and otherwise. How do these overlap (or not) with existing brands on your air? Podcasts can also represent good opportunities for selected smaller businesses to come on board, since they can afford it and are looking to target a younger demo. At the same time, podcasting can also help you generate revenue from direct response advertisers. Those advertisers require a strong call to action that can’t be done on on-air, but which can be experimented more freely with in the podcasting space.
Know your competition. Who else is your buyer considering and why are you a better choice?
Know your audience. Understand the audience you are targeting. Do surveys to identify how they overlap or are additive to your broadcast audience.
Know your tech. Be sure you know how your ads get in and how you measure them, so you can clarify any misconceptions.
Be an advocate for podcast listening. Podcasting is a highly-engaged listening experience and is an effective way to reach a highly mobile audience. Make sure you are podcast listener yourself. To be great at selling it you must believe it has value!
Develop your standard operating procedures (SOP). You have to have a good relationship with the content producers and your digital team to provide a good experience for your underwriters. Develop your SOP, be clear on who needs what and when; be clear about the expectations. Will the host read the message? How long should it be? What language guidelines will you have? And stay curious through the process. This is an evolving platform. One station maintains the following mantra: This is how we do it… today. It might be different tomorrow!
If you sell it, they will (eventually) come. For sales people on commission, the return on the effort to sell podcast sponsorship doesn’t make it worth your while at the start, especially if you are not packaging podcasting with other sponsorship inventory. You need to be committed to a future of on-demand content. Agencies are inquiring about podcast sponsorship opportunities. The business will come!
Shrewd Tactics
Keep the sponsorship cost low and increase as you go. Start small — approximately $600-$900 per quarter — if the number of downloads or available impressions is low per podcast per month. This makes it easier for your sales team to get used to selling podcast sponsorship and it’s a great add-on to a regular message schedule. You can always increase the pricing as you go and determine what’s working.
Combine podcasts until there are decent download numbers and price accordingly. We decided to group all 14 of our podcasts as one piece of inventory and offer 3 rotating sponsors. These include a mixture of our repackaged broadcast content podcasts, as well as original content podcasts.
Package with broadcast. Especially if you don’t have scale or measurement, include podcasts as part of your multimedia packages to help build awareness about the marketing value your podcast content/audience offers to your sponsors.
Sell repackaged broadcast content, but don’t call it that. Repackaged broadcast content can be an easier sell right out of the gate, as there is the opportunity to package with broadcast and streaming to build scale, and you can use the same credit to boot. With original content, it can be challenging to project downloads and you can run into an under-delivery problem.
Consider the opportunity (relative to client budget capacity / value of station deliverables) to package the broadcast content with the repackaged podcast as one sponsorship package with alignment around both pieces.
But be careful not to undersell the value of broadcast content distributed on digital platforms by using “also-ran” language to describe it. The term “repackaged” can have negative connotations. Great audio content is great content regardless of how a listener chooses to consume it.
Launch sponsorships can help. Securing an exclusive launch sponsor for a new podcast can help jump-start your podcasting sponsorship efforts, and allow the sponsor to reap the benefits of the extensive promotion planned around the new podcast.
Promote, promote, promote (and include the sponsor).
Get as much on-air and station promotion as you can for your podcasts.
Include the sponsor in podcast promotion. More exposure for your clients and your podcasts make everything work together, and you improve the value of your sponsorship while promoting your podcast. Add radio spots (and TV if you have them) that promote the podcast and include a sponsor tag. Do the same with your email blasts and any digital and print assets you may have.
Promotion inventory is especially valuable when selling original content podcasts.
Especially if selling an original content podcast, package your sponsorship to include the podcast downloads, the segments that are broadcast, and the promotion of that content. The promo piece is the key value offering to sponsors as you work to build an audience for your podcast.
Do what you can to get that first sponsor.
Don’t worry as much about how much money you are getting for sponsorship at first. It’s easier to sell sponsorship when there is already a sponsor. One station chose to package podcast sponsorship with eight broadcast spots and included a mention of the sponsor in the on-air promos for the podcast (at least 30 during the month). It was inclusion in the promo messages that provided the biggest impact to the underwriter.
If content gains traction beyond local interest, scale your prospecting efforts accordingly.
One popular local podcast — created for kids — quickly grew a national and even international audience about 150,000 downloads per month, and was therefore able to attract national sponsors. But it takes effort! One member of the sales team cold-calls any business she hears on other kid podcasts. If you have a podcast with a national audience, start with local businesses that distribute nationally.
Have the hosts read the ad spots when you can. Obviously, this tactic does not work for news formats, as journalists will not read ad spots as a rule. But for lifestyle or other non-news programming it is powerful to have host-read spots, and you will most likely get a higher CPM.
Think and Connect in New Ways
Understand your advantage as a “digital sales consultant.” Your clients and media buyers are likely podcast consumers. They are eager to talk about the medium and view public radio as a leader in the space. Leverage this advantage to position yourself as a digital sales consultant and educate them about the value of your podcast audience. In doing so, you can also introduce them to the value of your broadcast audience and the right mix of broadcast and digital media (i.e. they need both to be most effective!).
Use podcasting to dispel myths about the public radio audience. The podcasting audience is younger and more diverse than our broadcast audience. This makes it easiest to sell original content podcast sponsorship to those wanting to reach a younger demographic (think coding schools, online retailers, bike shops, local food delivery, universities). But you can also use this fact to combat perceptions about the “older,” “elite” public radio audience in general. Reinforce the value of including public radio podcasting in the buy along with the broadcast.
Literally, invite them in. Consider holding a listening session for prospects to meet your podcast principals (producers, participants, etc.) and be a part of the excitement.
Don’t be afraid to fail. The more you pitch it, the more closes you will have. Make podcasts part of every presentation.
Be creative on behalf of your sponsors and their sponsorships. Take advantage of the wild west feel of the podcasting landscape. You can experiment with different models for monetization with little risk — think takeovers and longer-form ads versus the traditional digital advertising CPM-based model – it all depends on the opportunity.
Don’t sell the numbers, sell the alignment with content. The opportunity is often strongest with brands looking for alignment and engagement. For example, one station successfully pitched sponsorship for their running podcast to a major shoe brand based in the area. The station added a fun-run event, and the shoe company has now been a sponsor for three years. This station didn’t only focus on a messaging opportunity, but seized on brand alignment and engagement.
Look for great tie-ins and pitch them. If a podcast has a unique local angle, target organizations that share the local name or focus (e.g. Bay Curious podcast sponsored by Bay Area Air Quality Management).
Use the power of hyper local. The local flavor of many podcasts is a perfect fit for businesses in the local community — even bigger ones — that want to position and brand themselves as truly local. (From one station where this has been especially successful within the finance category and local community banks, specifically).
With a price-point of under $1000 for a month of sponsoring a podcast about Vermont, there is a place for local, Vermont-identifying businesses to be on public radio. This has been popular with food producers and breweries, but the station is now seeing more established businesses such as a colleges come on board.
Industry Research to Help Make the Case:
NPR Podcast Audience and Halo Info
NPM Media Kit (includes NPR Podcast Study)
The Infinite Dial 2019 (annual study)
Nielsen: Podcast Sponsorship Effectiveness
Nielsen: A Marketer’s Guide to Podcasting
WNYC Studios/Edison Research: The National Podcast Audience Report