How to 10x your podcast sponsorships
If you want to find out the secret to 10x your podcast sponsorships—without 10xing your workload…
Meet Justin Moore: sponsorship coach, podcaster, creator, and founder of Creator Wizard, an educational community that teaches people how to find and negotiate their dream brand deals.
Not only has Justin been a full-time creator for over 8 years who’s earned over $5M working with brands—but he used to run an influencer marketing agency that helped other creators earn millions more than they were making.
Whether you’ve been chugging along, trying to figure out how to make your podcast more profitable (instead of just dishing out cash to upgrade mics)—or you’re just exploring whether you want to start a podcast, you might feel a little lost as to how to make it worthwhile, financially.
You know getting brand sponsorships for your podcast is the road… but:
- What do you say when you email a brand?
- How do you make brands pick you and not Tim Ferris?
- How much do you charge for a podcast sponsorship?
- How much money can you actually make?
Thanks to Justin’s insights from both sides of the brand deal negotiation table, you can now steal his best tricks for negotiating better and earning more. (And stop leaving money on that table!)
In this playbook, we’ll go through Justin’s step-by-step process on how to land your first podcast sponsorship, including 4 ways to increase your rates without having to increase your downloads.
The goal
Podcasts are powerful promotional tools for your brand because of:
- The authority it builds for your brand
- The massive amount of content that can be repurposed from them
- The opportunity to connect and network with other, complimentary experts in your space
But too many folks use them simply as sources of content—and forget that podcasts can be turned into a revenue stream of their very own!
(Check out past playbook’s podcasters: Amy Porterfield, Codie Sanchez, Ali Abdaal, and Maya Elious. )
If you already host a podcast, you might be plugging your products and services as ads—which is what many creators find successful—but adding brand deals and sponsorships can catapult your earnings.
For those newer to running their own business, pitching sponsorships may feel overwhelming. Thankfully, Justin’s experience can give you a solid foundation so you can land partnerships that feel good and pay even better.
So let’s get started.
The assessment
Unlike some of our other playbooks, assessing whether you’re ready to add sponsors to your podcast is simple.
- Do you have a podcast? ✅
- Do you understand your audience? ✅
- Do you have your numbers? ✅
- How many listeners
- How often you record/publish
- How many downloads
- Feedback from listeners on social, email, etc
- Do you have an idea about brands you want to reach out to? ✅
Excellent: after this playbook, you’ll be armed with a plan to get your first (or more lucrative) brand deal.
The playbook
According to Justin, the most important question you need to answer is this:
Who is your ideal sponsor?
“Unless you nail this part, you can kiss those lucrative podcast sponsorships goodbye,” says Justin. “But if you think you already know your answer, you’re probably wrong. Because figuring out which brands your audience is going to love isn’t as simple as you think.”
Step 1: Get to know your podcast listeners deeply
What are demographics—and psychographics? Are we talking Norman Bates here? Thankfully, no.
Basically (at least for those of you alive in the 90s) demographics are the A/S/L of marketing. But demographics can lead you to make assumptions about what people are interested in—versus actually finding out from doing the research.
Psychographics, on the other hand, tell you who people really are, what their days look like, what problems they’re dealing with, and what they want—which is, well, how you sell people stuff.
“Once you know their problems, you can figure out which brands are going to provide solutions,” says Justin.
Let’s look at an example for a coffee podcast.
⛔ Demographic approach: Your main audience is mid-20s baristas, so you think, “I’ll find a rare Brazilian bean company to sponsor my podcast.”
✅ Psychographic approach: You realize that those baristas enjoy eating cookies with their coffee, journaling while having their early morning espresso, and creating custom barista aprons. So, you add online bakeries, bespoke stationery brands, and barista apron brands to your list of brands to research and reach out to.
How do you figure out their psychographics? Ask.
- Ask them to email you about themselves and what they do on the weekends
- Link a survey in your show notes, asking them when and where they listen
- Talk to them on X (formerly known as Twitter), Discord, or wherever your fanbase “lives” online
Step 2: Identify the best-fit brands and help them say ‘yes’
Unsurprisingly, bigger brands are going to be pretty hard to land when you're starting out, so you've got to figure out which brands are realistic.
When you listen to similar podcasts and pay attention to what kind of ads they’re running, this shows you:
- Which brands are paying creators—based on the ads you hear
- How to approach those brands as new sponsors—listen and write down their key messages, calls to action, and any other info you hear that could help you position your podcast
Step 3: Set a target—and ROPE them in
“What if I told you you were only 50 emails away from your first sponsorship?” says Justin.
The easiest way to get your first sponsor is to set a weekly goal, like: reach out to 2 small brands per day.
Use the ROPE method to stand out from the other emails in their inbox, and stay focused:
- Relevant — Show the brand that you’ve done your research and you’re aware of their current campaigns.
- Organic — Link your pitch back to work that you’ve already published, whether that’s name dropping them directly or linking them to an episode that’s related to their campaign.
- Proof — Share how you’ve helped other brands achieve results.
- Easy-to-execute — Promise only what you can deliver.
Step 4: Make 10x more money with these 4 tips
Most brands and advertisers want to pay podcasters via CPM (cost per mille) — which is a set rate per 1,000 downloads to buy up your inventory.
This sponsorship type reserves a 30-60 second space in your podcast episode where someone will do an ad read—but your payout will depend on downloads.
For smaller podcasts, sponsorship deals that focus on paying based on downloads just aren’t lucrative. Most brands and agencies try to pay $25-30 per 60-second spot—so even with 1,000 listeners, you’re not really making a lot.
Here are all the ways you can make more money per sponsor (without waiting for your downloads to go up):
- Sponsor a season (instead of an episode) — not a ton more work for you, repeated exposure for them. Allows you to charge 10x as much because of the amount of “ownership” of ad space.
- Upsell additional social media syndication — wherever you’re growing your platform (LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, your newsletter, etc). Promotion on multiple platforms provides SEO benefits, and allows you to 2-3x your price.
- If their goal is brand awareness—offer dynamic ad insertions across your back catalog for ~3 months. Because people are at different stages of listening/downloading your podcast, your new episodes will only represent a portion of your downloads. A dynamic ad guarantees that every single episode you’ve ever made will promote that brand for a certain time period—which guarantees impressions. Depending on the size of your back catalog, Justin claims you can charge 20x as much for this sort of offer.
- Upsell with in-person events. Live events or speaking engagements allow you to promote the brand in different places—for 5-10x as much as you were charging to promote in your podcast.
Bonus: Spin the sponsorship wheel
Getting sponsorships—like creating podcast episodes—can be a smooth, repeatable process. You just have to work it into your creation cycle.
Justin teaches the sponsorship wheel process in Brand Deal Wizard, one of his signature courses. It’s a simple framework that’ll help you become a strategic partner for brands rather than just an ad spot they spend budget on.
The results
Justin has personally made +$5M with brand partnerships, and he teaches others in his +33,000-strong community how to do the same.
Not only that, but his claim to fame with Brand Deal Wizard is the results he gets for students.
Paul Jamison, creator of the Green Industry Podcast, undercharged and sold himself short at the beginning of his brand sponsorship journey. Paul owned a small business in the lawncare industry—and didn’t realize the impact of his massive, niche listenership when he first started getting approached by brands.
Now, he works with brands like Kohler and Lowe’s, and has 5-10x’d his sponsorship earnings (with live events and speaking engagements) with Justin’s help.
Justin’s learnings:
- Align on vision, early. Most creators get excited and take their eye off the ball after the
contract has been signed—but this is a mistake. Ask for a creative brief, specific talking points, and the
CTA—and ensure it makes sense for your audience. Aligning on vision early isn’t being picky—it’s a part of being
a great partner and making sure you’re working to create results.
- If they send it, and it’s confusing: tell them!
- If you think the talking points are ineffective: tell them!
- If you know your listeners will get confused once they hit that landing page: tell them!
- Build deep, long-term relationships instead of one-offs. It’s so much easier to work with the same, super-aligned brand over time. You learn their voice, their team, their goals, and their strategies—and can suggest different ways to promote them that are aligned and authentic to your brand.
- Your work doesn’t end when your episode goes live. Once the campaign is over, it’s time to show them that you really mean business: send a post-campaign report. Show DMs you received or emails you got from listeners to prove how effective partnering with you was for the brand.
- Ask for their results. Similar to your own reporting, ask for theirs. If they were running a conversion campaign to drive people to do something: find out and understand the outcome you helped create. Regardless of whether you fell short of your goal, you gained information to do better next time—and the brand will appreciate you asking. With this information, you can refine your approach and give them the confidence to partner with you again.
Key takeaways
- Don’t forget that podcasts can be revenue-generators (not just content-generators). Monetize it, promote it, and use it as another creative cog in your business.
- The more you understand your audience—the easier it’ll be to find and sell sponsorships. Your audience is the key to what brands will want from your podcast, which means that the more you know about them, the more you can grow with them.
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Think strategic partnership—not financial sponsorship. Thinking about sponsorship, contracts, and big brands can overwhelm people new to business or podcasting. “They want to sponsor little old me?”
But remember: your audience and their attention is very valuable to brands.
Acting as a strategic partner (ie. knowing what your audience will and won’t like, providing feedback about the talking points, suggesting partnership options that maximize their opportunity to reach their brand goals) rather than just an “order-taker” will make you a more valuable asset to these brands.
Watch Justin’s full YouTube video on this topic for more!
And if you’re a podcaster looking for an all-in-one community platform?
You’re in the right place.
Circle brings together your members, discussions, events, courses, and content—all in one place, under your own brand. Plus, you get access to our customer community full of handy resources and over 10,000 community builders on the same journey as you.
