Make Your Niche Podcast More Attractive To Advertisers

More ad dollars flowing into podcasting is generally seen as a good thing. Yet, niche podcasters don't see very much of it. Yes, there are "riches in the niches," but only if your podcast is attractive enough.

Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

Yesterday, I shared the Vocalize story with you. It's a nifty service that, frankly, brand-based advertisers are going to love. Check it out if you haven't listened to it. It's a fascinating concept. And as I was editing that episode, I started thinking about how podcasts of all sizes could make their shows more attractive to brand-based advertisers.

You see, big shows have one really attractive component that both brand-based advertisers and direct response advertisers both want. And that's a big audience.

Podcasting has a healthy and growing industry set up to serve the needs of both the advertisers of the big money and the publishers who get the big money. But that same industry doesn't work all that well at the smaller scale.

But that doesn't mean that brands are only spending their advertising and sponsorship dollars on gigantic shows. No, not at all. I mean, since the beginning of podcasting, many enterprising podcasters have been finding ways to make their shows more attractive to brands, convincing them of the benefits, and then delivering on the benefits, of working with their shows.

But that's not easy. While there are dozens of podcast ad rep firms calling on the big brands to spend big money across lots of podcasts every single day, that economy of scale doesn't play well for the long tail of podcasting, leaving shows with more modest niche audiences to fend for themselves.

But here's the thing, many of those small shows are purposely small. Or at least they're much less likely to see huge growth, which can then suddenly skyrocket their shows. Something that happens more often to shows which have a much more wide appeal.

A super-niche show may never grow beyond a few hundred listeners. But, if those are the right listeners, there's probably a brand who'd like to talk to that audience. At least that's the theory. A theory that's been proven out time and time again, but one you'll probably have to prove time and time again on your own to get an ad or sponsorship money to your show.

Make no mistake, this is probably an uphill climb, but it is doable. And I think if more podcasters did it, it'd start making this a lot easier for all of us.

But what is the "it" I'm talking about? Well, making your podcast more attractive to brand-based advertisers and then securing those deals. So how? Well, I'm glad you asked.

So how do you make your show more attractive to brand-based advertisers? Four ways, I think.

Number one, know thine audience - deeply. As you've heard me say on this show more than once, know who you are for and why they are there. Only this time, you're doing it for proof, proof that you are talking to the audience they, the brand-based advertiser, also wants to talk to.

So, how do you do that? Well, you do that, especially, you know, here we are, the anonymity that's built into podcasting. How do we figure that out? Well, several ways you can survey them using the questions in the format gifted to us by Edison Research. If you wanna see what that looks like, go to podcastpontifications.com/survey. And go ahead and take it if you want.

You can also share some sort of a community or a forum, you know, create that on your own and get to know the people who are in that community or in that forum. You'll learn who they are and what companies they're from as well.

Maybe start a newsletter, a newsletter that gives you the email addresses of those who've signed up. You can tell a lot just by looking at the domain names of an email, or, if you want, look up the email address, you know, do a reverse search.

The second thing you can do to make your show more attractive to brand-based advertisers is have a commitment to quality. Look, you are asking brands to spend their money on your show to reach your audience. So there's a very good chance that those brands might actually listen to your show before they make that decision. And just check, is it up to par?

Now, the company you're going after may have never advertised on a podcast before, but there's a very good chance the person who's making the decision, or at least somewhere along the chain, has listened to podcasts before. Does your show present itself well? Does it sound and look and feel like a place where that brand would be proud to be associated with?

The third thing you can do to make your show more attractive to advertisers, brand-based advertisers specifically, is actually have a brand story to tell. Brands are always going to be reluctant to go first, especially if it has to do with spending money in an unexplored, for them at least, channel. So you might need to prime the pump by putting brand messages on your show on your own.

Now, not necessarily the brand you really wanna work with or sell a sponsorship to. And definitely you never want to imply a brand is a sponsor of your show when they are not. But, you can pick something that seems on-brand and start the entire process. See what it takes to incorporate a brand's message into your episodes.

Use a URL shortener so you can track those who do happen to click through your episode detail webpages or the in-app details that's on their application. Start to understand the real, tangible benefits that a brand advertiser would get by working with you and your show. And then bake that into your sponsor kit, a sponsor kit you have to keep updated.

The fourth way is pretty simple - ask. I mean, it's great when brands come to you and ask to sponsor or to run ads on your podcast, but don't wait for that. It's probably not going to happen if you only ever wait for it. So yeah, put a webpage up on your website.

Also, put your sales hat on and start making phone calls and sending emails. Brush up your LinkedIn profile so people know you're in the market for this.

And the last way I'll mention is yeah, sure, grow your show. Because it's true, some brand sponsors are going to want to know how many people your podcast reaches and a thousand sounds a lot better than a hundred. But that only assumes that the demographics and psychographics of that 1,000 is the same as the 100 you had previously.

And yes, advertising and sponsorships are often a numbers game, but so is talking to the right audience in the right way. Grow wisely.

So there you go, five quick ideas on how you can make your podcast more attractive to brand-based advertisers to get some of that sweet, sweet cash to help your show keep going.

I shall be back directly with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting better. Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected transcript, both created by Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.