Have a dream brand that you’d love to partner with? We’ll help you turn that into a reality. Whether you found their contact info on your own or through a marketplace, you’ll want to send a message that grabs their attention and paints your podcast as an excellent space to advertise.
Getting a podcast sponsorship may seem like a mysterious process, but we break down exactly what info you need to prepare and how to send a persuasive pitch.
Types of Podcast Ads and Sponsorships
Before you write your pitch email, it’s important to consider what kind of ad formats you’re comfortable with running on your podcast. Review each of these types of ads so that you can confidently pitch the right formats for your show and audience.
Pre-Roll Ads
Pre-roll ads are when ads are read before the episode officially kicks off. If you don’t think that stopping your podcast for a mid-roll ad break would work for your show format, you should propose pre-roll ads.
Mid-Roll Ads
Mid-roll ads are ads that take place somewhere in the middle of a podcast episode. The host dialogue or monologue will fade, and then a short ad will start playing. Mid-roll ads make sense if your podcast episodes tend to run long (over an hour).
Host-Read Ads
Exactly what they sound like, host-read ads are ads that are read out loud by the podcast host themselves. From an advertising perspective, host-read ads are more effective at marketing a product or service than non-host read ads, boasting an average brand recall of 71%.
Non-Host Read Ads
If you don’t want to read an ad yourself, you can have someone else read it for you. This is what’s known as non-host read ads.
Affiliate Partnership
An affiliate partnership is a specific type of payment arrangement where you earn a commission each time a listener uses your unique discount code or link to purchase an item. You can incorporate affiliate discount codes into any of the types of ads listed above, or in your show notes for listeners to click on at their perusal.
Affiliate partnerships can be easier to land than value-based or cost-per-mille deals because the brand does not have to pay you until someone uses your code or link.
What You Need to Prepare Before You Pitch to Sponsors
Before you send a pitch, it’s helpful to gather certain key metrics about your podcast. Data points that are useful to have at the ready include:
- How long you’ve been podcasting for
- Average amount of listeners per episode
- Average amount of downloads per episode
- Number of subscribers across directories
- How many social media followers you have across platforms
- Demographic information about your audience (their age, where they live, gender, etc.)
You can find most of this information from your podcast directories. For information on your social media audience, you can look through each social media platform’s built-in analytics.
Remember, the brand has to understand why your podcast would be a good space for them to advertise. A large amount of subscribers or downloads is impressive, but so is having an engaged community on social media and having a significant audience overlap with the brand.
The reality is, if your podcast isn’t listened to or downloaded by the same people who would be interested in using a certain brand or product, your pitch will probably fall flat.
Elements of a Successful Sponsorship Pitch
Whether you’re planning to write your own pitch or use our templates, you should have a sense of what makes a pitch successful. The best, most effective pitches will:
- Be to the point. No one has time to read a five paragraph essay. Make sure your pitches are short and sweet. Keep your sentences and paragraphs as brief as you can.
- Be personalized. “Hi there” isn’t going to turn as many heads as “Hi Steve.” In other words, make sure your email is tailored to the person you’re pitching to.
- Establish a strong connection between you and the brand. If the brand you’re pitching to is something you regularly use and love, be sure to mention so. Even better, if you’ve tagged the brand in any of your existing social media posts organically, be sure to add those into your pitch so that the brand can see you’re not all talk.
- Demonstrate your value adds. The meat of the pitch is going to explain what you bring to the table. This is where you’d include your most impressive metrics, like your downloads, subscriber count, and social media engagement rates. If you’ve been featured in any notable press outlets, you can also link to those.
- Have a clear call-to-action. At the end of your pitch, close with the action you’d like the brand to take. For example, you can close with something like, “please let me know if you’d be interested in discussing further,” or even something as actionable as, “do you have time to hop on a quick 15-minute call this week to discuss a partnership?”
The Ultimate Podcast Sponsorship Pitch Template
Email subject line option 1: {Podcast name} x {brand name} sponsorship interest
Email subject line option 2: {Type of podcast/podcast subject} looking to work with {brand name}
Editor’s note: We recommend testing these subject lines out to see which yields more responses.
Hi {brand rep name},
I’m {your name} and I’m the {host or co-host} of the {podcast name}. For the past {length of time you’ve been podcasting}, I’ve been {explain what you talk about on your show} and building an engaged audience of {X subscribers} and {followers} along the way.
I’m interested in working with {brand name} to produce sponsored ads on my upcoming episodes. My audience consists mainly of {demographic audience information}, which aligns very well with {brand name’s audience}. My episodes see an average of {X downloads}.
Not only does my audience align, I am a huge fan of {brand name}. I use your {products or service} {frequency at which you use them}, and I’ve even mentioned them organically {on the podcast or on social media}.
Partnering with you would be a natural fit for my audience and a win-win for both parties. Please let me know if you are interested in discussing the possibility of running {type of ads} on {podcast name}.
Thanks so much,
{Your name}
{Your social media links, website link, podcast links}
