Ideas For A Sponsorable Podcast Segment

Brett Johnson: Welcome to the Circle Sessions featuring The Circle Of Experts. The Circle Of Experts are Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs. Tonnisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications. And Don The Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson from Circle270Media Podcast Consultants. Well, each week, one of the Circle Of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We'll focus on marketing, social media monetization, and website design and implementation of all of these.

This week, Don is here with The Circle Of Experts. He possesses creative powers beyond those of mere mortals. Don The Idea Guy, rescues those in need of innovative ideas through his brainstorming sessions there at Five Buck Brainstorms. Don, thanks for joining me today.

Don: I'm happy to be here. Let's get our podcast ideas on.

Brett: Yes, let's do it. And, you know, um, a big question, I was thinking about all the mediums that you can disperse content on, like blogging, video, YouTube, and podcasts. And podcasts is really that in between medium because a lot of people do a podcast. They don't want to have a sponsor, they don't want to have any money. They do it as a marketing tool, or they just have it as an expression of themselves. But those that do look for money to come in are lost in the woods. They really, really are. They don't know how to go about it other than the typical, well, I have a preroll and I can do a midroll. How do I put those in there and how much money do I charge? And all the questions that come along, it and their background is probably not in sales, so they are just meandering in this field of I hear people making money. Should I charge guests? How do I do this? How do I do that? And I wanted us to definitely dedicate a few episodes this season about sponsorable podcast segments and how to make it a little bit easier to find sponsors to do a sponsorship in your podcast. And you came up with, uh, this first round of some really good ideas. Your first one, which we all do, listen to traditional radio stations, take some notes, dive into that a little bit.

Don: Yeah. Um, first I want to just kind of agree with you on the, uh, positioning of the podcast. A lot of people started a podcast for the same reason they started a blog, especially early on, which was to give themselves a platform, uh, to get a public voice out there and express our ideas and opinions with the world. I know that's the reason I started a blog 100 years ago. Um, ah, a lot of the people right now, because podcast is kind of, uh, grown in popularity so quickly. It's been around for a long time, but all of a sudden, it's just really striking a note with everybody out there, and a lot of people are starting podcasts just because they think they can get sponsorship of them. And that's about the worst reason to start a podcast. Um, the people who start a podcast with, uh, money in their mind first, are probably not going to create content that's worth sponsoring. So, um, I think Ben Franklin said the way to get famous is to do something worth the writing or write something worth the reading. The same applies to podcasting. You got to do something that's worth listening to before you ever generate anything that's worth sponsoring. So don't put the cart before the horse. If you're starting a podcast, start it because you've got content that you think is going to be of interest to an audience. As you grow that audience, uh, as you grow that audience, you're going to get a lot more interest in sponsoring the content you're producing. That said, um, there are some ways to go about it. The big thought right now is to find one overarching sponsor with a really big checkbook and a really fat wallet that can just cover all the cost and make you a millionaire. To record your podcast on a beach someplace, all you need is one. You just need McDonald's to sponsor your podcast, and you'll be rich, rich, rich. Um, but it's a lot more attainable to find smaller sponsors to sponsor sections, segments of your podcast episodes. And this is what I really kind of want to concentrate on in this little, uh, brainstorm that we're doing today. The best reference that I can give somebody who started a podcast and are interested in coming up with sponsorable podcast segments is to listen to traditional radio and to take notes. Don't just listen to the good songs and then flip the station when the commercial comes on. Listen to what the DJ is doing on their side when they open the mic. If you listen to any morning show, there's about a half a dozen different segments that make up the show. They're going to take in callers, uh, who are calling into the station. They're going to have an interview with somebody. They're going to have a contest of some sort. All of those are sponsorable segments within that one show on a station. So think about your podcast episode as a segment. Even if you think of it as your opening, your middle, and your closing, that's three areas of your podcast that you could find potentially three different sponsors for. Now, create content for that specific section of your website. Create a segment that's repeatable every episode. And now it becomes a lot easier for you to come up with one or two or maybe even three segments within your episode that you could get one, two, or three different sponsors investing in your podcast because it's engaging content, not just because it's a, uh, podcast. And podcasts are hot.

Brett: Yeah. And it leans toward, you know, thinking about how you put your podcast together. It really makes you focus on the content, how you build it. You're not just opening a mic for yourself or your guests and just talking. There is a focus on where you're going. It's a roadmap of where you need to be, and it could actually be a great exercise to make better episodes for yourself by doing that.

Don: Yeah. Um, the reason I point back to radio is it's the original audio medium, right? Aside from people talking one to another, which was not mass media radio broadcasting, that was the first mass media audio. They were podcasting before, podcasting had, uh, a cool name. And if you look at when the first commercial radio station went on the air, they've been perfecting this so that they can generate revenue day after day, year after year, for over 100 years. So pay attention to what they're doing. It's working. They're on the air. Is the radio industry the powerhouse at once? What? No, not at all. But they still have a huge audience and they're making plenty of moolah. Uh uh, or else they wouldn't be on the air. So take a listen to what they're doing. They actually have somebody on staff, one or more individuals that are program directors. They're in charge of creating what's called clocks. So, uh, in every hour of a radio show, they're going to do certain things to keep listeners around, and they have people who in charge of that. As a podcaster, you're in charge of everything, but you would definitely benefit. Your podcast would absolutely benefit in the way it sounds, the listener appeal and monetization. If you do a little research into how radio stations run their hourly clocks and how they do segments and how get into programmatic. People listen to new music podcasts. They listen to true crime podcasts. Um, they listen to podcasts about cooking. Radio stations have been doing that for 100 years. They've got program formats for everything from talk to sports, uh, to, uh, every music genre that's out there. So pay attention. Don't look at radio and go, oh, that's the old stuff. No, it's a science. They've perfected. They've invested a lot of time, energy, and research into what works. And, um, you're not serious about what you're doing unless you're going to give some credence to the people who came before and learn from the investments they've made in it. It's going to make your product sound so much better.

Brett: All right. Exactly. And that leads toward another medium to take a look at. Is you mentioned here, watch and listen to ESPN shows.

Don: Yeah. It would be easy just to say, okay, there's ESPN Radio. When I say listen to radio, of course, ESPN is a radio as well. But ESPN started out as I think it started out as the TV station first, and then went to radio because radio works audio. Everybody's listening here knows audio works. But ESPN especially sports, uh, in general, but ESPN especially they will sell anything in the studio that they can stick a logo on, including the seats they're sitting in. I really think I recall hearing an episode or a show on ESPN that has sponsored for a while for a segment called The Hot Seat, where they brought in somebody, uh, and asked them really pointed questions that they needed to talk about their coaching strategy or how they screwed up the last game they played in. I'm not a sports fan, but the advertising geek and me marvels at their ability to monetize everything in that station. So they had this feature called the ESPN Hot Seat, but it was sponsored. And I think Coca Cola actually sponsored the hot seat, but I really thought it was a missed opportunity to have it sponsored by Tabasco or Texas Pete or Frank's Red Hot Sauces. That's a hot seat right now. It's in context, and it helps the sponsoring brand drive home their value of their product as well. And I single that one out. You watch a half an hour ESPN and you're going to see 15 different sponsorable segments. There's a show that's just about Countdown. How is that not sponsored by Timex or Rolex or some other timekeeping software? Because that whole show is about counting down the time in every segment. The sponsorships write themselves. Right, Brett? But I think a Hot Seat, especially if you're an interview show where you bring on yes, and you're going to ask them, the Hot seat. Uh, plenty of people have a quick fire round. What if that quickfire round was brought to you by charcoal briquettes or lighter fluid or something? A lot of times the segments you produce could generate a brainstorm list of 20 different potential sponsors to go after. And that's the fun part about the segments, because you're not looking for one sponsor to cover your whole show. You're looking for a segment specific to this, a daily poll, uh, a question of the day. But watch ESPN and take notes at all the different segment themes that they have and the sponsors they recruited to underwrite them.

Brett: Yeah, you mentioned a lot of brands, and I'm sure a listener is probably thinking, well, uh, brands, I'm not that big of a show, but retail sell brands. So if you're dealing with maybe a local hardware store that sells grills, that's the Hot Seat sponsor. You can translate it very easily. Yeah.

Don: Well, especially when you're starting out and you're looking to generate any kind of revenue, maybe you just want to go to your local, all local grocery store, right? You're not going to go get Kroger or, uh, Sam's Club to sponsor your show, your little local show. But you might shop at the same place every week where you literally know the person who checks you out. Ask them, have you guys thought about sponsoring a podcast? I'm doing a local show here, and I've got a couple of different segments, that grocery store could become your overall sponsor for your show, but different aisles in the grocery store could sponsor a segment. So everybody's got, um, a sauce aisle, right? Hot sauces are all a huge craze right now, almost as popular as podcasting. Maybe that grocery store is the sponsor of the podcast, but aisle six is the hot sauce aisle. They're the sponsor of your hot seat segment. The other is hot sauces in particular. Everybody's got two or three local hot sauce companies that are trying to take off. They're making it in their garage, just like local, uh, home brewers. You've got a lot of local companies. Yeah. You're not going to get Budweiser to sponsor your local sports recap podcast, but, uh, Sam's Beer, um, stop. He might.

Brett: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And let's go into the next one. You mentioned just a little bit about Countdown list. Let's dive a little bit more into that because everybody loves those top three, top fives kind of things. Uh, let's go into that a bit more about how that could be utilized.

Don: Right. So I'm not sure when this episode airs, but we're recording it at the end of the year. Uh, and end of year and beginning of year are always the times where every media company gets into these countdown, right? It's the top 100 songs of the year, the top ten movie releases of the year, and it's an annual countdown. And those are certainly sponsorable one or two off, uh, opportunities during, uh, a broadcast year or programming year. But why not take it to a smaller level and do a Top Three countdown list in every episode of your podcast? So let's say you're doing a podcast about pizza, uh, just pizza in general, the love of pizza, local pizza, pizza recipe, I don't know, just pizza in general. Well, if you look at your show as a segment that we talked about earlier, which was the opening, the middle and the end, you could do a top three countdown. Start with number three during your opening, go to number two in the middle, and then close it out with the number one on your countdown list. And just on this pizza theme, we can do top, uh, three pizza toppings, top, uh, three local pizza shops, top three sides to order with a pizza. Top three beers that go with a pizza. Top three wines that go with the pizza. Uh, top three pizzas by city, top three pizzas by state, top three movies with the word pizza in the title. You could just go on and on with any kind of top three list that you can somehow pull back, topiza. And just in that brief little riff, you've probably got enough ideas for three months worth of Top Three Countdowns, right. Um, and those are sponsorable. You get people that they stay tuned. It's a way to bring them through. Hey, we're going to be right back with the number one beer to order with your pizza this week. That's a great way to pull people along. Rip straight off a Radios, uh, strategy list. And it works really well to keep people with you throughout the podcast.

Brett: You're always looking for those shareable content ideas that somebody listens to your podcast and go, oh, you've never heard of that? Oh, that's so cool. I need to share that. Or at least you're saying, hey, I heard this on this podcast. Your next idea of fun facts that fits that to a T. Well, hold on, though.

Don: Just even with, uh, the countdown list, the people who disagree with you oh, yeah. Your name is Three Beers That Go With Pizza and you left off insert beer. Name here. Oh, my God. How could you leave them off that list? That kind of controversy sparks conversation. But it's a fun way to pull through there.

Brett: Yeah, that's great.

Don: Um, but yeah, fun fact. So that's another thing people love sharing useless trivia. At some point, I'm going to be on a game show somewhere with all the useless stuff that is stuck inside my head because I was a lousy student in school. I cannot remember, uh, how to I probably can't remember how to, uh, define a prime number, but boy, I can tell you, uh, the theme song of Gilligan's Island, right?

Brett: How in the world did we both go to Gilligan's Island? That's exactly the same wavelength. Oh, my gosh, it's so weird.

Don: Oh, you're talking about Gillian. Do you remember the episode where Mary ended? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So one trivia fun fact begets another because it's a conversation. People love trading these stories socially over lunch, over a beer, on on the Internet. How many posts have you seen in the past year on social media that started out with, I was today years old when I learned that XYZ insert weird fact here. There are podcasts devoted to endless episodes of weird facts. One of our friends here in Columbus, Ohio, uh, hosts a podcast that has grown incredibly over this past year called The Internet Says It's True. And it's just weird facts that he finds online. So you can introduce a segment with just a random fact of the day, some weird trivia question to share, something to stump your friends with. And that is infinitely sponsorable. And it's because it's not specifically themed. Like, let's say you were going to do a top beer countdown and you're going to lean into beer brands or microbrews or glassware companies as your sponsors. A fun fact, uh, a trivial piece of miscellaneous that you're going to share can be sponsored by anyone. Now, if you find a sponsor that's on a theme, let's say you get it a, uh, local brewery to sponsor it, you could do an entire decade of episodes on fun facts about beer.

Brett: Yeah, correct.

Don: So you can absolutely angle it towards your sponsor if you need or want to do that, but just the randomness of the Fun facts. People love those and they love to share them.

Brett: And a fun way to bring in the sponsor too, is allow them to even do the Fun Facts segment in their own voice. Uh, talk about stroke in the ego.

Don: Especially if it's on theme. Let's say you're going to do, uh, an annual sponsorship from, uh, that brewery and you're going to have them give the random beer trivia tip of the week. That's great.

Brett: I know, I love it. Yeah, exactly. Top Takeaways. It's kind of the same feel of the Fun Facts, but it's a twist go with the Top Takeaways.

Don: So it's still a single thing in your episode. So when you're going to do that trivia or that Fun Fact, it's going to be one segment. Well, Top Takeaway, you could do a trivia or Fun Fact in your first part of your podcast and you could do a Top Takeaway at the end. This is designed to close out your podcast. Uh, it may even come after an advertising insert if you're getting low doe, uh, affiliate marketing ads in there. Top Takeaway is a great tease to get somebody to hang around through that ad to listen to the Top Takeaway of the episode. Side Hustle Nation podcast does a great job of doing this. Every episode he interviews a different entrepreneur that's got some kind of side hustle they're going on and they're great interviews. And it's usually a 45 minutes to an hour show. Uh, no matter what the side hustle is, there's usually some piece of information I can pull out of that that I can apply to whatever project I might be working on. But at the end of every episode, the host, Nick Loper always does his Top Takeaways and he has usually three or four Top Takeaways. Your podcast, um, I think we've discussed in the past about especially a first time podcaster is just starting out. They're going to get better as the episodes go on. You may be a little long winded in those earlier episodes and you might meander around a little bit before you actually get to that one really good piece of information. The Top Takeaway is a great thing at the end of the episode where you can go back hone in on that one piece that may have gotten lost while you were wandering around and you can drill right back down to it. Go. If you remember one thing from this episode, this is the thing to remember. It's a great top takeaway to sponsor. Uh, it's a fun one to find a sponsorship for Top Takeaways. What do you do with them? You write them down. You share them. Um, maybe you collect them in a book or a journal. What if your Top Takeaway is sponsored by a pen or sponsored by Moleskin? Uh, and uh, Brett, you and I have, uh, those erasable pen books. What's the brand there?

Brett: Forget, um, what it's called. We'll put it in the show notes if we forget what it is.

Don: Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

Brett: Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Don: Uh, hold on, I got one right here.

Brett: I'll do you good. Thank you.

Don: Stay tuned, stay tuned. Um, uh, I see the logo and not the name dog on it. I thought I was going to have it. Oh, Rocketbook.

Brett: Rocketbook. Thank you, Rocketbook.

Don: So Rocketbook is this cool notebook that Brett and I love to write in, that you can write in and pen take a picture. It scans it up to the Internet, saves it to your Google folder. Rocketbook would be a great sponsor for the top takeaway because you'd want to write it down and make sure you don't miss it. Right. So we're going to be right back with the top takeaway sponsored by Rocketbook. Get out your rocketbook in your pen to write down this takeaway because you're not going to want to forget it.

Brett: Exactly. And think about this too. Even though you may not get, uh, let's say you do have a segment that you want Rocketbook to sponsor. Well, go ahead and mention Rocketbook a few times in a few episodes and just do it. Create some spec spots that you're saying, hey, Rocketbooks, I'm already doing this in the podcast for a time. What do you think? You like the money or affiliate code?

Don: Sign up for a free Amazon Associates program. The best way to sell, uh, a sponsorship spot is to show that somebody else already has it. So you're maybe going to make between 3% of a commission on something you sell through Amazon, but it costs you nothing to sign up for it. You can easily do a redirect. Hey, for a special discount on Rocketbook, use, uh, my link go to mypodcast. Comrocketbooklink, uh, to save 15% because they're always running discounts on Amazon. So you can use that link as a proof, uh, of concept. You can say X number of people use my link to go there. If you use a plug in on your website, like pretty links, or you use one of those, um, bitly shares where you can count the number of times somebody clicks a link, you can go to them and say, hey, I've been using you as a fill in sponsor. I'm using an associates program. Um, and I sent 100 people to go check out, uh, the Rocketbook link on Amazon. A couple of reasons that could work well for you. One, maybe it ends up being profitable and you just keep doing that. Two, it's a great way to reach out to Rocketbook for a more formal sponsorship. Three, maybe you reach out to Rocketbook. You're happy with what you're getting on the, uh, associates, uh, the affiliate link, and you just get them to give you a couple of notebooks that you can give away to listeners as a prize. They'll send you a free product before they'll write you a sponsorship check. And that's cool too. And it's proof of concept to take to some other notebook company. One of the big breakout, uh, products on Amazon over the past couple of years has been everybody's familiar with the Kindle, uh, on demand publishing platform. They also have, uh, on demand print books that people have been doing and usually be a book. You write a book on business, you got the Kindle business book, you got the print business book. People started doing journals and diaries where it's the same page. Like, think about the Moleskin Notebook where it's got the lined pages. There's nothing in there. Or it's a daily five minute planner where it's the same information on every single page. Those become hugely popular as self published items on Amazon. You could reach out to any of those creators and get a small sponsorship dollars, uh, from them to sponsor your top takeaway, because then you'd be promoting their book on your podcast. Get free product from them, get a little bit of a paycheck while you're building up your reputation and your results that you can take to larger sponsors.

Brett: All right, and I love your last one here. Take off on winner, winner, chicken dinner. Winner, winner, podcast listener. I think you kind of referenced it just a little bit in our last highlight of just making winners out of your listeners.

Don: Yeah, this one, uh, absolutely. You want to reward your listeners. And one way that you can reward listeners is by mentioning their name. You see, a lot of people, a lot of podcasters are doing this with, um, uh, their different support platforms, like Patreon. If you're a Patreon sponsor, a lot of times when you sponsor at a certain level, you get named in the most recent episode of the podcast, a podcast I follow and support about, um, the Pirate History podcast. They do this a lot. Um, somebody else who does this really well is Noah Kagan from Okdork.com. In his, uh, podcast, Noah Kagan presents he features a best, um, review of the week, where he reads the entire review, names the person who submitted the review. He's not giving them anything other than getting their name mentioned in his hugely popular podcast, uh, along with all the nice things they said about him. And he ends it with, hey, you might hear your name in a future podcast if you just leave a review. Leave a five star review. I'm going to pick my favorites. I read them all. Thanks so much for sharing them. And then he just picks a random person to read on the air. Well, you could increase your odds of getting, uh, those kinds of reviews by awarding them something. We talked a little bit about how you could give away those Rocket books or some other journal, but you could give away swag with your podcast logo on it. So I would love it if Pirate History Podcast had a really cool pirate T shirt. I'd write them way more reviews if I had a chance to get one of those shirts. So if we read your review on the air, we're going to say your name, but then we're going to send you one of our shirts. Well, that's cool because one, I want the shirt, but then I'm going to wear it. I'm going to become this walking billboard for your podcast brand. How many other people might I influence if I'm doing that? And you can order one off shirts like a cafe, Press and Zazzle. So it's not like you got to print a garage full of these T shirts. You can print them off as you get your winners done and have a drop ship directly to them. You have to mess with mailing it yourself. And your out of pocket cost might be $7.

Brett: Yeah, exactly. And the opportunity for them to take a selfie of themselves in that cat in that t shirt they're going to post on social media. There's also the opportunity, too, of even if the guest of the host doesn't read the review, maybe have the person that wrote the review phone in and record the review themselves and play it on the podcast. Tons and tons of different ways of including and making your listeners so really feel special.

Don: Yeah, there's, uh, a lot of different tools out there. Now. Some of them are free you just install on your website. It's like a WordPress plugin. Uh, or just have them record it to, uh, a message like Google, uh, Voice. Record the, uh, voicemail and then download that voicemail and use it as a clip inside the podcast as well. So it can be very easy to execute. People love hearing themselves on, uh, podcasts. So you can absolutely increase the different ways you execute this and be creative about it. That's the whole point, right?

Brett: Yeah, exactly. Now, Don and I both have radio sales backgrounds and truly, these ideas and more ideas as the year progresses, uh, when you come up with an idea and present it to a sponsor or a potential sponsor, it gives the impression, and it is the impression that you spend some time thinking about them. It's creativity. It's one step above even other people trying to sell them advertising, radio reps, TV reps, that you took the time to come up with a creative idea that they'll sit down and listen to you. Uh, I think that's the biggest and I'll do a takeaway that's the takeaway with this is be creative before you start making phone calls and knocking on doors.

Don: Yeah. Show that you invested some of your time in thinking about how you can help your sponsor if they invest in you. It's only fair. It's only fair. It's not selfish. I can't tell you how many media. Reps, uh, Brett and I have worked with or run into over the years. That it's all for them. They've got a quota to meet, and you don't want to have salesperson breath when you come in, right? You want to come in with an idea to benefit your potential sponsor. That idea should not be spend money with me. That idea should be, hey, we have this really cool segment and get more people interested in your notepads. Uh, because I use one and they're really cool. I want to tell more people about it. I'm already doing it for free. Uh, but boy, I could really build some additional promotion around this. If you decided to invest this, give it a try for six months. See how it works for you. Give us some notebooks to give away as a prize. At the very least, they're going to consider it because you came at them with a concept that benefits them in the long run, not just you exactly.

Brett: You need some help with some ideas, contact Don. Uh, where can they go to get some time with you?

Don: Well, the easiest place to find me is to go to Don The Idea Guy dot come. There's actually a brainstorm link on the page that you can click on. You can actually hire me to do one to one brainstorm sessions with you about how to grow your business, whether it's growing your podcast show, uh, your own side hustle, or your top ten, uh, business that you want to, uh, increase profits for in the coming year. I love doing custom brainstorms for people on the other side of the equation. I have a website called Five Buckbrainstorms.com that we launched this year where I do many brainstorms that, uh, some are free, some you pay to be a member of the list. You go to fivebuckbrainstorms.com, sign up for the free notification list. If you're interested in the idea, you can spend $5 and get at least a dozen ideas on whatever the topic is. In this case, we did a little, uh, episode on sponsorable podcast segments. This is a full blown, uh, twelve idea brainstorm. Twelve or more idea brainstorm that's available for download at fivebuckbrainstorms.com. I'd love to see you join the list and get this brainstorm for free.

Brett: Excellent. Hey, thanks for following and subscribing to the Circle Sessions from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants.