61. A Guide to Podcast Sponsorships in 2025

Sponsorships aren’t just for the big podcasts pulling millions of downloads. If you’ve got a niche show with a loyal audience, you can start turning your podcast into a money-making machine. In this episode, I’m breaking down everything you need to know about podcast sponsorships: how to position your podcast, and pitch like a pro.

Plus, I’ve got two resources to make your sponsorship journey even smoother. Listen in to snag actionable tips and tools to make your podcast profitable in 2025.

What’s Inside:

• Why niche shows with loyal audiences are sponsorship gold
• How to define your podcast’s value and unique selling proposition (USP)
• Crafting a sponsorship package that brands can’t resist
• Where to find sponsors and how to pitch them with confidence
• Maintaining strong sponsor relationships and building long-term partnerships

Key Takeaways:

1. It’s Not Just About Numbers: Sponsors care more about your audience’s quality than your download quantity.
2. Know Your Audience: Be ready to share your listener demographics (age, gender, location) and psychographics (interests, values, spending habits).
3. Create a Killer Media Kit: Include your podcast’s mission, metrics, sponsorship options, and pricing tiers.
4. Pitch Like a Pro: Be personal, show your value, and close with a clear call to action.
5. Keep It Professional: Deliver on your promises, share campaign metrics, and build long-term relationships with sponsors.

Resources Mentioned:

• Freebie: Pitch Like a Pro – A customizable media kit template to jumpstart your sponsorship journey. Grab it here!
• $9 Mini-Guide: Pitch Perfect Sponsorship Guide – A deep dive into securing and managing podcast sponsorships. Get it here!
• My upcoming course: Podcasting on Autopilot: AI That Works for You (Launching February 2025) – Sign up for the waitlist here to level up your workflow!

💬 Let’s Keep the Conversation Going!
Who is your dream podcast sponsor? Tell me about it!

• DM or tag me on Instagram/Threads: @SONIVIAstudios
• Email: rue@sonivia.com

Ready to Monetize Your Podcast?
You’ve got the tools, the knowledge, and the passion. Now it’s time to get paid. Start pitching sponsors today, and don’t forget to snag your free Pitch Like a Pro template for a head start.

Music Credit: Up An Octave Theme by Rue Spence with additional vocals provided by Darnell Spence

Up An Octave is hosted by Rue Spence of Sonivia. Up An Octave is a podcast for women and nonbinary people who are ready to take up space in podcasting to share their voices with the world.

Transcript

  You're listening to Up an Octave, a podcast by Sonivia, the podcasting agency that believes that women and non binary people deserve to take up space in the podcasting industry because our thoughts, voices, and stories matter. Here you'll learn how to make dope podcasts that inspire, educate, convert, and most importantly, make your voice shine.

I'm your host, Rue Spence, and I'm here to take podcasting up an octave. Let's get into it. 

Hello and welcome back to Up an Octave. I'm gonna be so real. I'm so frustrated right now. Uh, this is This is my fourth time recording this episode,  and I still don't think I'm happy with how it sounds, so we're just gonna make the best of it. I'm still in my super echoey space, which is just the circumstance of the house that I'm in,  and I'm just so frustrated by it, but my heater has been going nonstop because it is currently 0 degrees with a real feel of minus 13 outside.

Love that for me. So my poor HVAC system is doing everything it can to keep up. And then I thought I recorded and I definitely didn't, um, and I was like, I killed it. That episode was great. So  I'm going to try for the third time, fourth time, for a millionth time to get this episode out. I am pushing through because I'm so jazzed to talk about this topic because it is something that people have been in my DMs about.

It's something that I talk to clients about all the time, and honestly, it's just the energy that I'm bringing into 2025. Today we are talking about money and more specifically, sponsorships. I don't know about you, but I am tired of the booked and busy energy. I am here to be paid and peaceful. It's 2025, Donald Trump is president.

I don't have time or energy to BS. I am trying to protect my peace and keep dollars in my pocket. One of the ways that you can cultivate that energy is with podcast sponsorships. And sponsors are not just for the Joe Rogans of the world or shows with a million downloads. You, yes, you with your niched down podcast.

And your dialed in audience can land sponsors that make you real money with your show. Today I'm breaking down actionable ways that you can make that happen. And by the end of this episode, you will know how to position your podcast to be successful, pitch like a pro and start turning your little side project into dollar signs.

As a bonus gift to you, I've also got a freebie that's going to take the guesswork out of pitching sponsors. I'll share more about that later, so make sure you stick around.  Now, before you just start throwing pitches out there, you need to know what makes your podcast valuable. Sponsors don't just want numbers.

They want to know why partnering with you is going to get their brand results. Before you start sliding into DMS or sending out proposals, you need to be able to answer these questions. First up, who is listening to your podcast sponsors that you want to connect with care more about the who than the how many, and they want to know about your audience's demographics.

For those of you from the Omegle era, that's your audience's ASL. Or if you managed to escape the Omegle cringe, that's your audience's age, gender, and location. And then sponsors also want to know about your audience's psychographics, which is a super fun word that you now get to pull out at dinner parties.

You're welcome. Which just means your audience's interests, values, and spending habits. For example, let's say that you run a nail salon podcast, ahem, Salon Confessions. Your audience might be salon owners or beauty enthusiasts, likely women in their 40s and 50s who care about self care, beauty trends, and investing in products they trust and, you know, they have a little bit of cash to spare.

This is gold for beauty brands. Once you can answer those questions, it's time to highlight your unique selling proposition, your USP. So your USP is why a brand should partner with you specifically. Maybe it's your niche expertise, your loyal audience, or the way that you connect with listeners like their best friend.

For example, first, when we're talking about, you know, this nail tech podcast like Slanted Confessions. If you are serving salon professionals, your USP could be I connect directly with nail techs looking for tools and products to elevate their craft and grow their business. Now you can define your metrics.

I'm lying if I tell you that numbers don't matter at all, but don't stress if you're not pulling in tens of thousands of downloads. Highlight what you've got. Your average downloads per episode, your social media following and engagement, your email list size, and your audience listening engagement.

That's going to be your reviews, DMs, questions from the audience, emails, anytime that you're communicating directly with your audience. When sponsors ask about your numbers, they want to know that those numbers are accurate. And not all hosting platforms measure analytics the same way. This is why I always recommend being on an IAB  certified podcast host.

You already know from listening that I am a buzzsprout girly, and this is part of why. But aside from Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Podbean, Captivate, a bunch of others are also certified. Just keep an eye out for that. I know that as of the time of this recording, Spotify for podcasters is not IAB certified. So what this really means is that your analytics meet industry standards.

So when you tell a sponsor that you have 7, 000 downloads per episode. They can trust that number. If your podcast's host is not IAB certified, it leaves you open to fudge the numbers, i. e. Matilda's dad running back the odometer on the cars he's selling. It's just not a great vibe. And also in the sense of integrity.

You want to make sure that your sponsor is going to be getting what they think they're signing up for. Accurate analytics are your foundation for building trust with potential sponsors. It's what sets you apart as a podcaster who takes their work seriously. And it makes negotiations smoother because everyone is on the same page in black and white ink.

Finally, a pro tip. Small shows with high engagement are prime sponsorship opportunities. Brands care about your influence, not just your volume. So if you're sitting here like, I'm not pulling that many listeners, but all of my listeners are in my DMs, we're having communications all the time, we're, we've got a poppin Facebook group, this is where that is your magic.

This is not the time to make excuses or downplay what you're actually working with. Say your numbers with your chest and the right sponsors will still love you. Now that you know exactly what you're working with numbers wise and who you're talking with, you get to build your sponsorship package. You've nailed down your value and now you get to wrap it up in a nice little bow in a way that makes sponsors say, take my money.

So in order to get that kind of a response, your sponsorship package or media kit one sheet, depending on what you want to call it should have these things. A brief about your podcast. This is your little blurb, your mission, your audience. Keep this tight and make it something that your potential sponsor partners can just read at a glance.

Your metrics. This is your downloads, social reach and engagement stats. Sponsorship options, whether you're offering pre roll, mid roll, post roll, full episode sponsorships, giveaways, custom collaborations. what exactly it is that you're offering. And I'm just going to crash course all of that in case it felt like I was speaking a foreign language, uh, to make sure that you understand kind of the basics, but this could be its own episode entirely.

So just stick with me. Pre roll is something that plays before people even hear your voice. So they click the podcast and boom, if you are like a free Spotify user, when you tap on an episode, maybe even of this show, chances are you've heard like a Visit Iowa weird commercial that has nothing to do with the podcast you're listening to.

But that's pre roll. Mid roll is when like, okay, say if I was to stop right here and I play some music and then I'd be like, hi, it's Rue. I hate cooking dinner. And that's why I've partnered with this meal kit. Anyway, let's get back to the content. And then post roll is just at the very end of the episode.

I'm like, cool. Bye. And then it's like, boom, here's this ad. Typically, pre roll and mid roll have higher payout because chances are people are still listening. Once you say goodbye, people tend to click away, and so post roll ads aren't often worth as much to sponsors. A full episode sponsorship is when you enter your PBS era.

Who else was a PBS kid out there? Just me?  And you say, you know, welcome back to Up an Octave. Today's episode is sponsored by Sonevia and this is why Sonevia is so awesome and all that jazz. And then giveaways, of course, are pretty self explanatory. Custom collaborations are going to be a little bit more specific and case by case just depending on the nature of what the brand is asking of you.

And that could look like maybe it's a review episode of their product. So then finally, your sponsorship package media kit one sheet should also have a little bit of pricing information you can offer to get more custom and in the weeds with people during negotiations, but give them a ballpark estimate of what they can expect to pay.

That's going to help you get an email response. Offer different packages at different price points just to make it easier to say yes. So, for example, a 20 second pre recorded just drop it in the mid roll ad is probably going to be worth less than an entire episode that is sponsored, where you're going to be talking about the brand or the product a few times.

And then having a pre roll ad is also going to come at a different price point. And I know that you're probably like, okay, pricing tiers, that's cute. I have no idea how to price things. And if you're a small business owner, pricing has probably come up as a mental block for you in other places, but it's not surprising that coming up with your rates is feeling like you're just lost in the dark.

The industry standard for podcasting is currently 25 to 50 bucks per CPM. It stands for cost per mile, but in terms of podcasting, we mean cost per thousand downloads. Niche shows can charge more if their audience is highly engaged, that's what we were talking about earlier. So if you are someone who's got a whole bunch of downloads and a whole bunch of listeners, You're going to be making way more than that 25 to 50 but sticking in that lower range if you're still in the couples of thousands is going to make it more of a sweet spot and make the relationship feel more reciprocal.

So for example, if you have a thousand downloads per episode, but your audience is just obsessed with you, you could potentially charge 200 bucks an ad and that is because you're not just selling based on your downloads. You are selling based on your influence. You know that if you see an ad for whitening toothpaste on Facebook, you're probably just going to roll your eyes, especially now that Facebook fact checking means nothing, but.

When your bestie won't shut up about how that very same toothpaste erased years of Diet Coke, you find yourself clicking add to cart. Brands understand that too. They value influencers that can cut through the static and hand sell their items and services to dialed in listeners. You should be thinking of your media kit as your podcast's resume.

It should look professional. It should be tight and polished with easy to digest info about your audience, past successes, And sponsorship options. If this still feels overwhelming, I've got the freebie that I was talking about at the top of the episode for you, which is a sample media kit template, fully customizable to help you get started.

You can find the link for that in the show notes. So this all sounds great. And you've got your media kit. You follow the template. You know exactly who you're talking to. Life is awesome. But where do you actually find sponsors? Let's break it down. First, start with brands you already love. Brain dump, make a list of products and services that you use and believe in.

And that's it. Like I mentioned earlier, authenticity sells and sponsors love working with podcasters who genuinely love their brand. Think about, you know, I like this product. I like this product. I love this product. So after you have this list, it makes sense for you to consider what is aligned with the branding of your podcast.

So going back to Salon Confessions, maybe at the surface, it doesn't make sense for me to be talking about a non toxic all purpose cleaner that I use in my kitchen when my whole podcast positioning is on nails. Until you think about, wow, since I switched to using this specific kitchen disinfectant, I don't chip my nails when I'm scrubbing my counters anymore.

And that's kind of cool. So you could reach out to that brand and be like, Hey, your product is so gentle that it doesn't even hurt my beautifully manicured nails. Like that is such a selling point. That I don't even know if you've realized. And that is where authenticity and that hand selling that I was talking about comes into play.

Something else that you can also do is to research niche aligned sponsors. So that means looking for brands that align with your audience's interests. Let's say, for example, you have a parenting podcast. You could pitch to baby gear companies, educational toy brands, online parenting courses, that kind of thing.

If you had a fitness podcast, you could reach out to activewear brands, protein powder companies, fitness apps, et cetera. The trick with this is to get hyper focused. This is where having a well defined niche and really being able to answer those questions from earlier matters the most. There are a poopload of baby gear companies.

But if your parenting podcast is specifically for queer parents, getting really specific and reaching out to an LGBTQ owned brand like Bazzle Baby. And explaining your alignment would likely get you a lot further than just reaching out to huggies and hoping for the best. If you're feeling really overwhelmed by trying to identify brands or reaching out to them cold, you can also use sponsorship platforms.

These are platforms like Podcorn, which connect podcasters and brands. I don't recommend relying solely on these. I do think that while it's a little bit more nerve wracking that direct outreach almost always leads to better deals and stronger relationships. I've had hit or miss luck with the pairings that come from using these platforms, but it could be worth a shot for you.

See what comes of it. See if it resonates. There's a lot of trial and error in podcasting until you figure out what feels right and what's working well for you. Now that you've got all those things we've been talking about, your podcast's value, you've identified brands, it is time to pitch. And this is where the magic happens.

Hopefully, I'm going to help decringify the process of reaching out. Because I know it can be super uncomfortable. First up is crafting a killer email. I'm here to give you the formula for that too. First, you've got your subject line. Keep it super short and punchy. You know, like your brand plus my podcast equal a perfect match.

I don't know. Something that's going to get through all of the DMs and all of the emails that they're already getting on a daily basis. And then for the love of all that is good and holy, personalize it.  Do not send the same generic email to 50 brands. Mention why you're reaching out to them, how their product fits your audience.

Get intimate. Start the relationship by showing that you are here to put in the work and give value. And this is also a great place for you to sneak in that anecdote, you know, like I mentioned earlier, I love your product because X, Y, Z, I already use it in real life. So that's why I'm the perfect podcast for sponsorship because I'm not phoning it in.

There are so many podcasts that I've heard who are like repping Casper mattresses, purple mattresses, and I think there's another of the like, you know, ship in a bag and you cut it open, it poofs up mattresses. And I'm like, how many beds do you people have? Like, just last year you were repping Casper, now you're onto purple.

Like, how often are you replacing your mattress? It's supposed to be every seven years, like what's going on? And that just makes it stop feeling authentic. But if you can really tell them like, Hey, I love your brand. I already use it this, that, or the other, it's going to feel so much more filled with integrity than just something that you're going to get placed with on like podcorn and then close with a strong, can't resist call to action.

That almost seems like it's already happening and with I'm excited to talk to you. Let me know when you're available to schedule a quick call and then follow up. Stand in your power. Most sponsorship deals are not going to happen immediately after you send just one email. And if you don't hear back, don't be afraid to send a polite little nudge and then negotiate smart.

Be clear about what you're offering. Be clear about what you're getting. And as always, always, always get agreements in writing. Landing a sponsor is a huge milestone, but it is just the beginning. To keep those partnerships strong, you need to deliver. Over deliver, I would even say. And I acknowledge that we are living hellscape, but when it feels right and organic, over deliver on your promises.

If you promised one social media post, it's Remind people of the brand on an Instagram story. If you're running a mid roll ad on your show, weave the product naturally into their conversation that you're having for the rest of the episode. Remember that it should feel like a recommendation, not a pushy commercial.

Then share the metrics, post campaign, send your sponsor a recap of the campaign. This is what we did. This was the ad placement. And then also share the numbers, share the reach, the engagement, and listener feedback that you might have gotten. This also helps that brand get an understanding of the value you've brought to them.

And it helps them understand if this partnership was a good choice for their brand. There are some brands that podcast ads are just not the right place for them. And it helps them to know if this is worth repeating or coming back to in the future. Take the opportunity to build long term relationships.

Brands love podcasters who make their products shine. So stay in touch and pitch new ideas for future collaborations. The easiest sponsor to land is the sponsor you've had in the past. And because I know that there are definitely people out there who are anti podcast ad, uh, I suggest that they go make their own podcast because it's a lot easier to say, Oh, I hate ads.

When you're not relying on that income, when it's not literally your job or when you're not just doing it for free, because it is a passion, but you're trying to cover your own overhead. There are definitely people who hate ads and there is a chance that you will hear from this vocal minority. Saying, you know, you're selling out and you suck and, and that's fine.

There is always the option for them to skip 15 seconds ahead. But something else that I'm a big fan of is offering ad free content behind a paywall like Patreon. So for 5, 10, whatever dollars a month, people can access your show totally ad free, maybe even a day earlier or with extended content or whatever, if you're up for that.

No one has to take you up on that offer. But putting it out there helps to appease the ad haters and can pad your pockets at the same time. Finally, if this has all felt icky or uncomfortable, I want to remind you that there are other ways that you can monetize your podcast that don't rely on sponsorships.

If you just feel like this is not right for you, don't fret. Your podcast can bring in revenue in ways that feel more aligned, and we can chat about that in another episode. Let's recap on this. You know how to identify your value, build your sponsorship package, find the right brands, and pitch like the standout podcaster you are.

Before you scoot, I want to remind you about the freebie I mentioned. It's called Pitch Like a Pro, and it's going to help you get a head start towards connecting with brands that will connect with you. With connecting with brands that will connect you with cash. And if you want a little extra help snatching those sponsors, I've also got the Pitch Perfect Sponsorship Guide, which is available in the show notes for nine bucks.

This is going to walk you through applying everything that we covered in this episode and more to your podcast to find your perfect sponsorship partners. Don't forget, next month, my AI for Podcasters course is launching. The waitlist is still open to make sure that you are the first to hear when the date drops and what is coming.

I'm going to be giving some extra treats to people who are on the waitlist when we launch. I'm super, super jazzed about that, but that's all for today. Tell me who is your dream sponsor DM me, tag me on Instagram or threads at Sonevia Studios. I want to hear who you are dreaming of working with. Thank you for tuning in.

Go get that bag. And thanks for helping me take podcasting up an octave.