How Small Businesses Grow by Sponsoring Niche Podcasters and YouTubers

We explain why sponsoring niche podcasters and YouTubers beats mass ads for small businesses and local services. We share pricing ranges, performance tactics like affiliate links, and how authenticity drives trust and conversion.

• housekeeping, health update, and sponsorship changes
• local referrals and side projects including game trailer and indoor media billboards
• limited-time free ad screens for early indoor media adopters
• why micro-influencers outperform celebrity and mass media for SMEs
• host-read authenticity and trust from real experience
• measurable ROI with affiliate links, codes, and custom URLs
• pricing bands for 1k–100k creators and budget planning
• local vs national targeting for relevance and cost control
• B2B focus on credibility, guesting, and long-term trust
• action plan: test 3–5 creators and allocate 5–10% budget

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, updates, and housekeeping
• 1:16 Sponsorships, local referrals, and side projects
• 2:20 Indoor media billboards and free ad offer
• 3:17 Why sponsor niche creators over mass media
• 5:00 Micro-influencers: trust, cost, and engagement
• 7:15 Host-read authenticity and real-world examples
• 9:05 Measurable results and affiliate structures
• 10:20 Pricing bands and local vs national targeting
• 12:00 B2B credibility, guesting, and long-term play
• 12:55 Action plan and budget recommendation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Trader Stew.

SPEAKER_01: 0:24

Hello and welcome back to the Trade Post. I am your host, Trader Stew. A little housework to get started here. First of all, still sick. Still got a abuse of cough dropping on the mouth to try and not cough at the microphone. I've had this stupid cold for I think it was like a month now. I got it at the beginning of the month. I was just looking at it with my wife. My wife is now wicked sick, can't get rid of the cough. My little son, the two-year-old, he's still got it. Frontny nose, stuffy nose, the cough. Not as bad as us, of course. You know, how they are. The 10-year-old, the stepson, is he knocked it out. So he's done with it. And I still got this little weak little cough thing. Other than that, I feel fine. It's a stupid cough, man. My god. Anyway, what else do we got going here? Oh, Michigan Restaurants Festival is official with your covert. Last weekend was the last weekend. So the mid-roll is now gone for the sponsorship ad for them, which is of course not available. And that gets me into the uh today's address topic. What I want to talk about. Of course, I'm still sponsored by the association, the barter company. And if you have any questions about that, Holler, if you have any questions about the local homes in your area, if you're not a retroid or little area, still give you Holler. And I'll give you a referral or whatever to that area. What else? Uh my video game is still, I haven't I haven't seen the sneak peek of it yet. I know they're working on the sneak peek. But like I said, my voice is gone. I didn't do my voice, but my characters are there. Put the training post uh for trailer. That's in the uh uh press action play uh video game company that has been produced for the that game called Git Prep. And then uh what else? Uh I think that's it. Oh, and quantum uh indoor media. So check out those indoor media billboards. And you if you're a sponsor at Billboard right now until you know he's done building up his uh his area, you get free advertising for your screen. In fact, they produce a commercial for is a 15th second of his commercial. You get five more commercials around the area on the other five WFC on competing do you mention that as long as you keep a TV integrated in your building. So it's a pretty good gig right now. It's like$5,000 in the value that there he's giving you for you know this TV, which is awesome. And once he's got not enough miners in the buildings, the area, then that's an exploding offer, and you can't get into them. So all right. All right, let's get into it. Sponsoring niche positive task, which is why I want to talk about this. What the uh now that the uh the Renaissance festival's no longer sponsoring me because the festival's over. But sponsoring niche podcasters and YouTubers is one of the smartest moves that uh I believe small businesses uh could make right now to stretch advertising dollars and uh drive results in 35 beyond, basically. The targeted approach offers unique advantages uh over traditional mass marketing with proven uh benefits reporting and reception, engagement, and RDI. And that's because most small businesses, like the small public company, the small photos too, but we can't afford you know the mass productions that they are involved with putting your ad out on uh bigger venue. And I guess that could be uh I I got heard Facebook has gotten expensive and also is now not as but useful as it is used to be because I guess it's nobody's on it. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's for the ultra-crowd. I don't know. I'm only on it for the marketplace, to be honest. But I don't follow anybody, I don't like anything, I don't comment, I don't whatever. I don't got it on Facebook. I got I got off of Facebook during 2020. What I mean is a keyboard warrior, and but I can't change anybody's light, just I got around those crowd's back all. So anyway, I digress. So why why the niche podcasters and YouTuber? Why why not go for something that's huge, like you know, maybe Mr. Beast or whatever. Well, drilling those are the big dogs, I guess. And you know, going on both the spectrum is the podcaster spectrum and a YouTuber spectrum. So excuse me, white podcasters. Excuse me, I'm gonna water here. White podcasters and uh YouTubers worth a thousand to right around fifty thousand followers and speak to focused audiences deeply and passionately about specific topics or industries. My god. I guess that's in that out because I don't want to do that. Okay, so most brands uh not prefer the micro influencer uh realm uh over celebrities because you can they can inspire higher trust and a stronger engagement and offer much better value for innovative marketing down rate that you expect. And like I said, you can't afford, you know, I am toasting in that I used to just can't. And not as a local big dog scan, but not the little guys, right? So that's another reason why. And also for the amount of money you put into somebody that's a micro influencer up to 50,000 followers. And by the way, I don't I think on you on YouTube you can still see how many followers they had. Not podcasting, so I don't think anyway. Anyway, that's that's the round, right? One to five, fifty thousand. So, and then uh host red and sponsorship to the podcast are really powerful because uh listeners really the hosts and they trust the expert and as trusted experts, uh basically because usually the host has to try it on them to or been through whatever they're sponsoring, creating an emotional connection that that was brand they call Ben Carey's great responses to the offers. And I'm sure if you heard my talking about the Machine Renaissance Festival, you can tell that I was there. I've been there, done that. It's awesome. I want it, it was great. And you can't get that kind of reach by somebody who's just talking about it and has never been through or experience from thinking to the Renaissance Festival. So obviously much more passionate about talking about it because I've been there to have fun there. And uh done the behind-the-scenes things over the on the media night. It was fun, and my kids loved it. I'm like, what was it? So yeah. So here's the benefits for small businesses. Okay, so laser-targeted reach. Your messages reach an audience that is already interested in your type of product or service, leading to more relevant leads and higher conversion rates. So I talked about that. High engagement, that's me. All right, micro-aniche creators have engagement rates. So here's the likes and the comments and the listener actions. You get two to three times higher than large celebrities because their audiences truly value the recommendations. So I've seen many times that subscriber count no longer means anything on YouTube, even as far as how much pay they get. Or yeah, uh revenue or what do you call it, ad sense that is no longer, I guess, gauged on their on their subscriber count. Used to be like, okay, give me subscribers, you know, like and subscribe, like and subscribe. I guess that those days you're gone. I'm not on YouTube, so I don't follow it anymore like I used to. So, but you know, and that's because no, there was no what do you call it? No action. There's the the celebrity followers, they got the followers and subscribers because people's friends follow. Oh, I should subscribe and follow. But they'll never watch a video, right? They just did it to the pull to their ass tube, and that's a lower cost, less competition. Sponsorship costs are a fraction of what mega influencers charge, and there's less ad clutter, making your message stand out more. So there is oh, I even I think about that too, because if you are advertising on a celebrity, they're gonna have maybe 15 ads at their hour-long dealing, right? Whereas if you get a micro influencer, you might have three. So you'll want three, or whatever they keep saying. Yeah, authenticity and trust. Uh, these creators are trusted for their knowledge and real opinions and making enforcement's genuine recommendations and not ads. Like I already mentioned earlier, this uh authenticity drives randomity and loyalty. So yeah, you I got like I said, uh the authentic authenticity of me being a line of science festival, or even just me working for Nitro Trade, I could talk about trade all day and part it all day because guess what? I've been doing it for like 10 years. And I have my business in it too, because I believe in this so much when I had a business. So if I get a business in the future, I'll probably do it again. You know what I mean? So you get measurable results. Performance-based partnerships like affiliate links will have small businesses that track our eye directly. Many campaigns pay only for leads or conversions, keeping and spending efficient. So that means you get the the link. So if you are partnering with an influencer, and the only time you pay the influencer is if they convert somebody into buying a product to paying commission on that product. That's genius. That's a great idea. Because you don't pay for the thousands of admits that they might have got. Do you only pay for the two people that bought whatever? You know, that came through. It was all to the Python. That's a good idea. So long streeters with a thousand to ten thousand subscribers typically charge$50 to$300 for sponsorship video, while 10,000 to$100,000 subscribers can earn$250 to$2,000, making it you know, more accessible for small business budgets. And brand sponsoring small but how they went creators, thank local service providers and regional organizers, see better results than any intentional audience. That's irrel relative to their business. That's the other thing, too. If you find somebody, maybe like me, it's a Metro Detroit, you had a business in Metro Detroit, or even Flint or whatever in the area, uh you you'd be better off sponsoring someone like me or putting an ad in my pay that you would with again, let's just rogue it again. Because they are you're paying for a lot more than you need, right? So you only need the small metro area. You don't need everyone down in Hawaii, Alaska, you know, all over the you're paying for all those hits, not for a national toilet business. For any ship products globally, then yeah, it works out. It's a great idea. You should do that. But if you're a local, like say again, 12-hour electrician or whatever, you're not gonna benefit at all from anybody watching those videos down. Uh in B2B, more campaigns focus on building long-term brand new trust, uh, which is 67% and credibility is 54% than law, raw B generation, leveraging podcasts and YouTube sponsorships to position the business as an industry follow you. Again, that's also powerful too. You can jump on a podcast and then you build more credibility that me because you're talking about your business and what you do, what you've done, what your story is, what the struggles have been. Yeah, everyone likes a struggle story, and then you might get part of version rates that way too. You know, and then generally, if you are uh guest on the podcast, get whatever, it's free. So there's that as well. So anyway, a small business can maximize returns by finding uh three to five credible niche creators, those audiences match their market, building genuine relationships, and designing and collaboration kind of things that feel organic rather than force, and this method keeps the marketing budget tight and results big, especially the B2B and service sector. So I would just suggest if you have a marketing budget, okay, for like five or ten percent committed towards trying out, you know, sponsoring or uh uh an ad, putting an ad on a local podcaster for a YouTuber. That's it. All right, that's it. For you guys new out there, be good or be good at it.

unknown: 13:18

Bye.