How to Get Podcast Sponsors With Only 1,000 Downloads (Micro Sponsorship Strategy)

Oct 6

"You need at least 10,000 downloads per episode before sponsors will even look at you."

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this in podcasting circles, I'd have enough to sponsor someone's show myself. This advice has convinced countless podcasters that monetisation is off-limits until they hit some arbitrary download threshold. It's not just misleading, it's costing you money right now.

After helping dozens of podcasters at Bamby Media secure their first sponsors, I can tell you that smaller shows have a distinct advantage that most creators haven’t explored: micro sponsorship.

What’s a Micro Sponsor?

Micro sponsors are generally small businesses who want targeted exposure without enterprise-level budgets. They want to “get in” to the podcast advertising space, but their budgets preclude them from securing a spot on a large podcast.

That’s where you come in.

Your numbers aren’t huge, but you have a targeted niche that the micro sponsor is after. Instead of competing for attention from massive brands that require massive reach, you're partnering with local businesses and emerging brands that value niche audiences over huge numbers.

For a show generating 1,000-5,000 downloads per month, traditional sponsors won't return your emails. Micro sponsors, however, see your focused audience as exactly what they need.

Finding Micro Sponsors

Start with your existing audience. Announce on LinkedIn, Instagram, or your email newsletter that you're opening sponsorship slots. Your listeners likely know small businesses that would benefit from podcast advertising but don't know where to start.

The key is audience alignment. A micro sponsor doesn't need millions of listeners; they need the right listeners. If your podcast covers sustainable living and your audience is environmentally conscious consumers, that's valuable to eco-friendly brands regardless of your total download numbers.

If you’re trying to entice a micro sponsor further, I don’t see any harm in actually putting a dollar value in your initial reach out. You could say, “I’m opening up some micro sponsor slots on my podcast for as little as $500 / month.”

Don’t be afraid to mention the dollar figure straight up - especially if you’re only after smaller sponsors or brands. They’ll appreciate that you’re straightforward with the numbers and a small figure doesn’t feel too out of reach for them.

Pricing Strategy

Set a minimum of AU$500 per month for sponsorship packages. This amount is manageable for most small businesses while covering meaningful production costs for your show.

Just make sure you’re packing enough value into the sponsorship package if your download numbers are under 1000 / month. You want to ensure that the micro sponsor is still getting value for money. This might mean your sponsorship package includes more than just an ad read. You could include other integrations across your social platforms or newsletter to bring further value.

It’s important here that you also provide a clear “rate card” or “pitch deck” that you’re able to share with any interested micro sponsors. This should include download numbers, listener demographics, geographic distribution and gender if possible. Spotify for Podcasters and Apple Podcasts Connect offer some analytics that you’re not able to gain from your podcast host, so make sure to sign up to both of those platforms (it’s free) to ensure that you can get all the data you need.

Host-Read Ads Perform Best

There are two types of ads in the podcasting world; host read or programmatic. You want to be selling ad space that is host-read. This essentially means that it will be you that records the ad. You’ll develop a script in conjunction with the micro sponsor and then record that. Put it together with some music behind the ad, and this will perform better for the sponsor than a programmatic ad. If you need more info about the difference between a programmatic and host read ad, I break that down further for you in our Podcast Monetisation Course. I also show you how to create an ad using Descript.

The authenticity in host-read ads is why podcast advertising outperforms traditional digital ad as listeners trust recommendations from hosts they've built relationships with.

Who To Reach Out To

You could start really close to home if your target audience aligns with any nearby businesses. This could be your local cafe, gym, pilates studio or even local grocer. If you’ve already built relationships with businesses in real life, it’s a great place to start. They already know you and your business, so approaching them for a micro slot is a viable option.

Failing that, this is where as I mentioned at the top of this article reaching out to your online community will be helpful. A post on your social platforms along with a graphic (or even better - a little video) could bring micro sponsors to you with minimal effort.

I would also suggest being more targeted with your reach out. Make a list of the small businesses that you’d love to collaborate with and contact them directly. A micro slot is often a lot easier to fill than a big budget slot.

What To Provide

Create a simple sponsorship deck (3-5 pages maximum) that includes:

Podcast overview and content focus
Audience demographics and download metrics
Sponsorship package options and pricing
Previous sponsor results (if available)

This professional presentation demonstrates you're offering a legitimate marketing service, not just asking for money. If you want an example pitch deck, we have one inside our Monetising Your Podcast min-course.

You’re Not Begging for Money

In order to be successful in obtaining sponsors for your podcast at any level, you have to acknowledge that your podcast is worth their investment.

A lot of smaller podcasters have the wrong mindset here, believing that their shows are too small to be of any real value to a sponsor. But if you have the data to backup the investment, a smaller niche micro sponsor could find your podcast extremely valuable.

You’re providing extra marketing for their business to increase their reach to their target audience. It’s not all about you wanting funds to help defray the costs of your podcast, you’re also offering a service to your sponsors in the form of advertising. This mindset shift changes how you approach potential sponsors and how they perceive the partnership.

Small businesses struggle to reach niche audiences cost-effectively. Your podcast solves that problem for them.

Micro sponsorships probably won’t replace full-time income immediately, but they can cover production costs and validate your podcast as a business rather than just a hobby. As your audience grows, so does your sponsorship value and pricing power. It’s absolutely worth your time to think about, and I encourage you to think outside the box. Your podcast is worth something to someone, you just need to put in the work to connect with them.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] : You don't need to go after massive sponsors to try and get some monetization happening for your podcast. There are other ways to do it. In fact, there are quite a few ways and I do have a monetizing your podcast mini course that you can take whenever you like. It'll be in the description below. Today we're gonna discuss one thing in particular that you may not have tried, especially if you are a smaller show with a.
[00:00:24] : Smaller audience and it feels like a bit silly maybe to try and chase sponsors. There are other things that you can do, and one of the best ways that I've actually seen people get what I like to call Micros sponsors for their show, micro Cosponsoring is a really cool idea, and it's something that I've seen some of our clients do very successfully here at Baie Media.
[00:00:46] : So I'm gonna share it with you today. What does micro. Sponsoring actually mean, well, it's kind of like a fancy term for essentially reaching out to small businesses to help support your [00:01:00] show with a small monetary value. So let's say you are a show that really only gets about a thousand downloads in a month, or even less than that.
[00:01:09] : The number is less important at this point. If you're a show of that size, going after a big sponsor is not really gonna go anywhere. A big sponsor needs big reach. They wanna make sure that they're getting into as many ears as physically possible, and so a smaller show just they'll never really go for it.
[00:01:28] : I have not seen it happen. Even when people say, oh, a niche audience, you know that that works. Bigger sponsors don't really chase smaller niche audiences unless it's a very specific sponsor for a very. Niche. So micro sponsoring for smaller shows essentially means you reaching out to your audience. This is first and foremost your audience.
[00:01:50] : And this could be via LinkedIn, this could be via Instagram, TikTok, email, newsletter, uh, word of mouth, any which way that you [00:02:00] can to let them know that you are looking for support and you want to support them as well. So it's a mutually beneficial arrangement here where they give you a bit of money. So that you can talk about their product or their service on your podcast, and that's the exchange they wouldn't normally be able to afford getting a sponsorship place on a podcast because they are quite expensive depending on the size of the show.
[00:02:26] : But they wanna dip their toe into some sort of podcast marketing. They wanna get into the podcast advertising space as a sponsor. They can't do it with a lot of money. They just don't have it. So you don't have a lot of downloads, okay? They don't have a lot of money. It's a match made in heaven because then you are supporting each other.
[00:02:45] : Essentially, you've got a podcast, it's got enough of an audience, it's a niche audience for what that actual sponsor needs, and that sponsor doesn't need to give you a heap of money to get in front of that audience. That's why it's such a powerful strategy to [00:03:00] do, and it also generally means that. You feel more connected to the sponsor as well because maybe you know them, maybe they're part of your network more broadly and you feel like, oh man, this is great that I actually get to do a host red like ad for this person.
[00:03:14] : I really wanna support them and they're feeling good about it too, because they're supporting you by giving you a little bit of money. Now, how much money are we talking here? I like to say anything less than $500 is probably a bit of a waste of time, and that's for a month. That's not an unreasonable starting number.
[00:03:32] : That's quite a good number to start with, so both sides feel happy about that. Doesn't feel like a lot of money to the sponsor and it also feels significant enough for you as the podcaster. That maybe that helps support some of the production bills like we have here at Bammy Media. You know, we're a podcast production company.
[00:03:50] : If they can substitute some of that by having a sponsor, then everyone feels good about that, you know, so it's all like this happy dance of loveliness. So that's important [00:04:00] to note. Okay. You don't have to have a big podcast. You have to have enough downloads for that sponsor to feel like, okay, well that's worth it.
[00:04:07] : If we move on to kind of the next stage here, how do we actually package this up so we know we wanna charge them maybe about $500 to have a slot for a month. We need to show them what they're actually gonna get for that. This is where it's important to go into the backend of your podcast analytics and get the information you need before you reach out or start reaching out to potential small businesses and micro responses.
[00:04:33] : The data that's really important to have is obviously how many downloads you have, who your demographic is. So are they mostly female? Are they mostly male? How old they are? So kind of what age bracket we're working within what country you mostly have people in and definitely list like the top three and that will make sense for the sponsor as well if you have like downloads for countries that make sense for the product or service that they actually have as well.
[00:04:59] : Right. The country [00:05:00] needs to. Align with that. So we've got country age, bracket, and gender. They're the main things. You can't get all of that information from the one podcast host at this time. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know of many podcast hosts that actually give you the gender information.
[00:05:17] : Spotify does. So if you have a Spotify for Creators account, and in fact it's very easy to do, it's completely free. You just log into Spotify, you sign up, like connect your actual podcast. You don't need to be hosted with them. Once you've connected and claimed your show, you're able to see some more data in the backend of Spotify, but it only relates to the actual consumption of.
[00:05:42] : People using Spotify to listen to your show. So it's not gonna be a true representation of your market, but it gives you kind of enough information to go, well, okay, if Spotify uses a this, then it's probably gonna be close to that from Apple and other things as well. Apple also has a backend Apple Podcasts where [00:06:00] you get a little bit more analytics from their end as well.
[00:06:03] : They also give you consumption rate, so how long people are tuning in for before they give up on your episode. That's less important. From a sponsorship point of view, you kind of just wanna make sure that all your episodes are hitting at least 50% because you're gonna have a mid-roll in there and you wanna make sure that mid-roll actually is heard.
[00:06:20] : So make your podcast content good enough that people are sticking around. That's just a no brainer really at this point. And you heard me just touch on their host read. That's another important thing to let the Micros sponsor know that you are going to be the one that is actually recording the ad.
[00:06:35] : You'll be saying, you know, Hey, this episode is brought to you by, um, iPhone. You know, like whatever it is, you are going to actually be the one saying the thing. You're going to draft the script. The sponsor, micro Ponsor can actually give you some touch points if they want like that. They actually wanna make sure that you actually hit when you're talking about their product or servers.
[00:06:58] : You get approval from them and [00:07:00] then you actually record the script. And that's a host Red Ad. Host Red Ads Convert. Way better. Then programmatic. Programmatic being those ads that you hear, where it's like, have you had your car fixed lately? Well, maybe you should. Programmatic ads are the ones that you hear where it's not actually the host, it's some other random voiceover person, and they're explaining about, you know, the latest thing or whatever.
[00:07:22] : Like there's all those programmatic ads that you hear on radio. They don't convert as high because they're really received as ads. Whereas host read ads. Aren't received in the same way by the listener. So that's an important distinction for your Micros sponsor to really be aware of is that you are going to be the one that's actually recording and saying the things.
[00:07:44] : There's also gonna be two slots for them. We're gonna have a pre-roll. Okay, and we're gonna have a mid-roll. So pre-roll is normally, this episode is brought to you by blah, more on them later or something like that. So it's just a little flip. And then in the [00:08:00] mid-roll, you are looking at about 60 to 90 seconds of just a proper sort of ad sponsorship at that point.
[00:08:06] : As to how to put that ad together. I have a video on YouTube where you can have a look at how I actually put a mid role like sponsorship together, and that's also inside of our monetizing your podcast mini course as well. So we've got some information. We know we wanna chase a micro ponsor. That's gonna be a small business probably in your local area.
[00:08:27] : You could even pound the pavement. And go and, you know, talk to your local coffee shops or people that you see all the time before you reach out to them. You need to make sure that you've got some numbers and statistics that they can give them. That would be preferably in the form of some sort of pitch deck, generally about three pages or four pages in length that goes through the data that they're really gonna need.
[00:08:46] : Again, this is stuff I have inside of the monetizing your podcast mini course. That actually gives you an example. Pitch deck that you can have a look at there as well. So you've got your kind of pitch deck. You know who you wanna reach out to, you can start reaching out to them. You wanna keep the cost kind [00:09:00] of low so that they're not contributing a heap of money that they don't have.
[00:09:04] : You are a smaller show, so it makes sense for you to be charging less it, you know, defray some of the cost of actually producing the podcast. Everybody wins. Honestly, everybody wins. You get to support a local business or a small business, they get to support you and your production fees are lessened as a result.
[00:09:23] : So to me, micro sponsorship is such a good way for a smaller show to actually get a little bit of monetization happening. It builds more of a community. The micro sponsor gets like excited about hearing their actual business on a podcast. It's, it's like such a cool moment. So I would definitely encourage you to look at that as an option.
[00:09:47] : Go through your statistics, look at what you can offer. Do a bit of research onto how to actually put a mid-roll together. Do you need music? Do you not need music? Maybe do our monetizing your podcast mini course so that you can [00:10:00] actually get all that information really simply. There are many other ways to actually monetize your podcast, but I certainly feel like this is kind of more of a no-brainer for a smaller show.
[00:10:10] : And it can be a bit like ugh, confronting when you first start doing it. But the other thing that's really cool about it is that when you do start doing it, when a person that's listening to your show listens and hears that you have a small business sponsorship. And they're listening to it. They're like, oh my gosh, I also have a small business.
[00:10:28] : I didn't know that she or he was allowing that kind of thing. That's cool. And so they're more likely to feel like, all right, I would like to do this too. And if your costs are low enough, there'll be a higher appetite for the actual sponsorship slots. I hope that made sense. I definitely think it's a good option.
[00:10:45] : I think you need to kick yourself up the butt a little bit and actually just put yourself out there. I know it's scary to be asking people for money. If you frame it in the way where it's like, no, I'm supporting them too. It's not just about me [00:11:00] asking for things. It's about me actually being able to support another small business as well.
[00:11:05] : If you frame it like that, it's more of a service and less of an ask, and then you'll feel better about it too. That's it for me today. I hope that that was really valuable for you. As I said numerous times through this little video, if you want to learn more about our monetizing your. Podcast mini course.
[00:11:22] : Then there is a link in the description to go and do that. It is very cost effective and tells you all you need to know about monetizing. Bye.