Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
Today, my special guest is Traci DeForge. With over 30 years in broadcast media, executive management, and consulting for Fortune 500 companies, Traci founded Produce Your Podcast, a leading podcast consulting agency. With a diverse career from startups to Fortune 500 giants like Google and Hilton, she's renowned for business development insights that drive innovation. An international podcast expert and speaker, she's created the Podcast Management Academy, the industry's only podcast management certification program. She also co-founded the Podcast Professionals Association and hosts and co-hosts many of her own podcasts all the way from Mexico. Traci, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Traci DeForge [00:01:18]:
Well, thank you. And your accent is so lovely. I just have to say, it's like butter on your ears. Accent is so lovely. I just have to say, it's like butter on your ears. I love it. Oh, well, you're so sweet.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:24]:
I appreciate that. Yeah. People have said they can listen to me read a telephone book, and I said, no. You don't want me to do that. Traci, you certainly are a podcast guru. And in other episodes, you know, we've discussed podcast guesting, podcast hosting, but we have yet to discuss in any depth what it takes to monetize a podcast. So I thought you'd be an excellent person to talk to us about this.
Traci DeForge [00:01:57]:
Yes. And it's a very, very important topic to talk about, and it's also one of my most favorite topics across the board in podcasting to talk about, because I think there's so much interest in monetizing podcasts, but not a lot of information out there on how to monetize podcasts, especially if you have a very niche audience or if you have what might be considered to be a smaller amount of listeners or downloads. So let's bust up some myths and get some good tactical tips out there so people can break some of those barriers and start growing their show both profitably and with their audience as well.
Susan Friedmann [00:02:36]:
I love that. And that's exactly we're going to dig in here. Let's start with some common ways that new podcasts so I wanna focus on people who are just getting into podcasting, and if it's even possible for them to consider monetizing. And if so, what are some common ways that they could do this?
Traci DeForge [00:02:58]:
One of the things that you wanna think about as you're beginning to launch your show is going to really rely upon how do you actually build out your show with the thoughts of a possible sponsor or advertiser being integrated into your content. One of the most important things that you can do to build your audience is release your podcast consistently and have really strong content within your show. Sometimes the idea of bringing in an advertiser or sponsor straight out of the gate can be of somewhat of a concern because you need to have that really robust content to build the audience, and you don't want to dilute it with a lot of advertising messages out of the gate. At the same time, there are opportunities whether it's prelaunch or as a newly launched podcast, that you can integrate advertisers and sponsors. We recommend at the very beginning with you are looking at bringing in a sponsor or an advertiser into your show to do that first by creating what we refer to as the arena right sponsor. For anyone who might not know, what does that mean exactly? If you think about in your local community, the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater or the Mercedes Benz arena or the types of brands that sponsor baseball stadiums or football stadiums, for example. Those are brands that are attached to that facility. Well, what we recommend is attach a brand to your studios.
Traci DeForge [00:04:28]:
So when you are opening the mic and you're introducing your show, it could be the marketing experts powered by and then the brand that's associated with it. So that's one of the first things that you can do to integrate a sponsor into your content that gives them a high amount of visibility to your audience, but doesn't dilute your content or compromise the integrity of your content. That's one of the first ways that we say, no, start out by being connected to a brand or a sponsor that really wants to grow alongside you as your audience grows, but you don't wanna start out by having a heavy ad load of multiple commercials similar to what radio does currently.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:09]:
Yeah. That dilutes it and sort of cheapens it, I think, to in a way as well. How important is it to have a clear niche or target market for this?
Traci DeForge [00:05:21]:
I think it's really important. Again, like, one of the things that you always wanna think about as a podcast host or podcast creator is leading first with what is in it for your audience. And that crosses the board, not only from how you decide how to create the format of your show, how to deliver to your audience, but it also involves making decisions around what types of brands and sponsors and introductions that you want to make essentially to your audience. And if you're always leading with providing value to your audience first, then you are gonna grow your show and you are going to be able to stay focused on that niche. And niches are very viable, especially for nonfiction writers. Most often what we see with our client base, those that are nonfiction writers, authors, or consultants at coaches that have very specific niches, those are really rich and robust audiences to monetize. Because at this point in time, you're really looking at the quality of the audience that you're reaching versus the quantity. If you start thinking about your podcast, your podcast audience, and a brand or advertiser, then you're really creating this win win win, because you're being able to connect your audience to resources they may not already know about.
Traci DeForge [00:06:44]:
You're able to create a really great container for a brand or a sponsor to have access to an audience that can benefit from their products and services. And then you're still creating really good content that bridges that gap between the 2. Having a niche audience, I think is actually incredibly important ingredient in monetizing your show because niche audiences are typically going to be smaller, but they're also gonna be much mightier and passionate and engaged in the content that you're putting out.
Susan Friedmann [00:07:17]:
This is excellent information. As you're saying all this, Traci, I'm thinking, okay, Our listeners are going to think, okay. So how do I even go about finding the right companies that could align with my show? And then how would I even approach them?
Traci DeForge [00:07:35]:
Well, there are a couple of strategies that you wanna think about initially. One thing that you don't wanna overlook in terms of monetization may not actually have anything to do with a specific brand or an advertiser because when you think about your podcast audience and your podcast, again, that is oceanfront real estate for your own products and services. If you're a writer who is leveraging your book, for example, for speaking opportunities or to as a business development tool for your own products and services, don't discount the fact that your own podcast can also serve as an area to monetize through marketing your own products and services. You really want to make sure that if you have products and services, if you have a coaching programs online, e commerce, any of those things, or that you just want to let people know that you are available for speaking and that you have availability to bring in new clients and things like that, start there with marketing your own products and services because that definition of monetization hits your bottom line immediately. And then secondarily, to your point specifically, how do I even begin having these conversations? And one of the things that we recommend when we are coaching clients through sponsorships is to start with your immediate network. Look who is in your own backyard that you've built relationships over the years, who they know the quality of your work. They know the type of clients that you work with and they've seen your success along the way leading up to launching your podcast or as your podcast has been in the marketplace and grown. The best and easiest conversations are to start with people that you already know.
Traci DeForge [00:09:17]:
It was so interesting before we started actually recording this podcast, we've never met before, but we discovered between the 2 of us that we actually had a really good mutual friend in Tina who owns Twin Flame Studio. Most people underestimate the number of people that they know and they overestimate the number of people that know what they do. So if you start having conversations with people that know what you do and not even assuming maybe that they do, just start having conversations with the fact that I don't know if you know, but I've been hosting a podcast or I'm launching a podcast. And if there's anyone that you know that might wanna be connected with my audience and with my brand, we're inviting a certain number of sponsors to participate. Let me know if you know anybody or is that something you would be interested in? It's a nice casual ice breaking type conversation without having it be salesy or having to even dig in even deeper into what it is that you're looking for.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:14]:
And then how do you even go about incorporating them into the podcast? Is it the beginning, at the end, in the middle? You know, and how many times would you mention who the sponsor is? Is there, like, guidelines in terms of how to do that?
Traci DeForge [00:10:33]:
Yes. That's such an excellent question because, honestly, that answer is going to vary based on what your goals and objectives are, not only for the budget, that you want to or the target goal that you want to hit for monetization. And also in terms of what types of shows do you release and are there opportunities to integrate things like special segments within your shows? Are there opportunities to bringing in a person as a sponsor, but also maybe as a guest expert? Are there opportunities in your content to build out special series that a brand might want to be aligned with? So let me break each of those down. The very simplest and easiest thing to do right out of the gate is if you come back to one of those areas that I was talking about, let's say for example, the powered by. So if you were able to look at a lot of podcasters say, oh, if I could just get my production costs covered first, that would give me a huge relief because then I could focus on bigger guests, maybe release more episodes. It could be a really good catalyst for me to grow my show. Determine first, you know, what is the hard cost that you have associated with your podcast? And is there a brand or someone that you have a warm relationship with that might want to be accessible, have visibility within your audience, then set that powered by sponsorship amount at an affordable rate that covers your hard cost initially. In that case, they might receive, for example, every time you open the mic, that the podcast would be powered by the brand.
Traci DeForge [00:12:08]:
Another really strategic and very smart thing to do with sponsorships with smaller and more niche focused audiences is to include the other areas that you're marketing. Do you have blogs? Are you uploading your show to the website? Where is your social media being posted? Do you send out a newsletter? Now all of a sudden the conversation isn't just about the number of downloads or followers that you have for your podcast, but it's also a more encompassing broader range of reach for the brand because they can have access to your audience through multiple different touch points, both audio, video, newsletter, website, show notes, hyperlinks, and all of those things. It's not a simple answer to your question, but it's also not complicated if you think of the idea of a ladder and you start the 1st rung get your powered by. And then the second rung might be to integrate a special segment into your show. For example, there's a podcast that we produce called the salad with a side of fries. And within that podcast content, she also has a nutrition nugget. That nutrition nugget can be sponsored by a particular health and nutrition brand or sponsor. And so that's one small piece of content that you could add to your sponsorship, and then you could, of course, always add in what most people are familiar with, which are called live reads.
Traci DeForge [00:13:29]:
And a lot of times, those are put at the beginning of the podcast or 3 quarters of the way into the podcast, which is called a mid roll. This is a lot of information. I'm gonna maybe take a breath, let people kind of absorb it all. What it really does is it shows you that there are flexibility and options for you no matter what type of content you produce and no matter what size your audience is.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:50]:
You've said a couple of very interesting things that I don't think many people have thought about, and that is exactly where you're including them in your blogs. And this nugget of information that could be sponsored by a company. Those two things, I think, are just simple and you're not necessarily asking big dollars for those. Is there a range in terms of how much you could even ask that's not too little and then that's not too much?
Traci DeForge [00:14:23]:
Again, it's an excellent question to just think through on your own in terms of everybody's definition of what would be successful monetization strategy is very individual to the person's show, how frequently they release their shows, what their hard costs are that are involved and their audience numbers. If you are looking at, for example, a producer podcast, when we are coaching a client or working with a client to actually launch their podcast, one of the things that we're going to do right out of the gate is we're going to identify how is your podcast going to be built into your monetization strategy? How are you going to utilize your podcast to drive revenue to your bottom line? And if part of that is through monetizing the sponsor of the podcast with sponsorships, then we're gonna build that show out from the beginning. It's going to have the opportunity to have a special segment already built into it. It's going to have the opportunity to be able to position, maybe develop the ideas for the special series and things like that. And then while you're building out your editorial calendar for your podcast, you're also building out these possibilities to bring in advertisers and sponsors. In terms of the price points, that's gonna be contingent on how frequently do you release your podcast? What other areas are they going to get visibility? Are they going to be able to have the powered-by across the board in all of your episodes? Are you going to be able to have a 5 or 6 part special series where they can have a guest appearance? All of these are very well-established successful strategies, and price points can go anywhere from attached to a special segment and is $250 for the special segment to $450, 500. We've seen very successfully. We've seen our clients who are very niche-focused in an interior design space, for example, whose main clients come from the geography of their own literal backyard, and they could bundle and sell their audience podcast in a, like, a series of 3 episodes for a $1,000 per episode.
Traci DeForge [00:16:31]:
So the sponsor might be investing $3,000 in their podcast, but they're also getting all of this other additional exposure like we were talking about. And then we've also had, for example, we're working with a fertility clinic who has a very wide reach, even though they're based in one location, but they have summits in different places. They're leveraging sponsorship through live events in conjunction with their podcasts. And then in conjunction with special series about surrogacy, special series about IVF. People like lawyers and medical facilities are interested in tapping into this very highly exclusive but very narrow niche audience. There are so many different possibilities that it's almost endless in terms of how you build your own strategy and how it works for you.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:22]:
And as you're saying all these different things, I'm thinking, oh, yes. There's this supplier or there's that person that I refer in any event to my authors. And perhaps they might be interested, as you say, in sponsoring the segment of the show for a certain period of time, looking at what maybe 4 episodes, a month's worth, 3 months' worth. Is there again a minimum that you should look at? Would it be 1 month? Would it be 3 months? Let's talk about a weekly show. You know, I'm thinking, let's say, of this show, for instance, is like, okay, Would I offer a month or 3 months or 6 months? What would I offer? Sure.
Traci DeForge [00:18:03]:
Well, if you were a client and I was coaching you, here's what I would recommend. I would recommend looking again to your immediate network. Who are the vendors that you refer out? Who are the vendors that you've worked with for years in your publishing company? Are there certain relationships that you've had that really could benefit from being aligned and associated with or have access to the audience that you are reaching with your podcast. And secondly, because we always, always, always wanna focus on what is the value for your audience. If you were to able to do one of 2 things, you could look through your back catalog and you could pull together episodes that are very specifically tied into the best way to go from 0 to published for a new author. And you could pull, you know, anywhere from 5 to 7 is the optimal number for a special series. You could repurpose that content with a fresh introduction. You could release it as a special series, and then you could ask one of your vendors or long term relationship or an associate, someone that you know would really benefit from the audience that would show up for this special series.
Traci DeForge [00:19:13]:
You could create it as a special playlist in Spotify. You could market it through a lead gen in terms of having it be an opt in where the audio episodes would go into a drip sequence. And all of this exposure to this new special series that we just created for you can have the opportunity to have a premium sponsor associated with it. They could be involved in the lead gen on the website, the landing page. They could be involved in the marketing for the series. They could have branding and logo support in your show notes. And all of this that we just created for you, you're not even having to rerecord episodes. You're just re repackaging episodes you've already created and monetizing them in that way.
Traci DeForge [00:19:55]:
And you may want to in order to really get your new sponsor excited about it, if they're not already excited enough with everything we just built for them, then you also offer them a guest appearance that's locked into that series. So you have maybe 5 to 6 episodes that you've already created that you can bundle together to recreate the special series and then add this new episode into it, where you're actually interviewing the person who is sponsoring the series because they're going to bring value to your audience by them being able to learn more about their products and services. We literally just built you a monetization plan and you can sell that anywhere between 15,030, 35100. We've seen 5,075100 for these special series, but those are ranges for podcasters just like yourself. Podcasters who are listening to this right now with the audiences that have 1500 or less downloads, 350 or less downloads because of the quality of their audiences versus the quantity of their audiences.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:59]:
And that's really important because I was always under the impression it was the size of the audience. Whenever I've talked about this in the past with people, they've said, oh, you've got to have a certain size audience before anybody's going to even pay attention to you. Now I'm at that point, I'm thinking, Okay, but this is contrary to what you're saying is it's not necessarily based on the size of the audience, but rather the quality of the audience rather than quantity. Correct?
Traci DeForge [00:21:29]:
100%. And I like to take every opportunity I can behind this microphone to bust up that myth about downloads for monetization. You do not have to wait till you get to a certain amount of downloads to start having these conversations. The most important part is that who are you having the conversations with and what are the conversations about? Because the where this myth or this expectation or this misnomer, if you will, is there's some facts into how we got to where we are with this thought and this idea. And that is because most ad agencies, most people hosting platforms, advertising platforms that are integrated into hosting platforms and hosting platforms are where you actually have your podcast, where your RSS feed lives. Simple cast lips in a lot of the platforms have ad sales teams attached to the platforms where this myth or this misnomer comes into play is that in order for you to be able to monetize through their teams or an ad agency or marketing agency that works with big brands is that you have to have 10,000 downloads per episode. That is a factual statement, but that's what is called the cost per 1,000 model. And that's where brands are like, you'll hear HelloFresh, you'll hear BetterHelp, and they're buying audiences through networks and through big platforms.
Traci DeForge [00:22:56]:
And they're being based on a cost per 1,000, which the industry standard right now is around 23, $25. What we're talking about with monetization is a completely innovative, nontraditional way to align yourself, be able to provide your audience tools and resources, and connect to advertisers into brands that wanna reach that audience. And it has nothing to do with your cost per 1,000. It has everything to do with opportunities for visibility that you can provide connecting that potential advertiser to that audience.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:34]:
Yeah, that's brilliant. I love that idea. And as you said, it's like killed that myth, which I love because, you know, I was like, oh, am I ever going to get to that number, that magic number, but I don't have to? I love that. We talked a little bit about creating paid content. What about premium subscriptions? What are your thoughts on that? And how would you even go about creating something that would be, you know, monetizable, if that's a word?
Traci DeForge [00:24:04]:
Yes. Absolutely. Well, again, so this is gonna come down to what is the objective of you as a podcast host, you as a creator. What is going to be that one thing that you're going to want to put behind a paywall, for example? So my best example recently is I just recently did what we call a podcast power session with a podcaster who was creating the most amazing pieces of content, audio love notes for their audience. She's a cancer survivor. She is a healer and a person who is just really inspired to really encourage self love and self care into the world being on the other side of breast cancer. She launched her podcast and the design of her podcast initially was that she was going to put her guest interviews out to the public at no charge, and then she was going to have a premium subscription for the love notes behind the paywall. Well, I love the idea in theory, But if you're just starting out or you have a very niche audience, those love notes that could be 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 12 minutes, those are going to really be a good booster, a good audience developer.
Traci DeForge [00:25:21]:
Like, people love short content right now. It's wonderful, shareable content. So in our podcast power session, we talked about what could be the reverse. What if the love notes were going out into the world, creating and spreading beautiful and lovely healing energy and building the audience. And then the behind the paywall were the ability for the audience to access her in a small group coaching session in a 1 on 1 inspirational leading of meditation that they might not be able to get or behind the scenes access to the conversation that she has with her guests. Instead of keeping those love notes behind the paywall, I said, let's put the love notes out into the world and then drive the traffic for the community who want more of you, the creator, the host, the person behind this inspiration. In that way, that strategy works really well even if you have a smaller audience because you're being able to provide value to them instead of hoping and waiting that they'll discover these beautiful healing pieces of wisdom behind a paywall that not enough people are gonna be able to see right away or hear right away.
Susan Friedmann [00:26:28]:
Some fabulous ideas. Traci, I know we could go on for a long time. I think there's definitely a need for a part 2.
Traci DeForge [00:26:37]:
I would love that.
Susan Friedmann [00:26:39]:
Before we get there, I know that the audience are chomping at the bit to find out more about how can they find out more about you and the services that you provide?
Traci DeForge [00:26:51]:
Thank you so much for asking. Well, if you're listening to this and you are like, oh my gosh. I really wanna learn more about how to monetize my show and some of the examples that we talked about. I would encourage you to go to produce your podcast.com. We actually have a fun opt-in that's the 5 figure sponsorship formula. And yes, you have to give us your email, but we really, first of all, want to make sure you get value for giving us your email, and you'll actually receive a video series that goes into much more detail about a lot of the things that I talked about today. There's also just so many resources on our website, in our blogs, and you can actually go and listen to some of the podcasts here, how they have sponsored integrated into their shows in real-time, some of the things that we're talking about, for example. And just connect with me.
Traci DeForge [00:27:45]:
I would love to hear from you, answer your questions, and you can do all of that on our website at produceyourpodcast.com.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:52]:
That's fantastic. I'll put all of that into the show notes, Traci, so that if people are running errands at the moment and haven't got anything to write with, it'll be there for them when they look at the show notes and this goes live. So excellent. And as you know, we always like our guests to leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?
Traci DeForge [00:28:16]:
My golden nugget for you is to start where you are, and everything that we talked about today is possible for you. You just have to start by having a conversation. And if you feel most comfortable having a conversation with somebody you know really well, hey. I wanna just run something by you. If I was to open up my podcast for sponsorships, what would be some of the things that would be valuable to you if you were to want to work with my audience or be involved with my audience and just start a conversation? Because by doing that, you get more and more confidence every time you have one of these conversations. And that is literally half the battle when you are talking to potential brands and sponsorships that you don't know, you want to have some of the conversations that you do have with people that you do know. So you have some role playing and some dress rehearsals to hear some of the questions people might ask you. I love the questions that you asked me today, but it really just starts with having that first conversation no matter where you are.
Traci DeForge [00:29:20]:
If it's prelaunch or you've released 500 episodes or anywhere in between, it's just about starting where you
Susan Friedmann [00:29:26]:
are. Beautiful. 8 years ago, I would have loved to have heard this conversation.
Traci DeForge [00:29:33]:
But it's never too late to start either. It's never too late. If I can have 2 nuggets, that would be my second one. It's never too late to start to have the conversation because now you have 8 beautiful years of content creation, of audience support, of social proof. It's really an absolutely perfect time, and I would love to see you build that special series that we talked about that we workshopped in your podcast.
Susan Friedmann [00:29:57]:
Excellent. I love it. And you've given me the exact conversation to have. And listeners, it's here for you too, so take advantage of it. Traci, this has been amazing. And as I said, an opportunity to have a part 2. We'll look at that. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
Susan Friedmann [00:30:16]:
And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time that you got the return that you were hoping for.
So go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
