Pitching a Podcast Sponsor: Create a Pitch Deck or One Pager/Single Sheet

Pitching your podcast to sponsors might seem intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. A podcaster doesn't actually need 1000s and 1000s of downloads to get sponsorship, just a great podcast and a compelling pitch. I'm Jordan host of Podcasting Q&A where we answer your questions about how to start, grow and monetize podcast. One of the things you can do to elevate the professionalism of your podcast is to create a podcast pitch deck or one pager, also known as single sheet. This is a simple way to give an overview of your podcast while making sure your show stands out in the crowd. Let's start with a pitch deck. A pitch deck is a short slide presentation that showcases your podcast introduces you or your team, tells who your audience is, and other info sponsors might be looking for. Some great websites that provide pitch deck templates include Google Slides, Canva, Beautiful.ai, and Slidebean. I recommend not creating any more than five slides for your pitch presentation, because it needs to be short and to the point. Also, it's important to avoid word stuffing your slides. These are meant to give concise information at a glance. So the very first slide you're going to create will be the title slide. It will have your show artwork and maybe the subtitle or tagline of your podcast. Next we have about this slide should have a brief summary of what your podcast is about. And you can include the episode length, subject matter genre or mission statement. You can also throw in a couple audience reviews, it's really up to you to be as creative as you like. Third, we have audience and stats. This is where you will put in the audience demographics that sponsors will ask about, they will typically have a target audience in mind that they're shooting for and want to be sure that their money is invested in a podcast that will reach that target audience. You can get this information specifically for your podcast by gathering downloads and locations from your Buzzsprout dashboard, hosting a listener survey or gleaning stats from Spotify. If you are a newer podcaster and don't quite have the information to fill in the section, no worries, you can absolutely fill it in with information from Edison Research, Buzzsprout Global Stats, or Podcast Insights, and I will link to those in the show notes. Fourth, we have pricing. This slide is specifically for answering any questions regarding pricing or bundle discounts. If you are having a hard time figuring out a CPM model, or aren't quite at 1000 downloads per episode, try doing a flat rate and put an amount that you feel comfortable with. And then finally, we have Team and Contact Info. Use this inside to show off the All Stars that make the show happen, even if you're a one man show. Also include the contact email, website and any socials so the sponsor can easily find you. Now let's talk about a one pager. A one pager or single sheet (but I call it a one pager) is exactly what it sounds like; a pitch deck but consolidated to a single sheet of paper. I personally prefer a one pager to a pitch deck, and the reasoning behind this is that a person is much more likely to scan over a single page and reference the information then click through a bunch of slides. When creating a one pager, make sure to include all the information that I list out in the pitch deck section. So the title, the podcasts, artwork about the podcast, audience and stats, pricing, and team and contact info. And to create a one pager you can use any word processor. There are so many templates in Google Docs, Apple Pages and Microsoft Word and you can just edit it to your liking. Resume templates are fantastic for this kind of thing or a newsletter template works really great as well. It's a good idea to carve out a couple hours to craft a professional pitch deck or one pager for your podcast. And be sure to save the original file as a template so that you can make adjustments as your podcast grows. I hope this episode of Podcasting Q&A has been helpful to you. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode, go to podinbox.com/buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes to leave us an audio message. And as always keep podcasting!