There's a number of opportunities in which you can sell sponsorships against your Hearken-powered work. Here are just a few types: 

First, determine how many spots you'll have to sell. Then, determine whether you want to sell by the story, during a particular time duration (such as business quarter, season, month-to-month, etc.), or in a package, such bundling digital sponsorships with broadcast or bundling radio and podcast sponsorships.

What does your organization provide that would make it a no-brainer for a potential sponsor to partner up with you? You likely already have an elevator pitch about your organization. You can also use your metrics to help tell that story. Here are a few to consider:

Jacob Nelson is a journalist and academic from Arizona State University who did a deep study of Hearken and our partners. He interviewed WUWM about their efforts to monetize their Hearken-powered series, Bubbler Talk, and learned that potential sponsors were interested in the community angle: 

In pitches to businesses for corporate sponsorships for Hearken-powered content, the director of corporate sponsorship sales led with metrics… but the businesses were more excited about the community connection (so long as the stories were not offensive). “For them it was all about the content, which I feel was equal parts not offending anybody and being perceived as being part of the community… They want to know that we’re engaging with the community. 

What is it about your Hearken-powered work that stands apart from your editorial coverage, or that of other outlets? 

WBEZ discovered that what’s powerful for the corporate sponsors they've secured for their Hearken-powered series, Curious City, is that that series is locally-focused, interesting news and storytelling. 

Even as you're working to see concrete metrics out of your Hearken-powered work, such as getting new leads for membership or subscribers, sometimes the premise of community engagement alone is enough to entice sponsors into supporting your efforts. 

Here are some ideas of sources you can turn to for sponsorship:

Some of our partner newsrooms also use their digital space to sell sponsorship, using Hearken embed's header or footer spaces to acknowledge their sponsor with text or a sponsor logo as the footer image. 

Form embeds, poll embeds, and list embeds have footer space, which means you have three opportunities to sell sponsorship!

If you have a dedicated newsletter for your Hearken-powered work, you can sell space there and use your newsletter metrics to sell your value proposition. 

Segment air-time will likely determine the pricing for a sponsor. Look at what time of day your Hearken-powered stories typically air, and figure out how a spot during that time is priced. The more you target to certain time of day, the more you can charge a premium. If a potential sponsor wants exclusive sponsorship and you have a number of spots to sell, you can charge for exclusivity. 

For example, WBEZ's Curious City runs in the Thursday afternoon drive, and they charge a percentage more for sponsorships because the spot is attached to the Curious City segment. The minimum they charge is the going rate for that day plus 15-20 percent because the spot is attached. 

If you’re just starting off with a podcast, you won’t have hard numbers yet on average downloads, which can be tough because that's what advertisers ask for. Geary Yonker, a national account executive at WBEZ, recommends starting off by selling spots by the season. You may better off trying to sell the podcast to one sponsor and letting them know it will be an exclusive spot. You can say, “we think it’ll get X downloads, but regardless if it’s higher or lower, you’ll be the exclusive supporter.”

Curious City averages 8,000 downloads per week and their CPM is $25 per thousand. So here's how they can charge for spots:

Here's how you can replicate that math for yourself:

Geary recommends that when you're just launching the series and trying to sell spots on the podcast, look at the rate for the time your show runs on broadcast, and increase that amount by 20-25 percent. 

If you have questions or other suggestions for sponsorship ideas, feel free to email support@wearehearken.com. We’d love to share any suggestions with partner newsrooms!