You know those beautiful posts your favorite influencers upload that have that coveted "sponsored" tag at the top? It must be nice to have brand deals come so naturally, right? What if we told you that your favorite successful influencer likely spends hours upon hours finding, pitching to, and being rejected by brands?
Well, it's true. While it is becoming more common for brands to reach out to influencers, it is still by no means the norm. Don’t get us wrong, there is massive opportunity for micro and nano influencers to monetize, but that requires getting their foot in the door first.
One of the most common questions we get is how to successfully pitch to brands for high-paying partnerships. We can’t cover EVERYTHING there is to know about the process in one article, but we will do our best to highlight the biggies.
Before You Even Start: Community is Key Let’s put it this way: If you offer little to no value, you won’t land partnerships.
Where is the "value" when it comes to social media, you may ask? Most people assume it's in a giant following of 100k or more, but that's actually not the case. Your following number matters, but what matters more is the level of engagement you receive FROM your following.
You can have only 1,000 followers but still have powerful influence because of the engaged and connected community you took the time to build.
So the first step in landing brand deals comes before you even consider reaching out. The first step is to authentically prioritize your community.
It doesn’t sound glamorous, it takes time, and you have to be consistent, but this is what you signed up for as an influencer. Take pride in your brand, and prioritize your community. Facilitate ways to engage your followers.
We promise it will pay off!
Make Sure Your Media Kit is Ready Next; before you start reaching out to brands, make sure your media kit is up-to-date and ready to go. You won’t be sending it to the brand immediately, but trust us when we say they will need it.
If you have never created a media kit before or maybe never even heard of one, don’t panic. In basic terms, a media kit is a virtual portfolio that includes everything a brand would want/need to know about you before they choose to pay you for a service.
You will want to include things like
A bio about yourself Following per social media platform Engagement rate Reach Audience demographics Testimonials from previous clients (if you have them) Your media kit is what sells you, so you need to know what sells. The main thing brands look at when deciding who to partner with is aesthetics, following, and engagement. Highlighting these three categories in your media kit is a great place to start.
If you are nervous about creating a media kit, there are tons of sites that have templates you can use. Canva is a great one. Many creators use it, so you can literally search for "Media Kit Templates" and pick the one that fits your brand.
Find The Right Person to Contact Okay, you have the engaged community we talked about, and your media kit looks lovely. The next step is finding who the heck you are even going to pitch to.
Social media/influencer marketing has become much more regulated and normalized. Often, brands will have someone whose only job is deciding who is worth partnering with. Your biggest challenge is finding their contact information.
If you do a quick Google search on how influencers find contacts, you will be bombarded by unnecessarily complicated methods people use… but we are all about working smarter, not harder.
There are extensions you can download to your browser that will scrape email addresses from any website. We recommend Hunter IO , but there are many options, so do a little digging to find one you like. Through these extensions, you can literally pull the email address of anyone listed on any website. If you see someone listed under “PR,” “Hiring,” or even “Social Media,” they are probably a good place to start.
You can also use LinkedIn. You can almost always find an email and a name for a specific role. Search the brand you want to partner with and start looking through their employees.
Also, go directly to their social media. Sometimes, brands have a link or email listed for the exact place they want to receive pitches.
Pro Tip: When looking for a contact, make sure to find a specific email address, not just hello@brandname.com. You want to get right to the person who can give you a solid yes or a no. Maybe it's a PR executive; perhaps they have a department that works on Influencer Marketing. Just do your best to find a specific person to talk to.
Get Your Foot in The Door Great, you found the person to contact! From now on, you need to imagine yourself as a salesperson. What are you selling? Well, you’re selling yourself as a brand.
During this process, you will need to get comfortable hearing a lot of "nos." Embrace it. Hearing a "no" can get you to stop and think about why you aren’t getting a "Yes.” Adjust accordingly.
Your first outreach shouldn’t reveal all your cards. You simply want to get your foot in the door. Show them you personally know and love their brand. Prove why you want your audience to have the chance to love it too. Include a suggestion for how you would like to collaborate and invite them to contact you again for further discussion.
An example might be:
I saw you had a partnership with @xinfluencer, and that your products are a, b, and c, and my audience is all about supporting brands who value this. Can you connect me with the person who handles influencer partnerships for your company?
That’s it! Simple right?
The key here is to make it personalized. You want the brand to know you are genuinely interested in working with THEM.
Follow-Up If you hear back from them, fantastic, you did great. If not, don’t despair; follow up.
Many influencers have landed deals only after following-up. We know it can feel awkward or overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.
Just reach back out to say you wanted to ensure they received your previous email and that you would love to chat further. Done. Easy.
After You Get Your Foot in the Door Let’s say you followed up and got a response from the person holding the power to say yes or no.
AMAZING!
First of all, be proud; you have done some great work. Second, know that it is still not over.
Now it is time for you to really sell your value. This is where you want to include your media kit and a more detailed "sales pitch." Here is an example:
Hi <FIRST NAME>,
It’s great to e-meet you! I wanted to know if you have any upcoming influencer partnerships available, as I am a huge fan of BRAND NAME.
I love <PRODUCT NAME BECAUSE #1 AND #2> and would be thrilled to share it with my followers.
You can find me @YOUR INSTAGRAM HANDLE and on Facebook at <URL>.
I want to create: <THREE TO FIVE BULLET POINTS ON THE SPECIFIC CONTENT
STRATEGY YOU HAVE IN MIND FOR THIS PARTNERSHIP>.
Let me know if this interests you.
(Optional, no stress if this is your first one:) I have previously worked with <RELATED VERTICAL—BRAND NAME> and <BRAND NAME>, and we were able to achieve great things together. I hope we will too!
Looking forward to hearing from you,
<YOUR NAME>
Obviously, this example can be modified to fit your needs, but we wanted to include something that shows how simple it can be.
Don’t complicate it too much, keep it concise and to the point. Tell them why you are so amazing and worth investing in.
Conclusion A couple of thoughts we have to end on.
Make sure you are reaching out to brands you genuinely love. Remember when we said your value lies in the engagement of your community? Well, your community can sense fakeness from miles away. If you constantly push irrelevant brands, they will notice, and your engagement rate will suffer.
This also means you need to deeply understand your brand's overarching goal and what you stand for. You want everything in alignment with your ultimate vision.
Build that rapport and reputation with your following, stick to your brand, and maintain integrity as you begin pitching.
We know starting out can be discouraging, but we promise you can do this.
If you want to learn even more about pitching to brands, we highly recommend picking up a copy of The Micro Influencers Brand Partnership Bible . It is packed with information on how to forge successful partnerships with some of the world’s top companies. We wrote it for people like you—influencers who are serious about making their businesses thrive.
Buy our book, read it cover-to-cover, and then come back here ready to put everything you learned into practice. You won’t regret it!
