How to Attract Brands as a Creator
According to recent data, about 70% of influencers in the U.S. report collaborations with brands as their top income stream. On Instagram, partnering with a brand can bring in anywhere from $10 to $5,000+ per post. Sounds great, right?
The most successful influencers are those who consistently collaborate with other brands, but the current landscape is changing how to go about it. It wasn’t too long ago that an influencer had to have millions of followers and celebrity status to partner with brands. However, the gates of opportunity are widening.
Content creators with smaller followings have a chance to land brand deals and paid sponsorships. Instagram, for example, has categorized smaller influencers into groups: nano-influencers (up to 10,000 followers), micro-influencers (up to 100,000 followers), and macro-influencers (up to 1 million). This explains why the global influencer/creator market size more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, and is only continuing to grow!
You want to get in on brand deals, right? Now’s the time! But how do you start? What do you need to do to get noticed by brands?
Here are 5 actions creators can take to get the attention of brands. Let’s go!
Identify your niche & research brands that are a fit
Finding your niche is an absolute must in order to create a personal brand that will easily align with other brands. Don’t go in a “general” direction or frequently bounce back and forth between topics and styles. You will be competing with too many people and brands won’t see how you fit into their marketing campaigns. So, if you’re a health nut and all you live for is physical fitness, dedicate your socials to that –– obviously you can interweave pieces of your life here and there, but you will be defined in the minds of your fans as the “fitness girl” or however you brand yourself. Then you have a niche of brands you can approach to collaborate.
Start tagging branded products
Okay, you now have a solid following and industries to target. Now what? There are multiple ways to grab the attention of brands. Some examples are:
- Make videos where you rate products and share your results with the company
- Include branded items in your content more than once to establish yourself as a consistent user
- Tag the brand’s account in your videos and posts and use brand-related hashtags.
What you’ll find over time is that these companies will begin to notice your content.
Send out media kits & pitch emails
You can reach out to brands directly. But you’ll want to have all of your marketing materials ready to go. First up is a media kit that you can send out to showcase your content. It is a summary of all your best content in one place to show off what you can do.
Second, you’ll craft a pitch email. A lot can go into a pitch email, but here are some quick bullets on the basics:
- A brief intro about yourself
- What you love about the product/brand
- Verified analytics report (this example is Instagram)
- Media kit
- Rate card
- Any relevant brand partnerships you already have or have had in the past
Pitch emails should be no more than 2-3 paragraphs. Try to give an overview of how successful at building brand awareness you’ve been and how you are driving conversion (meaning browsers who have become buyers). Even if you don’t plan to send out many pitch emails, it’s a good tool to have at the ready just in case.
Use influencer marketing platforms
An effective way to grab attention is to sign up on influencer marketing platforms whose purpose is to help creators connect with brands that are relevant to their audience. Creators are then able to set up profiles, preferences, and even submit price quotes for brands to see. Some popular platforms are Captiv8, Grin, CreatorIQ and #paid (just to name a few).
Ask other creators or brands for referrals
Have you ever had a great experience working with a brand in the past? Do you have relationships with other creators who actively collaborate with brands? Consider asking for a referral. Referrals demonstrate knowledge and expertise. They boost trust between you and the brands you will potentially work with, and it shows you are proactive and willing to put in the work to build your audience.
Hopefully the above tips have helped. It may seem complicated, but don’t overthink it. Once you have built a following, you have built the foundation. Now it’s time to grow!