Are you an influencer looking to collaborate with brands? Here’s a quick guide on how to reach out to brands as an influencer.
- Know Your Worth: Understand your value as an influencer.
- Research and Target: Identify brands aligned with your niche.
- Craft a Compelling Pitch: Personalize your outreach to showcase your strengths.
- Be Professional and Polite: Maintain professionalism in your communication.
- Follow Up Strategically: Don’t hesitate to follow up, but do so tactfully.
- Offer Value Beyond Promotion: Propose ideas for collaboration beyond promotion.
- Build Genuine Relationships: Nurture relationships with brands for long-term collaboration opportunities.
How to get Brand Deals as an Influencer
In the ever-evolving landscape of social media, influencers have emerged as powerful voices shaping consumer behavior and brand perception. With their ability to connect authentically with their audience, influencers have become sought-after partners for brands looking to amplify their message and reach new markets.
However, for influencers seeking brand collaborations, navigating the outreach process can be daunting. Trust me, you are not the only person googling how to reach out to brands as an influencer! From crafting compelling pitches to fostering meaningful partnerships, there are several key steps to consider in order to effectively engage with brands and secure mutually beneficial collaborations.
In this guide, we will delve into the strategies and best practices for those wondering how to reach out to brands as an influencer, cultivate relationships, and ultimately, establish themselves as valuable partners in the competitive world of influencer marketing. Whether you’re a seasoned influencer or just starting out on your journey, this guide will equip you with the tools and insights needed to elevate your brand outreach efforts and unlock exciting partnership opportunities.
Let’s dive in.
Influencer Brand Partnerships
In the bustling realm of influencer marketing, the key to success often lies in the art of successful collaborations. For influencers eager to forge meaningful partnerships with brands, mastering the art of outreach is essential. But how can you effectively reach out to brands as an influencer and secure those coveted collaborations? Here are some tried-and-true strategies to help you navigate the intricate world of brand outreach:
- **Know Your Worth**: Before reaching out to brands, take the time to understand your value as an influencer. Analyze your audience demographics, engagement rates, and content style to showcase the unique perspective you bring to the table. By quantifying your influence, you’ll be better equipped to communicate your value proposition to brands.
- **Research and Target**: Identify brands that align with your niche, values, and audience interests. Conduct thorough research to understand each brand’s products, marketing initiatives, and target demographic. Tailor your outreach efforts to demonstrate genuine interest and alignment with the brand’s objectives.
- **Craft a Compelling Pitch**: Your outreach message is your first impression, so make it count. Craft a personalized pitch that highlights your strengths as an influencer and outlines the specific benefits of collaborating with you. Focus on how your unique voice and platform can help the brand achieve its marketing goals.
- **Be Professional and Polite**: When reaching out to brands, professionalism goes a long way. Use proper grammar, address the recipient by name if possible, and express genuine enthusiasm for the opportunity to collaborate. Remember to be respectful of their time and priorities.
- **Follow Up Strategically**: Don’t be discouraged if you don’t receive an immediate response. Follow up with a polite and concise message to reiterate your interest and inquire about next steps. Timing is key, so be mindful of not being overly persistent.
- **Offer Value Beyond Promotion**: Brands are increasingly looking for authentic partnerships that go beyond mere promotion. Consider how you can add value to the brand through creative content, storytelling, or co-creation opportunities. Showcase your willingness to collaborate and contribute ideas that align with the brand’s objectives.
- **Build Genuine Relationships**: Successful brand partnerships are built on trust and authenticity. Take the time to nurture relationships with brands, even if collaboration doesn’t happen immediately. Engage with their content, attend industry events, and seek opportunities to demonstrate your value as a trusted partner.
By following these steps and approaching brand outreach with authenticity and professionalism, you’ll be well-positioned to forge meaningful partnerships that benefit both you and the brands you collaborate with. Remember, persistence, patience, and a genuine passion for your craft are key ingredients for success in the dynamic world of influencer marketing. Happy collaborating!
Brand Collaboration Proposal
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s pivot and chat about some more effective ways to discover and partner with brands in your niche.
One strategy that not many influencers consider when they are contemplating how to reach out to brands for brand deals and other type of brand collaborations is LinkedIn. So let’s chat about how to get brand deals using LinkedIn so you can get ahead of the game. The truth is, LinkedIn is often overlooked by influencers, but if you think about it, it’s actually highly relevant to influencers and an important platform for influencers to take advantage of since it’s such a valuable resource when searching for the right contacts at brands.
How to get Brand Deals as an Influencer
Get ready to dive deep into the world of LinkedIn to discover and secure lucrative brand deals. By the end of this guide you should have some real insight into how to reach out to brands as an influencer to land those coveted brand deals you see other influencers getting.
By the way, if you’re new here — welcome, I’m Jaye and I’m the creator of 11 St. Studio influencer agency and I’ve been helping influencers break down how much to charge for brand deals, as well as negotiate with brands, since 2019. Because, the truth is, calculating your rates for brand deals doesn’t have to be hard.
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Influencer Rates
And for those interested, I recently launched a NEW webinar where I share exactly what goes into calculating rates for brand deals — IN DETAIL — as well as a simple formula to pricing influencer rates that has been proven to take countless influencer’s brand deal incomes to the next level. So, if you wanna know what to charge as an influencer, see some average influencer rates, or learn how to negotiate brand deals, then make sure to check out the webinar because it completely demystifies “how much to charge as an influencer”. In it I reveal a step-by-step formula to calculating your rates for all kinds of brand deals — whether you’re calculating rates for a sponsored Instagram post, TikTok video, blog post or YouTube video.
Pricing Influencer Rates (Webinar)
Influencer Rate Card Template
I also reveal how to get your hands on my personal influencer rate calculator, and influencer rate card template because trust me when I say, both are MUST-HAVES if brands are asking for your rates.
Again, I reveal IT ALL in the webinar. So make sure to check it out.
So, let’s be real, when you think of influencers and social media platforms, LinkedIn probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind – but trust me when I say that it’s far from just a recruiting and job-searching site. In fact, with nearly 1 billion users LinkedIn has rapidly grown to be a very relevant platform for influencers seeking new opportunities and you guessed it, brand deals.
So, if you’re wondering how to get brand deals and more specifically, how you can leverage LinkedIn to reach out to brands, keep reading because I’m sharing exactly how you can use LinkedIn to reach out to brands as an influencer in order to really maximize your brand deal opportunities.
How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer
So, to start, listen, I get it…if you’re an influencer on Instagram, or TikTok or here on YouTube then you might be wondering how LinkedIn could be relevant for you in the first place. Well, while it definitely has a reputation for being a platform for career-minded people, LinkedIn is no doubt a hub for people from a wide variety of industries to come together and network. Meaning, it’s ideal for anyone asking how to how to reach out to brands as an influencer.
More importantly, it’s also become an important platform for BOTH brands AND influencers to establish a presence and engage with one another, which ultimately opens up endless new opportunities for connection.
And for influencers, this means you’ll find a TON of marketing professionals, PR agents and influencer marketing managers active on the platform, working hard to promote and market brands to new audiences. And trust me when I say they’re always on the lookout for new influencers to connect with.
So what does this mean for influencers? To put it simply, it brings you one step closer to the brands and marketers that matter in your industry, which is a perfect opportunity to introduce yourself and form relationships with all the brands you’re eager to partner with.
So as you can see, all of this spells potential for collaboration opportunities – if you play your cards right. OK so keep that in mind because there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to reach out to brands as an influencer, especially on LinkedIn.
So let’s chat about the right way first. Here’s a few tips to help you get brand deals using LinkedIn.
Influencer Brand Deals
Tip #1: Use LinkedIn to find brand contacts.
I think it goes without saying that one of the most important steps you can take as an influencer is actively pursuing brand collaboration opportunities, and that starts with finding the right brand contacts to introduce yourself to so you can kick off the conversation.
And the truth is, LinkedIn is essentially a hub of all the biggest brand marketers and PR professionals in one place – and thanks to the social nature of the platform, reaching out to connect is really par for the course.
OK so, one of the best ways to get the ball rolling is to follow the brands you’re most interested in cultivating relationships with on LinkedIn. This way, not only will their posts populate your feed, but you’ll naturally come across posts from people who work with or for them, too. This is because marketers often create content that is reshared by the brand’s page. Meaning, you’d be smart to connect with those people as well, or at the very least follow them so they stay on your radar.
Tip #2: Search the brand’s list of employees.
One of my favorite methods to get brand deals is to search for the LinkedIn profile of the brand you’re interested in and to look through their list of employees, most of which are listed with their respective job titles. Ideally you’ll come across a few members of their team that work in marketing, influencer marketing, partnership management, or PR.
And when you do, make sure you connect with them so you have a direct line of communication when you’re ready to reach out and start a discussion about potential partnership opportunities.
Again, you wanna look for people in marketing roles, PR managers, influencer marketing managers, partnership managers, and other similar roles. These are the people who would be best to contact for brand collaborations as they’re most likely to have a connection to the influencer partnerships decision makers within the company.
With that said, if the brand is new or very small you may not see people with those titles, so in that scenario you can always reach out to the main employee in the marketing department or the founder themselves. Trust me, it can’t hurt to try!
Brand Deals for Influencers
The reason for this is that smaller companies typically don’t have dedicated employees for influencer partnerships, but they most likely have someone in charge of marketing. OK, so if that’s what you’re finding, I recommend connecting with anyone in the marketing department, or again, even the founder. Sometimes, they multitask and may handle influencer partnerships themselves, so it’s worth a shot! At the very least you’ll put yourself on their radar this way. And if they’re not in charge of partnerships they may put you in touch with whomever IS. So keep that in mind.
How to Pitch to Brands as an Influencer
Tip #3: Prepare a solid brand pitch.
Now, let’s be honest, one of the “downsides” of LinkedIn is that it has become extremely popular, and just like on Instagram, sometimes inboxes can get flooded with message requests and other partnership proposals. This means that you’re going to want to set yourself up for success and craft a really impressive, articulate message to immediately impress whomever you’re chatting with to let them know you mean business.
One of the BEST ways to do this is to get your message across quickly — so make sure you get straight to the point in your pitch. Keep it informative and to the point so the person you’re reaching out to knows exactly what you’re interested in and why.
I also recommend trying to incorporate some personality into your message so it doesn’t feel like just another copy-paste message that could have come from anyone. OK, so try to highlight a little about yourself in order to stand out.
Now, if you’ve followed the brand or the marketing employee working for the brand, you’ll probably see some content on their page related to products or initiatives they’re working on. If so, you may want to include some references to this in your brand pitch or structure your pitch to make it relevant to their current marketing goals. This will really stand out and show the brand contact that you’re invested and are paying attention to what they’re up to.
Now, as you can imagine, there are many ways to structure a brand pitch depending on your niche and your unique skills as an influencer, so it’s important to keep that in mind when you’re crafting your brand pitch.
Brand Pitch Email Template
By taking the time to write very well thought out messages you can position yourself in the best possible light. With that said, if you need help or inspiration, we teamed up with professional copywriters and influencer managers to create a package of 10 professional brand pitches that influencers like YOU can use to pitch brands. OK, these are the exact same pitches that influencer managers are using to secure very lucrative brand deals for the influencers they represent, so you definitely need to check them out!
Now just to be clear, they are pre-written brand pitch templates that you can download on our website in order to help you get the ball rolling. The Professional Pitch Package includes 10 pre-written brand pitches (plus 3 brand negotiation pitches) that you can use to pitch brands on your own to secure paid brand deals – regardless if you’re a nano, micro, macro or mega influencer.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that the pitch package includes a dedicated pitch to use to connect with brands on LinkedIn, as well as:
- a paid travel collaboration pitch
- an emerging brand pitch
- a paid hotel collaboration pitch
- an established brand pitch
- an Instagram (DM) brand pitch
- a new product collaboration pitch
- a paid brand collaboration pitch
- a product for post pitch
- a dream brand collaboration pitch
OK, so really, in my opinion the pitch package has all the brand pitch templates you could ever need to pitch brands on your own, plus 3 expert brand negotiation pitches to turn requests from brands to “exchange products for posts” or “discounts for posts” or “affiliate links for posts” into paid brand deals.
The truth is, writing a brand pitch with the goal of getting brand deals is not something that comes easily to many influencers. You need to know exactly what to say to a) catch their attention and b) motivate them to want to partner with you. And that includes some very specific details, as well as eye-catching subject lines!
Influencer Pitch to Brands Template
Which is why we teamed up with professional copywriters and influencer managers to create the pitch package for you. I’ll drop a link to the Professional Pitch Package below this video so you can check it out.
OK, onto tip #4 — Don’t neglect your LinkedIn profile!
Let’s be honest, you wouldn’t be interested in responding to messages coming from people with blank profiles and little-to-no information about the sender, am I right? So you need to make sure that you take the time to add a profile photo and fill out your LinkedIn bio so that you come across professionally.
Remember, first impressions are EVERYTHING, so be sure to create an eye-catching profile that highlights you, your brand and your niche in order to show potential connections and brand contacts who you are and what you do. I recommend starting with a clear profile picture, a relevant header image, and if possible, customize your LinkedIn URL. Also, make sure to craft a clear and catchy bio and a captivating headline. Trust me, this will really help you to stand out from other influencers!
Also, since LinkedIn allows users to write posts and share other content, make sure to use those tools to your advantage. This doesn’t have to be one specific thing – it can be relevant articles, your personal thoughts, or anything you find relevant to your niche.
It’s also incredibly useful for cross-posting! You can absolutely share content that you’ve created on YouTube or Instagram, or other platforms you’re active on to LinkedIn too. This will help show your LinkedIn network that you’re active in your niche and someone that has, well, a lot of INFLUENCE!
It’s also a natural place to highlight your achievements. Plenty of influencers use LinkedIn as a means to share their Instagram or YouTube or TikTok performance metrics and milestones, which ultimately inspires others and opens up the conversation about growth strategy and tactics. OK so don’t be afraid to share your wins and other stats that highlight your value as an influencer. That’s a great way to get on a lot of brand’s radar!
Tip #5: Engage with your network.
I think it goes without saying that LinkedIn is an active, social community. So make sure to check in often and actively engage with other professionals and influencers in your niche! You can easily like, comment, and share their content to build relationships and expand your network so that you can consistently reach new and relevant people in your niche. This is a KEY key method to finding brands to partner with in the future!
OK, now that we’ve covered those tips, let’s pivot and quickly chat about the wrong way to approach brands on LinkedIn. And that is to do so haphazardly.
What you don’t want to do is send messages or connection requests that are not well thought out. And you certainly don’t want to request to connect with the wrong people, or message people at the brand that aren’t in roles that are actively working with influencers. OK so keep that in mind because first impressions matter, and you really only have one chance to make an impression so it’s important to make it a really good one!
Now before I go, I want to answer one quick question, and that is, “Can you make money on LinkedIn?”
The short answer is simple – yes, you can definitely make money on LinkedIn as an influencer. There are a few direct approaches, such as selling digital products, sharing affiliate links, or creating dedicated sponsored posts on LinkedIn, but those are most commonly reserved for LinkedIn-specific creators.
As an influencer who is active on other platforms, like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, LinkedIn is (in my opinion) one of the BEST indirect avenues to earning brand deals (and money) thanks to the massive presence of brands and brand contacts on LinkedIn.
OK so keep that in mind, because strategic conversations with a brand’s employees on LinkedIn can easily lead you to gaining paid brand deals on YOUR go-to platform, whether that’s Instagram, YouTube, TikTok etc – making LinkedIn an essential place to be active on in your journey to monetize your influence.
As you can see, LinkedIn provides influencers with a a natural place to reach out to brands and with that unique opportunities to get brand deals that other influencers are typically unaware of. It’s really an ideal place to tap into new networks and opportunities. By taking the time to craft an eye-catching profile, connect with professionals in your niche and write brand pitches that aim to impress, you’ll be able to easily reach out to brands and meet new brand contacts to collaborate with. So, before you write LinkedIn off, make sure to take a good look at the opportunities it provides, because doing so can truly help boost your bottom line in the long run.
How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer
OK that pretty much sums things up! Hopefully you now have a better understand of how to reach out to brands as an influencer. By following these steps, you’ll easily be on your way to gaining successful partnerships with brands. Before you go, remember to check out my FREE webinar where I share my simple, step-by-step formula to pricing your rates for all kinds of brand deals! And, if you’re ready to take your brand pitches to the next level, make sure to check out the Professional Pitch Package, because it’s a GAME-CHANGER when it comes to getting brand deals.
Brand Collaboration Email Template
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Thanks for reading our guide on how to reach out to brands as an influencer! Here’s a few of our most popular guides for influencers as well as some of our best-selling resources for influencers in our Shop. ❤️
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