How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer
Wondering how to reach out to brands as an influencer? Here’s exactly how to reach out to companies as a content creator—from a full-time influencer!
This blog post is brought to you by my 💡 How to Pitch Brands for Paid Partnerships Course
Whether you realize it or not—if you’re an influencer working with a brand, you’re running a B2B.
This is a ‘business-to-business’ company where your income relies primarily on your clients (i.e. the brand) paying you for your project or retainer work (i.e. deliverables like Instagram Reels and TikToks).
Why am I saying all this? Because…
As an influencer, you are a business, and reaching out to brands needs to become a normal part of your business activities.
Early in my influencer career I made the big mistake of waiting until brands came to me, and didn’t realize I was losing thousands upon thousands of dollars a month by doing so.
In truth, with the industry becoming more and more saturated you truly can’t wait for campaign opportunities to land in your lap, you need to go out and get them!
In this post, I’m going to share everything you need to know to take control over your brand partnerships and learn how to reach out to brands an influencer consistently, from someone who’s done it.
About the Author
Hi! I’m Candace. I’m a full-time blogger & content creator @candaceabroad and social media strategist with 5+ years experience in startup & influencer marketing.
On this blog, I share no-fluff tips to help content creators and influencers grow a strong niche online community, pitch brands for paid partnerships and negotiate their worth as a creator. I’m glad you’re here!
How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer
Step 1 – Ensure Your Social Media Accounts Are Brand Ready
Before you even begin the pitch process it’s incredibly important to make sure as an influencer that your social media accounts are brand ready.
This includes:
- A Clear Bio – that makes it easy to tell what your brand is about, who your target audience is and the type of content you create
- Consistency – brands only work with professional creators, which means working with an account that has consistent content on their channels (P.S. – Here’s how to stay consistent on social media!)
- High-Quality Content – If a brand is going to pay you hundreds to thousands of dollars to promote their product or service, they’re going to need your content to be high quality. Now this doesn’t mean you need to shoot with a fancy camera or anything of the sort in the new Tik Tok age we’re in. But it does mean you need to have content on your page that clearly drives engagement and interest from others (watch the content section in How to Build a Niche Community Online if you still need help with this).
The truth is without these basics, you have a very low chance of hearing back from your pitch in the first place. So do a deep dive and make sure you’re 100% brand ready before you reach out to brands!
Step 2 – Social Media Stalk Brands & Creators That Match Your Niche
Now that you’re brand ready it’s time to do some social stalking.
Head to the page of the brand you’re looking to work with and analyse their content—do you match their vibe? How could you see your content being apart of their online brand? What’s their tone of voice and content style? Is it similar to yours?
Knowing all these will enable you to add a personal touch to your brand pitch you simply couldn’t get in a quick website search.
We go over how to find your ideal brands to work with in How to Pitch Brands for Paid Partnerships, but one tip I have for you is to look at other creators similar to you, in your niche, and see who they’re working with.
Not only does this let you know the brand has worked with influencers before, but you can clearly see the type of content they’re looking for that you can create for them too (remember, no scarcity mindset over here—there’s enough for everyone in this industry!).
Step 3 – Find the Best Brand Contact
One part of the brand pitching process people don’t talk enough about is finding the right brand contact, but if you’re going to be reaching out to brands as an influencer it’s 100% a skill you’ll need to learn.
Always remember to avoid generic brand emails as they’ll most likely get tossed to the customer service department and deleted.
Instead, always make sure you’re pitching directly to someone on their PR, Marketing or Influencer Marketing team. It’s a must!
Step 4 – Repeat & Refine
On the surface, it seems easy to simply ‘reach out to brands as an influencer’ but any influencer or creator will know it’s so much more than that.
Reaching out and sharing what you do to anyone can be scary. Let alone when that person is a big company, who you want to pay you…
Being afraid of putting yourself out there to brands and being afraid of rejection are completely normal reactions that are simply apart of the process.
As they say, ‘Embrace the fear, and do it anyways’.
Over time you’ll 1000% become better at pitching brands, so trust the process and continually repeat and refine your pitching!
Don’t Take It Personally
One thing you’ll quickly start to notice as you reach out to brands is you’ll never hear back from all of them, like, ever.
This is because like most things in sales, marketing and business, it’s a numbers game.
Don’t take it personally when you don’t hear back and understand what makes brands most likely to respond to your pitch so you’re better equipped to pitch the next time.
Final Thoughts on How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer
I hope this post helped you learn the basics on how to reach out to brands as an influencer (the right way) through making sure your account is ‘brand ready’, social media stalking the brand and creator to understand their content and how they work, finding the best brand contact, repeating and refining, and most importantly, not taking things personally when it comes to the world of pitching brands.
You’ve got this!
Happy creating,
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