How to Make Brands Fall in Love With You
As a blogger, influencer, content creator, entrepreneur, I am constantly responding and pitching to BRANDS. These are my solid tips for making brands fall in love with you! Keep reading to learn more.
1. First, Get On A Brand’s Radar
You would be silly to believe that a large brand is going to offer you $$ compensation after one e-mail when they have NO CLUE who you are! Brands and the people who work for them are human beings, not robots. They want to feel the same emotional connection that you have about the products they spend their days marketing and promoting out to the world.
You should channel your love and adoration for a brand by getting on their radar.
This is the first step to making a brand fall in love with you and potentially work with you on a future collaboration. Say hello to them on Instagram by leaving genuine comments, supporting their new product launches, and congratulating the brand on reaching new achievements.
Stay up to date on what the brand has in store for the rest of the year by following all of their social media channels. It’s also a good idea to sign up for their e-mail newsletter so you can hear about all the chatter behind an exciting new product launch before anyone else! When pitching the brand, you can source the information you find on new product launches and tell the brand how thrilled you were to discover the release of XX product. SHOW the brand how much you care about them! Establishing an emotional connection with a brand is crucial to make a brand fall in love with you.
Don’t forget to mention how much the products have impacted your life or why you rely on a certain product in your day to day routine to go a step further in the right direction. You can e-mail this to the brand in your pitch e-mail or you can simply share it with them on their brand Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts. With an influx of influencers on the web these days, it’s important now more than ever to GET YOUR NAME OUT THERE!
2. Post About The Brand on Your Channels
Another easy way to make brands fall in love with you? Post about the product/s you already use and love on your channels! Yes, this is free advertising, but it could also lead to a potential paid collaboration in the future. Spread the message about why you love a brand so they can see you.
Visibility is key for making a brand fall in love with you.
Consider this example: a crowd of influencers is standing around in a group and each one of them is shouting “Me, Me! Work with me!”
The brands will be OVERWHELMED to pick you from the huge crowd. That’s why I am telling you to go ahead and POST about the product you use and love from a brand to inch your way to the top where a brand can notice you quicker. There are plenty of platforms to share your details with top-rated brands and I outlined the 8 best and worst influencer platforms in this blog post.
Once again you are establishing how much you authentically LOVE the brand and you are getting on their radar much faster than your competition. For example, I am a beauty and skincare junkie, so I am constantly trying out new drugstore and Sephora brands to not only see what I like to keep my complexion clear but also to see if I find myself gravitating towards a certain brand. I love Drunk Elephant moisturizers and I even posted about using them in recent blog posts and on my Instagram feed.
The brand noticed these posts and reacted immediately when they saw the great content I posted featuring Drunk Elephant. I got in touch with someone from their PR team and was gifted $400 worth of Drunk Elephant products. I continue this important relationship to this day with such a wonderful brand and you can do the same thing once you start posting about brands you 100% love!
3. Be Nice!
Being nice may actually benefit you when you talk to brands, I kid you not! No press team wants to deal with an influencer/content creator who is difficult to work with, doesn’t reply to e-mails, or is rude in general. You need to practice etiquette whenever you address a brand, period. Even if a brand messages you back saying they “don’t have a budget to work with you” at the moment, it’s better to stay positive and nice than to lash out after feeling the sting of rejection.
Rejection happens. I am rejected from brands all the time, but I still keep my cool and message them back telling them to keep me in mind for any future paid collaborations that they might have a budget for to hire me.
Consider reaching out to brands and treating the interaction like a job interview each time you do it.
You want to perform with the best intentions to land the potential job, right? You wouldn’t lash out at the person interviewing you when they say they can’t hire you at the moment. Don’t take things to heart! Don’t take things too personally! Some brands just don’t have the money to pay you, even if you know in your mind that you would produce excellent content for them. Being nice is a simple way to show your level of professionalism, too. One day you could hear back from the brand offering you a huge contract to work with them because they remember how nice you were way back in the day.
4. Overdeliver On Your Deliverables
Hooray! You landed an awesome campaign with a brand of your dreams.
What do you do next to make that brand fall in love with you? Overdeliver on the deliverables you agreed to complete for the brand. Yes, going above and beyond will no doubt keep your name on the good list to work with again and again.
Overdelivering on these deliverables (images, blog posts, channel shares) could mean different things depending on the campaign and how much time you have to keep creating. For example, if you plan on providing the brand with 3 unique Instagram Stories, why not share a few extra ones in the mix? Add some specific polls to increase exposure to even more of your followers to click on the brand tags that you include in your Instagram stories. Add music to the Instagram stories to create engaging images and videos for your audience to connect with.
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| A sponsored Instagram photo for Naturally Serious Skin |
Go. Above. And. Beyond. It will pay off, trust me.
The brand you work with will notice everything from your timeliness to complete the campaign down to the smaller details where you included more than 3 Instagram slides as acceptable deliverables. Send the brand as many extra social posts as you completed for them to see evidence of your hard work, too! I personally love overdelivering when I am working with a brand that I already love because I use my platforms to share products/brands that I trust. More examples = more authenticity.
5. After Your First Campaign, Pitch Another 2-3 New Concepts or Ideas
I keep a running list of blog post ideas on a notepad. This list contains everything from fashion to beauty ideas that I think of on the fly. I eventually take one or two of these ideas and weave them into my pitch e-mails to a brand. I often come up with my best ideas when I am lying down in bed for the night or in the bathroom (LOL) and I keep my notepad with me at all times in my purse. You never know when you will get inspired or feel the itch to brainstorm creating something new!
I take into consideration my top 3 brand pillars (beauty, fashion, travel) and pitch brands unique ideas to help the company elevate their brand message with the help of my audience. Working with a brand requires thoughtful explanations that you should outline in your pitch e-mail. Tell the brand exactly what you will do for them in exchange for compensation, gal! I often pitch 2-3 ideas so the brand can have a variety of options to choose from once they read my e-mail.
Pitching more than one idea is another way to make a brand fall in love with you because you are letting them know that you are A) versatile with creating content B) creative and willing to make changes to fit the brand’s message. Showing flexibility with what types of content you can provide the brand is HUGE! Don’t stick to just one single idea — instead, add 2-3 incredible content ideas that you come up with to send over to the brand’s PR team to look over.
On another note, I use my Instagram “save” tool on the app to save pictures I see as inspiration for brand collabs. Stay up to date on what’s trendy and cool over on Instagram to help gear up your pitch idea for success. For example, these days you can’t scroll through your feed without noticing fun abstract brush strokes or pops of glitter behind an influencer thanks to graphics created by users such as Mallory On the Moon. Content that pushes boundaries and just plain looks fun is really on the rise these days.
6. Make The Relationship Longterm
You just wrapped up a highly successful, exciting brand campaign with a company you loved working with. After the campaign has ended, I would not only e-mail your point of contact a nice thank you, but I would also let them know your availability to partner with the same brand again in the future!
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| Credit: Adweek |
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Instead of wasting my time pitching to brand after brand, I’ve slowly realized the importance of securing a couple of great brand relationships over starting and ending a relationship after one single job. Stay in touch with the PR guy or gal that acted as the “project manager” for your specific campaign. In a couple of months, why not shoot them another e-mail explaining more content ideas that you could provide for the brand? I go into more detail covering my blogging journey in this blog post if you are interested.
For example: My good friend and influencer turned business coach, Kahlea, has been working with a haircare brand called Not Your Mother’s for an entire year. The brand just flew her out to New York City for freakin’ FASHION WEEK!
That is such an amazing accomplishment and because of her excellent relationship with the brand and the people behind the brand she was able to continue posting Instagram photos on her feed in paid partnership with NYM. Time and time again she proved her worth for the brand with each new post she delivered. The brand obviously took their relationship a step further by flying her and her photographer out to NYC for Fashion Week! Solid and consistent work can definitely lead to the most exciting new ventures for content creators, as it did for my friend Kahlea.
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| Photo Credit: Kahlea + Christine Wozz |