Pitching brand collaborations is a big part of Influencer Marketing. As an influencer or social media personality, the ultimate goal is often to work with brands on collaborations that mutually benefit both parties. As a brand, how influencers frame pitching brand collaborations is a big part of deciding to work with, and not work with. There’s a common misconception that securing brand collaborations is as easy as waiting for the email to come into your inbox. This honestly couldn’t be further from the truth. When you’re a new or rising influencer, whether it be on Instagram, Youtube, or any other social media outlet for that matter, pitching brand collaborations is a necessary step in securing a partnership. Reaching out to brands is a really humbling process that sometimes results in awesome new long-term partnerships, one time campaigns, and other times nothing at all. But getting yourself out there and pitching brand collaborations is the only way to get ahead, it’s kind of like the lottery if you don’t play you can’t win. In this article, we’re teaching you how to achieve success by sharing our top 5 tips for pitching brand collaborations and securing yourself more collaborations.
Pitching Brand Collaborations: Top Tips
Tip #1: Start small, think big
Our first tip about pitching brand collaborations is to start small, but think big. The most important thing to remember when choosing which brands to reach out to is that collaborations must be mutually beneficial for it to make sense. This is a two-way street. In the same way that you’d want the brand to match your own personal brand, make sense for your audience and be beneficial in terms of exposure in growth, the brand you’re reaching out to will want the same synergy from you.
We also encourage you to be cognizant of size and reach when approaching brands. For example, an influencer with 15k followers will have a much higher success rate if he/she approaches a mixture of brands with similar followings, rather than solely approaching brands with 200k+ followers. Don’t get us wrong, we encourage you to shoot for the stars and pray you’ll land among them, but solely speaking in terms of successfully securing collaborations as a growing influencer, we suggest you start small, think big, and have goal collaborations in mind to work towards. Once you build your portfolio and can show proof of successful collaborations, you’ll have more ground to stand on when reaching out to larger, aspirational brands.
Tip #2: Develop a Media Kit
Never heard of a media kit? Don’t worry, lots of people haven’t, and luckily, it’s a relatively simple concept to grasp. Think of a media kit as your blog or personal brand’s equivalent of a resume. It’s a essential part of pitching brand collaborations. To provide more color, a standard media kit would include your rate card (if you’re smaller or new to the game, be sure to include that you’re open to working on a gifting basis), past work samples (photos or blog posts), past collaborations (brand names or logos), an introduction to yourself or your blog (location, defining characteristics, areas of focus) and statistics on your reach (follower count, engagement rate, gender and age demographics). After looking at your media kit, a brand should have little to no questions about who you are, what your audience looks like, and what value you’d bring to the table.
We’ve come across a ton of media kits and we’ll be honest here, they’re all beautiful and nicely designed. If you’re not well-versed in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or a program that performs similar functions, we suggest checking out Etsy. Tons, dare we say hundreds, of very talented graphic designers sell media kit templates on Etsy. There’s a ton of different aesthetics and styles to choose from, so we can assure you that you won’t lose any individuality by purchasing a publicly available template. If you’re still worried about using a template that others could also purchase for use, we suggest heading to a freelance site like Freelancer to hire an affordable graphic designer to custom build your media kit for you. Both of these options vary in price, depending upon the designer you’re hiring or purchasing from, but typically range in price from $40-$200.
Tip #3: Craft a Smart, Concise and Compelling Email Outreach Template
Our third tip for pitching brand collaborations is to develop a smart, compelling email template to use in your outreach efforts. Developing the language for your outreach email takes a little bit of finesse. The wording in the email template needs to be vague enough to be applicable to multiple brands, but personable enough to diminish any signs that this email is being used across all of your outreach efforts. The standardized parts of your email should include your introduction to yourself and your personal brand (name, age, city, area of focus), a brief overview of your reach (ex/ My audience is composed mainly of females between the ages of 18-25, concentrated in the United States and Europe), and other self-explanatory pieces like your email signature, disclosing that your media kit is attached, etc.
The more customized, tailored and personalized aspects of your email should be altered brand by brand. For example, the contents of your email and the little details in wording for a skincare company would differ than those used for outreach to a footwear company. It’s important to add a few sentences here and there that show you’re knowledgeable about the company, the brand, their products, etc., and aren’t just looking for free product.
Tip #4: Pitch Yourself and Pitch an Idea
Short and simple, brands love it when you pitch concepts or marketing ideas to them. Don’t confuse this for offering marketing concepts for the larger brand, but rather offering a marketing idea for your own channel. For example, an outreach email to a brand suggesting an Instagram story take over demonstrating their products is a much more effective way to pitch yourself than just saying “here I am and here are my statistics.” Influencer marketing teams are a growing area of concentration for both PR companies and in-house marketing teams, some of who might be less versed on the different ways to collaborate with an influencer. We encourage you to pitch yourself alongside suggesting an IG story takeover, a try on haul, or showcasing some of their new arrivals in a spring look book, for example.
You want to make it as easy and possible for a brand to say “yes” to working with you, and that includes offering up ideas on how you can work together in a mutually beneficial way when pitching brand collaborations.
Tip #5: Friends Who Pitch Together, Win Together
Do you have friends who also blog or have a presence on social media? If so, you’re in luck. When it comes to collaborating, brands really do care about reach, follower count and engagement. If you can find innovative ways to collaborate with your influencer friends and joint-pitch a brand, you’ll find that you can secure higher quality, more prestigious collaborations. For example, if you and your blogger friend are planning a trip to Europe together, don’t hesitate to reach out to brands in a collaborative effort to pull your follower counts together. If you tell a hotel chain that both of you will be providing coverage for the brand, it’s much harder for them to deny you than if you were the only one providing exposure. Pitching brand collaborations in a team can help boost your odds of securing brand partnerships. This is a super popular method that’s used widely amongst groups of blogger friends in the industry, so don’t be scared to try it!
It’s pretty clear how important pitching brand collaborations is to influencers, and we hope these tips help you to grow your brand network. Head to the Wolf Blog for more tips on building your influencer brand!
