Speaker 1: Like, what are you doing? Like a brand is never going to respond to that message. It's just not going to happen. Hi everyone. Welcome back to my channel. Today's video I'm dropping all the gems, okay, I'm telling you how you can effectively pitch to brands. So people have asked me for this video for a while and I'm sorry if I've kept you waiting a bit but if you're one of those people who have asked this video, I expect you to be listening intently with your notepads and your pen because I'm going to be sharing all my top tips for how you can pitch to brands and actually get them to respond. If you're wondering why I know this information or if you're wondering like why should I even trust this girl, well, let me tell you a bit about my background on my journey. So basically I have an influencing Instagram page which is called Orange Collective which I run with my boyfriend. We managed to find brand partners for that page literally a few months after we started it so we had a really small following. The reason why we were able to find brand partners and figure out like the secret formula to finding brand partners is because I and my boyfriend actually have both worked for marketing agencies where we've recruited influencers before. I also have two brands where I recruit influencers on a daily basis so basically we have tons of insider knowledge on why brands actually choose to work with certain influencers, what type of pitches work for them, all that kind of stuff. So we have all that info and what I'm basically doing is sharing it with you either on this channel or on my resources, I've got a link below if you're interested to check any of those out. But yeah, I'm basically just on a bit of a mission to help you guys be more effective with your pitches and just land more brand partners. So enough gabbing, let's get to it. So if you're sitting there thinking why do I need to pitch to brands, like why aren't they going to come to me, I hate to break it to you but they're not going to come to you. Unless you're like a macro influencer with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, brands aren't really going to come to you. And the reason why is because there are a lot of influencers out there, I'm not saying this to many, I'm not going to sit here and be like oh it's oversaturated, that's not what I'm saying. But the point is that there's a lot of influencers out there and the power at the minute is very much with the brands because so many influencers want to work with so many different brands. So really, brands kind of have their pick of influencers and this is coming from a brand owner which is myself, right. I don't usually go out there to find influencers because so many influencers have already caught on to the effectiveness of pitching and therefore they're all coming to me and they're kind of writing me messages. And what I'm actually going to do is conclude this video by showing you some of the messages that people actually send me and I'm going to sit there, I'm going to go through some of them and I'm going to tell you why that pitch worked for me or why it didn't so make sure you stay tuned for that. But basically, the power is kind of within the brands now so what you need to do is get off your ass and start messaging brands and pitching yourself if you want to find brand partners, right. That's what you've got to do now so I'm glad we got that out of the way. Luckily, in this video I'm going to teach you how to do that so let's start with step one. The first thing you need to do when you're starting out pitching to brands is you need to identify the brands that you want to work with. So do not do this approach what so many influencers have where they kind of just copy and paste messages to every single brand under the sun. They don't care if they like the brand or not, they don't care if that brand is suitable to their niche, they're just messaging every single person to see if someone will respond and you know give them something for free or pay them to post something. That's not a good strategy, okay. So there's a few things you need to bear in mind when you're identifying a brand you want to pitch to. The first thing is that you want this brand to be one that you're actually a fan of. You need to actually love their products, not just because it's going to show an authentic genuine interest in the brand and it's going to be a lot more pleasant for you, but also because you have a duty to your followers to be promoting products or services that you believe in. If you're going to become one of those influencers who just promote anything what is given to you for free or what someone's willing to pay you for, you're going to lose your influence very quickly and once you lose your influence like that's it, you're not going to get any more brand partners. That is literally you have one job is to is to have influence, so once you lose that there's no going back. So make sure that you're only reaching out to brands who you actually care about and you actually believe in, right. And show that you care and that you believe in them by you know following them for one and engaging with their content and stuff like that. Just really make sure that you familiarise yourself with your brand and you're a genuine fan of their products. You also want to make sure that the brands that you're reaching out to are aligned with your niche. If you don't know much about like you know whether you need a niche, what's the importance of having a niche and all that kind of stuff, I have I've got a video where I talk about you know how to become an influencer in 2021 which I'll link up to, I recommend giving that a watch. But hopefully by this point you've got your niche, so you might be fashion, you might be tech, you might be kind of motivational quotes, whatever you think it's going to be, the brand you're reaching out to need to be aligned with that niche. So if you are in the niche of pets for example, if you're in the niche of pets and all of your content is about your dog, you cannot reach out to Zara and expect them to gift you an item. It's not going to work, like they're not going to do it. However if you're in the niche of fashion and you reach out to Zara, then you know you're going to be a lot more likely to get a response. It's just important to remember that when brands are deciding whether or not to work with you, they're looking at whether or not you have a defined niche, because you having a defined niche means that you are attracting an audience of people who are interested in that type of product. So you having a fashion niche and it's really clear on your page means that your followers are interested in fashion, which means that Zara will be making a very good business decision to partner with you because they'll be gaining access to your followers who are interested in fashion. Do you see where I'm coming from with this? So again I talk about that in so much more detail in my other video, but just make sure that any brands that you've identified as someone who you want to work with are aligned with your channel niche. You then want to check whether these channels are actually likely to respond to you or likely to work with you, and how you can basically do that is by going through their Instagram page and having a look to see if they work with influencers number one, because if they don't work with influencers then there's a big chance you're barking up the wrong tree. The second thing you want to look for is what kind of influencers are they working with? Are they working with macro huge influencers all the time? Are they working with celebrities? If that's the case and you're not a celebrity or a macro influencer, then you're probably not going to have much luck reaching out to that brand. However, if you're seeing a lot of small micro or nano influencers on their page, and that's the category that you fall into, so nano is zero to 10,000, micro is like 10,000 to 50,000. If you're seeing a lot of those types of influencers being featured on their page, then there's a very big chance that that brand is open and willing to work with influencers within the same category as you, so therefore it's a lot more likely that you're going to find success with that. A little extra bonus tip here, if you're only looking for paid partnerships, when you're going through this process of looking for their content and seeing what type of influencers they're featuring, go onto that influencer's account and try and find that post from the influencer where they're promoting that brand. Have a look at what hashtags they've included. If the hashtag is hashtag gifted or hashtag PR, then that product was obviously gifted free of charge, it wasn't paid for. If the hashtag is like hashtag ads or hashtag spons, then that obviously means that that brand actually paid them for that feature, so then again, it's just giving you a better idea of the type of influencers who this brand is willing to work with and who they're willing to pay for their content. Last tip on this one as well, in terms of identifying your brands, some brands who are really, really keen on the influencer marketing space will actually have dedicated web pages on their site where they talk about their influencer activity. A good example of this is Daniel Wellington, so you probably have heard of them because they are so big in the influencer marketing space. They have a whole landing page which is dedicated to explaining how they work with influencers and how you can work with them. So it's always worth a quick Google search if you found a brand because they might have a page where they talk about their Ambassador Programme or anything like that and therefore you know, you've got a lot more information and you know exactly how you can get hired by them. Okay, so the second thing you want to do is define your value offering. I feel like I drop the term value offering all the time, but it is the essence of life. It literally is relevant to business, it's relevant to everything, okay. So what I mean by your value offering is quite literally, what are you offering this brand which they're going to get in exchange from working with you? And I don't want to go on a rant here because I tend to go on rants when I talk about this, but this is coming from someone who's a business owner and I get DMs and pictures from people every single day, right? It is infuriating when you get messages from people where you can kind of tell that they basically think that you owe them a partnership. It's like they put zero effort into their DM and I'll come on to that in a minute, but it's almost like they talk to you like they're expecting you to give them something for free or to pay them for something. Because influencer marketing has become so common, I think a lot of people who don't have a real understanding of kind of what goes into it from a brand's point of view, kind of think that it's easy. Like the amount of messages that I get where people are literally like, can you send me a bag? Like, no. Always remember that these products that you're asking for, even if you're not asking to get paid to post it, you're just asking for it for free. Please remember that this product is not free to the business, it has cost this business money to produce it, it's cost this business money to market it and it's going to cost the business money to send it to you. So they are spending money to give you this product. So they need to get something in return. It's not good enough for you to be like, oh, but I've got a couple of hundred followers giving me something for free. That's not good enough. So please, if you're one of those people who think that way, please stop because it actually upsets me. Anyway, so when I'm talking about your value offering, there's a few different ways that you can identify what value you're going to offer to this brand, right? So if you're someone with a big follower base, so you've got, you're in your thousands, tens of thousands, your biggest value is probably going to be your reach. So you can say, you know, if you work with me and if I promote your brand, you can reach 10,000 people because I have a follower base of 10,000 people. You can even go so far to say is I've got 10,000 people who follow me who are really engaged because you'll look at your analytics and you can see how many people like your posts, how many people engage with your posts. So not only do you have a big following, but your followers engage with your content too. So that's kind of like your most obvious value offering and it's your most common one as well. However, for all of you smaller influencers out there, this do not fret. Like there are other things that you can offer. So if you are handy with a camera and you're really good at editing skills, in my opinion, this is probably even higher value than your, than having a huge follower count is producing high quality content. So if someone comes to me and says, look, I, I've got some great content. Like I can produce some campaign worthy photos of your product. If you give me a few of your products for free, like I will create five different shots in these different locations, blah, blah, blah. Or if you give me your product, you know, and you pay me, I'll produce a suite of 30 images, which I'll send over to you all high resolution and you can use them on your website or in your next advertising campaign. That is a strong value offering and that would work very well for me. And for a lot of other small brands out there, you've got to remember that brands are constantly looking for content. If you can say, Hey, I'm going to produce that content for you. And all you have to do is give me something for free or pay me a low fee, then your brands are going to, brands are going to snap you up on that. If you think your content is good, it's good enough for you to grow, but it's maybe not like campaign worthy content, then there might be other things you can do. If you've got a bunch of friends who are all micro and nano influencers, if you kind of get them all together and get them, you know, whether it's at an event or whether they're sharing your posts, combine all of that reach that you've got, you might only have a couple thousand each, but all together that might make 10,000. And then you've actually got a really strong value offering there. Or for example, do you have other channels where you've got a following? Do you have a TikTok where you've got a couple thousand followers? Do you have a YouTube channel? Like just really think about it. Are you on Clubhouse? Like is there other avenues that you can use where you can get, you know, your partnership out there and in front of more people? So really sit down and think about, you know, what am I actually going to give this brand in exchange for a fee or for a gifted product? Okay. So now you need to craft your DM. So I actually have a influencer hustle kit, which is basically a 45 page like e-guide, which includes every single thing you need to know about influencing. Like I'm talking from growing your channel to finding brands to partner with, to pitching to them, to working with influencer agencies, which is like my little industry secret that no one really talks about. To working with marketplaces, to evaluating your contracts, to negotiating more money. All that kind of stuff is included in this guide. And it also includes links to different workbooks and documents, including my own pitch template, which I use on a regular basis and which I've had loads of success with. So if you're looking for the exact formula in addition to loads of other value, then I definitely recommend checking that out. I will put a link below. But for now, I'm going to give you some tips, which will help you craft a successful DM. So the first thing I want to say, which I alluded to earlier, is do not under any circumstances copy and paste a message. I'm not going to dwell on this too much because it upsets me. Do not do it. These people who own these brands or run these social media pages dedicate hours of their life to making this brand work. If you cannot dedicate a few minutes to researching your brand and tailoring your message to that brand, then you are not going to have success as an influencer, plain and simple. To me, it is like a sign of disrespect that you couldn't spend a few minutes just to edit your message and make it a bit more personal. So I'm just going to leave that there. Make sure you're not copying and pasting your messages. In terms of what you should be putting in your messages to tailor the content, there's a few different things you can use, which will really help you stand out. So the first thing is making sure that you've researched the brand and that you're throwing in a few gems about the brand in there. I'm going to show you an example of someone who messaged me and done that previously, so you can see what I mean a bit later on in the video. But just think about what's their USP, like what's their brand token, like what do you like about them? Mention that in your message so it really shows that you love the brand and that you've researched it. Another thing which works really well is mentioning any content that you've done in the past, which is similar to the content that you'd produce for them. So whether that's you doing content for a similar brand, which is great because it's a great case study, so you can be like, I actually produced this asset for a restaurant group a few months ago and it done really well, you know, 400 people liked it, it was shared X amount of times. And that's just a really good way of showing, you know, I've done this before and it worked, so this is a safe bet to partner with me because I know what I'm doing. If you've not worked with brand partners before or you don't have a relevant case study, then go through your Instagram and find an image which is similar to one which you'd produce for that brand. You should already have these because you should be targeting brands who are within your niche. So for me, before we'd worked with restaurants, finding an image where we were at a restaurant wasn't hard because our niche is food and travel, so therefore we're spending a lot of time in restaurants, right? So what we would do is find a photo from one of the times we've been in a restaurant and share it and be like, this is a post that we've done, it had huge success, we'd love to do something similar for you. I'd also recommend including some stats, not all of them, but if you have anything that's particularly impressive, like your reach is really high or anything like that, then I recommend including that. And lastly, I would recommend asking for an email. So what's good to understand for anyone who's not familiar with like influencer marketing or social media marketing is for big brands especially, their Instagram pages aren't usually managed by like the owner. My Instagram pages for my brands are managed by the owner because that's me and they're tiny brands, but bigger brands, that's not how it works. They'll have like a social media manager who will be managing their Instagram page. So that social media manager might not have the ability to recruit or hire influencers. They might have an influencer manager who does that. So it's important to ask, like, is there anyone who I could speak to or an email address that I could have where I can pick up this conversation and discuss this a bit further? Because for some brands who do have a separate influencer manager, it just basically means that you're going to get that direct contact and if you don't ask for that, there's a big chance that you're going to fall up against a wall because the person you're speaking to isn't the person who's going to be hiring influencers anyway. So I'd always recommend asking for an email address. If they do send you an email address, then follow up with a similar format to what I just went through. If you have a media kit, then attach that too. If you don't know what a media kit is or you don't know how to make one, again, I have all that information in my Influencer Hustle Kit. Okay, and the last step that you want to do, don't forget this one, is to follow up, okay? So if you're really organised and keep a spreadsheet of the brands that you're reaching out to, you know, or flag them on your DMs, do some kind of organisation process so that you're actually following up on people and you're following up with really authentic messages, you know, saying, hi, I hope you're well, happy you had a chance to look at my message. I'd love to send my media kit to one of your team members via email, you know, follow up with something like that so that you're giving them a bit of a nudge, but it's not too chasey. A huge no-no on this, do not copy and paste the same message that you've just sent. It just, do not do it. Again, something that I get all the time. Don't do it because it just makes it look like you're chasing rather than following up. It just doesn't need a good impression, so I wouldn't recommend doing that. Okay, so, the exciting part. I'm gonna show you some messages that I've got and I'm gonna tell you why I've turned them down. So I've obviously like blurred out the names because I don't think it's fair for me to be like naming and shaming people, that'd be really mean, but I'm still gonna just take you through some of them and I'm gonna tell you why I didn't end up recruiting them. I'm only gonna do a few, but if this is interesting to you, then let me know because I'll do a whole video on it and I can take you through loads more. Okay, so, let's start with this one. This one is quite literally, collab question mark. No. No, I'm not gonna send you my items that have cost me a fortune and I've poured my heart into for free because you DM'd me saying collab question mark. No, it's not gonna happen. Huge no. Another one. Hello dear, are you interested in a cooperation? I'm guessing with this one, they're probably just trying to start a conversation. So this might work with some brands. It doesn't work for me though because you could have just copied and pasted that and posted it anywhere. Okay, now I'm gonna do two more. Okay, so this is a good one because they're basically saying you're looking for promoters, this is my name, these are my followers, these are my impressions and they've got a screenshot. So what I like about this is that they've included some key stats in there and they've done it on purpose because they know they've got good stats, like their reach is really impressive and also they put a screenshot which is also really useful because it kind of substantiates their claim, right? It's like a proof. However, again, there is no personalisation here. So again, you've copied and pasted this and you've probably sent it to loads of other brands. But to wrap up this process, I'm going to show you one which I actually did decide to respond to. Where is it? Okay, here we go. Hi Raya London, I hope you're well. I am X, not gonna say the name. I'm currently looking to connect and support businesses and brands like yours. I'm connecting with you today to ask you if you're interested in working with myself on a gifted collaboration. I would absolutely love to share your bios with my 2k plus followers. I love that your products are cruelty free and also think it's amazing that you give 10% of your profits to charity. I think we would work brilliantly together. If this is something you're interested in, blah, blah, blah. So the only thing I would have improved about this message is potentially including an example of a post that they've done similar where they're promoting a bag or an accessory because that's what Raya London is. And which has done really well because that to me would just help my decision a bit more because I'd be like, okay, they've done this before and it's performed really well. Like I trust them. But other than that, it's a great message. Like you've researched my company, you know that I donate 10% of profits to charity. That to me shows that you're interested. Have you taken the time? Like, yeah. So I responded to her. But do you see what I mean? To be fair, I'm not actually running any clubs at the minute, but I basically just said email me in a month and we'll talk then because that's when I'll be running clubs again. But that worked on me. So I should flag, maybe I should have flagged this before, that I am very much speaking from my own personal experience from work, from recruiting influencers for my brands, but also recruiting influencers for huge international brands. I can't say this is what every single company is going to follow the same thought process, but you know, I do think I have a really unique point of view here. So I wanted to share it with you regardless. So I hope that was useful. I think that concludes my video. If you're interested in this type of content, then please like and subscribe to my channel. I would love you dearly for it. So yeah, that's it for today. I will see you in my next video.