How To Get Brand Deals (without a big audience)

Often we as the creators can tell a story better than the brand might be able to. And at the very least, even if we're talking about like incredible marketing teams, like Yeti comes to mind for me as like a brand that I would like to work with one day. But, you know, they're great marketers, but I can tell their story through my experience and through my lens, through my understanding. Understanding in a way that they'll never be able to. So that's another way to like present your expertise of content and story to a brand, even if you don't have a big following. Like the following may not even matter.

Yeah. And there's a stat from Business Insider that I don't want to, I don't want to butcher, but essentially consumers view UGC content, user-generated content, as 2 times more authentic and believable than brand-related content or content created by brands. So if you— again, if you approach a brand and say, hey, look, there's like data that shows this stuff works better in the minds of your consumer, that's why you need me. And actually one of my clients, we actually tested this out. We are running ads, both paid— sorry, paid ads, both for UGC as well as branded content. And the UGC content works 2 times better than the branded content. So again, you're saying I am doing this for you, right? I am doing your job for you. And what I also like to do is reach out to brands who have competitors that are already doing what you're proposing. So you're saying, look, your competitors X, Y, and Z are already leveraging creators with relatively small followings in this case to create content. And here's the impact it's having on them, right? So saying like, I'm not just making this stuff up, right? I have third-party validation through stats and through just observation that this stuff actually works. And that's why you should consider partnering with me.

Let's go a little bit further along here and we could even like use, use me as, as an example. So I'm trying to think about— actually, this is a good example. So let's, let's stay on the Yeti example because I, I have a following, I have an audience. But when it comes to the type of content that like Yeti might want to use, very, very like outdoorsy, very adventurous. Those are things that I like. Those are things I can create content about. It's a good example because I don't have a brand or a following that's around that stuff. I have like a brand around creators and I had a brand around and a business around productivity, not like going out in the woods for a week. So if I wanted to approach Yeti to do a partnership with them, How would you coach me or guide me into like making that initial outreach? Another one would be a Huckleberry. I really like Huckleberry as a brand. I would love to do some work with them. So how would you recommend that somebody like me, not a big following, let's say for this specific thing, how would you help me get in touch with them and present a plan for creating a partnership?

So Matt, here's what I would do, and I'm going to try to say this in a logical order, but I might jump around a little bit. It's helpful to have a history of what success looks like. And by that I mean you're creating some content where you and your Yeti are going out in the wilderness somewhere, getting like a nice drink or so on and so forth. And then when you're pitching, you can say, look, I'm already creating content aligned with your brand. I am a fan. Here's an example of what I can do for you on your behalf. So that way it's like it's so much easier for them to wrap their head around.

Right?

So that's step 1. Step 2 is do their job for them, right? Do their job for them. Have an actual campaign in mind. Not just saying, would you like to partner? But you can say, hey, look, you know, I'm a father of 4 and we love getting outdoors during— on the weekends. I can create a video of me and my family outside. We're all drinking water, staying hydrated, and having a great idea— having a great time, right? Or Father's Day's coming up, right? So same thing. Like, here's the theme. Here's this active dad out with his family drinking water, staying hydrated, having a blast. So just remove any kind of doubt, uncertainty from their mind from the get-go. Because often when I see people pitching brands, they're just like, I would love to collaborate. Okay, great. A lot of people would like to. But if you've done my job for me, if you're making sense by saying, here's the exact strategy of a campaign I can put together, even if they reject that, they'll see you more as a thought partner and not a vendor. And that alone can accelerate you getting accepted as a partner. And also what I do is I think about it like, what's in it for them, right? What do they want as a tangible takeaway? So when I write my proposals, I'll say, look, here's how we're going to measure success, right? These are the KPIs. Here's how we'll measure that. Here's how I'll execute it against it as well. So I'm going back to my my days as a digital marketer when I'm doing these proposals. I'm being very specific of what success looks like, how we'll measure it, and how we'll amplify it as well. So I think if you just really just go try a little bit harder than the average person, I guess is what I'm saying. Like that alone will make you stand out. And as again, if you can do their job for them, they're like, oh sweet, great. Like I don't have to think so much. I can just hire this person.

Yeah. And whenever we're— so I'd like to hear a couple of ideas that you have for KPIs that we could pitch, but there are things like certainly number of clicks to a specific link that you have, maybe number of orders fulfilled. It could be, it could be views. But I think often when we're talking about working with a brand, they want to see sales and they want to see like, they want to see interest. So those are a couple of things that could be tracked. But I'm glad you made the point of saying, because it's a good— it was a good call out to me. And for anyone doing this is like, you should have already been creating the type of content that they could go to. Like, the reason this wouldn't work for me right now is that if they went to like follow my stuff on social or they looked at my YouTube videos, be like, This guy's talking about creator economy and productivity. He's not a good fit for— he's not a good fit for talking about coolers and canteens. Now, what it could be and what I've done before, especially for the productivity content, is going to find— like, I talk a lot about notebooks and analog action, note cards, journaling. And so if I went and found, say, like Bullet Journal, or another one would be like Best Self Journal, like all these different journal companies, I could could and have very easily go out to them and say like, hey, I'd love to review, review your notebook. These are the kind of views that I normally get. You can see the type of engagement that I've gotten from past campaigns with other partners. These are the types of things that I can, I can do for you here. So here are a bunch of examples.

Yeah, you're right. But I want to go back because we assume, rightfully so, that most brands want sales, right? They want to get some kind of direct response. But in my experience, I was actually wrong in regards to one of my partners because that's what I said. Hey, let's here's how we'll track success, here's how many clicks we'll get, how many conversions, so on and so forth. And they're like, you know what, actually we want to do this as a branding play. We're not really concerned about making money directly from the content. And I was like, well, what do you mean? Like, you know, how do I prove ROI? But that's the way they want to go. And that was a $25,000 contract that I closed with no like meaty KPIs beyond it besides creating great content and the views behind it as well. So I mean, I think we should lead with that. Lead with value and say, here's how we would do that. But also we're having a conversation, right? You know, we're pitching this and we're saying, look, here's what we're proposing. Let's hop on a call and talk about it as well.