HOW TO PITCH AND LAND YOUR FIRST BRAND COLLABORATION | Free Pitch Template and Walkthrough

if you want to start Landing brand collaborations and you've thought about pitching to a brand but you have no idea what to say or where to even start this video is for you what's up everyone I'm Millie I'm an influencer coach welcome back to my channel where I post videos every week teaching you the latest strategies and Trends on social media to help you grow your brand as an influencer I've been in the influencer space for over 5 years now I've worked with hundreds of Brands I also have a course that teaches influencers how to

grow on Instagram and land brand collaborations so I have quite a bit of experience under my belt when it comes to pitching working with Brands all the things when I teach on this topic typically the most asked question that I get over on Instagram is how do I write my pitch what do I say in my pitch how do I talk to the brand how do I reach out to the brand so that's what we're going to go over before you start pitching you want to ask yourself if you're even ready to start pitching and

no I don't mean do you have enough followers you don't need to have any number of followers to start working with Brands I've helped my student Ryan land paid brand collaboration and so no it's not about the follower numbers when brands are looking for influencers to partner with they look for three things your parallel your community and your experience your parallels is basically the things that you have in common they want to have things in common with you especially if your audience is their target audience they're going to be way more willing to slat into

those DMS pay you a little bit of cash to reach your audience and then two your community if they go to your Instagram and they see that you have a loyal Community people commenting on your posts you replying to people's comments they're going to see that as a lot of value brands are looking for influencers with a 3% engagement rate or more and if you have less than 10,000 followers you're actually at an advantage because you have a higher engagement rate than those over 10,000 followers so that could be a strategy with your pitching and

then when I say experience I don't mean do you have all the experience but are you generally good at creating content take a look at your feed an honest look at your feed and ask yourself would a brand pay me to make something like this if the answer is no you you just got to practice a little bit more content creation is key literally the main part of working with a brand is that you're creating content with them so if your profile doesn't have content that would entice a brand or maybe the quality just isn't

quite there yet that's what you want to work on a little bit more is honing in on your content creation craft not building your followers okay now that you know the three things to look for and you're like okay Millie I think I'm ready I think I'm ready to start pitching you have two goals with your pitch it could be either or or it could be both one goal is to create a connection the other goal is to serve your goal with pitching is not to land a paid brand collaboration believe it or not it's

not to get free stuff if that is your goal if that is your intention you are pitching from the wrong place I know how exciting it feels or that feeling of doing your first collaboration and a brand wants to send you something for free and being like Oh my gosh I've made it like I know we all want free stuff we all want to work with our Dream Brands but if you're pitching from that selfish mindset or if you're pitching from that place you won't be able to land honest genuine great brand collaborations because Brands

could see right through that they probably get thousands of DMS a day plenty of emails a day with people asking for free stuff so you want to stand out and you want to create a genuine email to them so really when you're pitching all you want to do is create a connection ask to get on a call grab a cup of coffee you just want to connect with the person behind the screen and and if you do want to partner with them and land a collaboration the collaboration is going to be one that is mutually

beneficial not just you getting free stuff but you know exactly how you can benefit the brand and you want to come from a service mindset okay now that you kind of know the basics of what to look for the intent of your pitch let's talk about how to craft your pitch how to write it if you're still like ooh Millie I'm not sure I definitely recommend starting out with third party platforms if you're too intimidated to pitch send a cold email third party platforms are where it's at that's I have a bunch that I recommend

to my students I think I have like a list of 10 that are my favorites but the one that I want to talk to you about is called social book who is also the sponsor of this video social book is a top influencer marketing software for both Brands and influencers alike they provide endless social tools that not a lot of third-party networking platforms have so not only can you connect with other brands inside of the social book account but you can also work on your media Cas you could create a link in BIO with all

of your links in the right place they have a bunch of content creator tools within their website that can genuinely help creators take their content and their business to the next level for brand collaboration specifically you have a brand collaboration form that you fill out you'll get to set your rates you get to Mark what your interests are what your Niche is and then you'll be able to connect with other brands that want to partner with you and are willing to pay your rates for me personally I partner with Brands who have the same values

as me and one of of social books goals is to help content creators grow and uplevel their businesses so that's why I really wanted to partner with them because we have similar values and we're both on the same track of wanting to help content creators yes creating a social book account is free so if you want to get started by filling out your brand collaboration form or making your own Media Kit I'll leave a link down in the description below where you could start setting up your free account today now let's talk about your pitch

structure this is a pitch that I use and I have used and I give to my students to use it's a great General outline for you to copy paste and fill in with your information feel free to screenshot do what you got to do I also have a downloadable below it's free there's multiple pitch templates because sometimes there's different reasons for pitching so maybe you just want to pitch to have an introduction pitch because you have a specific idea in mind or pitch because you want to land a hotel collaboration there's so many different types

of pitches so I put a few in a free downloadable down below so you could grab that if you want to but let's break down your pitch first let's start with your subject line line your subject line simple straightforward not too salesy you could put the brand name X your handle done simple that's all you got to do next is the first line of your pitch you want to introduce yourself who you are what you do who you do it for with a hyperlink on your name so I'm going to say hey what's up what's

mar Just kid I'm not going to say I'm going to say hey what's a brand I want to pitch to Mr Coffee I love Mr Coffee so I'm going to say hey Mr Coffee I'm Millie I'm an online educator that teaches influencers how to grow their businesses from home and I'm a huge fan of your brand or I'm a I've been an avid customer of yours for over 10 years now right make it personal you want to have that personal connection speaking of personal connection the next two to three sentences get even deeper with why

you love that brand do your research go to their website look at their about Page look at what sort of nonprofits they support create a personal connection so with them I can say when I went off to college my parents gave me a coffee machine to use in my dorm and I still have it to this day parenthesis we're going 10 years strong and then I'll say I recently did a poll on my stories asking my followers if they're coffee lovers or tea lovers these were their results okay so I create the personal connection but

I'm also tying it into my audience's interest in that brand so one personal connection two it's a brand I love I use I know I'm going to love their products three I'm connecting it to my business to my brand and to my audience I'm going to hyperlink the stats and I'm going to say here's a few quick stats about me and this is where you're going to highlight your best assets your best assets this isn't going to be just your follower number because if you're not confident in your follower number maybe you could highlight your

engagement rate instead so list a few things that you're really confident in I have a 10% engagement rate this is my average story views I have 10,000 email list subscribers right so you're just highlighting some of the best things about you even if it's your experience like I've been a professional photographer for 5 years maybe that's something that is a huge asset to them and then this is where you could either wrap up the email or you could pitch them a specific idea after I say my stats I'll say I saw you recently released your

iced coffee maker and wanted to know if you needed help marketing that product as you can see my audience is AVID coffee lovers and I love to partner with with you in promoting XYZ is this something you would be interested in would love to hop on a call XOXO Gossip Girl no I'm just kidding EXO EXO why am I saying EXO follow your joy Milly okay that's as simple as that so you can pitch a specific idea or if you don't have an idea you just want to partner with the brand you're going to say

something like we'd love to see if there's an opportunity for us to partner together whether now or in the future do you have time to hop on a call to discuss your marketing goals for this year say something like that most of the time if you're like Millie I don't want to hop in a call most of the time they are not going to hop on a call they're going to be like oh we're actually busy but we can email but the fact that you're willing to hop on a call is going to make you

stand out above and beyond everybody else okay now believe it or not the conversions of pitching is lower than catching and when I say catching I mean like if a brand pitches to you and they're like hey we want to partner with you that collaboration is almost a done deal right you just got to negotiate but pitching and cold pitching Brands the conversion of actually them saying yes not as high up there you're not going to land every pitch that you send it's just a matter of fact so don't be scared of hearing no and

don't be scared of getting ghosted because I hear NOS all the time I get ghosted all the time some of my favorite Brands I pitch to them and they ignore me I follow up three times they ignore me I even had a brand that I wanted to partner with oh should I call him out should I call him out I'm going to call him out book of the month I said it okay I love book of the month their monthly subscription box service if you're a reader I love reading and I'm such a fan of

them I've been subscribed for two years I get a new book every single month and I post on my stories I talk about my book sometimes and I've converted some people to book of the month lovers if you're curious I'll drop a link down below because I'm obsessed and I hope you'll be obsessed we could read together buddy read anyway so I've pitched to them and they've turned me down multiple times because my audience is not in alignment with their audience and that's okay like it's totally fine they have every right to say no because

it's true majority of my audience isn't looking to read fictional books and that's just that they did say no for now so it was like a comeback later type of a thing but really what they're looking for are like YouTubers that are booktubers Haley Hughes love Haley Hughes she's partnered with book of the month when she had less than 10,000 subscribers so like they would rather partner with Haley Hughes over me I'm not saying oh my God better but if you're somebody who's stuck on subscriber number or follower number I have 200,000 subscribers here and

so you would assume oh you could get any brand deal but that's not what brands are looking for they really want to connect with your audience and they want people who have similar passions as them and Their audience types so it makes total sense for them to want to partner with Haley over me because my audience they want to be influencers they don't want to be Book Lovers you know what I mean so don't be afraid to hear no don't be afraid to be ghosted because that's literally the worst that could happen I hope this

video is helpful if you have more questions about brand collaborations let me know in the comments below I do have a few other videos on brand collab so I could do a little series here on my channel if this is something you're interested in or if you're like no I'm serious I want to make bank I want influencing to be my full-time job I want to make multiple figures and brand deals take my course Shameless plug I do have a course that literally teaches how to land paid brand collaborations as as an influencer it's everything

from branding growing on Instagram to monetizing Instagram from affiliate marketing brand collabs all the things so I'm going to Shameless plug sponsored by myself what's up and if you're really serious about Landing paid brand collaborations check out the modern influencer I'll link it down below if you've made it this far and you're not already subscribed what are you doing who are you be sure to hug that subscribe button and turn on the Bell notification so you don't miss when I post my next videos and I'll see you in the next one thanks so much for

watching follow your joy bye