6 Tips On How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer

Do not index

Consider scrolling through YouTube, and you come across a creator with a highly engaged audience and making money from their videos. As you research their content, you discover they’re collaborating with some impressive brands. The next video of theirs you click on is even a sponsored video! YouTube sponsorships look like a great way to make money as a creator, and you want to learn how to get sponsored on Youtube. However, there’s one problem: You have no idea how to reach out to brands as an influencer. Sound familiar? If so, you’ve come to the right place! This guide will offer valuable insights to address your goals, such as going viral through influencer marketing services.

Aha Creator can help you achieve your goals with brand partnership deals. These connections allow you to land sponsorships to return to creating fantastic content for your audience.

Benefits of Collaborating With A Brand

How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer

1. Cash and Product Offers: The Financial Upside of Brand Collaborations

Let’s get right to it. The financial upside is the biggest perk of collaborating with brands as an influencer. Many brands offer payment, free products, or even long-term contracts to influencers who can promote their products effectively. This can be a primary income source for influencers and allow them to build a portfolio of collaborations. For example, influencers like Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) started collaborating with smaller brands. Over time, her successful partnerships helped her fund and launch her makeup line, which now collaborates with major brands globally.

2. Boost Your Audience and Build Credibility

Collaborating with reputable brands can enhance an influencer’s credibility, attracting more followers who trust the influencer’s recommendations. For example, Chiara Ferragni (@chiaraferragni), one of the first fashion influencers, collaborated with luxury brands like Dior and Louis Vuitton. These partnerships boosted her status, helping her grow from a blogger to a global fashion icon with millions of followers.

3. Fresh Content Ideas and Creative Inspiration

Brand collaborations often come with unique campaigns, photo shoots, or travel opportunities that provide influencers with fresh content ideas and new creative avenues. For example, influencers like Aimee Song (@songofstyle) have partnered with brands like Revolve for exclusive trips and fashion shows, creating content that showcases her travel, fashion, and lifestyle inspirations.

4. Networking and Connections to the Industry

Working with brands can introduce influencers to key people in the industry, such as PR managers, designers, and other influencers. These connections can lead to more opportunities. For example, initially known as a style influencer, Olivia Palermo has gained access to high-profile events and partnerships with brands like Banana Republic and Rochas, solidifying her presence in the fashion world and expanding her network.

5. Learning and Skill Development

Through collaborations, influencers often work with professional photographers, marketing teams, and creative directors, giving them firsthand experience and insight into brand marketing. For example, Negin Mirsalehi (@negin_mirsalehi) initially collaborated with beauty brands, where she learned about the industry. This experience helped her launch her hair care brand, Gisou, which has become a massive success.

6. The Potential for Long-Term Brand Ambassadorship

Influencers who are valuable partners can transition from one-off campaigns to longer-term brand ambassadorships, creating a steady and trusted relationship. For example, Selena Gomez partnered with Coach as a brand ambassador and later moved into a collaboration where she co-designed products. This long-term relationship enhanced her visibility and aligned her with a respected brand in the fashion industry.

Things To Have Before Reaching Out To Brands As An Influencer

Aha Creator: Your Go-To for Optimizing YouTube Brand Partnerships

Aha Creator streamlines brand partnerships for YouTube creators and businesses alike. We offer a done-for-you partnership service for brands to connect with the right creators. For content creators, we handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up for our waitlist today, and we'll work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.

Start With a Media Kit for Your Brand

A media kit is a document that helps you introduce your online presence to potential sponsors and partners. This introduction is essential for YouTube creators because many brands want to see their metrics before entering a partnership. Your media kit should include basic information about you and your brand and document your content creation metrics. For example, include your audience demographics, average views per video, and metrics for specific content niches.

Build a Relevant Portfolio

Before contacting brands for sponsorships, building a portfolio of work relevant to the companies you want to partner with can also be helpful. This is particularly important if you don’t have any prior sponsorships or brand deals, as it gives creators a better understanding of your work type. For instance, if you want to partner with a beauty brand, include examples of your previous beauty content. If you don’t have any, create sample videos and include those in your portfolio.

Know What Brands Want

Understanding what brands are looking for is crucial before reaching out for sponsorships. In short, they want to see that you create high-quality content consistently. They also want to know that your audience is engaged and interested in your content. The higher your metrics, the more likely you will secure a lucrative sponsorship deal.

Nail Down Your Style and Values

Before contacting brands, consider your aesthetics and values. Consider whether your style and values align with the brand you want to work with. If there’s a mismatch, looking for other sponsorship opportunities is probably best. This will ensure you create content you enjoy and help you maintain authenticity with your audience.

Research the Brand

As with any relationship, there needs to be a mutual understanding between content creators and brands. This means that before reaching out for sponsorships, you should get to know the brand you want to partner with. Start by looking at the company’s social media pages and website to understand their values and culture. From there, assess whether they match yours.

Engage With the Brand

Before reaching out, take the time to engage with the brand’s content. Start by liking, commenting, and sharing their posts to show you about their brand and audience. If you have the time, create content featuring their products to demonstrate your genuine interest in the company.

Influencer Marketing Automation

Platforms That Pay Content Creators

Social Media Influencer Partnerships

How Much Do Digital Creators Make

Influencer Brand Partnerships

5 Niches Commonly Used by Influencers

Influencer Engagement

How Do Brand Deals Work

6 Tips On How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer

1. Streamline Brand Partnerships with Aha Creator

Aha Creator simplifies the process of brand partnerships for YouTube creators and businesses. We offer a done-for-you partnership service for brands to connect with the right creators. For content creators, we handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up for our waitlist today, and we'll work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.

2. Identify the Right Brands for Collaboration

Choose brands that align with your niche and values. Look for brands whose mission and products resonate with your audience. Picking the right brands to approach is crucial. Look for brands that align with your niche, values, and audience. An influencer collaboration should feel natural and beneficial for both parties; it should be something you buy and use.

Do Your Homework

Research brands that align with your content. For instance, if you’re a fitness influencer, you could pitch your favorite supplement brands, workout gear, gym clothes, and fitness technology.

See if they’ve collaborated with influencers in the past. This can give you an idea of what they look for and how you might fit in.

Align with your audience.

Choose brands your followers will be excited about. If they love what you promote, engagement will be higher. If the brand sells a solution for a problem your audience has, it’s likely a good fit!

3. Research the Brand for a Personalized Approach

Before reaching out, get to know the brand inside and out. Understanding their mission, products, and audience shows you’re genuinely interested and can help you craft a personalized pitch. A generic, copy-paste email or DM isn’t going to cut it. A successful pitch stands out when it’s hyper-specific and shows the brand you’ve done your research.

Visit Their Website

Read about their history, values, and product lines.

Understand Their Audience

Know who they’re targeting and how your audience overlaps with theirs.

Identify Content Gaps

See if you can find any gaps in their content that you can create. This is the “angle” of your pitch. How can you bring value to the brand? For example, let’s say you’re pitching a luggage company, and you notice they’ve launched a new weekend bag. Your angle could be creating content on how to pack a carry-on or a challenge around how much you can fit in their bag.

4. Crafting Your Pitch for Brand Collaboration

Personalization. This is the mantra you need your heart to drum to you as you type up your outreach emails. Anyone can write an email asking for a brand collaboration, but not everyone can communicate their value effectively enough to make it a no-brainer.

Start Strong

Begin with a catchy subject line and a substantial introduction that grabs their attention.

Showcase Your Value and Expertise

Highlight your unique selling points, like your demographics, audience size, engagement rate, and past successes.

Be Specific

Explain how I’d like to collaborate and what I can offer the brand in return.

Keep It Short

Brands are busy, so keep your email concise. Use white space and bold the most important information to help the reader absorb the information as fast as possible.

5. Use the Right Platform for Contacting the Brand

Direct message

Social media DMs are the perfect way for creators to connect with brands because they’re personal, direct, and show initiative. Plus, it’s where most brand managers already hang out, making your pitch hard to miss. The best part? GRIN for Creators automatically pulls the social handles for each brand in its Brand Search tool, so you never have to go searching for the right @.

Email

Email allows for a more detailed and professional introduction. You can attach your media kit, portfolio, and detailed collaboration ideas, giving brands a comprehensive view of your offer. Brands can also easily forward your information to relevant team members.

The downside

It can be tricky to find email addresses for the right contacts. You may be able to pull them from the brand’s website. They might also have contact info for creators in their social media bio. If not, DMs are going to be your best bet.

This will technically be a DM, but LinkedIn outreach differs from outreach via Instagram and TikTok DMs. LinkedIn outreach is a bit more “serious” and professional. Plus, it allows you to connect directly with decision-makers.

Brand website

Sometimes, brands have landing pages on their websites where creators can apply to work with them directly. GRIN for Creators automatically pulls these landing pages into its Campaign Finder tool, but it’s worth watching when surfing the web.

6. Include Your Portfolio in Your Pitch

Outreach best practices will remain mostly consistent no matter how you reach out. The main point is to keep your initial outreach short and sweet. Let the prospect know why you’re reaching out and how they can follow up.

What to include in your pitch

At this point, you should have a few intriguing prospects I’m ready to reach out to. Here’s what to include in your pitch:

Short intro

Introduce who you are and what you do, but keep it short!

Purpose of contact

You’re looking for a partnership, but let the brand know why you chose them specifically.

Value prop

Make sure the brand knows exactly what you bring to the table.

CTA

Close with a clear call to action so the brand knows how to follow up.

Media kit/portfolio

Give the brand some additional information on your qualifications. Send them your media kit and portfolio.

How To Find Suitable Brands For Reaching Out

1. Identify Brands That Are Already Engaging With You

Almost every creator has a few brands already engaging with their content. Before searching countless profiles, comments, and likes, check to see if any of your current followers are businesses. If you find any, don’t hesitate to reach out to them. Who knows? They may be just the right brand you’ve been looking for.

2. Join An Influencer Marketplace

If you haven’t done this already, you should. Many influencer marketing platforms allow brands and content creators to find each other and collaborate. To get started, here is a list of some of the most popular influencer platforms:

Aspire IQ

Influence.co

Brandbacker

Famebit

Collabstr

Tapinfluence

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok aren’t just places where people post images and videos. They’re also places where you can find brands to work with. Using specific keywords in the hashtag search, you can do some deep digging and find other brands to contact. For example, if you’re a travel company, you may want to look up the hashtag #digitalnomad or #lovetravelling to see if you can find content creators or brands to connect with.

4. Check Your Competitors

You’re not the only one looking to collaborate with other brands. Whether you’re a business or content creator, your competitors probably have already worked with some brands. Check out your competitors’ social profiles to see who they work with. Look for sponsored photos and videos with specific products and tagged profiles. You’ll find brands that will be more than willing to work with you. Then, reach out to these brands with a pitch (which you’ll learn about in a second).

5. Pitch To Brands Directly

You’re probably already a fan of some brands, and if that’s the case, you can always reach out directly to them. Whether you’re a content creator or a business, connecting with brands you a) support and b) already have a history of collaborating with other businesses increases your chances of working with them. Email them once you have a list of brands you’d like to collaborate with. In your pitch, you want to answer Who you are, What you do, and Any achievements that may help you or your business stand out. Then, you’ll want to Explain why you're a good fit for the brand. Add any data that they may find helpful (engagement rates, prior work, follower count)

You may not think this is an essential element of brand collaboration, but it is. Posting consistently on social media is crucial. Why? For a few reasons, Instagram's algorithm loves new content. The more you post, the more you see Instagram loves engagement. The more you engage with other accounts, the better Collaborators want to see you're active on social media. This doesn’t mean you need to go wild and post every two minutes, but you should at least post a minimum of twice a week. Naturally, the more you post when your followers are most active, the more likely your posts will receive the most engagement (likes, comments, and shares).