Establishing meaningful relationships with brands you already use and love on a daily basis is so important. Not only does this help establish trust among your audience as the authenticity will show in your content, but it also leaves you in a space to establish long-term relationships with these companies.
It starts with your communication
When you first start working with a brand, you want to be very clear with sharing who/what your brand stands for and how that aligns with their brand vision. Are you already a consumer of this said brand or are you looking to test out their products for the first time? Whatever the case is, you will need to start by sharing your reasoning why they should work with you over other content creators on a campaign.
Once you’ve been able to establish the connection between your brand and the company you are looking to work with, it is important that you provide them with information on what kind of value you will be able to provide them. As much as brands want to ensure they are working with a partner with similar values to represent them, they also want to know what they will get in return.
When determining your pricing and packages, you’ll want to determine the following:
- Will you provide the brand extra content?
- Will you provide extra imagery?
- Are you providing any rights to imagery? For how long?
- How will you ensure the success of a campaign?
Providing all of this information to a brand partner in advance will show that you are 2 steps ahead of your competition and will put you in a really good position to kick off your partnership.
For example, I like to stand out by throwing in a free piece of content. If I am working on Instagram campaign, I may repurpose that content onto Facebook as well to maximize my reach.
Brands like content creators who ago above and beyond and willing to give a little extra!
Knock your content out of the park
Once you’ve discussed a partnership, it is time to over-deliver when creating your content. You’ll really want to knock it out of the park by delivering high quality content, organized assets and more.
I always put together a document that organizes my content and images for the brand to easily review. In addition, providing a Dropbox link of photos is helpful for brands when reviewing.
Make sure you meet deadline and stay on follow prompts or creative guidelines when shooting your content to avoid any re-shoots for a smooth approval process.
Make sure you meet deadline and stay on follow prompts or creative guidelines when shooting your content to avoid any re-shoots for a smooth approval process.
Turning that partnership into a long-term relationship
After delivering successful content and showing your brand partner the results of your campaign, it is not time to discuss how to turn that partnership into a long-term partnership.
Follow-up with the brand 1-2 months after your campaign to circle back with them and get the conversation started again. Begin by revising the success of the campaign- this is when you may want to share that extra piece of content you may have posted, any feedback you’ve received from your followers, etc.
Now, it’s time to choose a strategy to take on how you’d like to revisit another partnership together.
1. Tie it to a timely event
Say you worked on a campaign with a food brand during the holidays to deliver a specific recipe, now is the time to think how you can fit them into another timely event or holiday to bring this to life.
With spring around the corner, you may want to position a fresh take on a recipe that is perfect for spring. Highlight the success of the last campaign and share what ideas you’d like to share for a recipe. You can even go as far as pitching a campaign each season to share quarterly recipe tied to the season. Bundling your content into multi-post campaigns is a great way to ensure revenue is generated throughout the year and allows you to plan ahead!
2. Tie it to your personal life events
Do you have a personal reason why another campaign would make sense right now. Making a campaign timely is what will ultimately trigger a brand jumping on board for a second campaign.
Example 1: Say you’ve worked with a skincare company in the past and you are currently struggling with dry skin with the winter weather. You can pitch how the products have helped with your dry skin and the importance of sharing another round of content to help get the word out about how the skincare products continue to help you through difficult seasons.
Example 2: If you worked with a retail store for a holiday campaign, you may want to pitch them for a back to school or spring styles campaign to pursue a second partnership with the retailer!
There are many ways to pitch a long-term partnerships but your key takeaways here should be that:
- You need to go successful deliver results on your first campaign
- Hit the ball out of the park and possibly throw in an extra piece of content
- Thank a brand after the campaign ends and explain your excitement about being included in future campaigns
- Pitch the brand again 1-2 months after while it’s still fresh to discuss another partnership
- Build out how you would envision a partnership coming together to show how you’ve mapped out the proposal and help push the brand to sign another campaign with you
For a list of my freebies, click here. You can also also check out my e-book, The Influencer Handbook, for tips on gaining PAID brand partnerships, growing your following and more!!
