How to Get Paid Sponsorships (For Small Creators)

[00:02] it's not only possible to get sponsored as a small Creator but why you might actually be more attractive to some Brands when you have a thousand followers or less come on Justin that's ridiculous I don't remember inviting you

[00:15] ridiculous I don't remember inviting you limiting beliefs sorry sorry why would a brand want to partner with a Creator who's only able to connect them with a thousand people that's not a smart decision for them right but your

[00:27] smart decision for them right but your value is not limited to the size of your audience here's why first off what does a brand actually want from you as a small Creator well let's look at an example so a few years back the card

[00:39] example so a few years back the card game Uno hired my agency to run a very unique campaign the brand wanted to create something called the draw 4 challenge where creators with unique talents would enhance what they're known

[00:52] for by 4X so for example a nail artist might paint nails four times as colorful or a stunt man might attempt four times as many flips as usual or a pancake artist might make a pancake in the style of a draw 4 card in this scenario Uno

[01:09] didn't care about whether the Creator had an audience of 1000 or 1 million they just wanted a variety of skills to make the campaign as interesting as possible it's not all about your reach brands are not necessarily expecting

[01:24] your Instagram posts to go viral or your YouTube video to blow up what they get from you is an asset that they can use on their own platforms it's your experience and your credibility that counts and that's not tied to the size

[01:40] of your audience you have experience crafting compelling content you know what makes an engaging video you understand the differences between the platforms Brands won't think about you creating tailor-made vertical assets for

[01:53] tick tock or creating content specifically for Instagrams one-to-one ratio not only are you creating high quality the best tribute those assets across their

[02:08] platforms it's that expertise not always the size of your audience that Brands will pay for but getting noticed by a brand is another thing this is why you need to be crystal clear about your value proposition when a brand lands on

[02:23] your YouTube channel or your podcast or your community or your Tick Tock they your community or your Tick Tock they need to know who you are in the first 15 seconds yeah that's uh not for me they are going to make a snap judgment they

[02:37] are not gonna watch 20 of your videos or read a bunch of your newsletters to at your bio or scroll your feed or look at your website for literally five seconds but that is it you need to leave them in absolute no doubt that when they

[02:52] around they're gonna think we gotta hire that person and what is the easiest way to do this you probably guessed it niching down and you might think that this makes you less likely to get sponsored but that is one of the biggest

[03:06] myths by niching down you make your value proposition 100 clear any brand that lands on your profile now knows exactly who you are and whether you

[03:18] align for example I recently did a few one-on-one coaching calls with a Creator named Paul who runs the green industry podcast Paul has a daily podcast for people who run lawn care and Landscaping businesses and brands are beating down

[03:34] his door to sponsor him because there just simply aren't that many other people out there like him put yourself in the mind of the brand they are literally searching for videos on YouTube to try and find the next creator

[03:47] that they should partner up with so imagine the types of videos they'll be searching for right what keywords will they be using so remember get in their shoes wiggle your toes around a little bit and optimize your posts and your

[04:00] platforms accordingly so they'll be driven right to you having said that sponsorships aren't just gonna fall in your lap sure it might happen but the easiest way for a brand to realize that they should sponsor you is for you to

[04:13] tell them that's right you who can reach out to them if you can go to a brand with a compelling pitch about how you can help them achieve their business objectives they're gonna jump at the chance to work with you this can be

[04:26] especially effective with brands that don't have a consistent online presence a lot of Brands want to post more consistently but they either lack the time or the expertise to do it well and that's where you come in so when you

[04:39] approach a brand you're not pricing yourself based on your number of followers you're pricing yourself based on the value of the assets that you can create for them or the strategy that you're going to help them with but what

[04:52] do you say to them and how do you reach out well in my opinion the best ways to reach out are email LinkedIn and Twitter your first task is to try and figure out who is in charge of their brand Partnerships on LinkedIn this might be

[05:04] their influencer marketing manager or their digital marketing manager or their Partnerships team and then you write something like this hey Brand partnership manager I notice that you're looking to achieve X I am also

[05:17] passionate about X and you know what so is my audience here's a post I recently made where everyone went crazy for X I will help you achieve X by creating more content talking about X by the way I also helped this other brand achieved X

[05:30] free on Tuesday at 10 A.M to talk about it if a brand receives an email like this they are going to salivate and make sure you a B test your email subject lines too to figure out what makes Brands actually open your emails and

[05:44] remember Brands will love you if you actually reply to emails quickly I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of Brands and trust me they always prefer to partner up with a smaller responsive Creator over some million follower

[05:58] Hotshot who's impossible to get a hold of and that's why you as a small Creator have an advantage you're probably not getting flooded with sponsorship offers yet right there's no personal assistant picking and choosing which of your

[06:11] emails to delete you can make a hundred percent sure that when a brand gets in touch you're going to be the Creator that replies right away but you can also use Twitter Twitter is a seriously underrated way of connecting with Brands

[06:23] right especially smaller ones if you spend a few weeks interacting with the has less than a thousand followers as well by the way and then you show them that you're interested in their mission and then you DM them your name is

[06:36] and they'll know that you have a genuine interest in the brand so as for what to charge them well I go into pricing strategy in extreme detail in week two of my course brand deal wizard so if you need some help on that front just go to

[06:50] brand dealwizard.com or click the link down below to learn more so what's great about all of this is that once you have worked with one brand it is so much easier to get others interested because now you can say hey I just finished a

[07:03] fantastic partnership with this brand now now I'd love to work with you once the ball starts rolling things get easier and one of the most critical things to remember is that the fortune is in the follow-up you should always

[07:17] follow up with the brand especially after a successful partnership because awesome it was to work with you so this is the perfect time to pitch them on brand that you've never worked with following up is especially important if

[07:33] since your first message my rule of thumb is a minimum of four emails that's the initial pitch plus three follow-ups keep in mind these brands are busy just

[07:45] like you and you know how easy it is to let emails slip by you are not annoying Brands by offering to help them okay so you have to keep chugging because you never know how many thousands of dollars you are leaving on the table just by

[07:59] giving up after your first or second email so look we're not done watch this video If a brand just got back to you and you're are about to enter your first ever sponsorship negotiation oh boy I sure wouldn't want to go into that

[08:12] sure wouldn't want to go into that discussion without these tips