Influencer Marketing: What Not To Do When Approaching Brands You Want To Work With

Much like social media, the life of an influencer's career is also a whirlpool of constant changes and challenges. One can never fully sustain the vicarious nature of this ever-growing platform. Anyone who's aiming to create a career out of this beast needs to know that they have to grow many folds at a maddening speed to keep up with the trends - but should it be done at the cost of staying relevant?

Every day, thousands of budding and established influencers reach out to brands aiming to crack a deal- but how many of them really succeed? We know that not every influencer is able to land the brand they want to work with, so how are some failing and some succeeding in this whirl? Where do you start? How do you know what's wrong in your approach and how other influencers are getting deals that you aren't? How do you know what's in and what's not?

1. Stop Shooting Blinds

There's nothing worse than generalizing your message while approaching a brand- you kill your chance. A lot of influencers shoot CLT+C - CLT+V their messages. They say generic things like I love your product, I like what you're doing, a fan of your work etcetera.

Sorry, this won't cut!

If you do intend to say that you love their product, talk about how your genre is relevant to what they're selling and how you cracking a deal with them will help them grow - talk about your audience, move away from vanity metrics like likes or follower base and talk about your engagement rate, CTR, CPE, CAC.

A travel photographer posting about hand-made soaps will get the company a bunch of leads, but this will be in no comparison to if the same is done by a lifestyle blogger who's trusted amongst her/ his followers.

2. Show them your media kit

A media kit is basically a resume, but for your website/blog/channel. Brands get hundreds of messages everyday for collaboration and most of the time it's not even the decision-maker who's replying to your query, so when you send a proposal, make it worth everyone's time.

Make a recurring doc/sheet where you have enlisted all your collaborations from the past along with all the hard metrics (metrics that make difference). Give a backlink to your posts, share screenshots of the positive engagement and sentiment. What brands/ decision-makers need to know is how working with you will help them elevate their marketing goal and in such a case, dull pitches won't work.

3. What to write?

It may seem like we're running in circles about emphasizing too much on what to write but yes, it really is that important. Having handled the Instagram account for one of India's biggest food delivery app, I can tell from my experience that influencers with over 200k-300k followers have sent many half-baked pitches which did cost them a chance to work with the brand. Laden with grammatical errors, generalization, no specific CTA, no contact details, no records of past performance - sorry, nobody has time to dig all of that.

To make sure that you give your best shot when you do reach out to brands, these are the essentials -

• Write a catchy introduction/ about your self
• Share links to your Instagram/ Twitter handle
• Share all your hard metrics

a) Engagement Rate

b) Overall Sentiment Divide (Positive, Negative, Neutral)

c) Monthly Views

d) Audience Demographics

• Brands You've Worked With
• Your Contact Details (Email/ Phone Number)

Just make sure that when brands read this, they're scanning your best points. In your pitch, make sure you start off by being very specific as to how you're going to bring in a difference and what result they can expect from you if they collaborate. If you get a chance to make a pitch via an email (scope for sharing more details), do talk about how your partnership went with previous brands in detail and what were the highlights of the collaboration.

Again, this should be pitched with hard metrics, for instance, the average CTR, link clicks, comments, shares, and saves.

Example Pitch

Subject Line: Collaboration with lifestyle blogger - 80k Instagram followers

Hey Rahul,

I recently ordered XYZ (brand's name) handmade gourmet soap bars from your website and it has worked wonders on my acne. My skin has never been so supple and radiant. I am a lifestyle blogger with a follower base of 80k on Instagram, 90% of which are females from across the country and they love hearing about my skincare routine. Check out the XYZ (brand's name) giveaway I posted on my personal Instagram <your handle> and my nighttime skin-care regime which has over 1000+ comments.

I have previously worked with brands like A, B and C. With A, I drove a 48% CTR with over XYZ sales in a week's time through the link that I shared on my Instagram story. I have attached a screenshot of the appreciation message I got from their marketing manager. They've sold XYZ in just 2 months.

I also maintain my blog <blog name & link> where I talk about all the products I endorse in detail. My blog sees over 30k page views on a monthly basis and maintains an impressive 38% positive sentiment across posts.

If this interests you, you can reach out to me at <number>. Would love to partner with you guys soon!

Thanks,

<Your Name>

As an influencer, you know what your strong points are, so make sure you highlight it. Brands are now running away from generic posts/ generic influencers, which is why niching down is so important!