How To Land Brand Deals With A Small Social Media Following
Are you worried you won’t be able to land brand deals as a small influencer?
Fortunately, influencers of all sizes are able to get sponsored by brands in a variety of different ways, including exclusive affiliate commissions and pre-negotiated CPMs.
In this post, you’ll find tips on how to land your first brand deal even if you have a small social media following.
Reasons why brands sponsor small influencers
Not only are small influencers able to land brand deals, some brands prefer working with them over larger influencers.
Whereas large creators have enough influence to target broad niches, smaller creators tend to target smaller niches in hopes of getting noticed by smaller audiences that exist within broad niches.
Because these influencers don’t receive nearly as many comments and direct messages as larger influencers do and there isn’t as much competition in these niches to begin with, these smaller influencers are seen as relatable and are able to connect with their audiences more.
This leads to higher conversion rates, a high selling-point for brands interested in influencer marketing.
Smaller influencers are also less likely to be working with other brands, which gives potential sponsors the opportunity to develop ongoing relationships with them.
Finally, because smaller influencers don’t bring in large numbers, they’re more affordable.
How to land brand deals as a small influencer
Improve your content
This is a great place to start when you’re struggling to land your first brand deal.
While it’s a tough pill to swallow, the reason why you might be struggling to get sponsored is because your content needs improving.
Or you could have great content, but you don’t create it consistently enough and barely have any variety in the types of content you create.
To improve your content, try these tips:
- Choose a posting schedule, and stick with it.
- Post multiple content types, especially image carousels on Instagram, Instagram stories, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts and long-form YouTube videos.
- Create a content series, and publish videos to it regularly. This could be a review series, a tutorial series, a project series, etc.
Increase engagement from your audience
When brands sponsor influencers, they’re not handing out charitable donations.
Brand deals are business transactions in which brands pay you to advertise their products. This means when they sponsor you, they’re expecting your content to increase sales.
Yes, it’s certainly true that a larger influencer is able to attract a larger number of sales for the brands they partner with, but that doesn’t mean your smaller audience doesn’t hold any value for said brands.
If you have a decent engagement rate that’s at least between 1 and 5%, you’ll be able to guarantee more sales for the brands you partner with.
To increase engagement from your audience, try asking them questions, quizzing them, creating shocking or controversial content, responding to comments directly, and addressing comments in other videos.
Start promoting affiliate links
Affiliate marketing is a fantastic gateway into sponsorships. This is because it’s more or less the same. The only thing that’s different is how you get paid and how much you get paid.
Plus, if you haven’t worked with a brand before, you can use your affiliate marketing conversion rate as a selling point when you pitch yourself to brands.
Choose affiliate programs for products that relate to your niche. This will maximize your conversion rate along with your affiliate income in general.
Make it easy for your brands to find your content
Some brands won’t notice you until you pitch yourself to them in search of a sponsorship deal. Others track you down.
To increase your chances of being noticed by brands, use relevant hashtags in your content.
This way, when brands are looking for new influencers to work with, they can input the hashtag into the platform’s search feature and see what videos come up.
You should also use keywords related to the topic you’re creating content for in the post’s title and description/caption.
Determine your unique selling point
All influencers have a unique selling point.
Maybe you have a higher conversion rate out of all content creators in your niche. Maybe you’re a person of color who can offer themselves up to potential sponsors to help them meet certain diversity quotas.
Maybe you have a unique storytelling style, voice or look that can get potential sponsors to say yes.
Whatever your unique selling point is, find out what it is before you move onto the next step.
Create a mock campaign
If you’ve never worked with a brand before, you don’t have anything you can show them to let them know what kind of content you can create to promote their products, other than your affiliate content.
Create a mock campaign by grabbing a product related to your niche (especially a product from the brand you’re pitching yourself to) and promoting it in your content without changing the usual content you create.
It may give potential sponsors more confidence in choosing to work with you even though you don’t have any experience in this arena.
Create a media kit
A media kit is a PDF you create to fortify the pitch you make to potential sponsors.
It lets brands know who you are, how large your following is and why working with you would be beneficial to them.
Here’s what your media kit should contain:
- Blurb that briefly describes what niche you’re in and what your content is generally about.
- Social media platforms you publish content to
- Follower counts you have on each platform as well as the overall follower count you have across all social media platforms.
- Audience demographics.
- Types of content you normally create.
- Average number of engagements, likes, comments and shares you receive from each post.
- Relevant affiliate marketing metrics, including your average conversion rate for affiliate marketing.
- Reasons why you and this brand are a good match. This should be changed for each individual brand you send this media kit to.
Set up a business email
You should have a dedicated email for business inquiries.
This doesn’t necessarily need to be a professional email address from a service like Google Workspace. It can also be something as simple as a professional-looking Gmail account.
Whatever method you decide to use, make sure it’s easily accessible in your About Me section for every platform you publish or even your link-in-bio page.
You can also leave your direct messages open, but this means you’ll need to be meticulous about sorting follower inquiries from business inquiries.
Find brands to partner with
Make a list of your favorite brands that relate to your niche, or at least, brands you know your audience would love.
For example, if your audience is primarily men, they’d probably enjoy learning about a new male grooming tool.
You can also seek out local brands as they’re less likely to be working with other influencers. They may also be open to taking you on as a social media manager if they’re small enough.
Finally, influencer marketing platforms are another possibility.
An influencer marketing platform, such as Upfluence, is a hub where brands can find influencers and vice versa.
It’s free to join and makes it easy for your brand to get noticed by potential sponsors.
Pitch yourself to potential sponsors
Once your media kit is complete and you’ve set up a business email address to manage inquiries, you’re ready to pitch yourself to potential sponsors.
Send brands a short email about who you are, what kind of content you create and a summary of the engagements your content receives.
Don’t include your media kit just yet, but let brands know you have one and can “send it over if they’re interested.”
Finally, include a brief summary about why you and this brand are a good match. Do you share the same target market? Have you promoted similar products in the past?
This lets them know your content has the potential to bring more sales for their brand.
Negotiate a deal
At some point in your back and forth with brands, the question about how much you charge for brand deals will come up.
In our post on how much money YouTubers typically make, we found data that proved that YouTubers make a CPM of around $8.00.
CPM stands for cost per mile. It’s a metric that determines how much money you make per 1,000 impressions. An impression is a view. It’s not the same as reach.
At $8.00 per 1,000 impressions, a sponsored post with 50,000 impressions would earn you $400.
Start your negotiations with a CPM that’s around $8.00, and go from there. Use the average number of impressions you receive per post to come up with a rate per sponsored post.
So, if you do receive an average of 50,000 impressions per post, you would charge around $400 per sponsored post.
Calculate the average number of impressions you receive for every content type you create, then use that number to come up with a different rate for each individual content type.
You can negotiate an exclusive affiliate commission with a brand instead, such as receiving 30% per commission when most influencers earn 15%.
Finally, if a brand offers to send you a free gift in exchange for appearing in your content, politely decline the offer, and tell them you’d be happy to send over your media kit if they’re interested in partnering for a paid promotion campaign.
These seem like generous offers, but they’re nothing more than cheap ways for brands to solicit free advertising from you.
Final thoughts
It’s totally possible to negotiate brand deals even with a small social media following.
Just make sure that you’re always putting your best foot forward.
Create the highest quality content you can and do it as consistently as possible.
Keep working on building your audience and increasing engagement.
Make sure you’ve got a business email and you’re easy to reach. And for when brands do decide to reach out, make sure you’ve got an updated media kit ready to go.
But remember that these things don’t happen overnight and you may have to be proactive and seek out brands yourself.
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