How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer (2023)

How to reach out to brands as an influencer and secure paid partnerships in 2023.

This is by far the question I get asked the most from other influencers and content creators. So many of you are interested in learning how to reach out to brands and secure long term, paid partnerships.

So, I decided to create a series of blog posts answering all of your micro-influencing, blogging and content creation questions. How to make money blogging, how to pitch to brands, how to drive traffic to your blog, how to form long-term relationships with dream brands, how to create a content calendar and more!

How to reach out to brands as an influencer

Whether your a new influencer or you’ve been doing this for years, I think you’ll find this series extremely beneficial. Today we’re covering how to reach out to brands as an influencer, and everything that entails!

Top Micro Influencing + Blogging Posts:

How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer 101:

There’s a lot of information I’m going to share in this post, so I’m going to break it up into sections to make it easier for you to read! You can always skip ahead to a certain section or save this post to a Pinterest board so you can reference it later.

Section 1: Before You Reach Out to a Brand:

Before you actually send an email to a brand, there’s a bit of prep work you’ll want to do.

Research, Research, Research!

This is, undoubtedly, the most important step to complete BEFORE reaching out to a brand. Honestly, I feel like so many people forget about it. I’ve seen so many micro and nano influencers post their pitch emails to Tik Tok, and you can obviously tell that they didn’t do their research.

Brands receive A LOT of collaboration requests from influencers on a daily basis. So, you need to do your research and determine how you can set yourself a part. A great place to start when researching a brand, is their website’s about section.

Take some time to learn about their mission and core values so you can find similarities between your brand and theirs. What resonates with you? Why do you want to work with this particular brand and how can they benefit from working with you?

Then, take a look at their Instagram profile. What are they posting about? Do they have a new product launching soon? Are they currently working with other influencers? Based on what the brand is sharing on their social media platforms, I will then generate a list of ideas and concepts I can pitch to them on how we can work together. More on that later in this post!

Post Organically about the Brand

Brands like it when you tag them in your posts or repost their content on your socials. This could be as simple as sharing a few Instagram stories featuring the brand in the background (it doesn’t have to be a dedicated post) or reposting one of their latest Instagram posts.

If you’re constantly sharing a brand on your channel, the more likely a brand is to notice you. They might even reach out to you about a collaboration. I’ve had a number of brands dm me after seeing one of my Instagram stories that I tagged them in!

Follow the brand on Instagram, Tik Tok, etc.

When you pitch to a brand via email (or dm), they’re most likely going to check to see if you follow and engage with them on their social media platforms. I recommend following, liking and commenting on their recent posts and staying engaged with their content. This will show them you genuinely care about their brand/products and the content they’re putting out.

Prepare your Media Kit

Most brands are going to ask you to send over your media kit at some point during the negotiation process. It’s a good idea to have one on hand so you’re prepared when they ask. If you don’t know what a media kit is, it’s basically an online resume for your brand.

Your media kit will give brands a glimpse into your personal brand, audience demographics, social media analytics, the services you offer and your past work experience with brands.

If you need help creating one, I created a beautiful, easy to edit influencer media kit template that you can grab here!

Grab my exact Influencer Media Kit Template here!

I also wanted to note that I don’t attach my media kit to the first email I send to a brand. I talk more about when I do, versus when I don’t send my media kit here.

Know Your Analytics

Get familiar with your insights and social media stats because brands are going to want to see your numbers. Whenever I’m negotiating a paid brand deal, brands almost always ask to see screenshots of the analytics. This is because they want to gauge if the partnership will be mutually beneficial.

Remember, brands are looking for influencers that they think will be a good fit for their company and will help promote brand awareness and drive sales.

If the brand’s target audience is 35-44 year old females in the USA, but the majority of your following is 18-24 years old in Australia, they might decline the opportunity to partner together. The brand may think you have amazing content, but at the end of the day, if they don’t think you’ll be able to help them achieve their marketing initiatives, then they won’t want to work together.

This is just one example of why brands like to see your analytics. They may also like to see your numbers if your rates are higher than industry standard.

Reasons you may charge more for your content: exceptionally high engagement rate or awesome sales conversion rate when sharing products

If that’s the case, brands will usually want to see some proof of why you’re rates are higher.

Here are the analytics you’ll want to have ready to send over (if needed):

Number of followers on your social platforms
Average reach/impressions per post
Engagement rate
Male to female follower ratio
Top countries and top cities (where your audience is located)
Top age ranges
Average number of link clicks (on Instagram)
Number of pageviews per month on blog
Number of email subscribers

Some brands will ask to see your analytics from the last 14 days. Some will ask for the last 7 days of analytics, it honestly varies. But, if you plan on working with brands in a paid capacity, get used to sending over your analytics.

Section 2: How to Find Brands to Work With

Trust me, I know the struggle of being a smaller influencer and trying to find brands that want to work with you. I’ve been there! But let me tell you, there are actually a lot of brands looking for micro influencers to collaborate with! This is because micro influencers are typically known to have a loyal following and higher engagement and conversion rates.

Plus, micro influencers are more affordable! Tons of new brands and small businesses simply don’t have the budget to pay large influencers or for big marketing campaigns. So, that’s where you come in!

If you need help finding brands to reach out to, I have an entire post on how to find brands that want to work with micro influencers. Because that post details all the ways to find brands to work with, I will only share a few here!

How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer

One of the best ways to find brands to work with is by looking at other influencers’ Instagram accounts. Find influencers that are in your same niche and have roughly the same number of followers as you. Then, scroll through their posts to see what brands they’re partnering with.

You can do the same thing on Tik Tok too! It’ll usually say in the influencers’ caption if the post is sponsored! I also take note of the ads that pop up as I’m scrolling through my FYP. These are also brands that are currently working with influencers.

Another way to find brands is to search by the hashtags ad or sponsored on Instagram. When an influencer partners with a brand, they’re required to disclose the partnership to their audience. Most influencers do so by adding #ad or #sponsored to their posts.

So, when you search those hashtags, tons of sponsored posts will pop up! You can look through all of the posts and find brands that align well with your content.

Section 3: Finding the Brand Contact

This may be the hardest part when it comes to reaching out to brands, but it’s definitely the most important. You’ll want to do some research and find the exact person that handles the brand’s influencer marketing and their email address. It’s crucial to find the email address of their influencer marketing person because I’ve RARELY found success reaching out to the general email that’s listed on the brand’s Instagram account or website (ie. hello@brand.com or info@brand.com).

There are a few different ways you can go about finding the brand contact. The best way is to do a quick LinkedIn search. Type in the brand name and then filter by people. Most marketing professionals are on LinkedIn, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find the influencer marketing contact. The brand may also have a separate collab email set up for influencers to send their requests to. If the brand has one, you can usually find it on the brand’s website or in their Instagram bio.

However, if the brand has one, I can guarantee you that they are getting TONS and TONS of emails from other content creators and small influencers. So, I recommend still trying to find the actual person that handles the influencer marketing for the brand and sending your pitch email to them.

I talk more about my strategies for finding the right person to contact and how to easily find their email address in my Guide to Landing Paid Partnerships as a Micro Influencer E Book.

Section 4: What to include in your Pitch Email

I’ll give you a brief outline for how to structure your outreach emails to brands, but I won’t share my exact pitch templates below. For those of you that are looking for exact, word for word email templates and responses, I recommend checking out my 48 page, Guide to Landing Paid Partnerships as a Micro Influencer E-Book. This e-book shares 21 pitch templates and email responses that I personally use when responding and negotiating with brands as a micro influencer.

You’ll learn how to send an initial pitch email to a brand, how to follow up (and when), how to respond when a brand says they don’t have a budget, how to turn gifted collabs into paid brand deals, how to secure long term brand partnerships with your dream brands, how to pitch to PR companies, and more!

To give you a starting place though, below is an outline on how to structure your emails.

What to include in your pitch email:

Make sure to include a catchy, unique subject line
Address the brand contact by name (important to find the marketing contact’s info!)
A short introduction on you, your brand, your mission and the content you share
Links to all your social channels
Highlight what you love about their brand, how long you’ve been using their products, your favorite products, products you’d like to feature, etc. (don’t mention all of these, just pick a few)
Pitch a “specific” idea – do not just say “I love your products and would love to collaborate.” Do your research and brainstorm ideas on how you can showcase their product/service to your audience in a unique way
Highlight your best analytics (high engagement rate, high conversion rate, high number of Instagram followers, etc.)
Closing statement – something simple like “Looking forward to your response!” Or “I’d love to send over additional details!”

Make sure that your pitch email clearly shows the brand why they would want to work with you over another micro influencer. Show them what makes you unique and how you can help them achieve their marketing goals!

The Guide to Landing Paid Partnerships as a Micro Influencer

I wanted to talk a little bit more about my e book, because if you want to learn how to reach out to brands as an influencer, land paid partnerships and make a full time income from content creation, I created this book with you in mind. To give you some background info on myself, I started my blog back in Summer of 2018. I had just graduated college and I wanted a hobby/creative outlet. Honestly, I had no idea people were making money by working with brands or that it would even be possible for me to make it my full time job.

But, fast forward to today, I am now a full time entrepreneur! I’ve worked with over 75 brands and make over four figures a month from brand collabs alone. I’m also a Brand Collaborations Manager, so pitching, negotiating and communicating with brands is my speciality.

If you are an Influencer or Content Creator who is:

Struggling to land paid partnerships or negotiating pay
Lost when it comes to drafting a pitch email or responding to brands
Struggling to find the right brand contact to reach out to
Constantly hearing “I’m sorry, but unfortunately we don’t have a budget at this time”
Wanting to learn the strategies behind pitching and how to turn product-only collabs into long term brand partnerships

Then, this e-book is for you.

In this E-book You Will Learn:

How to ACTUALLY get paid as a micro influencer with under 10k followers!
How to pitch, communicate, negotiate and secure paid partnerships as a micro influencer
The 7 things you can (and should be) negotiating with brands for every collaboration
How to find the correct marketing contact to send your pitch to + how to find their email address (without fail)
How to perfect your pitch to increase your email open and response rate from brands
You will receive 21 outreach email templates and word for word email responses, our list of 50 brands that work with micro influencers, 30 influencer marketing platforms you can sign up for campaigns through and over 100 holidays, themes + seasonal ideas to help you come up with original and creative collaboration ideas that you can pitch to brands.

Bonus Content You Receive:

2 page customizable media kit template perfect for influencers, content creators and bloggers!
My collaboration organizer spreadsheet – you can use this to track all of your brand collaborations, deadlines, campaign analytics, brand contacts, discount codes, emails to brands and more.

If you’re interested in learning more, click here or send me a dm on Instagram!

Step 4: Schedule your Pitch Emails at an Ideal Time

Now that you’ve found the brand’s marketing contact/email address and drafted your pitch email, the next step is to schedule your email for the ideal day/time. I’ve been pitching to brands for years now, and I’ve found that pitching on either Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays are when I have the best response rates. I typically schedule my emails to go out in the morning (somewhere between 9-10am central time).

Personally, I try not to send pitch emails on Mondays or Fridays. Brands are usually catching up on emails or wrapping up for the week and don’t have as much time to respond to new requests on these days.

Again, this is just what I’ve found works best for me. You’ll have to play around with the days and times you send your emails to see what works best for you (and the time zone you’re in).

Best Practices + Extra Tips for Reaching Out to Brands:

Here are a few extra tips to keep in mind when pitching to brands.

Pitch Specific Ideas!

Do not make the brand do the work for you. Come up with unique and brand-specific ideas that gets the brand excited about the content that you will create. Show them what a partnership with you would look like and be SPECIFIC!

If I’m pitching to a natural skincare brand, I might pitch them the idea of an Instagram reel or Tik Tok video featuring one (or a few) of their products sharing how to get glowy, sun kissed skin. Or maybe sharing the best skincare products from the brand for dry skin. Something along those lines! Come up with a concept that makes sense for the brand and the current season.

Personalize each Pitch

Brands can tell when you copy and paste a pitch. So, along with pitching specific ideas, make your pitch personal! Tell the brand what products you currently use and love or what products you want to try. Tell them why you love their mission statement and values. If they launched a new collection or product, tell them what pieces/products you have been eyeing.

Don’t attach your media kit to your first email

I don’t understand why some influencers attach their media kit to their initial pitch email. Your media kit holds a lot of useful and valuable information about your brand. Before you hand all of that over, you want to gauge the interest of the brand to see if they are actually interested in partnering together.

Once the brand responds to your email, shows that they’re interested and wants to learn more, THEN you can send your media kit over. Do not send it over without knowing if the brand wants to work with you. It’s not necessary! I talk more about when or when not to send your media kit to brands here.

How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer Wrap Up

We covered a lot of info in this post, but I hope it was all extremely beneficial to you! Here’s a recap of everything that we covered:

How to reach out to brands as an influencer
The importance of doing your research before pitching!
How to find brands to work with
Helpful tips for finding the brand’s contact information
What to include in your initial pitch email
Overview of the Guide to Landing Paid Partnerships as a Micro Influencer
The ideal days to pitch to brands
Best practices and extra tips for reaching out to brands as a social media influencer

Other blog posts you may like:

This post shared how to reach out to brands as an influencer and land paid partnerships with your dream brands.

How to Reach out to Brands as an Influencer (2023)

How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer 101: