Make Your Pitch About Them, Not You

One of the most common messages I receive is:

"My videos/podcast/posts/events are killin' it right now! I get XYZ,000 views/downloads/impressions/attendees every month. Can you help find brands to sponsor me?"

Now, on the surface, this is a reasonable question. However, there's a critical flaw with the framing of this mindset:

It's not about you (sorry).

Firstly, when you reach out to brands, your pitch has to focus on them rather than you.

I know how stoked you might feel that your latest podcast episode got five times the usual downloads, but the brand doesn't care. They don't know who you are.

OOPS. They just deleted your email.

Your #1 priority must be articulating how to help the brand achieve specific business outcomes. Outcomes that are rarely as simple as "get more views."

"Wait, hold up, Justin! Won't brands be excited about getting tons of eyes and ears on their products/services? My audience is a perfect fit for their brand!"

Not really. Again, they don't know you. And there are lots of people on the Internet with large audiences/reach. Delete.

Remember, even if you're trying to pitch them something you feel is "low-risk," they don't have heaps of cash lying around to pay random people who reach out.

There's another huge problem here: it's terrible for you, too.

If you somehow land a deal, you're now trapped with a sub-optimal rate precedent and it will be extremely difficult to negotiate your way out of that hole down the line.

What happens when you start doing even better than you are now?

One of the most significant opportunities for creators I coach is helping them detach their rates from their views/downloads/impressions/audience size.

This is often a giant barrier to landing lucrative sponsorships, especially for smaller creators.

A critical mindset shift is realizing that while brands don't have piles of cash lying around to sponsor your viral content, they do have piles of cash already allocated for their internal initiatives.

So your job is to research and identify those initiatives by:

• Analyzing the content they're posting or campaigns they're running

• Reading their press releases & interpreting their marketing strategy

• Sleuthing through their job boards to see what they need help with

• Asking them directly

Once you have the brand's objectives, you can submit a comprehensive proposal illustrating how sponsoring you and your business will help them achieve those desired results.

Want to know what will happen next?

Your contact will then forward that along to their colleagues/boss (or client, if it's an agency), have a pow-wow, and then collectively decide,

"Let's just slide $20,000 of our marketing budget over to this person because it seems like they'll get us closer to our goals."