Aff links // Pitching to brands is a fantastic way to land incredible collaborations on your blog. I’m a firm believer in putting yourself out there and not waiting for things to land in your lap. And whilst it’s great when a brand comes to you, there’s no harm in seeking out those collaborations for yourself.
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
I’ve been pitching to brands for a few years now and I tend to switch it up each time. However, the way I’ve been pitching in 2020 has hands down been the most successful for me and I landed some amazing collaborations that year, including this one with Nordgreen.
Related Reads:
- Getting Your First Collab As a Blogger: 8 Things You Should Do
- How To Support Other Bloggers AD’s
- How To Make Money With A Blog For Beginners
My history with pitching until last year has certainly been a bit hit and miss. I’ve also been TERRIBLE with consistency, in that I would pitch to loads of brands for a month and then nothing for the next 7 months. Which is definitely something I’ve learned NOT to do.
There is a LOT of advice out there about pitching to brands and whilst there’s some fundamentals we should definitely be following, ultimately it’s trial and error and finding what works for you. Pitching to brands can be very daunting and scary at first so if you need some additional help, I’d highly recommend checking out the Blog To Business: Your Pitching Toolkit from Jenna Farmer.
Jenna has an amazing track record with pitching to brands so she is definitely the person to go for for advice if you need it. Her eBook helped me establish a better template for pitching to brands and consider the type of collaborations I wanted and was willing to accept.
She also helps you how to come up with packages to offer brands for the optimum success and payment and provides additional tracking sheets and cheat sheets to help you.
Now I want to get into some different ways to think of brands to work with on your blog! Here are 6 different ways:
Think of the brands you already use
This is an incredibly obvious one but should be your bread and butter because pitching to brands that you ALREADY use already gives you the leg up because it allows you to tell them what you love about their brands and products already. They already know they’re talking to a fan and you’ll be able to get much more personal with them in that way.
Backtrack and pitch to brands you’ve worked with in the past
This is a handy tip and one I’ve used regularly. If you’ve worked with brands occasionally for a few years, it’s always worth going back through your content to see which collaborations did well and pitching to those again. It’s likely that your blog following, readership and views have grown since then so you probably have more to offer than you did 3 years ago.
Brainstorm brands that would be a great fit for your niche
Although the brands under this category might not be brands you’ve used before, they will be brands that fit well within your niche. For example you probably wouldn’t pitch to a car manufacturer if you’re a beauty blogger. This point also gives you a great chance to brainstorm content ideas that will both fit in with your niche and the brand/s you’re planning to pitch to.
One basic example would be a self-care / wellness blogger pitching an idea to Yankee Candle for a post about How To Have The Perfect Self Care Night In. It ticks all the boxes.
Research which brands your competitors are working with
This is a really effective way to figure out which brands to pitch to because you already know that these brands are open and willing to work with influencers. For this one, I’d suggest identifying a few bloggers who are a similar size to you and in similar niches and checking out their Instagram and blog content to see which brands they’ve worked with in the last few months. As long as you’re not stealing their ideas, then there’s no harm in doing this.
See what content you have already lined up
Seeing what content you already have planned or scheduled can be a helpful way to garner which types of brands to work with. Going back to the above example, if you ALREADY have a blog post scheduled titled “How To Have The Perfect Self Care Night In”, you can think what sort of brands might be interested in being featured in such a post and go from there.
Re-pitch to brands you’ve already pitched to
And finally I’d recommend keeping track of all the brands you pitch to and chase them up if you haven’t heard from them. Preferably within 2 weeks of the original pitch. I’ve gained some collaborations this way just because the brand is particularly busy and your email just needs a little boost.
Similarly, if you’ve pitched to a brand a couple of months ago and not heard anything back, consider re-pitching to them with a new pitch and a new idea. Maybe they weren’t in a position to work with you back then or your first idea just wasn’t quite right for them.