How to Work with Brands as a Creator: Getting the Collaborations

If you have ever wondered how creators work with brands, how to get your first brand collaboration, or where creators actually find the right people to email, WELCOME! We are sharing what we have learned from building The Sterlings and working with brands as a family lifestyle creator account.

And spoiler alert: You do NOT need a million followers to start working with brands.

You need good content, to put yourself out there, and eventually an engaged audience (depending on what brand deal you are working towards).

How Do Creators Get Brand Collaborations?

There are a few different ways brands and creators find each other.

A brand can reach out to you = inbound

But, you can find opportunities through creator apps (Insense, Cohley, Statusphere, JoinBrands, Billo)

Or you can pitch to brands instead of waiting for them to come to you. This one is important, but also the most intimidating. Sure you could post daily for 30 days tagging brands and making engaging content (which works), but you sometimes have to make someone see why they should choose you.

For us, we look for brands that can naturally fit into our lives and content. While we do NOT believe in the “niche down” side of things, we do primarily post the same few categories, but the good thing is that some are UNIVERSAL.

Example: a get ready with me. You are obviously going to be tagging hygiene, beauty brands, clothes, makeup, jewelry. BUT, you can change this up. You can have trending audio, tell a story about motherhood or finding skincare routine at your age. While trending audio and fast edits can get you seen, can it connect with people? Sometimes a voiceover talking about things you are going through can connect more than just a trending audio.

We are posting about family, traveling, things to do in our city, DIY, our fertility journey, how we navigate motherhood, and what our toddler loves (food and toys)… YOU are the niche. How you present it is going to get your followers. As a two mom family, posting about our relationship obviously pulls our LGBTQ community in, but posting about fertility (still a parenting aspect), pulls in our women going through fertility or thinking about it. The more I post about one topic, the more I am pulling that group in.

The best brand partnerships, typically stem from the ones that they see you already using and tagging them, or they see where you could slide them in naturally to your content you already have.

You Do NOT Need 100,000 Followers to Work with Brands

One of the biggest misconceptions about brand collaborations for creators is that you need a massive following.

Follower count is a piece of the puzzle, especially if you are looking for paid ads to flow through your page (because they want to reach a wide and engaged audience). Brands also look at engagement a LOT. If your community is saving and sharing what your toddler is eating and you tagged the brands you used for the recipe, brands WANT this.

Quality is also a major factor. Is your content crisp? Is it edited nicely? Is it keeping attention? Are you using the WOW sound effects and pop ups?

Consistency… This is a massive one, and a hard one to overcome. BUT HERE IS THE TRICK. If you are wanting to start posting daily, think about ways you can maximize your content. Turn a reel into screenshots for a carousel. A day in the life can easily turn into a video about your local restaurant.

How We Find Brands to Pitch

Our strategy is simple… start with the brands that make sense to you. You are using over 100s of different products, going to multiple stores (brands love when you go shopping in stores). Once you start recognizing all the different brands you already consume, here comes the not so fun part- finding the correct person to email.

If you have ever tried to find a brand’s influencer marketing email, you know it can be an adventure. Start with the website, social media, LinkedIn, and sometimes ChatGPT and Claude can find it.

BUT you don’t have to waste all your time doing that. We have combined a list of different emails we have tried, collaborated with, and reached out to. This list is like gold, if you know what to do with it.

–>GET THE BRAND CONTACT LIST HERE

We are continually adding to the list, so make sure you bookmark this post and come back to visit. Oh, and IT’S FREE, I want you to feel supported, because having the email doesn’t secure the win.

How To Pitch to a Brand

Once you have picked the brands you want to work with, you need to craft an email or craft a DM (Instagram is way better than TikTok on DMs).

A good brand collaboration email does not need to be difficult, and it does not need to be too long, because you want to get to the point and not have them throw it in the trash before even getting to the good part.

The Elements (+personality):

• Who are You?
• Why are you reaching out?
• What can you give them?

Example:

Hi Kleenex!

We are a two mom family to a toddler that started daycare and the amount of sneezes we saw at orientation was too many to count. We love having Kleenex on hand(in our bag, in our sons, on the nightstand, and in the care) and as a Nurse and content creator, I would love to bring to life content that showcases how families need your products.

We create high converting content in the form of UGC and show stopping paid ads that can catch viewers attention faster than you can catch a sneeze. With the holidays (and flu season) among us, it is the perfect time to get your product showcased even more.

Check out our portfolio where other brands have trusted us here and don’t make us wait too long or we may be using our Kleenex to cry in.

Add personality to your email to keep them reading. If you do not have a portfolio, don’t stress you can use this one here and pick up a few items around your house and make some practice videos.

I sent the email, what now?

Don’t panic.

Brands get a lot of emails, and the person you emailed, might not be the person responsible, but this is where you are going to show how eager you are. In 3 days, follow up. 3 days after that, follow up again.

I have noticed that emails do great Tuesdays and Wednesdays first thing in the morning, so I usually send them then and Monday at 8 CST. Ask 3 times before you move on.

A “no” or “not right now” means you know the contact. Save that. The end of the quarter reach out to see if they have budget for the upcoming quarter. Sometimes you will land gifted items in the beginning. I won’t say turn those down, because it is good to get a feel of it, but whatever you create, come back and ask for feedback, then ask to be on their paid roster.

Hey, you can do this. Feel free to message us with any questions you have.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, and come back to check what brands have been added to our CONTACT LIST.