How To Find Brand Deals & Paid Sponsorships For Instagram (2022)
Are you an Instagram influencer who's struggling to find brand deals & paid sponsorships?
If so, then this article is for you.
In this post, l will quickly share with you a 5 step process that you can follow in order to find & secure brand deals.
The process involves the following steps:
Without further ado, let me explain each of these in great depth.
1. Have A More Specific Niche
As obvious as it sounds, most ‘influencers’ ignores this issue.
Most Instagram influencers thinks that they'll get more followers when they go too broad – which is not always true.
If you're someone who posts all-rounder content i.e. from fashion to food to entrepreneurship, people will be confused in knowing about what to actually expect from your account.
It's important to choose a more specific niche – so that you can attract the right audience for your content.
Not only that, but brands also like to work with someone who's more focused on a more specific niche i.e. they want to know if their products/services are ideal for your audience or not.
Thus, you should niche down your content – so that you can attract the right audience – and hopefully, the right sponsors to work with.
2. Build An Audience Around That Niche
Once you've decided on your niche, it's important to start building an audience around that niche.
I always hear people complaining about not getting brand deals – but when l check their accounts, l realize that they don't have any following.
If you have little to no followers, it's very difficult to convince brands to work with you – because they wont see you as a good person to trust with their products/services.
In other words, you'll be regarded as someone without any social proof.
The truth is that, brands only works with you because they only want to get access to your followers – not necessarily you.
Thus, you should focus on building a real following of people who knows, likes, and trust you – because if people trust you as a person, they'll also trust your recommendations.
Now, some people always ask this question;
‘Can l buy followers ASAP – because organic growth strategies takes time?’
The truth about buying followers is that, you'll be just buying numbers – not real people.
You'll get a ton of bots which doesn't engage with your content – thus, your analytics will be messed up.
And that's leads us to the next step which is – be data driven.
3. Be Data Driven
Once you start building a following, you must be very data driven – rather than just focusing on your follower count.
As mentioned earlier, buying Instagram followers will get you a ton of bots – which doesn't engage with your content.
As a result, your analytics will be f*cked up – and brands will not work with you if your analytics are not pleasing.
For example, if you have 1 million followers – but you only get less than 1k likes on your posts, it means that your followers are less engaging – and if brands sees this type of scenario, they wont be incentivised to work with you for one reason;
They'll get a less ROI for their campaigns – thus, they'll incur losses rather than profits.
If people aren't engaging with your free content, what makes you think that they'll engage with a sponsorship post which asks them to buy something?
Thus, it's important to always monitor your data – so that your analytics stays on track.
4. Know Your Worth
The next crucial step is deciding how much you're willing to accept for sponsorships/brand deals.
This is so important because when brands approaches you, they want to know your rates – so that they can see if you're the right fit for them or not (budget wise).
And if you don't have an idea about how much you should charge, you might end up overcharging these brands – which scares them away.
Or in some cases, you might end up undercharging them – which results in huge losses on your part.
If you're not so sure about how much you should charge, you can use a tool called Social Bluebook.
This tool basically gives you some rough estimates of how much you should charge i.e. through comparing your competitor's estimated rates (for the same audience range).
Thus, this tool will give you a benchmark or guideline for your pricing.
Another important thing is to charge based on opportunity cost i.e. if you spend the same amount of time & effort on other things, how much would you roughly make?
5. Pitch Brands
Once you've completed the previous steps, it's now high time to start pitching some potential brands.
Most ‘influencers' makes the mistake of just sitting – waiting for brands to approach them.
Although you might manage to get some deals here and there, you might spend prolonged periods without getting any deals.
The reason being that, there's so much competition on the Insta platform – thus, brands have plenty of options to choose from.
Thus, it's important to reach out to brands – so that they can know of your existence – hence, increasing your chances of getting sponsorships.
When approaching these brands, it's important to be precise about what you have to give to them – instead of just focusing on what you want from them.
Instead of just asking about free products and money, you must convince them that they'll get a good ROI when they work from you – through providing some proof that your audience is the right fit for their products/services.
Thus, you should be clear about what these brands will benefit from working from you – otherwise, it might be quite difficult to convince them to collab with you.
Wrapping Up
So that's all the steps that you need to take to get brand deals and paid sponsorships as an Instagram influencer.
Once you follow these, you might land some great deals for you and your audience.
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