Knowing how to land a brand deal will take your music career to the next level!
Making money as a creative isn't just a positive.
It's one of the main goals.
Who wouldn't want to have a successful career in the music industry?
Getting a brand deal will get this done - a brand partnership with a growing business will bring success.
Posting sponsored content has these value benefits:
You want to get brands sponsorship as a musician!
Now, let's get you rollin' in dough.
Here's the podcast version of this blog! ☝🏾
If reading isn't your thing - I got your back.
I'm going to start this one off with a story.
Let's say there's a niche music business that sells producer drum kits.
We will call it BoomBapz (not related to any real company).
Now BoomBapz wants to promote their service.
The brand currently runs ads but doesn't see much ROI success.
For proof that sponsors want brand deals, just look at the search terms:
Companies such as BoombBapz are willing to leverage influencer branding (or influencer marketing) to sell their products.
These influencers help the corporation market its products to its fanbase!
The businesses find interested content creators, pitch the opportunity, then launch branding campaigns.
Now, both influencers and brands walk out of the deal with success.
The content creator (called influencers in this case) gets paid money!
BoomBapz gets really targeted influencer marketing - leading to sales.
The first example of an influencer is a hot babe in bikini pics...
In reality, a lot of influencers are just people that are well-known in their niche.
Brand deals can be given if you work with a PR company as well.
We've compiled the best music PR services here so you can further your search.
The greatest thing about getting a brand deal is financial compensation.
As the influencer, you are going to get paid for these partnerships.
But that's not all that happens.
When you do brand deals, it's so much easier to get more and more brand deals since you now have the sponsorship experience under your belt.
Your partnership experience with sponsors helps negotiate better terms in the long run.
What if you woke up today and were paid $100'000 cash in your checking account?
That's a great sum of money - what would you first buy?
Maybe a car, a new house, or even a trip to Gucci for a spending spree.
(The Gucci trip really should be your LAST priority.)
However, as a digital entrepreneur, you need to use your resources in a different, more strategic manner.
Here are a few business investments that could be bought with the money:
Without the money, you wouldn't be able to buy any of this.
If you're reading this you most likely don't have that liquid cash lying around, let's just be honest.
We can bring this budget all the way down to a thousand dollars.
Although not as extravagant, you can see growth in your personal brand with a $1,000 budget.
That thousand-dollar budget can come from brand sponsorship deals.
You see, the average deal is around $300 (many different factors at play)
Here are three ways to earn your first $1000 as an influencer:
That's the value of brand deals, it's a stepping stone in your influencer career.
Not to mention networking with businesses will open many doors.
Tens of thousands of doors will open up for you when working with brands.
Getting started is the easy part, the hard part is continuing.
This is what generally happens with the unsuccessful influencer:
Before I get into it I should just warn you: it's going to be a hard journey.
Fortunately, as soon as you get it going, it's all downhill from there.
No matter what you hear people say, businesses are not fundamentally evil.
I know there is a misconception that companies are out there to use you.
Listen, they aren't out there to dominate the industry and hold you down.
The whole purpose of a brand is to make money (I mean, it's still a corporation at the end of the day, so you must treat it like so).
That brings me to the next point: for a brand to want to work with you it must see that you conduct yourself professionally in your music career.
The first place where a brand will determine if they might want to work with you is your social profile.
If the businesses see things on your page that aren't up to standard then you have no chance at this.
The best and biggest social media influencers have great profiles (influencer marketing platforms).
Try to create a consistent theme with all of your content - make it very distinguished.
You can create a theme by using certain color palettes.
For example, Boost Collective has green as the main theme color.
Make sure you own usage rights - avoid copyrighted material.
There is more value in original quality content.
This is very important when it comes to getting brand deals.
What's your general posting style?
Mainly selfies?
Fashion and clothing flex?
Or just photos of you just enjoying life?
There are many post styles and it's important when sponsors look at your profile and determine how clean-cut it is.
You must build an engaged audience - aesthetics provide a great online presence.
You absolutely NEED to add nice visual effects to stand out!
Your aesthetic across social media platforms is what really makes you stand out and make other brands wanna work with you!
It should be a representation of who you are to stand out within your niche.
The majority of posts on your page should maintain a similar aesthetic style in all your quality content.
Example: A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator one is more skater punk fashion, and the other is high fashion killer.
Select an aesthetic that you're both interested in and fits your brand.
You must fully understand your audience.
By 'audience', I mean you are following as a whole across all social platforms.
You need to really dig deep and see exactly which kind of people are following you and classify them.
This is an important step when you are pitching your deal proposition to brands!
Some key demographics that you should take note of are:
You can find this in your Analytics.
We included this in our sample Media Kit, you should look at it as a reference when making your own media kit.
Please don't buy a bunch of bots and fake accounts to follow you and drive the numbers up.
The businesses will use sites like Hypeauditor and SocialBlade to verify.
The misconception influencers have is that bots are going to help them with social clout...
It actually has the opposite effect. If your engagements are much lower than normal, it's a bad look.
It's always better to have highly engaged but fewer followers rather than millions of followers with zero engagement.
If you want to grow your Instagram following, watch this video below:
You must be using tags in your sponsored content (in fact, in all quality content.)
Make sure that you include a tag mentioning that they're sponsored posts. It can look very dishonest if you are promoting something and not outright saying it.
Plus, you look more official and entrepreneurial by having these paid promotions.
The great thing about Instagram is that it already generates a "paid sponsorship" text for brand deals.
There are three types of tags that you should be using:
Geotagging is really important if your sponsored post is location-based.
Example:
Geotags allow you to tag locations - works whenever a user searches the location.
The algorithm can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.
As long as you're good with the algorithm then you can expect a positive outlook for your posts.
Following the Instagram algorithm will get your quality content naturally shown to more and more people. (The same goes for other platforms)
This helps you grow when used correctly, it's really important for getting corporate sponsorship.
Most people who go looking for brand deals often skip this part and lose deals because of it.
You must truly research the companies you would like to work with to find a sponsor that matches you well.
Go on Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets and write down a big list of different companies in your niche that you can pitch to.
When you're looking for sponsors try to keep the spreadsheet as general as you can.
The goal is to get as many names on that list as possible!
It's all right to search for small brands.
Oftentimes they are looking to expand and would be interested in doing brand deals as well.
If you notice that a lot of the brand's posts relate to you then you know it's a good fit.
There are different types of brand sponsorships.
You can negotiate a higher rate depending on the type you choose.
You can take a photo and highlight the product in the caption, explaining the value and benefits of the brand.
The review brand deal is more immersive, talk about the product and your experience with it.
Since this is more in-depth than the basic brand deal, you can expect a higher rate.
The third type of sponsorship is the giveaway - put the business product in the post while tagging the company!
As long as you understand the product and brand, you can easily decipher which type of sponsorship to pursue.
The media kit super highlights everything about your own brand in a small, neat deck of slides.
The brand can then just look through the media kit and see if you're a good fit.
Unlock our sample media kit here so you know how yours should look!
Your media kit must include:
Don't forget to tell your story of how you became who you are today and how it relates to the company.
Show the companies that both sides stand to benefit!
Explain how much your audience is going to react to the brand deal.
The best way to send a proposal is via a highly professional yet short email.
Getting this email right is super important!
If poorly done, your chances of getting the deal can go to 0% instantly.
Keep the proposal truthful, and impeccable, and keep everything on the table.
Don't lie to get the partnership deal.
Companies can see right through it and it ruins your reputation and future chances of getting the deal.
You need to collect the contact info for companies in your niche.
Try to connect with marketing people (or marketing campaigns) that are relevant to the brand deal - they deal with influencer marketing.
Their Twitter and email are best for business inquiries.
If not, find contact info or their social media platforms in their 'about us' section of the page.
There are free email-extractor sites you can use, not recommended but it's a decent last resort.
By browsing the website, you can also see if they have an established process for affiliates/sponsorships - follow through if they do.
If they don't say anything about sponsorship, it's time to pitch!
Your social media bio should be optimized with your contact information in case a company happens to stumble across your account and wants to do a brand deal with you.
These days, you can get started as an influencer on Collectively and begin to monetize!
This is where your business skills are put to the test.
Here you get to negotiate your prices, rates, and responsibilities in the brand deal.
You won't be paid too much money for your first sponsorship, but you still have room to negotiate.
Ideally, keep your fare similar to what other influencers with your audience size are charging.
The regular standard in the music industry is $10 for every 1,000 followers.
Pro tip: Throw in bundles of Instagram story posts, and tweets, and link your bio to the brand.
The best brand deals are reoccurring sponsored posts - you'll be paid side income coming monthly!
Remember that a lot of these big companies are super busy - they may not even see the email in the first place.
Go ahead and follow up if you didn't get to hear back from them.
If you still don't get a response, follow up after a couple of days again.
Try to connect with them through different media (email, social profile, website, etc.)
Have fun, go out there, and create the brand post.
You can get in a lot of trouble if you sign the deal contract and you don't commit to your end of the bargain.
Remember, it's a two-way street.
It's a lot of fun so go out there and enjoy these deals!
I hope you learned more about how to land a brand deal!
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