As an influencer working with brands is crucial to you being able to pay your bills, however many brands have reported that while influencers are an important advertising source for them they’ve had a few issues with how they respond to certain situations, which a lot of it is simply the influencers being unaware of certain business practices, and sometimes a bit of immaturity on the influencers part, so if you want a brand to take you seriously and want them to work with you again, follow these 5 tips!
Always respond in a timely manner.
A brand rep goes to work typically 8-5 Monday-Friday, during that time they respond to the emails that come into them, if they send you an email on Monday at 12pm, try and respond to it by Monday 4pm, at the latest Tuesday 8am. The reason for that is frankly time is money, we all know that, and if you aren’t going to take the 5 minutes to respond to their email why should they continue to work with you. If you are going to be unavailable for more than a day create an autoresponder that says that and an additional contact source for you (ie manager, assistant), if you have one.
As just some food for thought on this, what if a brand emailed to say they loved the instagram video ad you made for them and they wanted to add on a full length version of that ad to run on your youtube channel, but for it to work with the current campaign run it would need to be approved and up on your channel in 7 days time. This would be an amazing opportunity for you financially and as an influencer, but sadly you didn’t respond until 3 days after getting the email and they went with someone else, maybe next time (if they work with you again).
Speak in a professional manner.
As an influencer you’ve seen those emails come in that says “hey babe” or “hey lovely”, those are marketing reps trying to speak influencer lingo and honestly it’s not cool, what also isn’t cool is when influencers send a proposal to a brand that starts with those same phrases, when influencers use profanity when speaking with brands, when influencers say “defo” instead of definitely, or my favorite is when influencers say “sorry but this Mercury retrograde really messed with my head, I’ll try and film next week after its out of retrograde”. Just FYI that last one was an actual excuse someone sent to a brand for why their ad was 2 weeks late, left speechless is an understatement.
When speaking with brands show them that your a business woman, you know what you’re talking about, and you came to play, by demonstrating to them that you’re a professional your accomplishing two things, 1. they see that they can’t mess you around, you will be paid your worth, and treated with respect, and 2. it makes them want to work with you again, you will become that influencer that brands love because you speak their lingo, you deliver quality content on time, and you do it all with a smile.
Deliver quality content.
This seems like a no brainer, but frankly I’ve seen some ads done by influencers that were shockingly bad, they were so bad that I felt embarrassed for them, they were so bad I felt embarrassed for the brand, so when you’re getting paid to deliver quality content, act like it! Put some time into developing a unique idea, make sure you get plenty of film or images so you have plenty to play with in your editing, and make sure it feels natural, no robotic script reading allowed!
Promote the brand.
You’re getting paid to promote this brand, so actually promote it by placing a link for your followers to find the brand, this again seems like a no brainer but is becoming less and less frequently done. If you do an instagram grid ad place a link in your bio for them, doing this with link tree means they can still find your website, youtube channel , shop, etc, as well as the link for the brand you just advertised. I would say leaving the link up for 48 hours would be good practice. This is something that brands will come to recognize about you and will set you apart from the back so make sure to mention it in your proposals.
If you’re doing InstaStories tag the brand and do a swipe up for them, and on facebook and youtube include the link in your descriptions and post.
Send a thank you to the brand.
After you’ve completed your business with the brand and you’ve been paid, send a cute little thank you to the Brand Rep you worked with, it shows how classy you are, and also reminds them that you were a dream to work with and they should work with you again. Also at the end of every year send a holiday card to all the brands you worked with that year thanking them for trusting you with their brand and advertising needs. This again reminds them how amazing you are and makes them want to work with you in the coming year.
I hope these 5 tips will help you hone your working with brand skills and if you have any specific questions or comments please leave them in the comments.
