Steps to securing a brand partnership
We’ve all acknowledged that touring, releasing music, even making music comes at a price that often may be a bit too high, but what if there was a way to ease those costs? Brand sponsorships can benefit an artist in many ways, especially when it comes to filling your wallet and pushing you into the lives of more people.
Get Ready
Before you sit down with a brand, it’s best to know your career budget and expected financial costs. The more you’re informed on your projects, budgets, and career planning, the more convincing you can be for your future sponsors. In the budget list, include some of these costs you may face with equipment, studio time, travel expenses, lodging expenses, and more. Before you come across any deal, don’t forget to analyze your audience. Your audience can help you seem more appealing to a brand because of the potential crowd you can bring in. Pushing a product that doesn’t necessarily suit the age group or vibe of your audience can lead to bad press. Almost like how if you were to collaborate with an alcohol sponsor, but your crowd consisted of minors. It wouldn’t make sense to do so. It doesn’t quite benefit either end of the partnership. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more can give you detailed analytics on your audience. By retrieving information like your audience’s demographics, interests, and reach, you can figure out which brands are most ideal to collaborate with. That, of course, requires you to do some research on brands.
Work your worth
It’s always important for you to sit down and assess what you bring to the table as an entertainer. It’s key for you to assess this so you can respect your worth and do some work accordingly, rather than allowing a brand to misuse your platform. Keep your mind open to take into consideration if you have a large following on social media, industry connections, if you’re willing to try out new events and opportunities, and more. Don’t forget that while you can focus on a big brand to collaborate with, you need to work your way up. With the rise of social media, it is very easy to pair up with a brand and land a couple paid promotions through platforms. Brands search avidly for influencers to deliver the right products to their target audience, which you may have. Some interesting sponsorship ideas that may come your way could be appearing in a brand’s new campaign, connections to media, press shoots, interviews, product placement in videos, shoots, social media, building on past festival sponsorships, and branded state signage.
Look and land
Reaching out to people can be as easy as the click of a button. Your presence on platforms alone can bring you one step closer to the eyes of an interested brand. LinkedIn makes it simple for you to reach out to people working more in the marketing, endorsement, and public relations fields of brands. If you’re looking at working with a smaller brand, you could maybe even aim for the founder. There are also online platforms that allow you to add yourself to various networks and marketplaces where brands usually search for talent to book. Celebrity Endorsers, Revfluence, and Booking Agent Info are some websites that brands use to find their next influencers. Revfluence even allows you to manage your influencers, check out how to here.
Sell yourself
Let’s say you’ve found a brand that you’re interested in and would like to reach out to them. Where should you start? Set up what you want to say in an email, just some simple bullet points with important career moments. Keep in mind what the brand may be going through at the time and try to make sure that you reach out to them when they’re not in any turmoil, whether it be social or financial. When compiling what you want to include in the email, make sure that you sound confident in your writing without using uncertain words such as “think” and “might”. Start off by introducing yourself and some of your most recent work, slowly easing into talks of a sponsorship. Then, continue on by mentioning how you’re certain that you will help them grow in multiple aspects (go in detail whether it be with customer growth, social media growth, etc) and what you desire in return. Take it a bit further by talking in detail on what you can offer, demographics and interests of your audience, upcoming shows, plans, and more. Now it’s time to talk about how you are ideal and beneficial for the brand and where you and the brand align. To end the email on a more smooth note, link them to some of your content, platforms and don’t forget to slip in a confident “I look forward to speaking to you more about our partnership”. Whether you’ve made it to the next step or not with a brand, don’t forget to follow up with a quick message of appreciation for their time.
Once you’ve landed a brand sponsorship by keeping these guidelines in mind, make sure to keep the communication clear and to deliver on every promise made. It’s important to grow the relationship once it’s been established as both parties have the wish to excel. Build relationships and work your way into larger sponsorships with experience from previous ones.