Watch the Live Presentation and Q&A with Candice Ward from the Confident Pitch to go over all your questions as a content creator about how to find and land the right brand deals.
- Watch the Replay
- About The Confident Pitch Program
- How to Find the Right Brands to Work With
- How to Qualify a Good Prospect
- Discovery Calls
- Client Experience
- Resources
Watch the Replay
About The Confident Pitch Program
The Confident Pitch Program is the most comprehensive program of its kind that offers a step-by-step pitch process built for Food Photographers who are committed to taking their business to the next level.
Here is the thing…By the end of the 14-days, you will have received access to all 4 modules, templates, and tools needed to start building momentum in your business. Meaning, that you’ll have had the opportunity to start creating processes in your business and implementing our ideas with clients.
If you don’t feel that The Confident Pitch Program has helped prepare you for success in business planning, pitching, and landing clients, simply reach out to us, show us you put in the work, and we’ll refund your investment.
How to Find the Right Brands to Pitch
“Focus on creating value and building trust with your potential clients” – Candice Ward.
Start with prospecting. A prospect is anyone you’d make a potential client, any potential brand you would work with. First, you need to qualify your prospects. Often we hear things about brands that want to work for free. But we need to qualify and find the right brands. This will maximize your efforts.
4 factors that must align for a brand to buy from you!
- 1 – Need: It’s our job to uncover the need of the client. You are a consultant and they need you to help with their pain points. You can jump on a discovery call to see what their needs are. Or research a brand and see if they need something.
- 2 – Budget: If a client is concerned with budget, they are likely not sold yet on the value or cost of your services for the gain or reward. There are ways to gauge if they pay…check out their IG to see if they work with other partners, do they have ads, do they work with an agency? This will show if they have ad/marketing money to spend.
- 3 – Timeline/Bandwidth: If they have a NEED and BUDGET, they must also have an established timeline or sense of urgency in order to buy. Reaching out to marketing people at a brand or agencies, sometimes we think they aren’t interested. But sometimes they are just busy! You need to create a timeline by saying something like “we could work on some summer content, here are some ideas”. Create a sense of urgency.
- 4 – Desire/Trust: The brand must be up to date with marketing strategies and be convinced that you are the right person for the job! Sometimes those who don’t post regularly or do partnerships, it actually might be hardest to convince them to see the value in those partnerships. First, they have to buy into influencer marketing, but this is a lot and sometimes not worth the effort. Look for brands who are already doing these partnerships.
How to Qualify a Good Prospect
Step 1
Create a list of potential brands to reach out to. Make sure they meet the above criteria before pitching.
How to find brands:
- Look in your pantry and grocery store aisles and find brands you use and love.
- Who are you getting ads from on IG? They likely have budget.
- Google food products in your niche, which ones show up on the 2nd and 3rd page of Google.
- Local Food Brands and Restaurants.
Step 2
Research the Brand to Uncover a Need
Things to look for to identify their needs:
- How active are they on social media?
- Do they have any recent features?
- Do they have a blog?
- Are they using consumer images + stock photos?
Example: If you uncovered that they recently rebranded their products or launched a new product…
Another big question when researching is who is the brand trying to reach? Who is their target audience? Show them how you could target them and show ideas for that to build credibility and trust. You need to position yourself as an expert “idea generator”. All brands need content.
Step 3
Find the Right Contact
Find and build a connection with the brand on whatever platform they are active on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Wherever they are active, you want to be on there. If you are on LinkedIn you can check out the marketing department on LinkedIn and even connect with those people on there.
But in the end, your pitch email is more important than emailing the “right” person.
Where to look:
- Use social media (IG, TIkTok, Facebook)
- Website to find the right person that handles marketing (titles to look for: VP of Marketing, Creative Director, Social Media Manager, PR/Influencer Relationships)
Social Media Manager and Marketing Manager or Director are different. SMM is going to care more about the performance of social campaigns and metric. Marketing Managers will care more on the macro-level and sales, ROI, etc.
DM Example:
What is in it for the Brand
Keep brands engaged by always reminding them, what is in it for them. How can we give them more and meet their needs?
Client experience is vital. Our role is to create content that helps our clients solve a marketing challenge. What challenges might they have? Don’t have access to a certain type of audience. Don’t have enough reach with their product. They have competitors.
Why would they work with you? They lack the bandwidth to create content. Lack of resources of professional images/videos.
Create work that performs for the client.
Discovery Calls
The goal of a discovery call is to:
- Establish a relationship between you and the potential client
- Uncover the customer’s specific marketing needs
- Show value by aligning your services to help the client overcome their challenges
Example Discovery Questions:
- Which products are a focus for the marketing team this season/quarter? Why?
- What are you hoping to achieve with custom brand imagery? Actionable or measurable goal?
- What type of content is your audience currently responding to? Not responding to?
- Is there anything you would like to incorporate into your marketing strategy?
Client Experience
This is number one in repeat clients and long-term partnerships are happy clients.
- Start with a kick-off call to align on specifics of the job, shoot, props, styling, etc.
- You can also send a welcome packet that includes a FAQ document. It can really clearly outline the process and any repeat questions.
- Mood board to align with visual, style, props, and colors.
Resources
- Slide Deck: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFAOazzQRQ/A51qZfG1-CNYl-RzY8TcPw/view?utm_content=DAFAOazzQRQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
- Free Download- Brand Questionnaire: https://candiceward.mykajabi.com/pl/2147536209
FAQ BLOCK
Yes, you can pitch multiple ideas in the pitch email. This broadens your chances of being picked up!
Getting the first client is overwhelming. Show them your portfolio, whatever imagery or videography you love the most. It doesn’t have to be paid or partnership work. It can be super helpful to create things that could go into that brand’s vibes. Communicate the value to them. Send a pitch email and talk about your audience, your work, etc.
Send discovery questions, one should always ask for budget or budget range. This will help you gauge if this is even in the realm. Your pricing should be more than their budget. You want to pitch higher so you can negotiate down if needed. Then you change your deliverables if needed. You can show them for your rate here is the lower deliverables. Or here is my higher rate with the deliverables you wanted.
Make another ask. Do you do sponsored posts? Do you need something like recipe development? Blog posts? What do you need that I can support you with? Do you need me to come back in 3 months? 6 months?
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