Guide for creators
How to pitch brands as a creator
Pitch brands you already use, address a named person rather than a generic inbox, open with a specific idea for their product rather than your follower count, include one link to your media kit, and follow up twice before moving on.
Most creator pitches fail for the same reason most brand outreach fails: they are about the sender. A brand receives dozens of messages listing follower counts. It receives very few proposing a specific piece of content it can picture.
1. Build a list of brands you actually use
Start with products already in your life, then add the brands that sponsor creators in your niche, which you can find by looking at who your peers have tagged as paid partners in the last few months. A brand already spending on creator marketing needs no convincing that the channel works.
Twenty well-chosen brands will outperform two hundred generic ones, because the specificity of the pitch is what converts and you cannot be specific at volume.
2. Find a named person
Look for an influencer, partnerships, brand, or social marketing manager on LinkedIn. A message to a named person outperforms a contact form by a wide margin, because the form goes to a shared inbox nobody owns.
If you cannot find a person, the brand's own creator application page is the next best route, and a direct message to the brand's social account is the last resort rather than the first.
3. Open with the idea, not your stats
The first two lines should describe a specific piece of content you would make for their product. Name the product, the format, and the angle. This is the part almost nobody does, and it is the part that gets replies.
Your audience numbers belong in the third or fourth line, once the reader has a reason to care about them.
Common mistake: Leading with follower count. It invites an immediate comparison against every other creator in the inbox, on the one axis where someone will always beat you.
4. Prove it with one relevant result
One sentence with a real number from comparable work: a post that reached a certain audience, a code that drove a certain number of orders, a video that held attention. One concrete result outperforms a paragraph of description.
If you have no paid results yet, use your closest organic post and label it as organic.
5. Include one link, and make it your media kit
A single link to a hosted media kit gives them everything else: platforms, demographics, past work, rates. Multiple links and attachments reduce the chance any of them is opened.
Close by asking one clear question, such as whether they are planning creator work this quarter. A pitch with no question is easy to leave unanswered.
6. Follow up twice, then stop
Send one follow-up after about a week and a second after another two, each adding something small rather than repeating the first message. A meaningful share of deals come from the second or third contact, because the first arrived in a bad week.
After two follow-ups, move on and revisit in a quarter. Persistence beyond that costs you the relationship.
Common questions
- How many followers do you need to get brand deals?
- There is no threshold. Nano creators with a few thousand engaged followers in a clear niche are routinely paid, and UGC work has no follower requirement at all because the brand publishes the content itself. Specificity of audience matters more than size.
- Should you pitch a brand you have never used?
- It is much harder, and it shows. Brands can tell the difference between a creator who has used the product and one working from the website, and so can the audience if the deal happens.
Terms used in this guide
- Media kit
- A media kit is a short document or page a creator sends to brands that summarises who their audience is, how their content performs, which brands they have worked with, and what they charge.
- Outreach
- Outreach is the first contact a brand makes with a creator about working together, and the follow-up that turns interest into an agreed deal.
- Brand deal
- A brand deal is a paid agreement in which a creator produces and publishes agreed content for a brand in exchange for a fee, product, or commission.
- UGC creator
- A UGC creator makes content for a brand to publish on the brand's own channels, rather than posting it to their own audience. They are paid for the content itself, not for distribution.
- Rate card
- A rate card is a creator's published list of prices by deliverable, for example a set fee for a feed post, a story series, or a long-form video.