Why brands aren't responding to you

So yesterday I was chatting with my team of sponsorship coaches inside a Wizards Guild program about kind of a concerning trend that we're seeing across some of our clients. And I thought to myself, this is actually quite interesting. I should just make an episode about this. So here I am. So essentially what we're seeing is creators who are sending outreach sending pitches to brands. A lot of those pitches are going unanswered. Whereas historically they were breaking through. They were cutting through the noise. Or if a brand, you know, is emailing a creator, hey, you know, tell me your rates. Creator will respond promptly. And then the brand will ghost them. Or it takes like multiple follow-ups to kind of hear back. And then the brands like, oh, sorry, we're going on a different direction. Or sorry, you know, we're not, we're no longer recruiting for that campaign. And so I just want to first start by acknowledging that you're not imagining this. This is definitely something we're seeing. We work across hundreds of creators. And I think that there's five different reasons why this is happening. I'm not the type of person who I'm going to make an episode like this. And like, you know, the sky is falling. There's nothing we can do about this. No, I'm always the person that wants to default to action. What are the tactical changes or fixes that we can make in response to these things? So let's get into it. So the first point is that marketers are getting absolutely hammered by AI slop pitches right now at scale oftentimes, right? So I've spoken with a couple marketers about this recently. And somehow their email addresses have found, you know, wound up in these like databases, right? Like there's these tools now where, you know, they're like AI pitch generators or UGC tools or whatever. And they allow you to like email a hundred brands a day or something like that. There's zero personalization. And oftentimes they're using like these AI agents to do it. You're not even like manually hitting send on these emails. So, and so something that we have been recommending over the last six months or so video pitches. Video pitches are now the default, right? These are short. These are personalized. And it's just obvious proof that that a human made this, right? And so the composition of these pitches, it's very similar to the rope method that I share in my book sponsor magnet, but you're doing it on video. So you're leading with something that is relevant to them in the first, you know, five seconds of this, right? You're referencing a campaign that they ran or a product that they just recently launched or something like that, right? And then, you know, you follow up with organic content and you share your screen of something that shows that your audience has existing affinity for that campaign or that brand or whatever. You're talking about proof of how you've worked with other brands and then you're giving them something tangible and you're doing this in video form. Again, where do you send this email? Are you sending this via email? Yeah, you could potentially try that. What I like to do is include a moving gif, it's gif, not gif, by the way, a moving gif of the video pitch so they can see, oh, this is a person sending me an email, especially if you are kind of sharing the screen with their campaign, like they're probably going to click click on that video. But my primary tactic is a LinkedIn cold connection request. So I'm connecting cold to the, you know, the influencer marketing manager at that brand. And then I'm saying, Hey, you know, saw that you were doing XYZ, like kind of the relevancy part, I had a quick idea for how I can help you spread the word about that. And then I linked the video pitch, right? You know, if you don't, if you don't feel comfortable doing a LinkedIn cold connection request, you can do an in-mail, which is again, you need oftentimes, I think you need like a higher plan on LinkedIn to be able to send a certain amount of in-mail, which is in-mails like a DM on LinkedIn. But you can't send an unlimited amount of them. So I think it's worth it to actually upgrade to be able to send more of these types of things. And so I have found that tactic to be successful. And again, you know, preferably, you're following these contacts on LinkedIn first, you're engaging, you know, with a couple posts, then you're going to reach out so that you can kind of warm the relationship before they ask. Point number two is that the niche creators, the niche clients that we're working with are weathering this way better. I think because the more generic you are, if you're just a lifestyle influencer, you're a generic food creator, travel creator, and you don't have a particular niche, you don't have a particular subject matter expertise, the harder you're getting hit. The reality is is that the supply of creators, the supply of content is just way up. The reality is that budgets are tighter from a lot of these brands, and we'll talk about that in some future points. But niche creators are seeing far less disruption. Why is that? Well, if you have a specific audience that a brand has a hard time reaching anywhere else, then you're going to have leverage that, you know, a general like mom creator or something just doesn't have right now. I can speak specifically about one of our coaching clients, Dr. Alex, she runs a podcast called Digital Pathology Place. Right? So again, very niche. She's not getting hundreds, thousands, you know, hundreds of thousands of views. She's getting hundreds or thousands singular. But she's crushing it with brand partnerships because if, you know, if you're a medical device company, if you're a biopharmaceutical company, you don't have a ton of options. You don't have a ton of professional kind of creator options to partner with, especially if they're looking to invest in new media and not do the traditional advertising formats that they've done in the past. And so I think what is the tactical fix here? What is the action that you can take as a creator? If you have found yourself in this situation and you're a bit more, I guess generic in nature, get specific, get more specific about not just the content that you create, but in your outreach and your pitches about who your audiences and why they can't be reached anywhere else. What would be very helpful here is potentially pulling audience data that proves this niche, right? So if you have access to, if you've done surveys in the past, right, if you know the types of job titles, maybe you have a newsletter, right? And you've, you actually have collected data about job titles, maybe even HHI, which is household income, right? Maybe you could ask about that. The gold standard though is specific psychographic information, behaviors, what's keeping them up at night? What problems are they having, right? And so if you can position yourself as kind of like the only option or or a small handful of options, not one of just the faceless, many, your, your commodity, they could partner with anyone they want. Scarcity is going to be your friend right now. And so I think that repositioning your creator brand with this in mind is crucial. Now point number three, is about the macro landscape. The reality here is that we've been in this prolonged period where there is a concern about the global economy, about a potential recession. There's been headlines in the news about, you know, big companies reducing headcount because of AI, AI efficiencies. We don't need as many like actual humans, right? Other big ones, tariff chaos, right, hitting supply chains. You can imagine if you are a, let's say you're a CPG brand, right? Any consumer brand really. And you have been really hard, your margins have been really hit in a dramatic way because, you know, there's, there's unpredictability where you're manufacturing your products and then shipping them in and like, are you ensuring things? You know, I was just speaking with someone recently who has kind of been in an industrial setting and tariff is just wreak havoc on their business. You can imagine a brand like that is really nervous to invest in marketing and advertising because what if they spend, you know, millions of dollars, you know, trying to like spread the word about their product and then they, they have supply chain disruptions where they can't keep enough inventory for people to purchase. I mean, the small example of this is like, you know, I remember back in the day, April and I were doing a partnership with a jewelry brand. In fact, I talk about this example in my, or this story in my book sponsor magnet where they paid us a bunch of money. We created the content and then like the day before it was about to launch, they had a supply inventory disruption where they were out of stock on the product that we were literally about to promote. So this is like worst case scenario, right? They had, you know, outlaid capital to, to, you know, to hire us to talk about their, their product. And then now all this time, we're going to drive a bunch of eyeballs to the landing page and no one can buy it, right? What a nightmare, right? And so you can imagine this times a million times 100,000, the scale that a lot of these consumer brands are experiencing right now. And so instead of that dreaded scenario, they're thinking, okay, well, let's just be more conservative with our market or our advertising spend until there's, you know, a bit more certainty and things settled down. And this is the, this is the challenge is that things have not settled down, right? It's not like, you know, there's been some court rulings that said that tariffs are unconstitutional or illegal or whatever, but like brands are still being the thing to, the other thing to remember is that these gigantic brands, it's like a giant ocean freight liner. They cannot turn 90 degrees, you know, it's going to take them hundreds of miles, maybe not hundreds, tens of miles to turn this ship, right? And so because they've had such conservative plans, it takes them many, many months, maybe even years to course correct, right? And so I think this, this is the really, really, you know, challenging place that we found ourselves in. And so because those plans have been so conservative, it might take them six, nine, 12, 18 months to course correct. So what is the tactical fix here? Well, if you are a creator where there is a subset of brands, maybe those are B2B brands, maybe it's a SaaS product, right? A SaaS software, software as a service, those companies are going to be inherently less exposed to tariffs to supply chain chain disruptions than consumer brands. And so maybe starting to pitch some of those brands makes sense. And if you're already working with with consumer brands, maybe proposing like smaller or lower risk activations to kind of kind of keep the relationship warm, rather than just like losing the deal entirely, is going to start making sense. I think also, you know, just being practical here, reframing your pitch around, you know, the return on investment that they can see here, maybe it's not just awareness campaigns that you're going to pitch to these brand, maybe you're proposing that you're going to create some content that they can repurpose for paid advertising, or if you have a lot of certainty or conviction behind their product, maybe you are someone who's going to pitch a conversion focus campaign, you feel convinced that you can, you know, drive actual actions for this brand. Can't just stick your head in the sand and be like, oh, oh, everything's the same. No, everything's not the same. A lot has changed. Now, real quickly, before I go over the last two points, I wanted to mention, if you're a creator who is going through this right now, you know, you're still doing deals, but it just seems more unpredictable than it has in years past. We would love to support you inside our sponsorship coaching program, wizard skilled. You can click the link below to book a call with my team. And essentially we are there on speed dial for you to help you with, you know, your outreach, your pricing strategy, your packages, putting proposals together together, navigating tricky situations with brands. In fact, I am working with a creator right now who is chasing a brand for payment. And it's a really delicate situation because there's like an in person activation. They were supposed to be paid it, but they hadn't haven't yet. And it's just kind of a nightmare. And so these are the types of things. Like you never know the types of things that come up with brands. And so like, for example, in that scenario, how do you maintain the relationship with the brand and not, you know, fly off the rail and get super mad at them and you burn bridges. And then of course, now they're going to never work with you again. But again, at the same time, you need to be paid, right? And so how do you navigate that? These are the types of things that we, we would work with you to resolve. And so yeah, click the link, check it out below. We'd love to support you. All right. Now point number four, and this one's going to be a bitter pill, which is that your rates and your packages might need a reality check. You know, I know a lot of creators who are pricing themselves out of deals without realizing it, you know, especially if your rates were set during the kind of, you know, 21, 22, 23 boom. I don't know how many creators remember this, but like early on, you know, like let's say, let's say five years ago, especially like after the pandemic started, brands were like splashing cash, right? You know, the inbound was super healthy, you know, and they were willing to pay a huge amount of money for not, you know, not a lot of work. You know, again, brands were still kind of trying to figure out this whole influencer marketing thing. You know, obviously my wife and I have been doing this for a long time, but but that period is, you know, kind of squarely in the middle of the pandemic, brands were spending a lot of money. But the reality is is that brands have a lot more options now. They have more data now. They have software tooling that will tell them whether a creator has a fraudulent audience or not or a bunch of bots, right? That that software will tell them if their audience has existing affinity for their brand. They have software that will tell them they can slice and dice the audience demographics, you know, of like, you know, we want a mom, you know, who lives in the southeastern United States has kids between the ages of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, has, you know, her, her audience has this existing affinity, right? They have those tooling now that they didn't that they didn't before. And AI is also helping them, you know, again, find the perfect influencer for them. And so I think the this isn't about racing to the bottom, right? It's about how do you structure your deals smarter? And so I think the tactical fix here is there's there's there's there's actually quite a few different things that I think you can you can do here. The first is maybe consider including a performance-based component, right? Maybe there is some sort of bonus tied to, you know, promo code redemptions or link clicks, you know, maybe again, there's some sort of like hybrid deal that you can negotiate here where it's a instead of just a flat, you know, compensation where all the risk is shifted to the brand, you are receiving some sort of baseline compensation to create the content and then there's some sort of performance-based kicker on the back end. So it's 15%, it's 25% of each sale that you drive, right? And so how can we think of a more value-aligned compensation structure here where the brand, the perceived risk for the brand decreases and also it's signaling that you're confident in your ability to actually, you know, you know, drive an action. Other things that you can consider is, you know, maybe bundle deliverables more creatively, right? So instead of just dropping your rate and the brand is like conceding nothing, maybe there's some sort of additional value that you can provide, right? A newsletter mentioned, a social post, maybe this means also that you're thinking about other content formats that you can create, other distribution, you know, points that you have or you can say to the brand, hey, you know, in addition to the, you know, activating on social media and creating this like real or whatever, I've got a newsletter with 3,000 of my most engaged followers on there. How about I blast the promo code there, right? So again, the price starts feeling justified at the number that you that you actually want to get. Another solution could be proposing a longer term time frame where the brand is actually committing to work with you over multiple months. And then just like from a practical standpoint, can we be creative about the payment terms, right? Maybe a brand says, hey, I've only got, you know, 5K left and in the quarter two budget can't make this work, you know, you want 10K. Why don't you say, okay, great, like pay me the 5K that you've got left in this quarter's budget and the remaining balance out of quarter three budget. A lot of brands will say, I didn't even know you'd be willing to do that type of thing. And in fact, that could potentially open up. There's a story I actually share in the book also about this particular scenario, a creator mentioned this idea about stretching the payment terms to a brand and they said, you would do that for us. We didn't even know that was an option in that case. Instead of this 10K deal, can we lock in a 60K deal for the entire year where it's 5K a month, like an always on type thing? And the creator was like, uh, yeah, right? And so again, just don't don't assume that the brand is going to come to you with this idea. It's up to you to be to be novel, uh, you know, to get this deal across the finish line. Now point number five, I don't know why this feels like such a groundbreaking revelation when I bring this up to creators. Um, but it's that your warmest leads are already in your inbox, right? So, you know, if cold outreach conversion is down, right? You reaching out to brands, that's feeling frustrating. That seems like that's not working. You have to remember, like brands that you worked with a year ago or six months ago, those existing brand relationships are going to be so much easier to convert than brands who have never heard of you, right? It's that whole adage like that, you know, the easiest, you know, person to like convince to pay you more is the brands that have already paid you before, right? So by the way, this doesn't necessarily have to mean brands that have paid you in a flat capacity. Maybe there are affiliates that you've done great work for, uh, in the past as well. So they've, they've, they know that, you know, they seem proof, uh, that, you know, you can drive results. They, they know, hopefully they know about your audience. They've seen your content. Um, again, they've already done the internal approval process to work with you probably, right? You're already set up in their vendor paperwork system or whatever, or whatever. Right? They've got your W9 tax form or whatever they've worked with you before. They know what it's like collaborating with you. Um, and, and so convincing a past sponsor to come back is just infinitely easier than convincing a new one to take a chance on you. Uh, but by the way, I think I know the reason why most creators don't do this is that they're terrified of going back to those past brand partners and saying, Hey, work with me again, because then that opened the door for the brand to say, how dare you pitch us again? The last deal we did sucked. It didn't drive a lot of sales. It didn't get a lot of views, right? I know, I know that this is the reason, right? Um, and so what I always say is like Nelson Mandela has as one of my favorite quotes is like, you know, I never lose. I either win or learn. So when you go back to that brand and pitch them on another engagement, they're either going to say, Hey, great. Thank you so much for reaching out. We, you know, we've just been so busy. Yes, let's do it again. We've, in fact, great. We've got this new campaign coming down the pipeline. You'd be perfect for. They're either going to say that. And then I hope you would have no hesitation there pitching them on another deal, right? Now, but if they say, oh, we'll just win average, right? Or oh, you know, we were hoping that it would, you know, driven more sales or gotten more views or whatever. Great. This is information. It's now your opportunity to say, thank you so much for sharing that. I have some suspicions for why I think that is. In fact, there were some people in the comments section saying that they had tried your product, you know, on that last engagement, they said, tried your product. It didn't work for me. But I know that you've completely reformulated, you know, your, your products since, you know, the last three months or whatever. So let's make that the focus of the next engagement where we can re-educate the market about some update, you know, to your product, to your software, to whatever. And, and we just kind of go head on to that neutral to that negative feedback, right? We directly try to overcome those objections, right? And so I think that this is just a really, really important point here that the tactic, the tactical fix here is just running straight into it, right? So you are not sticking your head in the sand. You're realizing that, you know, brands are busy, you know, they're not always going to come to you. You know, even if they were thrilled with the work that you did last time, they're busy. Maybe they are under resource. They're understaffed. Someone got laid off in the marketing department, the person who, you know, used to work with with creators. And now all of that is on the affiliate marketing manager or the director of marketing. And they're doing all sorts of different things. They're doing the pay per click advertising, they're doing the billboard and bus bench advertising. Maybe they're advertising on, you know, broadcast TV. And they have to manage all these things. And maybe they have an outside agency that's not pulling their weight. And they're, they're just like overworked. And they've got, you know, their kid is sick at home. And they're, you know, they're, I have to cancel their vacation because they, I don't know, I like going off on down this rabbit hole in the stanza because all of these things are human problems. They're all human problems. And so if you can have this mindset of like, how can I make their life easier? How can I make this a turnkey thing? I already did good work for them. How can I reach out to them and serve it up for them on a silver platter and be like, Hey, you don't even have to think here. I've got this idea, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's exactly why we don't even get on a call if you don't want to just say yes or no to this is this look good. Here's what the investment's going to be like. Do you want to run this back? Sometimes just that alone can get you the deal. So I hope one of the big takeaways for you is that there's no single reason for this slowdown. I often hesitate to bring up the kind of macro landscape, the economy and all that because I kind of think it's a cop out. If you have that passive attitude, it's like it just feels like you're a victim. There's nothing I can do here. You just kind of take this stuff super personally. And if you have that attitude, and if you don't start adapting, you're going to be in for an absolute world of hurt. And I just don't think it's productive. I think it's way more productive to think, okay, again, what are the tactical fixes? What is the action I can take right now to start improving the situation for me in my business? Again, if you would love some support navigating this, check out wizardsgold.com, click the link below. We'd love to support you inside our sponsorship coaching program. Now, if you want to keep wallowing about how hard it is to get brand deals right now, I can help you. I can help you keep wallowing. So make sure to check out this episode right here.