How to Work with Brands for the Holidays

If you’re a creator who is feeling overwhelmed about the upcoming holiday season, no fear. How can you work with brands for the holidays, you ask?

Well, today I’m sharing all the must-know tips with you about preparing to land brand partnerships and monetize hard during Q4 as a content creator or influencer.

What you need to know about the holiday season

Brands typically have a larger budget.

Because the fourth quarter is one of the biggest spending periods of the entire year for consumers, it only makes sense that many brands want to do their biggest advertising and marketing push during this time of year. They’re making more money, so they’re willing to spend a bit more too.

Most brands work far in advance.

You definitely might have some brands reaching out to you in later October, November or even the start of December, but most brands - especially the ones with larger budgets - are going to have their influencer roster nailed down pretty far in advance. We’re talking end of September/early October.

This means that you’ll want to work in advance too - sending out pitches now (the start of September) so you can get your foot in the door before they spend all of their creator budget.

Multi-post partnerships are more likely.

This is the time to really sell yourself and a campaign with multiple posts. Typically, repeat exposure leads to better conversion of your followers turning into customers, so if you can work it out with a brand where you’re posting October, November, and December, that means more money for you, more consistent work, and likely more income for the brand.

A brand’s goal is likely sales.

Throughout the year, many brands will have different goals vs. just sales. For example, they may hire you for content repurposing (the ability for them to have you create content for them to use) or brand awareness (they want your audience to know that their brand even exists.

But, during the holidays, the brand likely has a goal of pushing sales more than anything else. Again, they’re spending a lot of money during this time on advertising, they want an return on that investment while people are more likely to be spending their money.

Your creator pre-pitch checklist.

✅ Ensure that you have a consistent content style. No brand wants to work with a creator who they just don’t know what they’re paying for. Do you sometimes create beautifully produced, editorial style photos and then the next day it’s a selfie? This might confuse a brand and make them more hesitant to dish out cash.

✅ Encourage your community to engage in your content. Engagement is incredibly important to brands because they want to know that you’re audience is actually going to care about what you say. Try to get your engagement to a 2-3% before you start pitching.

✅ Make sure you’re in a consistent posting schedule. This is not the time to take a social media hiatus. If a brand is going to hire you for a holiday campaign, they want to know that you’re not just popping on to post ads here and there. They want to know that you’re keeping consistent with your audience so that they’re engaged in your content.

✅ Your media kit + rate card need to be ready to go. Brands are likely going to ask for this - especially if they’re not yet hiring for their holiday campaigns - so it’s important that you have it ready to go. If you need a media kit template, you can get ours for free here.

✅ Gather impressive previous sponsored work you’ve done to share as examples. Your previous work speaks volumes on your abilities as a content creator, so it’s important that you have some previous paid or gifted sponsored work that you’ve done that you’re proud of to show the brand as a case study of what you can do for them.

Find brands you’d like to collaborate with.

Previous brand partners

Your previous brand partners are a great place to start when it comes to brands you can collaborate with during the holidays. You already know the brand’s messaging, so they’ll have to spend less time training you or having you reshoot content.

Hot holiday sellers

Any brands that are hot during the holiday season are obviously great options for a Q4 partnership. Think liftable items like candles, bath products, stocking stuffers, jewelry, etc. You can also think about the brands that you use more during the holiday season such as alcohol, beauty brands, formal fashion, etc.

Brands that you love

As always, think about the brands that you already use and love and would want to collaborate with any time of year. Make sure they’re a brand that matches your content style.

Warm up the brand

✅ Follow them on socials

✅ Start to organically share the brand within your normal content.

✅ Engage in their content on multiple platforms (reply to their Stories, comment on their posts, etc).

✅ If you can find the people at the brand, you can start to use the Anti-Pitch Method (If you want to learn more about the Anti-Pitch Method, you can find our FREE Masterclass here.

✅ Do this for about 7-14 days before moving onto the next step. The longer, the better.

Send your pitch email to the brand

Make it short and sweet. Brands don’t have a lot of time - especially during the holiday season. They don’t need to know your life style. Get to the point and get there quickly.

Ask the brand their plans for the holiday season. What are their marketing goals for Q4? Do they have any specific products that they are launching? Is there specific messaging they’re trying to get across this time of year?

Introduce a repeat exposure campaign. Because repeat exposure can lead to a higher ROI (return on investment; the money that they make back from you minus how much they’re paying you), introducing a partnership where you can share the brand with your audience multiple times is a great way to have a higher-performing campaign.

Share your top 2-3 high-performing previous campaigns. The brand wants to know that you can create great content, generate brand awareness, and drive sales. Do you have any evidence that you can do these things - especially drive sales? Share previous partnerships with high-quality comments or sales you’ve generated from previous collabs linked in your pitch email or in a case study PDF. These do not need to be specifically holiday campaigns.

Format your pitch to serve the brand. Don’t ask them how you can get a collaboration with them. Ask them how you can help them reach their goals this holiday season.

Take their time into consideration. Make things as quick and easy for the brand as possible. Typically, I’d ask the brand to hope on a call, but this isn’t exactly the best time of year for that.

Like what you’ve read here today? Make sure to watch the Youtube video where we review this in even more detail and our recent episode of “Soulcial Scoop” with Alex DiCapo, the VP of Marketing at AZOINE PR. I learned so much from her in this episode!