How To Convert a Brand Deal Into a Long Term Relationship
Structure successful collaborations and ensure a reliable income source by newsletter marketing.
As a creator, you are unique, as is your newsletter, and the relationship you’ve built with your audience over the years. And that’s why, when you work with a brand on a sponsored collaboration, the relationship dynamics you build with the brand are also going to be unique.
Swapstack empowers creators to decide their own terms while pitching to brands. You get to pick your niche, style of collaboration, pricing, and publishing schedule.
Brand sponsorships are a great way to monetize your newsletter while adding value to your readers’ lives and introducing them to brands you know they are going to love.
Sponsorships take time and effort to be finalized, and that’s why, when you find a brand that speaks to the same audience as you do, it makes sense to develop a long-term relationship with them. Not only does this ensure a more dependable source of income over the months, but it also allows you to emphasize to your audience that you continue to love, use, and support the brand. This makes your promotion sound much more authentic and convincing.
From the brand’s perspective, long-term relationships help them adjust their messaging monthly or quarterly and essentially do A/B testing to see what works best. This article is all about how you can run successful brand sponsorships for your newsletter (with Swapstack or otherwise) and how to convert them to long-term relationships.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Structuring a Successful Relationship
Before you think long-term, the first step is to show your professionalism and credibility by making the first collaboration as seamless and beneficial for the brand as possible. Here’s how you can go about it.
Define the goals clearly
Align on business metrics. The most important things to a brand are how you, as a writer, can contribute to their business goals. Determine if they’re trying to drive awareness, site visits, conversions, etc., and align your efforts towards helping them hit those goals.
Make sure the report reflects everything you discussed
A detailed discussion with the brand before the collaboration will give you clarity on how to go about writing the sponsored post. It will also make the reporting much easier after the collaboration runs successfully. You’ll know what numbers to focus on and the detailed report will help the brand recognize to what extent the relationship was successful (based on the return on ad spend). Here are some points to keep in mind:
- Add numbers and percentages whenever applicable.
- Include screenshots to make the results seem more impactful.
- Write a short report based on your experience and add a proposal for a longer-term collaboration with your subsequent email. The next section discusses how you can go about it.
Converting a one-off to a long-term relationship
If you know the brand is potentially looking for long-term relationships, talk about it with them! Discuss what numbers you’d need to hit in order to sign them on for a multi-month partnership.
After a successful collaboration, send a detailed proposal to the brand for a long-term relationship. This should include the following:
- Pricing: Build a package with more options and add an attractive discount on the services offered if the brand books for multiple months.
- If you had only collaborated for a newsletter sponsorship, offer to extend to other platforms you have a presence on.
- Do your homework on what will best help the brand, and craft a strategy for them that shows you’ve understood their goal and that your publishing plans are aligned with what they have in mind.
Justin Moore, the founder of Creator Wizard, has a very interesting approach to ensuring long-term collaborations with brands. From his interview with Swapstack, here’s what Justin has to say:
- Begin a pitch with: “I have found that the most successful way to partner with brands is to spread out the posting cadence over a longer time period like six months or twelve months.”
- Talk about the marketing rule of seven, which basically states that it takes an average of seven interactions with a brand before a purchase will take place.
- Talking through why this is so important with the brand will often open their eyes to the value of a long-term relationship compared to a one-off deal.
Final Words
Structuring a relationship with a brand can be hard, but if you follow the right steps, you can land a highly profitable relationship for both you and the brand.
At the end of the day, brands can get immense value from marketing to a highly targeted niche audience (like your newsletter subscribers), and if you can leverage that to land a profitable deal for you, it will be a win-win situation for all.
