S1E1: Turning One-Off Deals into Long-Term Partnerships
You just got approached by a brand to do a paid post around their latest feature release, but you don't want to do one-off posts. You want longer-term deals. In this episode we discuss how to turn short-term engagements into long-term partnerships.
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Question number one is coming from a B2B creator, sales creator that has around
17,000 followers on LinkedIn.
They say they've done one-off post for brands in the past, but they've never
done any recurring brand deals,
and they want to attract more longer-term partnerships. How do they start to do
that?
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Yeah, it just starts with a conversation with the brand. So brands are coming
to you, and they're saying,
"Hey, we want to do one-off post or post only or whatever." Sometimes brands
don't even know that careers are open to do more long-term.
In fact, every brand I've spoken to, wants long-term creators. They don't want
these one-off transactional people.
So it comes down to coming in and just telling them about product, like, "Hey,
I'm ready to work out a relationship."
Why would you do a three-month pilot? Most brands that I'm talking to right now
, three-month pilots, they're all about it.
What do those deals typically look like? Are they based on a campaign that the
brand is running? Are they trying to create some new episodic show?
What are the creators that are getting these longer-term deals? What are they
typically creating?
Yeah, so it goes beyond the posts. A lot of brands right now, they're doing a
sponsor post. I actually try to move brands and creators away from that.
So the big thing with a lot of creators, they have multiple inventory available
. So they have posts, webinars, videos, co-branded content.
That's actually a big one. And then things like newsletters and podcasts, if
you have that, you're able to package so much more into a pilot and then also
charge more for doing it.
Co-branded posts. What do you mean by that?
So co-authored content could be like a lead magnet. It could be like a blog
that we write together. It could be a whole bunch of different things that are
co-authored, depending on the expertise of the creator and what the brand is
trying to do.
So you bring that together. Brands love that. They're like, "Now are names on
something that we can use to get more leads."
Although I just always in the way it is.
Hypothetically, let's say that this person, brand comes to them. They say, "Hey
, we are launching this new feature because a lot of times when you're doing
these one-off posts and a brand comes to you, in my experience, that's what
they're asking."
It's like, "Hey, we want to get a bunch of people to do a takeover or we got
this feature we want to promote. Can you do some hosts around that thing?"
If they come to me or this person and say, "That's what we're looking for." How
do I pivot that into like, "Yeah, we can talk about that."
Because when I get these, I typically say, "I don't do one."
So how do you pivot that into the longer term?
So I always ask the brand this question being like, "How do you plan on
connecting that awareness plate?" Because that's what it takes over days.
Everyone's talking about brand X for a day or two.
I ask them, "How are you planning to connect that to demos or getting leads or
fighting out who's actually interested in your business?"
Either they can't answer that question, which means they now know they have to
figure it out.
Or they're like, "Yeah, we need your help to figure that out."
So the type of content you create, if it's a poster, it's like whatever, blast
or whatever, that's awareness.
But if you're able to drive people from the awareness to consideration through
how two videos, the problems you're trying to solve,
can be lead magnets, can be guides, whatever, that's where you can find out
from all that big splash you just did.
There's a subset of people who want to solve the problems that your product
solves for.
You need to have the creator be able to do that as well.
If the brand's not considering that, people are going to get a nice big
impression count, but no one's actually signing up for the brand itself.
You need to have a conversation beyond the thing that they originally came to
you for.
Correct. Just remember, if you're a marketing creator or a sales creator, you
're first and foremost a technical practitioner.
You're a marketing person or a sales person.
You should know that driving people from awareness to consideration, that's the
job.
So if you're able to just wear that instead of the creator and play that
advisor role, the brand now begins to see you as someone they want in the mix
for three to six months because you're also advising them.
Yeah.
That's the beauty of the B2B LinkedIn space.
We're not doing dances or just doing entertainment or the Kardashian, whatever,
on Instagram.
Yeah.
The beauty of winning with brands is that we're also, we became creators
because we are subject matter experts first.
So demonstrate that by treating that person like you were as a consultant
client.
And then you just happen to be the mechanism for them to get to the end.
Yeah.
I think that's the main part is a lot of these companies will specifically, if
they don't like already follow you, they typically reach out to you because you
have. A certain follower count, they may have seen like something that you've posted.
If you can take that conversation and actually consult, I've done this on
interviews a lot, rationally.
And it's the same thing, whether it's an interview or you're doing this kind of
deal where like they come to you for one thing, but then by the end of the call
, it's like, wow, I feel like I just got like 30 minutes of free consult.
Yeah.
And I think that's basically what you're getting at is like, turn this like,
hey, we'll pay you X amount of dollars to promote our thing into you consulting
them how to make that thing significantly better.
Exactly.
So the key thing to remember is the person you're selling to has likely done
creator partnerships on other non-linked in channels, more often than not.
So their benchmark of your understanding on how this whole system works is
compared to like TikTok activations and Instagram and activations or whatever.
So when you're bringing people into LinkedIn, it's like, no, we do this every
day for our jobs or our careers.
Our bread and butter isn't being creators most of the time.
It's, we're doing, you know, worst market in the world.
All the other things that you know, everyone that we talk to is done.
Yep. So bringing those, bringing those stories into the mix and reminding these
people that, hey, like, we know the game just as well as you do, if not more,
especially on LinkedIn, that's where the domain authority comes across.
So once you demonstrate that, whether you're 17,000 followers, 6,000 followers,
500,000 followers, you need to remind the company that's coming in the brand,
then you can do a lot more than just post.
Do you recommend that creators keep a resume or, I guess, portfolio, maybe, of
like, not only the things that they've done, but like tried to get the outcomes
that have happened for the brand for those things to keep to have those
conversations like, hey, I drove X amount with this.
Or do you, do you find that most creators typically, they just know that, like,
hey, like here are the channel level metrics that I typically drive.
Yeah, it's a bit of both. So in your media kit creation, so if you are a
creator that's remotely trying to get serious, you need to have your core story
arcs down.
So what I mean by that is you need to have like the big three things you like
to talk about.
And then those three things need to be backed up with things that you actually
accomplished. So that's where you prove your credibility to anybody that you're
talking to.
Even as an agent before I sign people, people don't know this, but like, I've
closed $50 million in sales and media working at Pinterest and these other
companies.
So if I'm talking to a sales creator and I asked them like two levels deep type
of question and they can't answer, I already know they're not credible.
Yeah, I cannot in good faith put that person in front of a sales brand that
wants to leverage them.
They copy and paste and someone else's shit and I'm like, oh, I know.
I know this is Josh Bronwyn all over. Like, what are you doing? Right? So it
just gets to a point where the credibility can only come with like your track
record.
But this is what the brands are paying for.
They're like, oh, this person was able to get all these followers because they
actually know what they're talking about.
That needs to be proven through the media kit.
You're saying the creator should be a subject matter expert themselves on
whatever this thing that they're talking about is.
What about creators? They may not be subject matter experts for their company,
but they're really good at delivering the product.
They're delivering the narrative or the message of the company.
So I know people that work in paid media or creators for paid media companies.
I know people that work in their creators for AI companies, but they are not,
they couldn't go run a paid kit.
They couldn't go build an algorithm or something.
But they're really good at taking whatever the engineer or the paid media
expert wants to say and delivering that message in a way that people remember,
whether that's entertainment or taking a script and delivering it.
Where do those people come in?
Yeah, definitely think that group is very important because they bring content
to life, right?
And they're entertaining and people love what they have to say. The reality is
though that brands may not come to those creators if they're trying to connect
with a certain ICP.
If the brand is just trying to do mass awareness for a very everyday type of
thing like an Uber or a Lyft, fine.
Yeah.
Bring in an entertainer because everyone uses those things.
But if you're in a B2B/SAS situation like most of the folks we talked to with B
2B folks, you need to be able to convince people about the power line that, oh,
I should probably be able to convince people about the power line that, oh, I should probably be able to convince people about the power line. Oh, I should probably take a look at this product. More often than not in a B2B
setting, you need to have some domain authority for expertise for sure.
But those folks who may not have that, but they're excellent entertainers and
content creators, there's a use case for all of them across the board because
you have to get brands to enter a space with that type of, with that type of
effect.
But just the brands will need to know at some point that they can't go from
that to conversion with that same creator, more often than not.
Yeah, I think there's also a lot of times those creators try to, if they're
trying to get brand deals, they're trying to get brand deals in those things
they talk about.
When, because they've been talking about those things or creating content
around those things, but that's not, not to say they don't have expertise.
They may have expertise in video editing or whatever they do ever again, right?
Right.
And they're just going after the wrong companies, because that's not where they
're expertise.
Yeah, and that's where you got to be careful of some of these marketplaces,
right? Because you have a brand that's reaching out to a creator, but there's
no brokerage of authenticity.
Right. You need to make sure there's an authentic connection between the brand
and the creator to the outcome that the brand is trying to go for.
That's why whenever I do the brand pillar exercise with my creators, when I
sign them, we have a whole onboarding thing.
I'm like, what do you want to be known for? That needs to match what the brand
is trying to communicate.
Otherwise, it's like a triangle and a square peg hole type of choice.
I love that. Every creator or successful, I hate the word influencer, but for
lack of a better term influencer, all the good ones are known for something.
Yeah, exactly.
And I learned this when I first started doing TikTok. This is why I started
preaching episodic content in the first place, because I would talk to a lot of
people, and they would say, like, oh, like, who's an example of whatever we
were talking about on TikTok is typically those conversations around TikTok at
that time?
And in almost all cases, I did not know the person's name, but I knew what they
did. I could explain, hey, it's that guy that does this or that.
And you could find that person by what I knew them for, more so than their name
Until eventually you learn their name.
Right. I mean, right? How's this done? So many times. Yeah, exactly.
All right. So we've got an actual contract. So let's say that this person was
able to secure this three month pilot longer term deal that we're talking about
that they want to get.
This is a three month contract that someone has sent in. We've redacted the
company in the name, but this is an actual contract. So let's go through this
and just flag anything that you would say you would see as an example.
Like, nah, that's not kosher. Yeah, for sure. So right away, right away, when
you got to put out the monthly video posts, there should be some terms around
revisions and number revisions on there. So what I see happened a lot is brands
Rans will tell creators your full autonomy to say what you want when you want
how you want. But when it comes down to actually seeing the video, there's
always notes. There's always edits. Yeah, there's always revisions.
So if you're costing this out the compensation, a thousand dollars a month for
three months, you have to take into account as a creator.
Multiple retakes. So you have to set that value for yourself for what you're
willing to do, but that needs to be carved out in here for sure.
The second thing is licensing on the video itself. Who owns the video? So this
is a three month deal.
One of the things that a lot of creators don't think about is the long term. So
a thousand bucks a month, that's pretty small contract.
Let's say the brand decides to cut this after three months. Then four months
later, another player in this category approaches you because you're a subject
matter expert in space.
And they offer you four grand a month. What's stopping this brand from using
your video if they own it?
So you need to think about usage. You think about revisions. And you need to
think about how long.
How long is the brand able to use your content even after your contract start?
Most of the times the brands will own the content, but the usage rights of the
content with the creator need to be predetermined.
Because if they can use this forever, they can repurpose this for paid ads.
They can sign a contract with another partner and then use your video.
They're making money off of your gotcha IP well beyond the thousand bucks a
month that they're spending with you.
So you need to factor those things in. Most of the contracts that I go with,
they're only allowed to use the content for as long as we're partners.
So that's just incentive for them to keep renewing with you because they had so
much history with you.
Otherwise they could repurpose this when you sign with a competitor six to
eight months later.
They can still use this and broadcast it. How do you think your new brand
partner would feel about that?
Yeah. Right. Sure. So you've got to factor that into the cost because a
thousand bucks a month just takes to account the short term.
Not the lifetime of the video content.
Love that. All right. So let's wrap this up with everything we've talked about
for this specific creator.
What's the one piece of advice that you would give them moving forward?
Yeah. Managing expectations upfront. So whether it's to tell them that you can
do things for a longer period, offering that more inventory,
but even protecting yourself. Most creators are so, "Oh my God, I'm getting
paid."
They don't think about the category impact, the usage of the video impact and
licensing things of that nature.
Now, I'm personally not a lawyer. You all know this. Disclaimer. But it is very
important for you to think about who owns what and how it can be used.
100%.
I think that was a solid episode, my friend.
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