SPI 890: What’s Working in Sponsorships and Brand Deals Right Now

SPI 890: What’s Working in Sponsorships and Brand Deals Right Now

Pat Flynn: Hey Pat here. We’re gonna talk about sponsorships and brand deals. This has always been a way for creators to generate revenue, right? Connecting with other companies and other products because you’ve worked hard to build this audience and to build some loyalty and a following. And this company wants to get in front of your brand and in front of your audience that you’ve worked hard to build.

Now, affiliate marketing is one thing. We’ve talked about affiliate marketing recently, and it still continues to be a way to generate a lot of revenue by promoting and recommending other people’s products. And the beauty of affiliate marketing is you get paid if and only if you get customers for that company.

So it makes sense for these companies to do that because they’re not losing anything. They’re only sharing revenue with people who are putting more money in their pocket anyway. And this is where sponsorships and brand deals can come into play, and it is a kind of tight rope to walk on sometimes on both sides because a brand will pay you to get in front of your audience hoping that you’ll generate revenue for them.

However, you are wanting to work with this company and they’re willing to pay you. And there’s no real sense of, or at least for many creators, there’s no real sense of, okay, I have to convert this many people. Right? The value comes in what you’ve built and the platform that you’re on and the reach that you have.

So I want to talk about some of the ins and outs and things that are working and happening today and things to look out for because, and I’m just gonna start here today. There are a lot of creators out there who are saying yes to brand deals who shouldn’t be taking these brand deals. Now, there’s some obvious reasons for doing that, right?

You have a cat brand and a dog brand wants to reach out to you. There’s no reason to work with them. It’s a completely different audience. Yes, they might be paying you, but you know, hopefully that that’s not going to resonate and it just doesn’t work very well. So that’s kind of an extreme example. It might be even too extreme because why would even a brand reach out. But all that to say, you wanna make sure that the brands that are featured on your channels, on your platforms are ones that you can get behind. Because as soon as you say yes to any of these brand deals, I mean, your name is now connected to that brand. And you gotta be careful. There’ve been a lot of creators over the years, especially ones who’ve worked with various crypto related companies and other things like that.

People eventually find out these things are scams and things aren’t good. And that always comes back to the people who once promoted it because they either didn’t do their due diligence, some people are able to step forward and apologize and kind of own up to the fact that they didn’t do their due diligence or the company was just so nefarious that, you know, they also got caught within it and were duped as well and have apologized and done very well.

So I’m not gonna expand into those realms right now because I wanna help you with brand deals that you have. But you shouldn’t say yes to everything. You shouldn’t say yes to everything. One thing that I’m seeing lately, this is not a good trend, there’s a lot of bigger brands reaching out to smaller creators and simply using the power of their brand, the reputation behind their brand, to get creators to promote their stuff without getting anything in return.

They’re not paying you to do that. They’re saying, Hey, look at us. We’re this big company. We have a lot of brand reputation. It adds actually a value to you to work with us and to do it for free. It’s a shame because they do come with some reputation and for a smaller creator, one who’s just starting out, one who is not getting a lot of recognition, one who doesn’t have a large following, this is very exciting.

However, when you say yes to those kinds of opportunities, you’re setting a precedent for all the other times that this company and other companies can work with you. And the more that creators say yes to these kinds of low paying, no pay opportunities. The more these companies are gonna do this, they are taking advantage of you.

These companies realize just how important getting involved with influencers and authorities on different platforms is however they are snakes sometimes. I’m not gonna mention any companies that are companies out there. I’ve even been on the receiving end of companies that have wanted to work with me.

And even though I have larger platforms, they’re still wanting things to be done for free. I’ve been in this business for a while. I understand the value that I have to offer, and you have to understand the value that you have to offer as well. This loyal audience that you’ve been building is massively, massively valuable, even if it’s small, because it takes time to build trust.

It takes effort and time to build this relationship with your audience, and these brands are just wanting to get in front of that really quickly. So when you can establish yourself as somebody who does understand the value of what you have to offer, well then that’s good because then you’ll get paid for what you deserve.

Yes, working with the company could be great for your brand. It, being able to share publicly that you’re working with this company might be a cool thing. And yes, there is some value that can come with that. So you’re gonna have to weigh these moments on a case by case basis. On a pros and cons sort of level, you’re gonna have to understand, is it worth it to do these things?

And a lot of these companies I’ve seen will also take advantage of you. You have to do this. You have to create this many posts, and it could be cumbersome. It can also ruin and sever the relationship that you have because now you’re doing things not because you want to, but because you’re told to. I wasn’t even exactly sure where this was gonna go, but I just, I think the big lesson here is know what you’re worth.

Know how much time, and remember how much time and effort you’re putting into the work that you’re doing that is valuable. That is valuable. So don’t let these companies stomp all over you, and if possible, try to create groups and friendships and communities and connections with other people in the same space as you.

Who can share this information with everybody else. Now, you don’t have to share necessarily the dollar value that you’re sharing, but maybe you might have some close ties to creators in your space who will share this information so that you can all be paid what you’re worth. Again, delicate balance here, especially when it comes to reputation, friendships, and connections and all those kinds of things.

But for example, in the Pokemon space that I’m in, there’s a few creators who I speak to, and we share these things openly with each other. We share just how much a brand wants from us to essentially provide warning for the others. We’re almost like prairie dogs, you know? We poke our head up, we see, we see something, we warn everybody else to make sure, because here’s the thing, once people start saying yes, like I was recently offered $500 for, I think it was, they asked for six Instagram posts and each of my Instagram posts, reach nearly a million people. This is on, on Deep Pocket Monster on Instagram. Each one averages about a million and they wanted $500. And I found out that a lot of other creators are saying yes to opportunities where they’re saying yes to $50, a hundred dollars. I know the value of what I have to offer and how much these companies are spending to get in front of audiences, and this is where you can potentially start to understand what your number could be. Because if you look at your average reach, if you look at and see how not just big your subscribership is, that’s also less important. Now, what’s important is your reach. How much exposure can you provide these companies?

You can determine based on how much these companies might be spending on ads or how much it might cost to get and go to and set up a booth at a event with that many people. And to create a juxtaposition between that and what they’re paying with what you have to offer, I mean, you can start to begin to understand exactly how much you could potentially charge.

This is just like Wojcik, we’ve had him on the show before  Wojcik, who is the host of the Fire Science podcast, with very little audience, very little subscribership, but he knows exactly how much that audience is worth because those companies that also pay for that sponsorship, they’re also paying for booths at events and spending tens of thousands of dollars.

So he was able to position it, his podcast in a way where they can get in front of more people for more of the year throughout more of the year, not just like three days during an event, but throughout the entire year for what is an absolute steal, and he’s making more money doing that for his small audience or with his small audience with these brand deals and sponsorships versus what he’s making in his day job, just simply by understanding the value of what he has to offer.

So, I’m sorry, I’m spending a little time on on that, but I really wanted to kind of share that perspective before we go into these brand deals and other things to work out and to look out for because you have to know the value of what it is that your audience is worth and it’s gonna take some time, but I don’t want you to make the mistake of just saying yes to everything or lower level deals.

A lot of these companies will also share free things with you, and yes, that can work, especially if it’s something that you would use and love anyway. So yes, you can get some free swag and all those kinds of things, but depending on what it’s like working with them, they might require you to post a certain number of times or say specific things that maybe you don’t wanna say.

So you have to find out what that comfort line is for you and kind of lean into it once you discover it. Alright. Another thing to look out for that myself and fellow colleagues have been kind of involved with lately in the world of brand sponsorships and brand deals is the requirements that these companies ask you, yes, there’s gonna be a certain number of deliverables and that kind of thing, and every company’s different.

I remember doing one for a company and it, it felt like I was an employee for a while again, and it was not a good feeling. It was so many check-ins and reviews and all this stuff and things I were like, I had to say, and I couldn’t even be myself. So I stopped working with that company, even though they were paying, well, it just didn’t feel right.

So that’s the first thing. But the second thing is a lot of these companies are gonna ask you, or at least have in mind, conversions. And you have to be very clear with them and have it in the contract if there is any expectation of a certain number of revenue coming back as a result or a certain number of customers coming back.

Well, you’re gonna wanna make sure that either A, you can, you know, confidently do that, or B, you’re gonna be in trouble and have to just create more content to make up for it. And I’ve been in that position before, even here at SPI to where we’ve done certain deals and conversions didn’t work and we’ve had to kind of go back into the drawing board to try to, you know, make up for the cost of that brand deal because we didn’t set that expectation, or I didn’t set that expectation that this was going to be for brand exposure.

Where brand exposure comes with the idea that like it’s just getting the name out there and getting it known and having it be introduced to the audience. Whether or not they convert or not versus other brands will say, Hey, we are looking specifically to at least close 50 people from this brand deal.

Can you do that? A lot of people might not even tell you that, or a lot of brands might not even tell you that, and you need to know that so that you can, you can absolutely tell if this can happen and you know it might be a risk, but if you don’t know what’s going on or what they are expecting on their end, you might get again in trouble or might have to make up for it in some way, shape, or form.

I believe that the brand deals and sponsorships that are more awareness campaigns are ultimately gonna always be better, primarily because it’s just less pressure on you and you can just create how you want to create and do your best. You, you wanna perform, you don’t wanna under deliver. And I think when you perform, that’s when that company will come back and want to spend more money with you especially if they can attribute those sales and or that awareness back to you.

So again, it’s a delicate situation, but there are a lot of companies out there who will wanna work with you. So how do you find them? Let’s get into some of that and what’s working now?

What I find to work best, this has always been the case. Is not just by going into a marketplace and finding these random products with various commissions. There are certain marketplaces like TikTok and all those kinds of places that have the built an affiliate commission and structure and the marketplace and all those kinds of things.

And those things are fine, but for long-term brand deals, and that’s what we want. We want a long-term brand deal or sponsorship, something that’s not just a one-time thing, but something that where a person maybe pays, or a company pays you quarterly for an entire year and then they continue to stay on.

Right, this always works best when you are a customer of that product already. When they see that you are a user of that product and you are somebody who can be a great spokesperson for it, that’s where a lot of the revenue can come in. They almost treat you as an ambassador more than just an affiliate or somebody just kind of promoting the brand.

So that’s working really well. What companies, what companies are you already using? What brands are you already involved with? What products have you purchased that you enjoy? Think about that, make a list of that, and some of those on that list may be people or companies that you can reach out to. Looking on LinkedIn to also see who the decision makers are at these companies is always great.

Yes. Probably the easiest way to find sponsorships is to have either an agency do it for you, but then you’re gonna have to start to do some rev share, which may or may not be worth it for you. We have that for our podcast sponsorships, which works well, but for the most part, it’s private deals, private sponsorships.

I’ve always done that since the beginning in the architecture days, and that has always worked out really well, again, with companies that I’m already using. But yeah, going to something like LinkedIn to see who the, either the marketing people are or the ad kind of campaign managers at various companies.

Marketing directors, these are the people who are the decision makers for where their money goes for, for ad spend, for for marketing, of course. And so that’s where you can come in and make a case for yourself. So that works really well. Starting with relationships you already have. If you have a person, a friend, a colleague, a peer who’s working with the company, if they’re willing to share the contact go there. And if they can vouch for you, especially if they’ve performed very well for that company and can often help them, when they point that company to another person that’s also helping them. And you can do the same if you have other people. If you’ve been working with a company and you’re like, Hey, I’d like to recommend my friend, who also is good, you know, it’s great for your peer to peer sort of situation and and helping each other out.

Right? Abundance, everybody can win and I love that. Another thing that’s working really well. Is finding out who else is sponsoring other channels and other brands that you watch or listen to. Reaching out and saying that you found them on there and then saying that you also are somebody who can help amplify their work is great.

Now, there is somebody who I wanna recommend for a lot of the brand and sponsorship stuff, stuff that you will hear me repeat here, but also who will take this for you in a much, much further way. He is the author of a book called Sponsor Magnet. And his name is Justin Moore. And so if you go to SponsorMagnet.com, you’ll see my testimonial there for his book Sponsor Magnet.

It’s an absolute gem of a read and it’s hyper specific, right? So this is why this book is not gonna be a New York Times bestseller or anything. No offense Justin. You know this. But it should be because it’s that good, how to attract price and execute your dream brand partnerships, right? So if you wanna get into the technical stuff of all of that, Sponsor Magnet’s the way to go.

Justin Moore is the author. He’s been on the show before. He is fantastic. Such good energy. He and I have been at Masterminds together in Boise at Craft and Commerce. Very genuine guy, family guy. His wife and I both share the same name. My wife and his wife. It’s incredible how much we have in common, and Justin Moore is an awesome find for anybody who’s going and diving into the world of brand deals and sponsorships.

One thing that he taught me that I wanna share with you was taught to me in a previous podcast, but I wanna bring it back here, that still is working really well, is finding out if you have a brand that you wanna work with, go into their Instagram. It could be any, any other platform as well, but go into their Instagram and go one year prior.

See what they were posting. See if there were any campaigns that they were obviously putting money into a Mother’s Day campaign, a new Year campaign, whatever it might be, because there might be events and things on the calendar coming up that they are definitely gonna be putting money behind. And if you can approach them with already that in mind, it shows them a few things.

Number one, that you have done your research, but two, if you can come up with something that can align with where you know they’re going. It can save them time and it could save them money to work with you, and therefore they could give you money for that, right? As a sponsor. So this partnership that you can create with them can be very long term and amazing.

If you get on board with kind of who they are as a company and where they’re going, and if you look at their history, you can kind of see that already. It’s almost like a cheat code, which is incredible. It’s similar to going to Amazon and looking at the reviews for products that you’re competing with because you can see what’s working and what’s not.

It’s already there. It’s laid out, it’s free. To check out. So again, check out the book. The book is not free, but you can get some free bonuses if you go to SponsorMagnet.com. I’m not an affiliate or anything like that. I’m just a supporter of, of that book to help you with brand deals and sponsorships. I think the example that he used on that podcast was like, if there was like a Fitbit thing, right?

With my podcast channel, how could Pokemon stuff connect with Fitbit? The thing that keeps track of how many steps you have and your fitness and all that stuff. Well, I go on these challenges where I’m going around conferences and events and I take tens of thousands of steps at these. It might be interesting to track that using my Fitbit and in integrate it into those videos in that way, not as an ad break, like in the middle though, that could exist, but rather integrating it into the story.

For example, I have to take a thousand steps before my next trade, and I use the Fitbit to keep track of that. Right. So maybe there’s some other event coming up in, in Fitbit that some holiday campaign. Okay, cool. Let’s create a a campaign for them related to Pokemon in this thing. And this takes me to what has been working best for me personally.

And this is integrated campaigns that take that sponsor, this is very similar to what I just said. Take that sponsor their product, whatever they do, and integrating it into the story that you’re telling. And I wanna tell you about one of those integrations that recently happened. So there’s a company in New York called Poke Court, C-O-U-R-T, and they are a retailer of Pokemon products.

They have a shop in Manhattan and they also have an online retail space. And they have this campaign going for the Lunar New Year and for the Lunar New Year, they created these red envelopes, like these Chinese red envelopes, and they put a pack of Pokemon in each of them. They had these incredible gold foil designs on the outside with different Pokemon on them, and they, and they were great, and they sent me a few to give away on my channel.

And so I reached out to ’em. I was like, Hey. Would you like to sponsor a video? I’m like, oh, maybe well like tell me more. And I said, well, okay, this is how it’s gonna work. I’m gonna be going to this event in a couple months and I’d love to showcase your Lunar New Year envelopes and promote the company.

Like, okay, tell me more. So this event that I was going to, I needed to complete a set of Pokemon in two days. It was a two day convention, and I was going to go around this convention and complete this set of Pokemon. And I said I’d love to have a side quest during this video to also give away a certain number of these red envelopes.

And even if I finish the challenge, if I don’t give away enough of these or trade with enough people to give them away, then I don’t win. I’m like, oh my gosh, I love that. So this becomes sort of a side challenge. Where you kind of have to interact with people or else you won’t be able to trade these things.

Yes, we love this. So we did it. Not only was this video, one of our most popular videos as of late, it saw over a million views in less than a week. It put Pokemon Court on the map for a lot of people. They didn’t even know this company existed, but not because it was a sixty second ad break in the middle talking about something completely separate.

But right from the get go, these red envelopes were introduced, the idea of Lunar New Year and lucky got in introduced, and then when I started talking more about it later in the video, after giving away the third or fourth, they say, Hey, where do these come from? Well, these actually came from a company called Pokey Court and the logos on the back of these red envelopes, and I talked about ’em a little bit more.

Then moved forward later in the video, 15, 20 minutes later, brought ’em up again. Talked about their store in Manhattan, talked about the fact that they have cards for sale online. It was this perfect integration. Where it didn’t even feel like an ad at all, but they actually enhanced the story. In fact, more than that, they actually helped me give away more things to people and create some good vibes and good feeling and positivity into the story as well.

So when you think a little bit more deeply with a partnership in this way, not only will the partnership work out better, but it’s just better for the viewers and the audience, right? It’s just more entertaining. So this is how we’ve been trying to determine how to integrate sponsors now across the board, not just at Deep Pocket Monster, but even with SPI now talking about Stan quite a bit because we’ve been talking about things like creating quick lead magnets and ways to build your email list before even setting up a more fancier strategy with email marketing.

Selling an online course just as a lead magnet, or even having people kind of pay a little bit of money to book some time with you so you can discover more about them, but also you’re offering a little bit of coaching on the side. Well, you can use a tool like Stan to do that, and it sort of just integrates into the conversation already versus just like a break in the middle.

Or sometimes you hear on the podcast because we have, the brand sponsorships at the beginning of the show, right, which sometimes feel a little bit separate from various brands, right? And those are not ideal for the way that I’d like to eventually move things. I, I love the integration of sponsors into a story.

Now when you’re just sharing information. You can’t always connect the brand or sponsor with that information, and that is where those ad breaks and things like that can work and that still does work. We see that all over the place and that’s fine. But again, those long-term sponsorships, the ones that work well, the ones that perform best are the ones that integrate that product and company with the story that you’re telling.

We’re even doing this again actually on Deep Pocket Monster. We’re integrating by the time this podcast episode comes out, this video may be ready or already available to watch, but, but you can watch that other one on Deep Pocket Monster as well. It takes place in Hawaii and again, that’s where we bring in the, the Lucky Lunar New Year Red envelopes.

But in this video that we’re working on right now. It actually is from another card retailer and their warehouse actually is the same warehouse that is where my books came from when I was doing my sort of bonus campaign. So we’re doing a thing where the company congratulates me on hitting New York Times bestseller with my book and actually says, Hey, by the way, if you complete this challenge, we’re gonna buy a hundred books for a hundred people who are watching right now. And if you don’t, then sorry, you don’t get any books. So we’re in even integrating my book into it and having it be a part of the challenge, the story, the reward, working with this company versus just again, an ad break. And the ad break does come a little bit more toward the middle.

It’s a little bit. Like 30 seconds, but it never feels random. It’s always integrated. And again, if you can think about a company that you wanna work with, and maybe it’s one that you’ve already used and you come up with a plan related to a campaign that you know they’re gonna come out with, it’s not only going to impress them, but it can bring you some decent revenue in a way that also not just rewards that company with more customers, rewards you with more money in your pocket, but also rewards the viewers for integrating into something that is more than just like a break from the situation, but an addition to the story that you’re telling.

So, those are the things that are working right now in the world of brand deals and sponsorships. Those, those are where long-term relationships get built. And then, of course, I’ve talked about this before. A lot of those brand deals, sponsorships, affiliate opportunities, can turn into even deeper relationships.

It’s why I’m an advisor now for companies like Kit, because I was just once a user and an affiliate, but then came on as an advisor where I actually have a small percentage ownership of the company and work closely with the company to move it forward into the future and provide some advice and connections.

Same thing with Circle our, our community platform, myself and former CEO, Matt, our advisors to the company and we’ve been able to grow with them, but also help them out along the way. And it only happened because of relationships and because of, of what we’ve done for them in the past. So a lot of this has to do with people, right?

A lot of this has to do with people. And yes, there are people out there who have easy access to sponsors and brands, and there are tools like on YouTube where you can sign up and get brand deals, sponsorships, and those things can work, but they often feel forced or more algorithmically calculated. And really the way to success today is to actually walk away from those algorithms in some cases and find the humanness, find relationships and real human to human interaction. And that’s where a lot of my success has recently come in the world of sponsorships and brand deals and where I know it can come for you too. So thank you so much for listening to this.

I appreciate you. We have more What’s Working episodes coming later this year because we talk about a lot of things here. So make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss out on that. And thank you for listening to the show. I appreciate you. I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers everybody.