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The Level Up Creators podcast is for digital creators ready to take their business to the next level. You'll learn valuable strategies and hear engaging stories from industry pros and digital creators who have walked the path of scaling up.
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# Transcript Ep.12 - Brand Deals w/ Caroline Carter
Amanda (00:01.046)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators build thriving, sustainable businesses they love, and we are so glad you're here, welcome. My guest today is our amazing head of sales, Caroline Carter. Caroline and I are going to shed some light on how creators can maximize their brand deal revenue without chasing down deals. Welcome, Caroline.
Caroline Carter (00:22.166)
Hi Amanda, thanks for having me.
Amanda (00:24.33)
You bet, so glad to have you. And I'll share just a little bit more about you, Caroline, before we kick off. So Caroline has a long, deep background in sales. She is a seasoned sales professional who loves working in client-facing roles. She helps clients invest in their money digitally at a San Francisco-based startup called Future Advisor that was later acquired by BlackRock. Her fintech journey continued at Block Inc. where she was a founding member on the New York sales team.
A couple years later, Caroline made the jump to enterprise sales and sold Market Insights software to Fortune 500 companies at CB Insights. And in her most recent role, she built a highly successful media sales program for the Duckbill Group. And it's there that she developed a love for the creator economy, which is why she's here. It's awesome. Caroline lived in Paris for three years, is fluent in French, has two Bernese Mountain Dogs, an adorable little baby daughter, and loves to travel whenever she can. That's quite an intro. Caroline, you've got like a serious, serious background.
Caroline Carter (01:16.491)
I'm sorry.
Amanda (01:20.826)
Caroline can make sales, y'all, I'm telling you. She knows what's up and has sold millions and millions of dollars of brand deals. And so if you're trying to kind of crack the code on consistency within your brand deals, maximizing your revenue, listen closely, because today Caroline and I are gonna walk you through, again, how to best position yourself to capture high quality brand deals, create easy and smart systems for delivering excellent finished products for those deals, and how to ensure you're not getting taken advantage of by brands or agencies.
agencies which is a huge problem right now. So Caroline if you can kick us off by giving us just a quick overview of what brand deals are and then tell us about the different types of brand deals that creators are able to capture.
Caroline Carter (02:01.698)
Yes, definitely. So we now live in a world where everybody pretty much has a smartphone, they have access to the internet, and now luckily anybody can create their own type of small business. If you are somebody who's creative and passionate about a certain topic, you can actually go film videos, write blog contents, things like that, that people are gonna be able to access from anywhere in the world. And now there's actually the ability to monetize that, which is super exciting.
So a lot of times creators start out doing this as sort of a side hobby while they're working their normal job, and then they get a certain number of followers, things kind of take off, and then brands actually want to pay them for their content. So they can actually turn their content creation into a full-time business. And there's a couple of different ways to go about that. So I'm just going to chat through a few of those. One of the options is the paid sponsored post.
So that probably comes to mind first when you think of like a branch deal with somebody. And so it's when a brand actually pays an influencer or creator to create content, to post on their own social media or online accounts. So you'll often see that on Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, kind of basically anywhere a creator has influence over an audience or community. And then that influencer is paid to showcase the brand's key messages. So maybe they're...
reviewing a product or talking about their experience with it, oftentimes through a dedicated piece of content, which is created for the influencer's audience, not the brand's audience. So that's like one type of content creation option that a lot of influencers do. The second one that I can think of is that you can do a dedicated versus an integrated sponsored post. So a dedicated post is where the influencer or creator talks about or showcases.
Amanda (03:52.75)
Thanks for watching!
Caroline Carter (03:54.582)
the product or service as the main focus. So the purpose of this post is to talk about the brand and the product and to get across the main message that the brand wants to share. An integrated post is more organic content. So the influencer can talk about the product in one of their videos for a very short snippet of time. Often it's like in the middle of a video, but it's not the sole focus of the video is not on the brand itself. It's on, it's just sort of a highlight there.
to add more information or value to the brand. So there's like, you can do a fully sponsored video or just like a partially sponsored one. Yeah.
Amanda (04:30.85)
So an example of an integrated sponsor post that's sort of like a product placement almost.
Caroline Carter (04:40.338)
Exactly. So, you know, if you see like the James Bond movies, they'll do product placement with Apple products like Aston Martin cars. So you don't really know that that's what's happening, but the products are in, in the movie. So it's very similar. Whereas like a dedicated post, you might actually be demoing the product, right? So you might spend 10 or 20 minutes actually like utilizing the product, showing your community how to use it. So those are two different options there.
Amanda (04:41.538)
sorta kinda.
Amanda (05:05.678)
Cool. Okay. Thanks. What else?
Caroline Carter (05:07.402)
Yeah. And then there's the content creation brand partnership. So that is where it's a little bit different. So a creator pitches their skills to a brand as a content creator to the brand, and they don't focus on their social media numbers. So they're actually going to the brand and saying, hey, I can help you elevate your content by creating it for you. So this is a super interesting.
Amanda (05:31.668)
Mm.
Caroline Carter (05:34.286)
thing where you get to actually architect the content and yeah, you run with a strategy with them. So that's an awesome way to go about brand partnerships. The fourth option they can think of are brand collaborations. So that can be when you are looking at products or services of the brand and they, it's a little bit different because you might not necessarily be paid on that one or you're showcasing a free product or discounted products.
Sometimes a brand will give you free trips or free exposures on their channels. So that's one option as well. And another type of content or role that you can have as a creator is the ambassador role. So this is super interesting because you can think of this as more of a long-term brand partnership between an influencer and creator or a brand. So while other brand partnerships we've discussed are typically one and done,
The ambassador role is sort of an ongoing relationship. It might require several posts over time as a way to truly reach an audience as it's consistent messaging about a product or service. So Amanda has a marketing background and you know a little bit about this, that in marketing it's a general rule of thumb. It usually takes a person multiple times of seeing a message to actually take action.
So this is a great way to work with a brand and help them with their goals and also get consistent work as a creator.
Amanda (07:02.99)
Hmm. That sounds like something we should dive into a little bit more later in the show. But yeah,
> **Title: How to create consistent revenue with brand deals**
>
> the whole ambassadorship thing is very, very interesting because we talk a lot about MRR being really up down all around. So the amount of consistent money that a creator makes per month, MRR monthly recurring revenue, it's really, really hard to nail that in a consistent, predictable way with brand deals alone. But if you can leverage an ambassadorship or two, that kind of like changes the game a little bit.
>
So, okay, I'll put a pin in it and we'll come back to that in a little bit, but I'm very interested in that model for sure.
Caroline Carter (07:37.046)
Yeah, definitely. Let's see, another type of brand partnership that you could have would be affiliate marketing. So that's where the brand will provide the influencer or creator with unique links to their products to promote on their social media, maybe their website, their email list. And the nice thing here is the creator actually keeps a portion of the sale. And then the brand can physically keep track on the return of investment on their partnership. So a lot of times you'll see influencers who have a promo code.
I don't know if you've seen the one I see everywhere is like the Stanley Cup, right? So everybody's selling these Stanley cups and it's usually their name and then 10% and they apply that promo code. So that's really nice because you can actually track the ROI on it. And if you have good performance with your audience, you will often be able to tout that with other brands you might want to work with. So that's kind of the affiliate marketing route you can go down.
Another option are live events or speaking engagements. So I would say this isn't for everybody, but if you love getting up and talking live or doing videos, this can be a great option. Companies or brands will invite you to speak, sometimes at kickoff events, or they'll have you do live kind of product placement. This can be a good option, like I said, if you love getting out there.
meeting your community in person. You know, some folks love to do stuff kind of behind the screen and interact with people digitally, but live events and speaking are great if you want to feel kind of the energy of the audience around you. Yeah.
Amanda (09:10.134)
Yeah, let's talk about speaking gigs for just a minute. Do you find that creators and influencers who have more brand deals would sort of have a more natural end to add speaking engagements to their sort of like product offering suite?
Caroline Carter (09:24.99)
I think so. I think the folks who tend to excel at the live speaking events or speaking engagements, like you love talking, right? Like some type of brand creators, they just like to post kind of more static content or a lot of written content. But if you're somebody that really likes to engage with your audience or talk about a certain topic, those are the folks that are bound to get speaking engagements. I'd also say if you have a lot of YouTube videos and
Amanda (09:35.534)
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Carter (09:51.506)
content that they can access ahead of time. That can also be a great way for folks to discover you and say, hey you did that wonderful five-minute video on YouTube, could you actually come do it at our company or retreat or things like that? Yeah.
Amanda (10:02.474)
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a very, very interesting tie-in and a way to be really intentional about getting speaking gigs if this is kind of like your first foray into speaking gigs.
> **Title: Leveraging Brand Deals to Get Speaking Gigs**
>
> If you're working with brands and companies that you've already done brand deals with, you have a natural in for them. They trust you. They like you, especially if your brand deal was successful and trackable and all those sorts of things. And then if you can get.
>
> you know, one speaking gig there and another, you know, that kind of like can snowball onto itself and speaking gigs are another way to really significantly actually increase creator monthly recurring revenue. If you wanna do one to two speaking engagements a month and you start out making a couple thousand dollars per and then you rack up a resume pretty quickly and kind of work your way up the speaking chain, you can get well into the five figures on speaking engagements. And so the speaking gig brand deal sort of one, two punch can be a significant.
>
even if you don't have your own digital product suite. I mean, that can be really real money real quickly. So yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That's a really good point. Yeah, okay. So up to this point in this podcast series, Natalie and I and a few other guests have explored all the ways that creators can make money online. And that starts back in episode three, talking about a merchandise line. And our discussion today about brand deals will kind of...
cap off the series and package it up in a nice little present for you. And here's all the ways that you can make money. So I want to insert a little caveat to the rest of the conversation. So the vast majority of the content in this series, this podcast series, centers around building a digital product ecosystem of products that you own. We also talk about affiliate relationships a little bit more in another episode. And then to add on, Caroline talked about
a type of brand deals is promoting other people's products where you get an affiliate commission and that's all great. But kind of our POV level of creators is that the best way to make the most amount of money that you can as a creator is to have a digital product suite that makes the most sense for you. It's in this combination of what problems can you solve for your audience and provide the most value to them while receiving the most value possible in exchange. And so typically that could include
Amanda (12:18.826)
a couple of one-off digital products, maybe like a course, an ebook, a membership, and then you can go up to like high ticket group coaching mastermind and then really high ticket one-on-one types of engagements with your audience. And obviously like this podcast is specifically for creator educators or creators who are subject matter experts. This all is kind of, this isn't really about like entertainment based creators, right? Like obviously brand deals are going to be, and probably a merchandise line are going to be the number one and two points of leverage for.
an entertainment-based creator, but just a reminder that this is for subject matter experts specifically. So we want you to have a product suite that includes all the things that I just recommended. Speaking gigs are major if you can get over any sort of stage fright or fear around that. That's a way to drive up revenue significantly. And then we want to help you with this podcast in particular, figure out how to predictably and steadily increase your revenue from brand deals.
product suite and having someone even like our company and Caroline representing you, puts you in the driver seat of your revenue generation and like you're not just sitting around hoping some brand deals will come through to pay your bills. Like you've got marketing automation in place, you have a product suite that moves your customers on a thoughtful journey to maximize the amount of money that they pay you. We talked about LTV a bunch of times. And so I wanna just reiterate, I stand by absolute.
absolutely everything we've said about that and having a product suite. So just know that this episode is not in contradiction. And, but moreover,
> **Title: Brand Deals + a Product Suite FTW**
>
> how you can, you can have your cake and eat it too, right? We think brand deals are really important and we have kind of cracked the code at Level Up Creators with Caroline on how to create consistent and growing revenue with brand deals as opposed to being in like this reactive mode where you're just waiting for inbound because that's really kind of like, you're still on the hamster wheel if you're doing that.
>
> So creators with subject matter expertise should absolutely primarily monetize their expertise through digital products, high ticket group coaching, recurring revenue, things like that. That's your bread and butter. But when done well again brand deals can be quite lucrative, especially if Caroline and the rest of our team is working on your behalf to that end. So, okay, all my caveats are out of the way. This is all part of a cohesive strategy to maximize revenue.
>
> **Title: How Creator Educators Can Get More Brand Deals**
>
> Caroline, tell us how creators can best position themselves for the most lucrative brand deals.
Yes, I would say that the most important thing you can do as a creator is to have a super strong brand. So that means if you haven't already, you should probably be working on your design~~, you know, what does your logo look like? Like when I look at your page, what am I going to be able to pick up from it? Is it that you love colors? Is it that you love, you know, a certain type of font?~~ Like it sounds really silly, but
>
> people who are serious buyers are going to want to see that you have a super strong brand ~~and they can think of you as like, oh, that person who does parenting knowledge or that person who does sleep training like they want to be able to see like You're a subject matter expert on something and you have a very clearly defined brand I would say another area to focus on is to really know your audience and who you're speaking to So a lot of times, you know, of course, there's who is it? Mr. Beast and he's got a hundred million followers on~~
>
> ~~YouTube and people think of that as like the ultimate successful creator, but actually you can have a much smaller following and if you have a very niche audience, there are definitely brands that are going to want to work with you.~~ So if you know who you're talking to, you have a very clearly defined kind of audience and they've followed you for a long time, that's going to be very appealing to brand deals. I'd say finally being authentic is super important. That kind of ties in with knowing your audience. You likely didn't get to where you were.
>
> If you weren't authentic, but it's just always important to keep in mind, you're a unique person out there, right? And your followers watch you or subscribe to you because you are authentic and they like what you're putting out there. So you don't want to get to a point where things feel too corporate or, you know, too, too heavy on the ads. Right?
>
So we kind of talked about some of those brand deals and
A lot of times like those integrated posts or videos can be good because it doesn't necessarily overshadow who you are and like the organic content you were putting out there to begin with. So those are a couple of the areas I focus on.
Amanda (16:37.346)
Those are three really, really interesting and totally on point points. And they also mirror pretty closely with what Mike and Michael at Brand Origin shared back in episode three about how to best position yourself for a merchandise line. And so it's like, if you can nail your niche, like Caroline said, you don't need to be Mr. Beast, but if you have kind of a critical mass of people who are interested in a certain topic who follow you in your...
The topic that you speak about and are most knowledgeable about is crystal, crystal clear to the brands who are approaching you about brand deals. And also, I mean, this feeds into speaking engagement, too. It's like, this is all true. Just this is like classic positioning, right?
> **Title: Maximizing Impact & Income in Your Creator Business**
>
> And so if you can nail your brand and positioning and with the aim of attracting brand deals, maybe creating your own product or merchandise line.
>
> Other things fall into place too, like speaking gigs. And then creating products becomes a little bit more easier because there's clarity around who you are and what your value proposition is. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say that for creator educators who are looking to maximize what they're doing in their creator-first business, these are absolute essentials. Strong brand, know your audience and who you're speaking to and being your truly authentic self and...
>
> Good things are going to come your way. Obviously, there's a lot of intentional effort, but that we'll have to go into it as well. But you are setting yourself up for success that will come more easily, I think, if you can nail those things.
>
So yeah, those are really, really good points. Thanks for sharing that, Caroline. Oh, and we haven't talked about media kits or press kits. Can you explain real quickly what those are for anyone who doesn't know and what role they play in this conversation?
Caroline Carter (18:24.786)
> **Title: Creator Media Kits Bring Higher Quality Brand Deals**
Yes, so a lot of content creators, they're really good at just that creating content, but they might not always have kind of the business side of things. And when people approach you about brand sponsorships, it's kind of like anything else. You want to have a resume or a suite of like, you know, a description of what you've been doing. And so media kits are a great way to do that. It's kind of a short one to two pager.
>
> you can send a potential brand, it will have information about your audience size, maybe demographics, you know, how old the folks are, what their interests are, and then also your pricing. So I find that, you know, influencers who are super successful, they typically have a media kit or some type of product offering and pricing that they can send somebody. It just sends that signal of, hey, I've been doing this a long time. These are my prices.
>
Another good way to kind of figure out maybe what those prices are, because sometimes people don't know until they try is, you know, you want to go on and see, oh, I love this brand, and they're sponsoring this other YouTube post, feel free to reach out to them and maybe ask, hey, what's your going rate? Like, what does that company pay? Do some market research. And that's how you can put together some of the pricing. But I'd say definitely having a one or two pager that just describes, you know, your audience who the brands can target, and then how much they can expect to pay for sort of an average.
package makes a lot of sense.
Amanda (19:46.538)
Yeah, awesome.
> **Title: Social Proof Drives Sales of Brand Deals & Digital Products**
>
> And social proof, definitely a really, really important component of your media kit. So if you as a creator have testimonials or statistics or things like that, and people who have been successful with anything that you've sold in the past, like you're gonna put that on your landing page, right? Because that plays a big factor in a person's decision to buy your course or join your membership or your mastermind or whatever it may be. And so as you do more brand deals and or speaking gigs, you wanna make sure that you are getting testimonials. Like...
>
> proof points from the people who hired you to do those brand deals and speaking gigs and wrapping those back into your media kit on a consistent basis. And make sure you've got live action photography, video clips from speaking gigs, from brand deals. All those kinds of things are, I think, good to add as well.
>
Anything else on that, Caroline? Or is that pretty? What's the basics?
Caroline Carter (20:36.846)
Yeah, I think that's the most of it.
Amanda (20:39.73)
Yeah. OK, so now that we've talked about kind of the ingredients for effective positioning and all the amazing trickle-down effects that can happen once you have nailed your positioning,
> **Title: Creators, Don’t Fall For These Kinds of Brand Deals**
>
> let's come back to what I said earlier about creators getting taken advantage of in brand deal type arrangements. So creators who are not in the business realm, that's not their niche, typically don't have, and I'm drawing with a wide brush here or whatever,
>
> Typically, you don't have a whole lot of business knowledge or education. I mean, that's literally why level-up creators exist, right? But one thing that I'm hearing very consistently that is really disturbing and frustrating to me is that when a brand approaches a creator directly, not through an agency or brand talent management or anything like that, they are offering things like, well, we'll give you this piece of product in exchange for you promoting it to your audience of $275,000.
>
> Amanda (21:38.742)
to that company for whatever piece of product they're offering the creator may cost anywhere between you know, 50 and $500 or something like that. When in fact, the creator should be paying, being paid like $12,500 or something for that brand deal.
>
And then they can go forward to buy the product themselves or they should send the product in addition to the cash.
> **Title: Don’t Get Taken Advantage of in Your Brand Deals Like This Creator Did**
>
> But how can we...
>
> help creators, Caroline, like change kind of their mindset around value-based pricing with regard to brand deals. And if people are handling brand deals on their own, kind of taking the DIY approach, how can we help them not get taken advantage of?
>
> Caroline Carter (22:17.07)
That is a great question and can definitely be challenging for first time or new creators. I actually worked with somebody that they had a company come to them and really, hey, we'll pay you for a YouTube video. And this creator, you know, didn't know what to charge. So she was like, I'm going to like suggest $3,000 as a flat fee for a 10 minute YouTube video, only to find two months later that the same company was sponsoring a different YouTube influencer
>
> you know, roughly the same amount of followers or subscribers. Um, and they were paying that creator $18,000 for a video. So yeah, which was super, you know, just a bummer to hear that creator got taken advantage of, but also then you're really far off in terms of, um, trying to get your price point up. Right. So if you've agreed to a $3,000 deal and you know, somebody over here is working with the same company and they're getting paid $18,000, it's gonna be a lot harder to sort of.
>
> Amanda (22:53.262)
Mmm.
>
> Caroline Carter (23:14.574)
leverage that knowledge.
>
> **Title: How To Make The Most Money On Each Brand Deal**
>
> So I'd say in terms of not getting taken advantage of, you want to definitely do your market research, kind of understand what other folks are getting paid for some of this. There are ways to kind of maximize your revenue as well. So if you are thinking about doing one offs, right, like a one off video or one off sponsored blog post, see if you can actually increase that and do a series of them. A lot of times brands will pay you more because like
>
> Amanda (23:39.725)
Mm-hmm.
>
> Caroline Carter (23:42.402)
to the earlier point of effective frequency in marketing, you need to be hitting home a message several times. So if you can do a series of three videos, that's very appealing to a brand. A lot of times you can bundle those together and maybe give a slightly more competitive price, but you, the creator, are actually getting paid more, right? Because you're getting three videos up front. There's always a kind of series of add-ons you can do. So in addition to your content creation, you can do the promotion piece.
>
Amanda (24:03.587)
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Carter (24:11.798)
That's often a low lift for creators, right? Is like, not only do you create the content, you actually publish it on some of your other channels. So maybe your main channel is YouTube, but you offer to post it on your LinkedIn following, Twitter, maybe TikTok, wherever, and you can add on additional, you know, fees or price tags there. So I'd say being flexible and sort of bundling pricing can go a long way.
Amanda (24:35.414)
Mm, yeah, I like that. Yeah, I mean, a bundle is going to be more effective anyway, just like to Caroline's point, you said effective frequency. I love that term, that's great. Yeah, and then if you have an email list, you can obviously add on newsletters. It doesn't have to just be a social media component. There's lots of access and entry points to your audience that you can provide brands. And so, yeah, putting together multi-touch, multi-frequency packages seems like a definite way to drive up revenue.
Caroline Carter (24:43.575)
Yes.
Amanda (25:05.91)
And ideally one of those deals you could kind of like parlay into an ambassadorship like we were talking about with like a Flat fee per month on you know longer term contract Okay, so I like that you mentioned just reach out to people just DM people who Are in kind of like are your peers? That's gonna be the easiest types of influencers and creators to get a hold of right if you're if you're reaching out to somebody That's like kind of way above your pay grade so to speak
they're probably not gonna get back to you with their pricing schedule. But, you know, again, this is for subject matter experts, probably mid-tier creators, reach out to one another and pay it forward also. If someone reaches out to you, share your pricing structure and strategy and maybe you can learn something from one another. But yeah, that would be great to kind of be able to create a culture where there's a great degree of knowledge sharing happening so that we don't have these discrepancies between like you're delivering the same thing but you're getting paid $15,000 less.
for it. That's super not cool.
> **Title: Get Help and Command The Highest Brand Deal Fees**
>
> And quick plug for us here, I mean, we put together killer media kits and then Caroline goes out and just absolutely slays it and she'll handle inbound and outbound deals for brand deals and speaking gigs and just again has sold millions and millions of dollars of deals along that vein. And so we do brand management for a number of very successful creators and Caroline has really, really added to their bottom lines. And so if you're not sure what to do,
>
> Ask an expert. I mean, our model here at Level Up Creators is to, even with our fee structure in place, make sure you get paid more than you would have if we were not there. And we do everything for you, except deliver the actual piece. But we give you a little brief that says, here's exactly what you need to do, what it needs to include, the hashtags, da da. So it's really like a full service, full on turnkey situation if you want to outsource your brand management.
>
But again, I think everything that Caroline said is super important with regard to kind of protecting yourself with different brand deals approaching or with different brands approaching you directly and making sure that you're getting paid what you're worth. And speaking of pricing, Natalie and I have talked on several previous episodes about how pricing works and pricing your products and services is really, really hard. One, it starts with a mindset.
Amanda (27:25.078)
of what I am providing is valuable. And if you have a massed in audience of over 50,000 or even fewer people than that, depending on the size of sort of your market, again, we talk about that critical mass.
> **Title: How To Double Your Brand Deal Rates**
>
> If you have a critical mass of followers within your niche, the more valuable what you have to offer is, whether that is digital products directly to your audience or if it's brand deals, offer to bigger brands and companies, obviously. So knowing your value and knowing your worth and really internalizing that,
>
> and knowing that you have something special to offer, a term that's used in pricing is inimitability. And so if it's really hard for someone else to deliver what you can deliver, then you should double your prices immediately. The uniqueness of what you have to offer is a major lever for driving up prices. And then back to Caroline's point about making sure that you're checking on comps.
>
> and thinking about equity as well. So what is an equitable deal for you and for the brand? And so what kind of results would you need to deliver in order to charge X number of dollars? And so that's gonna vary from brand to brand and company to company. And so we would advise you to not Google how much should I charge for an Instagram post because they're gonna give you just like a, per 1000 followers metric and don't think about it that way. Again, think about your level of inevitability, what you have to offer, and what the return on investment is going to be for each different type of brand that you work with.
>
Caroline, can you think of any examples or adding a little context and color? So I stopped monologuing here about like, you might offer the same thing, the same deliverable to two companies, but the value of it is drastically different depending on what the company sells.
Caroline Carter (29:13.11)
Yes, I think a really important thing to do, and
> **Title: Questions Your Need To Ask When Negotiating A Brand Deal**
>
> I do this on my sales calls when I'm helping get business for influencers is on that initial discovery call, you want to understand what their objectives are. So if it's really just to get in front of a certain number of eyeballs, maybe the pricing is structured around, hey, I have 50,000 followers, that's what you're trying to get access to. That's great. But that's not always a great metric to figure out your pricing or deliverables. I would say asking questions like,
>
> what are you hoping to achieve from this campaign? Are you looking to do brand awareness? Which is really just them getting their message out there. You know, they just want to get the product in front of people. Are you focusing more on demand generation or lead generation? So are you measuring the success of this partnership by how many people go to your landing page or sign up for the product or buy the product? And so those types of questions are a good way to ensure the partnership makes sense.
>
> And that's also another good way to help figure out how you want to price it and not get taken advantage of or not be distilled down to just a number. And this is how many followers you have. And so this is the base rate you're gonna get paid.
>
Amanda (30:21.806)
Hmm. What are other questions? Like say influencer creator receives an inquiry for a brand deal. **What should they ask other than that to make sure that they're understanding objectives and can price accordingly?** Like what's a quick way to level up to get more information before you share pricing?
Caroline Carter (30:41.514)
> **Title: The First Question You Ask A Brand Before Signing A Brand Deal**
>
> **I think the most important question you can ask is just like, who are you trying to target?** Right? Because ultimately that's going to be a qualification metric. And so if they're looking to target the folks that you have in your audience, you're probably going to be a great fit for them, whether you are focused on demand generation or brand awareness or whatever end goal. It's all about like matching yourself with the audience of the brand. So that's what I focus on too. And sometimes you actually want to turn down deals because...
>
> maybe the audience is not the right fit. And so you're not going to get any clicks or eyeballs, and then the brand is going to be upset. They might not want to work with you again. So you want to actually qualify in and out of some of these deals based on, is the partnership a match with your audience?
>
Amanda (31:29.318)
Yeah, and to add on that, just a total yes and here, don't work with brands who are trashy and are not going to do right by your audience. And so do some vetting, maybe before you even reply to somebody's emails, thinking about the questions that Caroline is imploring you to ask, but also Google the company, look at reviews of their products, make sure that they are legitimate so that you don't lose legitimacy with your audience by-
association with this, you know, trashy brand or whatever. So making sure that you are protecting yourself and your audience from anybody who is kind of subpar, if you will. And also see if that brand has recently received like venture capital funding or it was acquired by a private equity firm. And Caroline's point earlier, do research on who else they have done brand deals with, try and kind of get just a general sense of.
Maybe they're flush with cash or this is part, them reaching out to you as part of like a bigger influencer campaign or a bigger company initiative that's been discussed publicly or something like that or there's an article about it. So get a little bit of intel and go into the conversation with the prospective brand with more information. And so that's something that everybody can do. Everybody can Google and kind of like do a little bit of defining the landscape, if you will, what they're walking into. So yeah, okay, cool.
Um, and let's also talk, Caroline, um, we've got some notes here about thinking about brand deals that are scalable and, you know, kind of using time, using a creator's time efficiently with regard to brand deals. Do you want to speak to that a little bit?
Caroline Carter (33:09.79)
Yes, definitely. So I have seen creators who have a great kind of first half of their creator business. And then they actually get so busy and maybe take on so much that they get burnt out because they really can't scale. So you have to think about like Amanda mentioned, maybe a course, right? You teach the course for one hour, but you can actually like sell that to multiple people, right? Or like hundreds of people can partake in that course without you having to teach it 100 different times.
Same thing, a video is maybe going to take you longer to produce because you have to do edits and maybe do a couple takes. So you probably want to think about charging more for that because that's just going to take more of your time. Whereas, what is a lower lift? Maybe posting something on LinkedIn or Twitter where you can spend five minutes typing up a post. That's a lot more scalable. So you need to just be very protective of your time and figure out what is going to take you the most time.
that's probably where you want to charge the most. And then where can you do some of these add-ons that are a lot more scalable? So I love Amanda's idea of, again, the courses, maybe a podcast series, that series that gets promoted to a bunch of different folks. That's a great way to get your name out there. But yeah, you just have to be very protective of your time as a creator and be very organized. So maybe you only take on a certain number of content creation pieces every month.
Amanda (34:36.066)
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Carter (34:36.211)
or every quarter. I think that's always helpful to keep in mind.
Amanda (34:40.158)
Yeah, pace yourself. And I talk about leverage a lot. And so like, what's the lever that you can pull that exactly what Caroline just said is the lowest lift for you, but creates the most value for your audience and also will make you the most money. So you could also think of like a Venn diagram. Uh, you're trying to find the middle of it on one side is what your audience needs and that could be brands and or your customers. And then on the other, the other circle on the other side of the Venn diagram is, um,
what you can provide, right? And so you're trying to find the middle of those, like what do these people need? What can I provide? And then if you can fine tune it a little bit further than that, like if you can solve their biggest problems with something that doesn't take a whole lot of effort, the middle of that Venn diagram is filled with dollar signs. And so try and be thinking along those lines. It goes back to creator mindset and making sure that you are really valuing what you're doing and that you place a premium on your time and your outputs. And...
you know, approach your work with excellence because excellent work, I think, will get you better social proof and testimonials, which you can leverage to get more brand deals and charge more for them. And so, yeah, don't overload yourself. Don't overcommit yourself and like, my gosh, get help. If you're in that fortunate position where you've got more requests coming in than you can manage, get help. And we'll help you get really, really efficient or help you find someone if we're not the right fit. So I would definitely.
I encourage you to take all of the advice in here. This is actually just all great advice for all creators, no matter if you're an entertainment-based creator or an education-based creator, whatever. Okay, well let's shift gears here just for a few minutes. And so if a creator is going to try and deliver brand deals on their own, how can they do so consistency and with excellence, especially if you're managing, to your point, a second ago, a handful of them like every month?
Do you have specific tips on as a salesperson, a seasoned salesperson, like how you keep track of all this?
Caroline Carter (36:39.495)
Definitely. I would say you need to be pretty organized. So make sure that you have a good system for keeping track of things. I would even have a content creation calendar, like I said, because you may figure out, hey, I've taken on eight different projects for the month of November, and then you start to realize, oh my gosh, I can actually only get through one a week and deliver high-quality work. So finding that balance.
with like how you work and sort of the demands of some of the engagements you subscribe to. I think that's super important. Like I said, a content creation calendar. Amanda mentioned this but definitely outsourcing the things that take a ton of time or you might not be good at. So maybe you have somebody who edits your videos for you. Maybe you have a ghostwriter for some of your newsletter if you can't do it three times a week, you know, but you need to keep up that consistency.
Amanda (37:20.598)
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Carter (37:31.254)
Accounting, I know we've worked with folks who, you know, the invoicing side takes a long time or you're working with a large organization, like you, the creator, don't want to have to spend two hours of your week figuring out how to get paid on one of your projects, right? So I think being super organized with like the actual content creation, but then figuring out, hey, where do I not enjoy spending my time and what is detracting from creating the content and figuring out how to kind of outsource that or find some creative solutions, I think.
Amanda (38:01.522)
Yes, I love that. And documentation is so key here. Keeping track of stuff, leaving breadcrumbs for yourself. This is how I can manage 900 different things at a time. I take very, very careful notes and keep very careful records and things like that. So I can context switch quickly, and get up to speed quickly, and get things done, like I said earlier, consistently and with excellence. So those are all good tips. We have...
a checklist or a couple of checklists associated with brand deals that I would be more than happy to give away to anybody who listens to this show. You can just email me amanda at we level up [creators.com](http://creators.com/) and I'll just give you the checklist that we use internally like with Caroline and our clients that we make sure like all the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted and everything. It is a very, very comprehensive list that you could just copy and paste for each one of your brand deals in your pipeline, so to speak. So
Reach out to me and grab that. Anything else you wanna add, Caroline?
Caroline Carter (39:00.63)
I think that's about it. But yes, definitely if you are a content creator looking for some help with your sales or managing your pipeline, definitely reach out to us because I know that Amanda is great at managing the business side of things. And I love helping you monetize your creative talents. So feel free to reach out to us.
Amanda (39:21.258)
Yeah, definitely. And you can reach out again, Amanda at [WeLevelUpCreators.com](http://welevelupcreators.com/) or hello at [WeLevelUpCreators.com](http://welevelupcreators.com/). And we would be happy to just set up an exploratory conversation if that's what's right for you or just answer your questions. Just mentioned this podcast episode and we will set you up. Time is precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us. Level Up Creators exists to amplify the voice, reach and impact of creators making a positive impact in the world with your expertise as our focus, our team of
team of strategists, marketers, sales pros, product developers, administrators, and tech gurus handle the heavy lifting of building and optimizing a profitable business that will transform your life for good. Subscribe to the show and check out [welevelupcreators.com](http://welevelupcreators.com/) to sign up for our newsletter where we share weekly actionable business tips for creators, just like you. See you next time on the level up creators podcast.
Caroline Carter (40:08.974)
Thanks.
In this episode, Caroline Carter and Amanda discuss brand deals and how creators can navigate the world of influencer marketing. They emphasize
**the importance of understanding the value of your content and not underselling yourself**. Caroline shares an example of a creator who unknowingly charged significantly less than another influencer for a similar brand deal, **highlighting the need for market research and pricing strategy**. They also discuss the benefits of **bundling content and leveraging different platforms to maximize revenue**. The conversation touches on the importance of protecting yourself from brands that may not align with your values and **the value of knowledge sharing within the creator community**. Overall, this discussion helps listeners understand the importance of valuing their work, conducting market research, and protecting themselves from being taken advantage of in brand deals.
1. Understanding the Value of Your Content: A Guide to Making High-Value Brand Deals
2. Navigating the World of Brand Deals: How to Avoid Being Taken Advantage Of
3. Market Research and Pricing Strategy: Unlocking the Potential of Your Brand Deals
4. Maximizing Revenue: Bundling Content and Leveraging Different Platforms for Success
5. Protecting Your Values: Choosing the Right Brands for Collaborations
6. Knowledge Sharing in the Creator Community: Empowering Each Other in Brand Deals
7. Valuing Your Work: Tips for Making High-Value Brand Deals and Protecting Yourself
Are you getting the best brand deal
How to Make High-Value Brand Deals