Securing Top Brands w/ Justin Moore

0:00I think there's a big mistake that a lot of creators make when they're trying to approach their dream sponsor, which is trying to impress them with their metrics metrics.

0:14Hey, Justin, welcome to the show. What's up, man? Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Why don't you tell us about yourself? And we use this thing called the map. Basically, it's the mission. So what do you aim to achieve? The achievements, anything that you are very either proud of, any notable milestone in your career or life also, if you want, or both, and the purpose. So why do you do what you do? So my mission is I'm going to help creators big and small land a million sponsorships by 2032. This is my North Star, and it's what I've built my life and my business around. And so that's really kind of my true North.

0:48My accomplishments, first and foremost, I am a dad. I have two boys who are seven and 10, and I love them to death. And I'm a husband to my wife, April, who funny enough, she was the one who started her YouTube channel in 2009, which is how I got into this whole thing. And so a big part of my life is spending time with my family, traveling, scouting, sports, that type of thing. And then other achievements, man, I was in a metalcore band in high school. I'm a trained opera singer. I'm an Eagle Scout. My background is actually in engineering. So it's definitely not influencer marketing when I started.

1:28But I have a very circuitous path throughout my life of doing lots of different things that got me to where I am today. And then the purpose, why do I do what I do? Well, the reason that I'm educating creators now is because I feel as though it's my duty to educate the next generation of creators. Because my wife and I have had so much fortune throughout, we've been so fortunate to accomplish a lot of the things, both professionally and financially, over the last 15 years being creators. And now it's like, I really want to help prevent a lot the creators coming up from making the mistakes that we did thank you for that intro it helps all the time to understand a bit more like you know who you are and also like how you got there and one of the questions for you was like in this basically 14 15 years right on youtube basically from there like it when when it was still you know the beginning and there was a couple of uh you know buttons to just upload and you know and that that was if you're not the time there was no feed and notification and nothing like that you know how did your channel like change it in these uh in this period?

2:30What are the things that either you expected or things that you didn't and that kind of shocked you to see on YouTube? And what trends have you observed like come and go? Is there something that is evergreen happening on YouTube or somehow every year, every six months, you have to kind of understand what is happening, adapt and change? I think that the biggest difference between YouTube of 15 years ago and YouTube of today is that basically everyone who started kind of the og creators you literally could not make money like that you you don't make money it was like the partner program had just started but most people were not in it right like my wife got rejected three times from the partner program before she finally got in but like most people were not in it it was very much like an invite only thing in the beginning and brands were not compensating creators on youtube at that time like maybe some very very very large people, but generally it was not, it was free stuff.

3:26That was, they started to offer like, Hey, here, we'll give you this free thing to like talk about us. And so in the beginning, it was a passion project. Everyone did it because it was like these funny videos or these, this cool thing that you could, you know, upload videos for free on the internet. Cause remember before YouTube was like really hard to like host a video file, like anywhere. Right. Yeah. And so that was like a big value proposition. And so, you know, I think that the big difference over the last 10 to 15 years has been that, you know, this kind of next generation of creators, regardless whether it's on YouTube or some of these other social media platforms, it is like totally accepted and a legitimate goal to like try to make money from being a creator, being an influencer.

4:06And I think it just, you approach it, I think a little bit differently in terms of your savviness to try to build a business around it. But for us, dude, we had no idea what we were doing. We signed contracts that we shouldn't have. We did deals without contracts. We just, man, we made every mistake in the book. That is, I think one of the biggest differences is that everyone knows, like kind of in the cultural zeitgeist, that you can make money as an influencer, as a creator. Back in the day, no one knew. Like they would constantly ask us in the comment section, like, so what's your guys' jobs?

4:35And we're like, this is our job, right? But now it's a lot different. But I think it's a positive trend. It's a positive trend that it's kind of becoming destigmatized to be able to generate a livelihood from this. It's funny what you say, you know, it's a job because if you at the time, you know better than I mean, at the time, it was like, no one really wanted to say I make videos on YouTube because it was like weird, right? Like to say, I do that for a living. At the time, it was not, you know, for a living. But still, you didn't want your friends to know that you were like, you know, doing videos on YouTube.

5:06And that was also funny. Like, it's so easy these days to upload things online. But yeah, at the time, it was difficult. I do remember that maybe like Dailymotion and some other website right there, we weren't able to upload things. It took so much time because of the connection was not the best time for upload and everything. So these days we take things for granted. But yes, if you are like one of the OG, you know that at the time was not easy at all to be a content creator. So because you said, right, you learn by your mistakes and now you want to help the others. Let's say that, you know, there is a creator.

5:36And this would be interesting, I think, to listen for both creators, also brand managers and marketing managers, right? To understand how to be on the same page. Let's say that a creator has a dream collaboration, a dream brand. They definitely want to work with that one. It is on their, you know, dream list. How do you, you know, approach that? So let's say that you just put the name of the brand on your piece of paper, on your form, whatever. What's next? I think there's a big mistake that a lot of creators make when they're trying to approach their dream sponsor, which is trying to impress them with their metrics.

6:12I have this many followers or this many subscribers or this many viewers. and so when they reach out, let's say they craft a pitch to this brand, whether they slide in the brand's DMs on Instagram or sends an email to like press at brand.com from the website or something, this is what they lead with. It's like all these demographic information and viewership and all this stuff too and the brand instantly deletes that email because they don't know who you are and they don't care. There's lots of people on social media who have lots of followers and, and large viewership and things like that. And so what I guide people to do is kind of a mindset shift around this, which is that it's not about you.

6:50Because again, they don't care about you. What they care about is accomplishing their own objectives. And so my guidance to creators is like try to surmise, try to speculate what it seems like is important to the brand right now. Look at what they're posting on social media. Look at what their VP of marketing is posting on LinkedIn. look at their press releases, look at their job boards. Are they recruiting for an influencer marketing manager or a coordinator? And they're saying, here's all the things we need help with, right? You as a creator can reach out and say, Hey, I saw that you're trying to accomplish this thing.

7:22I believe that I can help you do that in the following ways. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Are you free on Thursday at 10 a.m. to talk about it? So it's this shift from it being all about me, me, me to all about the brand. I think it's spot on. It reminds me during, you know, hiring processes, exactly the same. If you want to get like, you know, work for a company, instead of sending like, you know, blasting out to a thousand companies, select the file that you want to work and exactly do the same. Like, you know, look at the news as been any changes in the company. And they're going to know this back because I can easily see whenever we receive this type of emails, the one that are copy paste and the one where they spend the time.

7:56And then, you know, guess who is going to receive a reply, right? Is the one that put it because you want to work with influencers and communicators that have a professional mindset, a professional approach. and therefore you can understand that from the day one and the first email, right, I would say. So that is absolutely a great advice that you gave here. Do you think there is any difference between up-and-coming creators and experienced ones when it comes to communicate that or do you think that it works the same? You know, I think that to some degree, I actually think up-and-coming creators have a little bit of an advantage with respect to this because they don't have any bad habits yet because I think that experienced creators, there's a big trap where they become reliant on inbound deal flow.

8:41So maybe they've built up their business pretty significantly and they've been used to getting a bunch of deals from brands. And then when there's an economic crisis or something happens where they're just not getting a lot of emails, they think, oh my God, the sky is falling. What's going on here? Like I'm not getting brand deals anymore. And so one of the things I talk about is like you always have to supplement your inbound deal flow with outbound prospecting and pitching with brands. Because the trap is, is that when a brand reaches out to you, so much of the campaign is fully baked, right?

9:14It's like, here's the campaign. Here's the product we want you to talk about. Here's the brief. Here's how much we're going to pay you. Take it or leave it, right? But when it's you actually reaching out and proposing something, it's a little bit more of a blank canvas. You can kind of co-create the campaign with the brand or the agency, and you probably have a bit more negotiating leverage because I think a lot of people look at a pitch as like, oh, I'm reaching out to them. But when a brand reaches out to you, you still have to pitch them on why you're the best person for the job. And I think a lot of creators don't look at a pitch that way because you're probably competing with 20 other people that they reached out to.

9:45And so I actually think that up and coming creators might, if they can educate themselves around how to craft a compelling pitch rather than the grizzled creator veteran who's done it for like, why is it just, it's just times have changed. I don't know what's changing. Hello! Is your brand ready to amplify its reach? Well, the Influencer Marketing Factory is here to do just that. We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements to managing shipping and logistics, we have it all covered.

10:17We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals from Fortune 500 companies to DTC brands. And we don't just stop there. With detailed ROI analysis, we help brands like yours measure success, transforming impressions into actionable conversions. You can find us at theinfluencermarketingfactory.com or just search the Influencer Marketing Factory on Google. So you said about, you know, the importance of understanding what can I give you in terms of, you know, metrics, but also how can I have a bright brand in achieving certain goals and so on. So one of the ways it is, you know, sending an email, and sometimes you can also attach a media kit, right?

10:52Sometimes you can add key studies of, you know, like historical campaigns that you did. Sometimes it's media kit plus, you know, the sort of, you know, pricing, right? Sort of table of pricing. Some people, I know this, they have a sort of packages, right? They put it there. Other times it's like, you know, it depends by the double content. How do you usually advise creators? Like, is it pre-formatted things and that's it? Is it more about the discussion that happens between them and the brand? Okay. So if you're listening to this and you're a creator, I want you to never, ever, ever attach a document or a PDF or a media kit or anything on a cold pitch email for one very simple reason, which is that a lot of brands' corporate firewalls will reject emails from unknown senders that have attachments on them.

11:39So your email may have never even gotten through to anyone because you attached a PDF to it. And so I really advise against attaching a media kit or a proposal or media, you know, rate card or whatever to an initial email. Once that brand responds to you, that is a signal to the firewall that like, okay, this is a known sender and then you can send, you know, attachment if you need to. But that's just like a quick piece of advice. Number two, if you have a media kit with a rate card in it, I would highly, highly suggest deleting that page. for the following reason. Imagine, Alessandro, that you have an ailment and so you go to the doctor and you wanna figure out what's going wrong with you.

12:16So you go into the doctor's office and then the doctor enters the room. You open your mouth to start talking about what's wrong with you and the doctor says, he takes out his prescription pad and he writes you a prescription, hands it to you and walks out the door. This is what's happening when you are providing brands a rate card or prefix packages. Here, pick one, two, three, four, five, six. The brand is thinking, well, I didn't want any of those things. And here's the creator saying, here's the prescription for you without even knowing what our challenges or problems are as a brand. And so the unlock here is that, yes, of course you should provide packages to them, but those are bespoke.

12:53They're not a boilerplate packages that you offer to everyone, like pick one. No, it's like, I'm going to listen to what your challenges are as inputs. And then when you say, here's what I heard about what your challenges are. And here is how I can help you accomplish those challenges by sponsoring me. So it's somewhat of a positioning exercise. Of course, you can have packages and things like that, that you kind of keep to yourself of like the various ways that you usually work with people, but you're going to kind of pick and choose what is going to work best for each specific sponsor. You know, when brands sponsor me and my business at Creator Wizard, this is exactly what I do.

13:27So brand A comes inbound. It was like awareness. That's our goal or we want to get people to sign up for this webinar that that's another goal. And so I said, okay, great. Then for the awareness goal type, you probably want to sponsor the podcast and you probably want to sponsor the YouTube channel for, you know, that's package one, let's say. And then for package two, when you want webinar registrants, we're going to do newsletter blast for that one. And so this is a big mistake that a lot of creators make is that their packages, the only variance is quantity. So they're like two YouTube videos, package one, three YouTube videos, package too right it's like that's the only thing that changes and so the the game changer is like each package is completely different based on the goal that you're uh attaching it to essentially thank you for sharing that because again maybe you send a pdf it bounced back and you think that they're not like you know want to talk with you it's just like a firewall right this is like no thank right i don't want it um and then the second part when you say about you know not uh try not to do like just a sort of pricing based on the deliverables so it's also interesting so deliverables right so for people like listening today it's you know how many like you know instagram stories and tiktok videos and and so on but on top of it also we have things like usage right exclusivity and so on how do you help the creators when it comes to to that because that can change drastically the pricing goals right of of of the final like agreement and the scope of work so i have this framework that i talk about the called the do rule d u e right like you just said the deliverables the usage rights and the exclusivity.

14:53Those are the three major pricing levers that you should be thinking about when it comes to figuring out what you want to charge. And you're right, like, depending on exactly what they're asking you to do, for example, a integrated YouTube video, 90 second integration is gonna be very different than a dedicated YouTube video. A reel is going to be very different than a photo carousel, right? A entire blog post that's dedicated to the brand, right? So you get the idea, like it varies. And so you need to scope that properly. The you in the do rule, the usage rights, like you said, does the brand want to license it or do they want to run paid media with it?

15:27So licensing is where the brand says, hey, we actually want to embed this on our website or we want to upload it natively on our social media platforms or an e-commerce partner or something like that. Or do they want to amplify it with additional dollars behind the content? So running an additional 50K or 100K of paid media spend behind your assets. It's really important to know that, right? And for how long, what's the duration? And then the final thing is exclusivity is the brand saying, hey, you cannot work with any of our competitors for a year. That represents like a direct, you know, opportunity cost, like dollars out of your pocket were one of the brand's competitors to approach you in six months or something and say, hey, we'd love to collaborate.

16:06And so a lot of creators are very dismissive of some of these details and they're just fixated on like, oh, the brand's gonna pay me 500 bucks. They're gonna pay me a thousand bucks. and they're not really considering some of these other levers, which will drastically impact the price. Absolutely. And also, you know, when you talk about user rate, of course, for the creator, it's a good opportunity to make more money. But also, we discussed about this, I think, in the episode with Leeds from Bazar Voice. And we said that there is a lot of data that says that when you show UGC content, creator content, influencer content on your website, usually the commercial rate is much higher because that's the type of video that you want to see.

16:42So it helps the creators to make more money. It helps the brands to help in terms of conversion rate increase in social proof and so on, right? So it might cost you a bit more as a brand, but you're already paying, right, for the content. So why not, instead of making other content in a studio and paying more for, like, all that, just use that one and instead of just publishing on social media, publishing on your website, publishing on your detailed page of your e-commerce, right? There are so many ways that you can use that one and help you, again, you know, just getting the last sort of, you know, if you are the customer, should I buy this one?

17:15Look at this video. It's someone that I relate to. I'm going to click on purchase, right? So I think it's quite important as well. You know, I think any brand marketers who are listening to this also should, it should hopefully unlock, like, this is the type of way where you can get extended mileage out of these partnerships that you're doing with creators. So rather than being fixated on like, oh, the creator's post went live, but no one like bought it or like not as many people bought it as we thought. If you can start to secure some of these other types of rights to repurpose the content in other ways, that can help unlock, it can help make the entire investment more worthwhile to understand that you're getting other things out of it.

17:53And to start wrapping on the episode, I also wanted to see that, I know that you are writing a book now, right? First of all, I'm also curious why a book writer after doing everything on social media, that is digital, right? So first of all, how did you come out with the idea? Is that something that you always wanted to do? Is it something that, you know, creators asked you to? And if for creators and influencers listening today, what they can learn from your book? So my book is called Sponsor Magnet and hopefully it'll be out by the end of the year. And the reason that I decided to write a book is a couple of things.

18:28Yes, I've been asked a ton by my audience for something to consume in a longer format like that, where it's kind of this laid out, like to be clear, I have a course, right? So that is very kind of sequential, like you're do this, do this, do this, this. But again, going back to my impact mission, right, where I want to help creators land a million sponsorships, I started thinking about what are the ways in which I can do that? Yes, I can create a bunch of free content on the internet. I can make YouTube videos. I can make short form content, things like that. But what are the things that I can do that are in its purest form will explode the accessibility potential?

18:59And a book at that kind of low price point will help accomplish that mission, right? And so that was one major reason why I decided to do it. The other thing too, is that there is no definitive book about this. There's some old kind of corporate-y kind of textbook research-based books about sponsorship, corporate sponsorship, things like this. But man, sponsorships is the number one source of revenue for most creators. Look at any study out there, right? And there's no definitive book about this. By the way, this insight also is what's leading me to starting a conference as well. So I'm launching a conference called the Sponsorship Strategy Summit, all about sponsorship strategy.

19:37And so it's these two things, the book and the conference are, I guess I just feel very drawn to like, someone needs to do this. Someone needs to like, you know, be out there at the front of the pack, kind of championing, being an advocate for creators. Because I think that there's all these other players in the industry, the influencer marketing agencies, the PR agencies, the managers and agents, all that stuff too. But like, I can say that I am completely unbiased. Like I do not, you cannot hire me. You can't retain me. I do, I will not represent you. I'm not going to take a percentage of your deals.

20:10I am literally just going to teach you, right? And you can learn for free. I've got lots of free stuff out there. But yeah, of course, if you want to learn from me, of course, there's all that stuff too. But like, I felt like it needed to come from someone like me who has no dog in the race, if that makes sense. It makes sense. You know, especially, again, I can see still a lot of confusion, you know, sometimes. Because again, it's sometimes it's technical and boring things that especially if you're a content creator, you either you don't care about that much or you are again lost right because you know what you're doing then it's not just about the money here i would say it's also about the back and forth in the communication in just be sure that you're gonna work again with a brand because you understood from day one about the you know terms of the agreement and so on so i think that it's it's absolutely needed and necessary these days with all the money in the creator economy to have someone, right, to teach people on how to do that.

21:01So, you know, best of luck with the book, best of luck with the conference, congrats on everything that you built so far in these years of YouTube and for joining me today and sharing all your story and knowledge with us. Dude, thank you so much. And if there's any creators listening out there that are looking to learn more about this, I have a completely free newsletter at creatorwizard.com slash join. I've got about 30 ,000 creators on there now. And every single week I send out sponsorship opportunities for free. People, brands are trying to find brands to creators to collaborate with. And so I also share videos and articles and things like that.

21:34So, yeah, I would love to connect with each and every one of you. Amazing. We're going to put a link in the description of the episode so people can easily click on that one and subscribe. Awesome. Thanks again for having me, man. It was a blast. Of course. Thank you, Justin. This was the Influence Factor by the Influencer Marketing Factory. And I'll see you next week.

21:57Thank you.

22:29Thank you.