Getting On The Shortlist

A brand sends a brief. Twenty profiles get opened. Five names go back. For six years, I was the person opening them.

This is the whole method for getting into that five, written from the inside. No theory, no background reading. It ends with you having actually sent a pitch.

What is inside

• Where to look, by category. Fashion, beauty, fitness, tech, food, home. A row for each, and four routes that work in any of them
• Why some categories gift and others pay. The pattern underneath it, and the three questions that tell you which offer is coming before it arrives
• Fashion, honestly. What a fashion brand is actually buying, who owns gifting there, why it books weeks before you ever see the drop, and what the most crowded category costs you
• Fitness, beauty and services, each with the way that category really behaves. What a product that cannot speak for itself has to pay for. Why beauty runs on launches rather than a calendar. Why a hotel books you when it is empty rather than when it is flush
• Three signals a brand actually has money, and the one that means nothing at all
• Who to ask for by name, by size of company. The job titles that hold the budget, and two that look right and are not
• LinkedIn, in full. How to find the influencer marketing manager, partnerships manager or casting director behind a brand, how to narrow it down by country, and how to pitch a person rather than an inbox
• How to find their email address, and the rule that protects your sending reputation
• Spotting the fake ones. Brand impersonation, fake gifting offers, agencies that charge you, and the reason good people fall for them
• The pitch itself, written out in full, plus the follow-up almost nobody sends
• After a no. One brand said no in Los Angeles and yes in Miami. What that told me, and what to do with it
• What actually got somebody on the list, and what took them off it. Not one item was about follower count

Get it if

• You do not know where to find brands worth pitching
• You are emailing info@ and hearing nothing
• You keep being offered gifted and cannot work out why
• You cannot tell a real offer from a time waster

Skip it if

Brands already email you and the problem is what to charge. That is The Brand Partnership Guide.

Two files: one flat to print, one you can type into. 23 exercises with room to write, and five email templates in full, including the brand pitch email template and the follow-up.

This is influencer outreach end to end. It is how to get brand deals with a small following, because nothing that got somebody onto one of my lists was decided by follower count.

Every guide now ends with a direct line to me. If a section does not land, message @ceo.rocks and I will explain it properly.