They loved your content and still didn't give you the deal, here's why.
Let me tell you something that took a lot of creators too long to figure out.
When a brand reaches out to you it's not an audition, you already passed the audition, your content did that, the reason they're in your DMs is because something about what you make caught their attention and they want in.
So why do so many of those conversations end in silence?
Here's what actually happens on the brand's side.
They find a creator they like, they reach out, they ask for a media kit or a rate card and then they wait.
What comes back is usually a PDF, sometimes a Google Drive link, sometimes just numbers typed plainly in a DM, stats from three months ago, a rate that sounds like it was made up on the spot and a bio that was clearly written for just the followers not for a brand manager trying to justify a spend to their boss.
And just like that, a deal that was almost theirs slips away, not because the content wasn't good, it was, but because the pitch didn't match it.
There's a version of you that creates amazing content and a version of you that a brand can actually work with easily, and the gap between those two versions isn't talent, it's infrastructure
Your media kit, your rate card, your audience data, the way you show up when someone asks what you charge, all of that is infrastructure and most creators in this market are building the content without building the infrastructure to support it.
So what do you actually do about it?
Honestly it starts before the brand even asks, know your numbers, not from memory but from somewhere that's always current, have a rate you're confident about before someone puts you on the spot, and have something to send that actually reflects where you are right now not where you were eight months ago.
Your content got them into your DMs, your infrastructure should close the deal.
One more thing..
We're building something for exactly this, a live media kit platform for creators, one link with your live stats, your rate card and everything a brand needs to say yes without the back and forth.
Published on Marloden's Substack
