How to find sponsors for your YouTube channel
Start by Identifying Your YouTube Audience
Before you go searching for sponsors, you must first look at your audience. What is their age range? What trends do the follow? Where do they shop? Which products are the interested in? These questions are a good starting point for which types of brands to approach. A sponsorship is a two-way street. You get paid in cash or products. You sponsor gets the exposure, good reviews, etc. Along with the benefit of an audience that’s likely to buy their products.
Determine What You Can Offer to Brands
Any brand you approach will want to know what you’re going to do for them in return for a sponsorship. Will you give in-video shout-outs or mentions? Will you do product reviews of different products that they make? How will you be marketing their brand?
You may want to set up several tiers of sponsorships. For example, you may be willing to review products in exchange for getting them for free from the brand, but you will not guarantee a positive review if the product doesn’t work the way it’s advertised.
You may be willing to give exposure in your videos, and on your social media pages for a certain amount of money. For a higher payment, you might sign a contract to use their products exclusively. The potential is unlimited. It is best to create different sponsorship plans at different price points that provide value. Each sponsorship plan or level for your YouTube channel can include different or additional methods of promotion for the brand.
Do Some Research
Once you’ve determined the types of brands your audience finds relevant. Make sure you have a good idea of what you can offer them. Do some research on a few of those brands. And don’t just focus on the big-name brands. Look for smaller, start-up brands that make quality products that your followers may be interested in.
As you do your brand research, look specifically for brands that you think could really benefit from sponsoring your YouTube channel and videos. Are they new and looking to widen their reach? Are they an established brand with one demographic but looking to expand into another (specifically, one made up of your audience)? You’ll use this information when you make your proposal for a sponsorship.
Create Quality YouTube Sponsorship Proposals
Firstly, do not write a single form letter and do nothing more than change the name of the company. They receive proposals for sponsorships all the time, and they are ready to throw out form letters quickly.
Writing a personalised sponsorship proposal letter for each of the companies you approach, they will notice and take you more seriously. In this letter, be sure to properly introduce yourself and give a good description of your content and how a sponsorship can benefit them. Be as specific as possible and show them that you have a plan to make their sponsorship a successful campaign for both you and them.
Start Reaching Out to Brands
Once you’ve chosen the companies you want to approach for sponsorship and you’ve written at least the first draft(s) of your proposal(s), it’s time to start reaching out to them. Go to their websites and check out their “Contact Us” pages.
Look through their links to see if they have an established process for approaching them for sponsorship. If not, just write to the most relevant email address on the contact page and go from there.
In addition to researching and approaching individual brands, you can also check out one of several sponsorship platforms, as well. We recommend fundmyvideo.com.