The Branded Content Marketing Association launches influence pitching competition - what would your pitch be?
One of the biggest challenges in the highly competitive world of influencer marketing, is pitching to win brand campaigns. The BCMA, (Branded Content Marketing Association) and leading authority on influencer marketing launched a global competition in June based around the well known elevator pitch with entrants completing a 1 minute video. The final will be held at Borderless Live at Tobacco Dock in September. So if you had a minute what would you say?
Over the years, I have seen long detailed presentation decks, I am guilty of doing this too. We have so much to say about what we do don't we. When we have a limited amount of time, its amazing how much we focus on whats really important. So if you had just a minute how would you craft your pitch. Sometimes we may meet the ideal prospect at a networking event and we need to get them interested enough to want them asking for more, what do we do?
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1. Put yourself in their shoes - if I was buying from me, what would I want. The best pitches I have seen are where the person doing the presentation, understands the challenges, and or has done some research, even if only taking a look at a website.
2. Building rapport and connection with your audience - we want to work with people we like so this is important. Actually working remotely, has been remarkably easy at building rapport. Body language is important in pitching, so always keep eye contact, smile and notice non-verbal behaviour.
3. Focus on the challenges that people often have and how you solve them by quoting case studies, for example. XYZ company couldnt do any events any more, so we were able to provide a complete virtual conference together in less than 2 months, we helped them achieve ABC registrations, and they had X number of new registrations and 10 sponsors covered the cost of the event and some. We delivered this all within their budget so We could do the same for you.
4. Be sure of your value, so often we can assume the prospect will decline or just think about about our proposal. I say this to influencers, if a brand were to hire a videographer, photographer, producer, website designer, marketing manager, community manager it would cost them a signifcant amount of money and in one influencer they may have all these roles so charge accordingly
5. Using inspiring quotes- to nail a message home. We can only take in so much content, its better to tell one story (message) really well than try and share everything. You can use stats but try and equate them to something that people will remember. Think of a pitch like this The headline grabber, the main content, and the big finish!
If you want to find out more about the BCMA competition https://www.thebcma.info/pitch-influence-2020/
Best of luck!