Episode 711: How to Land Brand Deals As a Food Creator in 2025 With Candice Ward

EBT711 – Candice Ward

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

[00:00:37]   

If you are wanting to expand your business in 2025 into the realm of working with brands, you are definitely going to want to listen to this episode. I talked to Candice Ward. She is the blogger at Eat More Cake. She is also the founder of The Confident Pitch Program. She talks about how to stand out as a food creator in 2025 when it comes to landing brand deals, she is immersed in this world. She’s super passionate about working with brands, so she has the inside scoop for you. She talks about what has changed in 2025 from previous years and how to stay ahead this year as opposed to previous years, what strategies we maybe should leave behind, and how to position yourself as the go to Content Creator for Brands Want to work with in 2025.

[00:01:32]   

And there’s some great news included. Brands no longer want just large creators with big accounts. They no longer want one off partnerships. They want to work with you whether you’re a small creator, a big creator, or anywhere in between. We also talk about sending pitches to brands and how to curate the best pitches so that brands actually respond.

[00:01:59]   

Candice talks through three big mistakes a lot of content creators make and she also talks about why simply sending an email isn’t enough anymore and what you can do beyond that. This is a well rounded, succinct, valuable episode and I hope you enjoy it. It is number 712 are you really.

[00:02:21] Sponsor   

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[00:03:04] Megan Porta   

Candice is a food photographer that has worked with brands like Crisco in the Raw Sugar, Stonewall Kitchen, Eagle Brand Milk and more. She is also a strategy and monetization coach for food bloggers and content creators that spent a decade in sales at Fortune 500 companies hitting massive quotas. Candice founded the Confident Pitch program, helping hundreds of content creators monetize and scale their businesses strategically so they have more time to focus on being creative. She teaches a pitching method that has allowed her to make a full time income on a 10 hour work week, take one month off to travel with their family, and have creative freedom to only say yes to clients that are in alignment with her brand. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two boys.

[00:03:51]   

Hello Candice, welcome back to the podcast. How have you been?

[00:03:55]  Candice Ward 

I’ve been so great. Nice to have you or be on here again. Thank you.

[00:03:58]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, great to see you again. I always like having repeat guests and such a great topic to talk about, just landing brand deals, especially in this new era of 2025 when I feel like everything is shifting and changing. So this will be great to touch base about. But before we do that, do you have another fun fact to share with us?

[00:04:18]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, my former life when I was in college I thought I wanted to be a diplomat. So I studied abroad and traveled more then than I do now and I’ve been to some interesting places like Ernest Hemingway’s house in Cuba which still stands out. That was the first international trip I took in high school so.

[00:04:36]  Megan Porta 

Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. Love it. Have you traveled anywhere exotic or interesting recently?

[00:04:43]  Candice Ward 

I went to Italy last year. Photography retreat and that was amazing. It’s still highlight of my life and career and just such a fun opportunity to photograph and be creative and not have any agenda tied to it other than exploring and being being creative.

[00:05:02]  Megan Porta 

Oh, glad you got the opportunity to do that. I haven’t been yet, but it’s on my list. So soon I hope. Okay, let’s talk about the topic at hand to frame this. Do you want to give us just a background on your blog, Eat More Cake and then also The Confident Pitch which I know you help a lot of bloggers through that. So yeah, give us the scoop.

[00:05:25]  Candice Ward 

Sure. So I am, I have a blog, Eat More Cake by Candice. It’s dessert focused. I started it really when I was making wedding cakes and wanted to document all of my recipes and then it turned into a business probably much like many of you listeners and I started teaching food bloggers and also photographers and just creatives that really wanted to create a thriving business.

[00:05:48]   

I quickly prioritized focusing on working with brands right out of the gate when I first started as a source of income while I was, you know, building my blog on the side. So that’s something that I started to teach other photographers and bloggers how to monetize because I do have a sales background.

[00:06:07]   

So that’s helped me leverage really cold pitching and client outreach to be able to land brand partnerships. And so I’m really passionate about teaching others how to create a simplified sales process in their business so that they can focus find other avenues of monetizing their creative business.

[00:06:25]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. And how long has The Confident Pitch Program been around?

[00:06:30]  Candice Ward 

So The Confident Pitch Program is my signature course that I created, also my coaching program. It’s been around for going on three years. So I really created a simple system that people can follow and replicate when it comes to reaching out to brands and pitching themselves and also just learning the foundational skill of selling themselves.

[00:06:52]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. Okay, let’s talk about 2025, because like I mentioned earlier, I feel like everything is shifting with not just working with brands, but everything in our world is kind of rocky and, and just changing. Right. So what in the world of working with brands is changing right now?

[00:07:12]  Candice Ward 

The biggest changes that I’ve seen is how brands are working with content creators, they very much are still hiring food bloggers and content creators to, you know, in this, in the capacity of sponsored posts on Instagram or sponsored blog posts. But gone are the days of that being the only form of partnerships.

[00:07:34]   

The way that brands are working with creators has evolved drastically for a couple of reasons, really increased competition, there’s a lot more creators out there and also just the rise of AI. I think brands are really craving that authentic relationship with content creators and wanting to build longer term partnerships. But they’re also wanting to get access to your audience in a different way than just relying on social media.

[00:07:58]   

Because as we know, social media has become increasingly more difficult. The algorithm is always changing, there’s just more people on it, so the noises become louder and it’s harder to be seen. Also, visibility doesn’t pay the bills and brands are willing to work with smaller creators because there is a lot of value in working with small creators.

[00:08:18]   

And some of the ways that they’re doing that is, you know, really looking at where the creator is performing. And that’s not necessarily just social media or just your blog these days. It can be you know, membership sites or if you have a really strong email list or if you’re on YouTube or you have a podcast.

[00:08:37]   

There’s all these different avenues that brands are willing to pay for now to reach your audience. And we need to evolve with that as well. But there have been a lot of shifts this year that I think we’re all feeling.

[00:08:47]  Megan Porta 

Well, that’s good news for the newer blogger, the smaller creator. Right. Because it used to be where you had to be more established and not just that, but you needed certain numbers and metrics and it seems like that’s kind of turning around. So it’s more of an open discussion, like anyone can bring a seat to the table.

[00:09:08]  Candice Ward 

Yes, absolutely. In fact, something I did want to share that I think is really relevant is just last week I follow many chat on LinkedIn and I’m connected with the VP of Marketing and she posted to her page the presentation that she gave influencer marketing and how that’s evolved. And there were definitely some key points that coincide with this that really were eye openers for myself.

[00:09:32]   

But also I think it’s relevant for us as creators to be aware of that. You know, a few of the points that she made was that they are brands are willing to work with smaller creators, smaller creators with a smaller following, and that the more important metric is being able to work with creators on a longer term capacity because the repetition of you, you know, talking about their product multiple times is more effective that they’re finding finally, they’re finally on board with this than just one off partnerships.

[00:10:05]   

So we need to then think, okay, how can we create a long term strategy or long term partnership opportunity when we are reaching out to brands and what does that look like and how can we show them the value when we are explaining, okay, maybe my audience is really strong on my email list or maybe I have a membership site that they can pay to have access to on a quarterly basis, for example, or for a particular season.

[00:10:30]   

So that’s one finding. And then the other is that brands are willing to pay for more money for ad spend. So what that means is in the past brands used to work with creators mostly on just creating organic, organic marketing, meaning they would hire you, you would create a piece of content for them and then that would go on your social channels and they wouldn’t necessarily boost that particular post.

[00:10:54]   

Now they’re seeing the benefit again because there’s a lot more people on social media. It’s harder for them to get in front of your audience as well as the audience they want to get in front of. So they’re putting ad spend behind your content. So that just means you an opportunity to one, charge more because you need to charge more for that.

[00:11:11]   

And two, it’s creating this higher drive and need from brands to hire creators to create ads that feel authentic and not and don’t feel like ads. So that’s really where we’re starting to see this rise of UGC marketing or UGC content, which is user generated content. So I think it’s more opportunity for us. We just need to shift the way that we view it and the way that we interact with brands to land those opportunities.

[00:11:36]  Megan Porta 

I love the long term news because I feel like you kind of alluded to this, but in the past it was like we had to try to convince brands that it was beneficial to do a long term partnership and it always felt like we were working against that. But now they’re starting to see the value and areas where we can highlight what our strengths are and what platforms we do well on. So how do we approach that? If we want a longer term partnership and we know they do, how do we approach it?

[00:12:06]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, I think there’s two ways. If it’s with a brand that you’ve worked with in the past, let’s say it was a one off partnership. Those are the easiest brands to convert into longer term partnerships. So two ways you can do this. You can either send them another pitch email and explain or show the results of the partnership that you did have with them.

[00:12:27]   

And if you’ve had a long term partnership, you can compare those results with a longer term partnership that you’ve had. Let’s say you’ve never had a long term partnership. Honestly, this is how you can leverage AI. And I’m sure there’s statistics out there that will show, I mean just the marketing principle alone is it, you know, it takes what, seven times to hear this about the same product or hear the same message before typically a consumer is ready to buy.

[00:12:53]   

That’s a perfect statistic that you can share with a brand that you’re pitching a long term partnership to. And basically you’re explaining to them that the repetition of, of you talking about their product is going to help them obviously reach their goals and increase sales. Depending again on what their particular goals are.

[00:13:12]   

That’s a few ways that you, that you could go about doing it. If you again have never worked with a partnership long term, I think, or even if you’ve never, let’s say you’ve never worked with a brand at all, the best way to land these opportunities is to, I call land and expand.

[00:13:27]   

So try to just land a partnership initially and then do really, really well with that partnership. And then it’s so much easier to open the door that longer term conversation. It is harder to land a three or six month partnership if you have, if you’ve never worked with a brand before, because that is a higher risk for the brand to say, okay, I’m going to make an investment in you, but I don’t have anything to show for it.

[00:13:49]   

So if you can show some sort of ROI or return on investment in hiring you long term, and again, there’s a lot of different ways to do that that is going to increase your chances of the brand giving you the green light and saying yes to working with you.

[00:14:02]  Megan Porta 

What are some ways to communicate that if you haven’t worked with a brand yet?

[00:14:08]  Candice Ward 

If you haven’t worked with a brand, I always say think, think backwards. So go and create, look at the content that you’re already creating and look at what’s performing and then go and approach brands that would fit naturally into a similar recipe. So I’ll give you an example. You know, as a dessert blogger, I have a one bowl chocolate cake recipe that always performs well.

[00:14:29]   

And, and so I might say, okay, if I want to approach chocolate brands to partner with them or any ingredient, you know, milk or yogurt or sour cream, you know, all the ingredients that go into chocolate cake, I would then try to think, how can I create another recipe that’s similar to this chocolate cake recipe?

[00:14:46]   

Maybe it’s a different flavor, like it’s a s’ mores cake. Because we’re entering summer months, right? Make it relevant to the season that we’re entering or that we are going into. And then I would pitch brands and say I have statistics to show you that my audience likes this chocolate cake recipe and I’m going to create more content similar to that.

[00:15:04]   

So I’m confident that it will perform. So if you’ve never worked with a brand, that’s one way. The second way is to look at if you have a specific list of brands that you really want to work with. I would go and look at, literally scroll their Instagram from a year before and look at the campaigns they ran this time last year.

[00:15:23]   

Like summer, I would say summer because, you know, it’s almost summer and obviously we’re not pitching for spring content anymore. We’re kind of summer and even into fall, I would say. And so I would look at the content that or the types of campaigns that they ran this time last year. We often think like, oh, they reinvent the wheel.

[00:15:41]   

It’s different every year. Not really. They kind of rinse and repeat, especially if it did well. So if you see that they had a specific type of campaign or even just certain types of recipes and you think that you can help them create more of that, then I would just start creating more of that on your feed and then you have more to show them in terms of like this is what my audience wants to see and it aligns well with your product or your audience as well.

[00:16:05]  Megan Porta 

Are you seeing that creators are having more success with bigger versus smaller brands right now or is it kind of both all over the place?

[00:16:14]  Candice Ward 

I’ve always been a proponent of not approaching the bigger brands. Not that it’s. But it’s just harder to get in front of the bigger brands. I also think bigger brands don’t have as much of a need and what I mean by that is they typically, I feel like bigger brands are the ones that are trying to get free content in exchange for exposure versus smaller brands are highly motivated because they’re trying to compete.

[00:16:39]   

They need content. They usually have marketing teams that run really lean and so that marketing individual has a lot on their plate and so they’re not necessarily the best at creating content or the best at coming up with content ideas and they’re going to lean on content creators for that. So I always say it’s better to approach small to mid sized companies that are in a state of growth and or they are maybe have one product, they’re going to be creating more products.

[00:17:08]   

Almost always they have, they start with one product and then they launch different products. That’s the sweet spot if you can find a company that’s in that state of growth because they will need a lot of content quickly and or they might need a photographer to photograph new packaging when that happens and they will want to work with a lot of creators.

[00:17:26]  Megan Porta 

Gotcha. Is there anything else that we should leave behind in 2024 and earlier and that is new or different in 2025?

[00:17:35]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, I think the biggest like things, the biggest things that I’ve seen evolve is obviously rise of AI and how we use that, but also how that how brands interact with us because of the rise of AI. So I think going back to the basics of focusing on relationship building which is why I think it works so beautifully with the conversation of long term partnerships.

[00:17:57]   

So I think that’s one. I think the second part to that that we’ve mentioned is evolving our offer as well. So as bloggers and, or as a photographer, for example, we can’t just offer photos anymore. We need to be offering video. As bloggers, we need be offering more than just recipes. We need to be maybe creating digital products to monetize and serving our audience in different ways or creating membership sites that are specific to maybe a subset of your content that your audience wants to see that you can like drip every week or every month to that audience.

[00:18:34]   

So just expanding our offer beyond what we’ve done in the past. Like my, my saying right now is, you know, if you’re blogging like you were in 2020, like it, we’re 2025 now. Right. And a lot, a lot of times it’s hard for us to, we’re in the thick of it day to day creating that.

[00:18:51]   

We’re not seeing these like really quick marketing shifts that are happening. And then the third one is really to step away from the thought that social media is the holy grail, which I think we are kind of seeing that shift with, especially with food bloggers, not necessarily wanting to spend all of their time on social media, but really getting back to these other avenues to market our business, like Pinterest and growing our email list and you know, doing inter collaborations with other creators, things like that.

[00:19:22]   

Just getting back to kind of the basics of what we, when we started our business. So those are like the top three that I’m seeing and just evolving. So evolving our offer and evolving how we market it and then really focusing on how you can have a sales process in your business, which is basically turning those people that you’re marketing to into customers or buyers.

[00:19:42]  Megan Porta 

It’s funny how different topics, different subtopics of food blogging are all kind of the same, like diversity, being more creative, being more adaptable, resilient, leaning on AI. And I am hearing that same message across. Like I just had a conversation earlier about a totally different topic, but it’s like kind of the same bullet points.

[00:20:02]   

It’s really cool how it’s kind of all aligning. Yeah. So thank you for talking through those. And I’m wondering about pitching. If somebody listening is like, yeah, I’m trying this, Candice, but it’s not working. Nobody’s replying to my pitches. What do you have to say to that?

[00:20:20]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, the pitching is hard. I just want to say that pitching is, is hard. Especially in the beginning when you feel like you’re putting in time and effort and you’re not getting the outcome that you would like. I always go back and I go okay, if something’s not working, how can I go back to the drawing board and really figure out why that’s happening?

[00:20:39]   

And so whenever people come to me and they’re like, but no one replies to my emails, it’s usually for one of three reasons. Most common reasons. Typically what I’m seeing is people are still writing generic emails. Like somebody back in the day taught that just writing a generic template, copy and paste to a bunch of people is the right strategy.

[00:21:00]   

And that may have worked years, like 10 years ago when there was a lot less creators out there. But we can’t write generic emails anymore. We really have to write emails that have three main components. They have to have connection, relevancy and value. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is I often see that pitch emails are too you focused because it’s comfortable and it’s easy for us to talk about ourselves.

[00:21:28]   

Especially with the opening line of a pitch email, it’s always like, hi, my name is Candice and this is what I do. And that’s such a paradigm shift for me to tell people to not say that in your first sentence. We really want to establish a connection with the brand right off the bat.

[00:21:43]   

Especially if it’s through email and you aren’t having a face to face discussion with somebody. You have to really connect with them first before you go into anything about yourself. So that’s the second part.

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[00:22:23]  Candice Ward 

And then I would say the third reason is that their emails are lacking relevancy. There’s nothing relevant to either that season or that campaign that they’re running or any particular need that they have. So that’s why I always fall back on and I try to teach the three biggest components that you need to have is connection, relevancy and value in your emails. And if they don’t have all three of that, the chances are very low that they will actually reply.

[00:22:51]  Megan Porta 

So if we don’t start off like, hi, I’m Megan, blah blah, blah, so we start with a connecting sentence so it’s more about them and then we go into who we are. Is that what you suggest?

[00:23:02]  Candice Ward 

Okay, exactly, yes. So there’s a lot of different ways to do this right. I always explain it like, okay, if you were meeting a friend for the first time, would you immediately go in and just tell them your whole life story or would you ask questions about them? Would you try to get to know them?

[00:23:15]   

Or would you say something like, oh, I really like your shirt. You know, just like a simple comment. I mean you wouldn’t say that to a brand. But my point is, is go back to the basics of how you would treat somebody that you’re meeting for the first time. And I just love to research the brand and look at what they have going on in their business.

[00:23:31]   

Like the best place to do this is LinkedIn. They’re posting real updates about product launches or any accolades they’ve won. Or maybe they’re on a list of fastest growing companies. I think it was Instacart recently or maybe one of. Yeah, I think it was Instacart. They released like the 75 top emerging like CPG brands.

[00:23:52]   

That is a great list to scrub and to target those brands. And that’s a great thing to reference in your initial opening sentence of your email. Hey, I noticed you guys made Instacart 75 top growing food brands. That’s amazing. And just showing that you have a genuine interest in the company, the brand, what they have going on.

[00:24:10]   

I mean, there’s a million different ways you can do this. I always like to kind of find out what they have going on in their business and either make a comment on that or it could even be like their mission and value statement of their company really resonates with you on personal level.

[00:24:23]   

I would open with that. Or maybe it’s a local company. There’s lots of different ways to do this. But yeah, making a connection statement first is really important because they’re going to decide in the first one to two sentences of the email they want to keep reading your email. And if you’re going to talk, if you’re talking about them, they’re way more likely to continue reading. And that’s the goal of the first email, is to get them to just read it, which sounds silly, but it’s true.

[00:24:47]  Megan Porta 

So would a good connection sentence be something like how the brands, one of their products has changed my life or something like. Or is that too much about me?

[00:24:58]  Candice Ward 

No, I think that’s a great connection statement. It could be something if it really resonates with you on a personal level or how it’s changed your life. I think we just need to move away from the one that everyone says that they’re comfortable saying is, I love your product. Let’s not use that anymore.

[00:25:15]   

You can love their product, and yes, they might care to some degree, but it’s oversaturated, it’s overused. Brands become desensitized to that. Hearing that statement, yeah, that makes sense. They want you to love their product, but find a different way to connect with them, either on a personal level or a business perspective.

[00:25:36]   

If you can connect with them on a business level, that is going to drive the needle even more because you’re actually showing them that you want to understand their business. But two, that you’re motivated to help them. And three, they. You’re. You’re solving a problem for them, or you can potentially solve a problem if you understand what they have going on, then they’re looking at you as somebody who could potentially solve a problem for them.

[00:26:01]  Megan Porta 

I think we can all relate to that desensitizing of. Of certain things that come at us. Right. Because we hear things all the time that we’re like, I’ve heard that line so many times that I’m not even tuning in anymore. So it’s kind of what you’re saying with the brands, like, I love your product.

[00:26:16]   

Well, of course you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be emailing me. So just trying to think of a different way, a more powerful way to talk about their products that they’ll actually listen to. And that’s so simple. I mean, that is such a simple reframe, right?

[00:26:31]  Candice Ward 

Yeah. Yeah, we just have to practice it. It’s just something you. It’s like any skill and anything that’s new is we default to what we’re comfortable saying. And what’s easy to say, but it takes a little bit more effort and work to go and research their Instagram or their LinkedIn and be like, what do they have going on? What are they doing? It could be something as simple as, hey, I saw you guys had a viral, or you had a video go viral, or this recipe go viral.I just tried it at home. I mean, it doesn’t have to be complicated at all. It could just be what you genuinely see and observe about the brand when you’re researching them.

[00:27:05]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so beyond pitch emails, is there more we should be doing? Because I feel like the complexity of our businesses is growing. So I imagine your strategy is not just to send emails. Do you recommend doing other things as well?

[00:27:25]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, just like anything. Right. It’s going to be more effective if you. I say pull different levers and I mean, one Lever is of course, email outreach. And that is still highly effective because it’s similar. It’s a similar form of marketing as, you know, growing your email list and then selling a digital product to your email list or selling a membership site or selling a recipe book or an ebook.

[00:27:48]   

It’s the same concept. When you’re reaching out to a brand, you’re directly reaching out to somebody hoping to get money in exchange for that. Right. So I still think pitching and email marketing is extremely relevant. However, there are so many different ways now that we can connect with brands. Obviously, that can be on social media, it can be on LinkedIn, it could be, you know, through YouTube.

[00:28:10]   

The options have just really expanded. And so I am seeing a lot of success though, on LinkedIn. And I think it’s a place that not a lot of creatives have quite. I think they’re getting there, but I don’t think they’re leveraging it in the best in the way that they could. I think a lot of us are on LinkedIn, but we’re not really using it.

[00:28:30]   

I go on LinkedIn daily now to connect with brands versus going on Instagram. I very much still DM brands on Instagram. If I’m trying to find like a direct, direct contact or just, you know, responding to a story maybe that they posted, I can give an example. There’s a. Of something that happened to me recently.

[00:28:47]   

There’s a local hotel in my area that’s highly rated, it’s really famous, and I’ve been wanting to work with them. They just reopened a new restaurant and I said, that’s a perfect opportunity for a food creator to come in.

[00:28:57]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:28:57]  Candice Ward 

And as also a local to come in and create content. And I’ve been reaching out directly through email and they weren’t replying. And I eventually saw that they were hosting an event that’s coming up in June on their Instagram stories. And so I wrote, replied to that and I said, do you guys need help promoting this event?

[00:29:13]   

I’m local. I’m also a food influencer. I can help you with this. And they directed me to their PR manager and they emailed me literally that day. So if you can get in front of them at the right time. And that’s why finding them and interacting with them on different places will lead you down a different path and sometimes speed up that sales process that would otherwise be a dead end if you’re just email pitching.

[00:29:38]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And I imagine that meet that includes meeting them in person when and if you can correct so like maybe conferences or I don’t know where else that would be. But human interaction is so valuable.

[00:29:52]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I even say, I mean you, you host an event now, you know how valuable it is for sponsors to meet actual creators in person. Yeah. Build that relationship. I mean going to events or seeing which brands are at these events, I mean even just events like Expo West. Right.These big large food conferences, making connections in person. Absolutely. Hands down will always trump sending a cold email.

[00:30:18]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s amazing how impactful sponsors are. At the in person event that we host, just hosted, people are like on board because they get to meet the human, they get to see that they’re real and they’re genuine and they’re nice, they’re kind people. Plus they offer a great service. So of course they want to work with them.So there’s so much power in the in person connection if you can swing going to an expo or a conference of some sort.

[00:30:46]  Candice Ward 

Yeah.

[00:30:47]  Megan Porta 

What else do we need to know this year with working with brands?

[00:30:51]  Candice Ward 

I think that’s I, you know, kind of the main bulk of it. But I, I think the best thing I would say about working with brands this year is, I mean I’m still learning too. It’s completely evolved and changed for me and I am someone who is, is actively reaching out to brands all year, every single week.

[00:31:08]   

It’s part of my business workflow and I am seeing, I am seeing a lot of changes and just it’s getting more challenging to get replies and so I’m starting to test out different things and a few things that have helped me kind of stand out and get noticed and get, increase my replies is inserting actual, couple of things.

[00:31:28]   

Inserting actual like screenshots of stats. So if like you’re pitching them on. I’ll go back to my chocolate cake recipe idea. If I’m pitching a chocolate brand on a s’ mores chocolate cake for summer, I would put in an actual screenshot of where that recipe performed. So I would take a screenshot of Instagram because I had that particular video went viral and put it in the body of the email.

[00:31:51]   

So not as an attachment, just like a quick here you can visually look at the proof or you can type it out. I think it’s more effective to have a picture in there. If you are trying to pitch like restaurant work or you want to do more of the photography, freelance work or even just freelance ugc, you technically don’t have to have experience with that product to create a UGC ad.

[00:32:12]   

You can show a, you know, something that you created for another brand that performed really well or inserting images of, you know, if it’s a chocolate company, maybe more chocolate recipes and how you can effectively display their product. So I actually insert it into the body of the email. Another way that. That I’ve been leveraging is video.

[00:32:34]   

So I’ll give you an example. I had an agency that I was in communication with. They were like, send me your rates for this type of recipe. I went through the whole sales process with them, and then they were like, yeah, we went a different direction. And I was like, okay, well, that’s a bummer.

[00:32:46]   

So instead of just closing the door on that opportunity, I actually sent the person a personalized video and said, hey, this is me. This is who I am. I really appreciate you guys, like, going at bat for me and putting me in front of the brand as a potential partner opportunity. I would love to discuss other opportunities in the future and just.

[00:33:05]   

It helped keep the door open. And now the conversation is still. We’re still having the conversation about potentially working together this summer. There’s a lot of different reasons why brands may not move forward with you, and it’s typically not because of you. There’s other factors going on in the background, so we can’t always assume it’s, oh, I’m not good enough, which is where we all want to immediately go to when that happens.

[00:33:27]   

But even, you know, I’ve been creating content for six years, and I’ve worked for some huge, really large brands. I’ve worked with some smaller brands as well. And it has nothing to do with the quality of your content. It has everything to do with. There are factors that we don’t know from a business perspective happening.

[00:33:44]   

So don’t ever take a not right now as a no, it’s just. Or a no as an, I would say a finalized no. It’s just a not right now. Okay, Keep that conversation open. And video is the best way. If you can’t meet them in person, video is the best way to build that rapport and to just keep the conversation and the door open.

[00:34:04]  Megan Porta 

If a brand says no, what’s a good time frame to give them, like, a window of time to give them before you touch back with them.

[00:34:12]  Candice Ward 

So if a brand says no to me, I never just take that as I never just write it off and forget about it. My next step is always to ask clarifying questions like, okay, can you help me understand why, you know, if you’re communicating with an agency, like, why the brand decided to not move forward or what is it that you guys look for in particular when you’re looking at hiring influencers because they all have different metrics.

[00:34:36]   

Again, gone are the days of them just filtering out. We want to work with influencers that have over 100k followers. They’re really making calculated decisions now. And honestly, I think they’re using AI to help them make these decisions faster. So I think asking those questions like, what is it that I could do to be a stronger candidate for you?

[00:34:56]   

Or I can share previous partnerships to help you make a decision. So be thinking back on how can you win the opportunity? And then I say to them, like, okay, great, if now’s not the time, when would be a better time for me to reach back out? And they almost always give me like, oh, we’re booked up until, you know, whatever a specific month, like until Summer or July.

[00:35:16]   

And then I just make it very clear to them that I’m going to reach back out to them instead of relying on them. They always will say, oh, we’ll reach out to you if opportunities arise. And I just say, okay, I’ll just circle back with you maybe in June and see where you guys are and then reopen the conversation.

[00:35:31]  Megan Porta 

Okay, I love that. Yeah, take it out of their hands and put it back in yours.

[00:35:37]  Candice Ward 

Yeah, they’re so busy and they, I mean, they do have a list of. You know, they create lists sometimes, but very rarely do they actually reach back out. You kind of have to stay top of mind for them. So I always say if they didn’t reply to you at all, I would probably circle back or reevaluate.

[00:35:55]   

Did I reach out to the right contact? Is there something I could have done differently in that pitch email? Can I try to reach them somewhere else? So, like, I will go to LinkedIn and connect with them there and then if they accept my connection request, I will send them a direct message through LinkedIn.

[00:36:09]   

And that’s really effective because you can see if they’ve read it. And if they did reply though, and they said no, then I just try to find out when would be a good time to circle back. Otherwise I just circle back, typically quarterly with a brand.

[00:36:22]  Megan Porta 

Okay, yeah, that’s a good time frame. So bottom line, in 2025, brands are looking for content creators to work with.

[00:36:31]  Candice Ward 

Yes, absolutely. I mean, it’s still growing. It’s still the number one form of marketing, influencer marketing, UGC, creating ads. Also thinking about how can you evolve how you work with brands? Not just thinking sponsored content, but how can you create ads for them? How can you give them access to a different part of your audience on a different platform?

[00:36:51]  Megan Porta 

Okay, well, good news. And not just for the larger creator, but the smaller creator as well. So that’s music to all of our ears. Thank you, Candice. Loved chatting with you. Again, this is such a topic of passion. I can tell for you. You’re just so. You get so enthused about it. So I love chatting with you about it. So thank you for everything you shared with us today.

[00:37:14]  Candice Ward 

Yeah.

[00:37:14]  Megan Porta 

Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

[00:37:18]  Candice Ward 

I do, and it’s very, very applicable to our conversation. And this, ironically, I had to go back in my archives of Instagram of when I wrote this quote down because it was very relevant to when I started my business. So I posted this in 2016, and it’s not my quote, but it’s a quote that I think is very relevant now in 2025.

[00:37:39]   

So the quote is, if opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. And it’s by Milton Berle, I believe. And I love this because it’s such a reminder that we need to constantly be evolving as creatives and business owners. And if things aren’t going our way, then we need to just take initiative and action and pivot directions.

[00:37:58]   

And that’s like the thing that makes me most excited about being a business owner. And I think a lot of us operate that way because why else would we be business owners? We want that freedom. And so I love this quote because it reminds me of, don’t be scared to do things differently than what?

[00:38:16]   

Than the way you’ve done them before. And if something isn’t going the way that you want it to, then just pivot. You can always go back. You just have to start and try and see what happens.

[00:38:27]  Megan Porta 

Such good news. And there could not be a better way to wrap this up. That was the perfect way to sum our conversation. So thank you for that. We’ll put together a show notes page for you, Candice. If anyone wants to go peek at those, head to eatblogtalk.com/eatmorecake3. I believe this is this the third time you’ve been on the podcast, or is it the same?

[00:38:48]  Candice Ward 

It must be. Yeah, it is the third, which is why we.

[00:38:51]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, yeah. So head over there. And I know you have some things to offer food bloggers as well. So you. Do you want to talk through those, Candice?

[00:39:00]  Candice Ward 

Yeah. So I have. On the topic that we’ve talked about today on the podcast, I have a brand magnet workshop that you can watch the replay. So it’s on this topic, but I go deeper into each aspect of it and I give examples. And I also have AI prompts in there that can help you guys with AI to leverage AI in your pitching workflow.

[00:39:22]   

And then I also have free resources that I can give link for you which is My Pitch to Profit playbook which is like if you’ve never reached out to a brand or pitched, it’s the perfect place to start. It kind of gives you my formula and play by play of how to go about doing that.

[00:39:38]   

And then of course I always have The Confident Pitch Program is always open for. It’s my signature course to help you lay the groundwork to create a sales process in your business and work with brands. And that’s open year round. So I have that resource available as well.

[00:39:53]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. Well, I hope you guys all go check out Candice’s offerings. Thank you again for being here and thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time.

[00:40:04]   

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.