How to Turn Down a Brand Representative's Pitch

Some mom bloggers are concerned about turning away opportunities to work with brands, lest they lose out on future opportunities. Yet there will most definitely be times when a brand or product is really not a good fit with your blog audience or your business goals.

If you take every opportunity, even if it doesn’t fit with your blog topic, you risk alienating readers or becoming too much like a blogging infomercial. Over time, this kind of practice can lead to losses — of traffic, loyal readers, and even your credibility. Those are your biggest assets as a blogger; it pays in the long run to protect them at all costs.

It’s not hard to turn down a pitch. In fact, many pitches to bloggers go completely ignored, and yet the pitches show no signs up letting up anytime soon. Of course, you don’t want to turn someone down with something like, “I hate your product,” because sometimes brand representatives work with several companies.

If you are rude to a brand representative, you very well could lose out on future opportunities working with other brands, including some you love.

The most elegant way to turn down a pitch is by saying something like this:

“I really appreciate you contacting me to work with you regarding your Product X promotion. However, because my blog is mostly about Hobby Z, I don’t think I would be effective at giving your product the exposure you are seeking. You might want to contact Anna W. at the XYZ blog, because I think she would be a much better fit. But please keep me in mind for future promotions.”

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ll find that you get lots of pitches in your inbox, sometimes daily. You do not need to respond to every single one of them, because that could become a full-time job in and of itself.

When you want to ensure that you preserve the relationship with a particular brand representative for future consideration, use a pitch rejection like the preceding example. Not only will you be building relationships with many different people, but you will be putting you and your blog “top of mind” any time that brand representative needs to pitch anything related to “Hobby Z”!

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-turn-down-a-brand-representatives-pitch.html