Find brand contacts by working backward

Few things sting like putting real effort into a pitch, sending it to a promising brand, and getting back: "Thanks, but we don't have budget for influencer marketing right now."

The fix is to pitch brands that have already shown they pay for creator content. Bento's Instagram prospecting does that shortcut: you give it the handles of creators in your niche, it tracks their brand collaborations and adds those brands to your prospect list, and you pitch the same companies with your own angle. It works best with five carefully chosen creators a tier or two above you, and the main limitation is timing: a sponsored post shows a brand spent money once, not that it's spending this month.

Step 1: pick the right five creators

The tool is only as good as the handles you feed it, and this is the step people rush. Don't pick the biggest name in your niche. A creator with two million followers is approached by brands rather than the other way round, and their sponsors are buying reach at a price point you can't compete with. Look instead for creators one or two tiers above you whose audience actually watches; comments that discuss the content rather than just emojis are a better sign than a high follower count. Choose creators whose content resembles yours in format as well as topic, since a brand that buys polished studio reels may not want handheld UGC.

Five is a good starting number: enough to spot a pattern in who's spending, not so many that the brand list becomes unmanageable.

Step 2: add them to Instagram prospecting

In Bento, open Instagram prospecting and add the five handles. Bento watches their posts for brand collaborations, the paid partnership labels, tagged brands and sponsored mentions, and adds the brands it finds to your prospects. Give it a little time to build the list rather than expecting a complete history in the first minute, and add new creators as you discover them.

Step 3: match each brand to a contact

For each brand Bento surfaces, look up the contact it holds and check the title. For a sponsored post on a creator's own account, the influencer marketing or partnerships manager is usually right; if the collaboration was clearly an ad running from the brand's account, a paid social or growth contact is the better target, as our guide to finding the right person at a brand explains. Add the good matches to your pipeline with a note of which creator and post led you there.

Step 4: pitch a different angle, not the same idea

The worst version of this is pitching the brand a copy of what the other creator already made. The brand has that. Pitch the audience or format they haven't reached yet:

"Hi Priya, I enjoyed your recent work with [Creator Name] on the morning routine angle. My content focuses on quick desk workouts for people who work from home, a slightly different crowd that I think would suit your new resistance bands. Two ideas below."

Mentioning the existing partnership shows you did your research and frames you as complementary rather than competing. Then follow the four-part structure from our guide to rewriting Bento's AI pitches: a specific hook, one concrete idea, honest proof and a small ask.

Turning one discovery into several pitches

A good find is rarely a single brand. When one of your five creators works with a skincare brand, look at who else that brand works with: its tagged posts and partnership labels show a roster, and the creators on it are worth adding to your tracked list, which surfaces the next set of brands. A few rounds of this map out the part of your niche that actually pays creators, usually a few dozen brands that recycle through similar creators every quarter.

Pace the pitching rather than sending to every brand on the day you find it. Ten to fifteen a week, each with an angle tied to the specific collaboration you saw, keeps every pitch specific and fits Bento's free plan of 20 pitches a month with room for follow-ups. Note on each pipeline card which creator and post led you to the brand; when a reply comes, that context is exactly what you'll want in front of you.

Keeping the creator list useful

Review your tracked creators every month or two. Drop anyone who has stopped posting partnerships or grown far beyond you, and add creators you've noticed with fresh brand deals. A tracked list that reflects who is being paid right now keeps the prospects current, which is the whole point of the method.

What this doesn't tell you

A sponsored post is a snapshot, not a live budget line. If the partnership you found is six or eight months old, the campaign may have ended, the person who ran it may have moved on, or the year's creator budget may be spent, and none of that shows in the post. Check the date before building a pitch around it. Treat anything older than a couple of months as a softer signal ("this brand has paid creators before") rather than a guarantee ("this brand is spending right now").

Recent, repeated collaborations are the strongest signal. A brand that has worked with three of your five creators in the last quarter is running an active programme and likely to be looking for more people; a brand with one post from last year is a maybe.

When it doesn't behave as expected

• Few or no brands appear. The creators you chose may not label their partnerships clearly, or they mostly post organic content. Swap in creators who visibly run paid partnerships.
• The brands are too big. You picked creators too far above you. Step down a tier.
• A brand has no usable contact. Check its team page and LinkedIn for a partnerships role, or move on; there will be others on the list.

Starting from brands that already pay creators removes the most common objection before you hit send. Pair this with Bento's automatic follow-ups, and the prospects that came from real partnerships get the persistence they deserve.