What is Collaborative Marketeing?
| Thursday August 12Collaborative Marketing is quite simply teaming up with like-minded, similar, but non-competing businesses and pooling financial and time resources to create more buzz and interest than you could likely generate on your own.
Ad most small business owners know, marketing can be expensive and there is never enough money in the budget for it. Here’s where Collaborative Marketing comes in. It can be very low cost and sometimes even FREE (who doesn't like free marketing!) Some collaborative marketing ventures are a one-time event and other ventures are businesses teaming up for a longer period of time.
When small business owners come together with a common audience, or goal, or a common mission or interest, they can band together in any number of ways to create an influence and a presence that is greater than they could simply do themselves. Sharing of resources, databases and marketing expenses are just a few of the wins that this type of marketing can have.
This concept is not new and has existed for a long time in marketing. You can open any magazine or website to find collective ads that promote Top Restaurants, Top Surgeons, Top Resorts, or even Top Places To Visit After Lockdown. There are many examples of amazing success stories when it comes to collaborative marketing – one example we found is this article by Northern Beaches Mums with a mini competition at the bottom for CanGro. They reach a wider audience, get the opportunity to market their brand to new potential customers and engage with them. It’s mutually beneficial and win/win whilst leveraging each other’s assets.
WHERE TO START?
As Stephen R. Covey so famously wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, start with the end in mind! Think about your end goal. What do you want?
- More reach?
- To grow your database?
- To grow your social media followers?
- To tap into a new market?
- To engage the audience you already have?
Determine your TARGET MARKET – your potential customers you want to get in front of or the channels you want to get exposure through that are a non-competing business.
REMEMBER that it must be a valuable asset to you! Collaborative Marketing will only be successful if you have a goal to measure it against and you can see the value to you and your business in both the short and long term.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COLLABORATIVE MARKETING AND INFLUENCER COLLABORATION?
You are leveraging your skills set, your community, and your time instead of money with collaborative marketing. You are leveraging each other’s assets as it’s not a financial transaction between two businesses.
Influencers collaboration is different because in this type you will be paying for content creation and/or placement. The exchange is financial gain for one party and exposure of the other party and exposure of the other party. It is a very effective marketing tool, but not the exchange of community, time, and skills we are talking about when discussing collaborative marketing. But do, however, have their place in small business marketing strategies today.
THE PITFALLS TO COLLABORATIVE MARKETING
With all the good intentions from both parties, we have, unfortunately, seen collaborative marketing go sour.
The 3 biggest pitfalls that can ruin a fabulous collaborative marketing strategy are:
- The parties had mismatched expectations
- One party is doing all the work to get the collaboration up and running or keep running, and
- One party (not always the one doing all the work!) is reaping all the rewards.
All these pitfalls could have been and can be avoided if you go into an agreement, understanding each other’s expectations and target audience.
DO YOU NEED AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN PARTIES WITH COLLABORATING?
Both Yes and No! It actually depends on the complexity of the arrangement, the expectations of both parties and the resources that need to be put into is an indicator that you may or may not need an agreement between the parties.
Having a simple Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which details in dot points what each party is expected to do and the desired outcomes, could be all you need. A simple one-pager.
HOW CAN YOU USE COLLABORATIVE MARKETING IN YOUR BUSINESS?
This usually works seamlessly with…
- Event partnership
- Brand to brand marketing partnerships
- Social media partnerships (running competitions or giveaways)
- Webinars
- Facebook Lives
- And many many other ways.
Even if you are starting with no list, no social following, and no cash, collaborative marketing can work for you. That’s the beauty of this type of marketing!
LASTLY…
Collaboration is an incredible tool to tap into new audiences and grow any business by reaching new potential customers. It also engages your communities on another level with something new and awesome.
You get to grow your own network at the same time – creating new business friendships, new business connections. Starting off doing something small, which grows into something very valuable and important in your marketing mix.
The CHALLENGE for you today is to determine…
- Who has your target audience that you would like an opportunity to tap into?
- What would your goal be if you were given the opportunity to get in from of that audience?
- Could you leverage your skills set, your community, your time, and your assets with that business to create a win/win collaboration marketing strategy?
We’d love to hear your thoughts on future collaboration ideas or even your experience in collaborations you’ve already done or are doing right now! Can you see anyone from Connect for Success who you want to tap for collaboration?
Author’s Bio:
Jenn Donovan is a marketing strategist and social media extraordinaire, coach, mentor, speaker, and soon to be an author to women who want to go from invisible to invincible. Jenn’s also the owner and founder of Social Media & Marketing Australia.
With a passion for making business simple, because it isn’t easy but it should be simple or at least simpler, she’s built a reputation for helping other small business owners simplify their marketing and businesses so they can reach their goals, be more profitable and live the dream (finding the freedom they set out to achieve when they started ... the elusive small business owner freedom dream...!)
Jenn believes in giving before asking and that’s why she’s the host of the popular Small Business Made Simple Podcast and the Founder of the enormously successful Buy From a Bush Business Facebook Campaign and co-founder of the Spend With Us Marketplace, which supports thousands of rural and regional small businesses.
With a career that started with more than 15 years in law and moved into retail in a regional area – purchasing, owning and growing her own retail business, Jenn has been in small business all her working life.
Her passion for marketing and social media came from the time of being a retailer – there’s hardly a harder job – and now she pretty much lives, breathes and talks marketing whenever she’s not asleep!
Jenn is also a Mum of 3 fast-growing adults/teenagers and wife to Mr Farmer, with hobbies including killing plants, half growing vegetable gardens and researching the latest marketing trends.
Connect with Jenn:
Instagram – jenndonovan_
LinkedIn – jenndonovan
Facebook – Social Media and Marketing Australia
