One of the most enjoyable and strongest marketing tools you can use for your business is to collaborate with another business or brand. When you use collaboration for your business, you open doors that you didn’t even know were there.
This means teaming up with another business you’re in alignment with to work together on a campaign or promotion.
Here at Coaches & Co., we love collaborating with like-minded businesses!
In fact, Collaboration is one of our core values.
It’s a way to make personal connections with your audience and other businesses. And who doesn’t want MORE connections?
You’re probably thinking, “Okay this sounds great, but how exactly can I add this to my marketing plan?”
Well, sis, in this post, we’re sharing five fun ways you can include collaboration when marketing your business.
Let’s get into it! 👇🏽
1. Bring Guest Experts Into Your Community
Your community loves you. 💛
They love your brand and the services you have to offer, and they love engaging with you regularly.
But sometimes it can be fun to bring in a fresh face and some fresh expertise. You don’t know everything there is to know, and you can’t possibly talk about every single topic that your audience may be interested in.
This is where bringing in a guest expert can help you! The key in collaborating with others is identifying good, solid, cooperative partners. This includes credible, qualified individuals whose values align with yours.
You want to ensure two very important things:
An Ideal Guest Will Have a Complimentary Offer for Your Audience
Make sure their business appeals to your audience, yet won’t compete with what your business offers.
For example, say you’re a solopreneur that needs to get their taxes done, and your business doesn’t offer tax services.
You know that your clients are all business owners and will benefit from learning from a tax expert. So you invite a CPA or a bookkeeper to do a master class or an IGTV live to discuss what business owners need to keep in mind during tax season. ✔️
A Memorable Guest Will Offer Value to Your Audience
Make sure the guest you invite to speak to your audience offers something mega valuable to your audience.
You don’t want to waste time bringing in an expert that won’t provide an overall worthwhile and positive experience. Time is precious, and both you and your community members don’t wanna waste any of it. 💁♀️
In return, if it makes sense for the guest’s audience, you can swap and go into their community as a guest expert.
You’ll not only be bringing overall value, but you’ll also expand your reach to a wider audience — which means potential new customers for you. 💰💰
2. Co-Create Content With Your Guest Expert
Nowadays, people are looking for ways to receive valuable content that’s easily digestible. And there isn’t a better way to promote collaboration with another business than on social media!
The tools within social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook make it easy for busy entrepreneurs (like you!) to promote their businesses.
For example, IG live and IG stories are a super fun way to co-create with your guest expert! You can promote collaborative giveaways or challenges with each other’s audiences, or even do an IG story takeover on each other’s pages.
Here at Coaches & Co., we love doing IG lives with guest experts! For our business’ one-year birthday event, we hosted a bunch of collabs, where we went live with different guest experts to discuss business tips and announce giveaway winners. 🎉
Friends, this is a great example of having fun and doing business with like-minded women who will provide value for your business and expand your brand. Again, just remember that whoever you invite into your community should have a business that’s complementary to yours!
3. Invite Guests to Join You on Your Podcast
Inviting a guest to join you on your podcast is not only another fun way to incorporate collaboration into your business, but it’s also one of the fastest ways to grow your podcast audience. 📈
Here are some more benefits:
- Your guest gets to reach a new audience.
- They’ll promote it and get their folks flocking to your platform.
- It’s an easy way to create content for the week.
That’s what we like to call a win-win-win. 😉
Even if your podcast guest offers different services or products than you, there will most likely be crossover in the audiences you serve.
Not to mention, podcast collaborations are a great way to build relationships with other professionals.
And everyone knows, having solid business relationships is like business gold. ✨
They can help pave the way for more referrals, more opportunities, and more fun!
4. Create an Affiliate Program
We think this next way to use collaboration in your business is pretty clever: Affiliate marketing!
Yep, you can actually create an affiliate program for your product or service!
If you’re thinking to yourself, “What?! How?” 🤔
Stay with us!
A basic definition of affiliate marketing is using the internet to connect with people, and whenever a person purchases a product or service, a commission is made. Cha-ching!
Here’s how this goes down: 👇🏽
Let’s say you’ve identified the ideal collaborator that offers complementary services to you.
You’re not in competition with each other, but you serve similar audiences.
Now, you can create an affiliate program so that when this collaborator shares your amazing program, service, or product with their audience, they get a small kickback from you. 💸
Not only is it helping both of your bottom lines, but your collaborator is now providing even more value to the community they serve.
5. Participate in Exciting Giveaways
Another great way to use collaboration in your business is to host giveaways.
Giveaways in any context always drum up excitement and create buzz, site traffic, and engagement! For a giveaway, you have the option to collaborate with another business, or you can host a giveaway on your own.
And while both options are great, we find that partnering up with other businesses for a giveaway not only increases the value of the prize, but it also increases even more hype. ✨✨
Examples of different giveaways could be:
- Digital software programs like one year of Canva Pro for free
- Physical products like a T-shirt or a mug
- Three months of business coaching
Just keep in mind that the giveaway makes sense for all parties involved.
There are numerous ways to promote giveaways on social media platforms. The various calls to action (CTAs) for followers that help with this can be:
- Tag a friend in the comments
- Like this post and follow
- Register at the link for a chance to win
Now that you’ve read about the different types of collaborations to include in your business, which one are you interested in doing the most?
Friend, whichever one you decide to do will be a great, collaborative way to come together and showcase your audience that you’re able to bring even more value to them.
Opening your audience to your network and establishing those partnerships is invaluable and can take your business far.
Plus, it’s just all-around more fun and enjoyable when you’re able to connect with other human beings. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we all are.
All of us are human beings behind the businesses.
And as human beings, the connection we have with our audience and ideal clients is the basis of a business.
If you value connection and community, you should absolutely use these strategies to start implementing more collaboration in your marketing strategy. 💛
And hey, before you go, check out the Coaches & Co. affiliate program here, where you can partner with us to help your clients build a solid legal foundation. Fill out the quick form, then see how you can start making passive cash from your clients’ clicks to help grow your biz!
Want to make your professional relationships official? Check out our ready-to-use, lawyer-approved, plug-and-play legal contract templates, so you can upgrade your contracts while staying Profitable & Protected™✨
*The information presented in this blog post is for educational & informational purposes only. This should not be a substitute for customized legal advice from a licensed professional in a private setting. If you need legal advice, please consult with an attorney. This is not a law firm.
