STOP. RIGHT. THERE. First things first, you are never too small to collaborate! You often have more to offer in a win/win collaboration than you think. It’s simply a case of knowing and understanding your value. Brand Collaborations are about win-win exchanges of value, so let’s help discover yours.
What is the ultimate marketing goal that you want to achieve from this collaboration? Without a specific marketing or business outcome in mind, ‘collaborating for collaborations’ sake’ is pointless - just like running a Facebook Ad is pointless without a goal in mind!
When done strategically, brand x brand collaborations are one of the most powerful ways you can tap into new audiences & pools of potential customers. They're up to 25 x cheaper than digital advertising (woah), but in order to be successful, you've got to know what to measure that success against.
A few ideas...
Get a clear idea of your exact goals for this partnership - this will help you establish an awesome relationship that is mutually beneficial & fair.
Think humble, with a touch of Kanye for this one (you will find prompts to help you with these, via page 3 of ‘Listing your brand on Collabosaurus’).
The truth is, you will likely be sitting on a mountain of value already! From your skill-set, to your time, to your products, services & marketing channels, it's important to identify what you have to offer so that you can leverage a win/win collaboration.
From a channel perspective alone, think about...
That's just the start! You could attract fantastic media attention because of a cool collaboration, you could be a gun graphic designer, or photographer, or blog writer - all of these can be leveraged in a collaboration & super valuable assets to your collaborator.
You should be able to determine at least 3 x assets that you could contribute to a cool collaboration exchange.
90% of the collaborations that occur through Collabosaurus do not involve monetary exchange. Get to know your currency!
TIP: Quantify your value
It's not just about how many followers you have on Instagram (haha *sigh*), but think about engagement numbers & reach as important statistics. How many potential customers could you get a collaborator in front of? How much do you typically charge for your products or services?
Let's say for example using: your products, foot traffic to your store, and Instagram community.
You could offer….
Knowing your numbers, will ease communication and guide the fairness of collaboration partnerships (it can help you negotiate to meet your collaborators' goal, and remind you of your own goal, too).
Building a relationship is the fundamental starting block for all collaborations & partnerships. Don’t try to marry them on the first date! Instead, gently tease out the benefits of collaborating together in your initial interactions, without bombarding them with a big, salesy ‘pitch’ immediately. This gives your potential collaborator a gauge as to what’s in it for them, remember, collaboration marketing should be “win-win” for both parties.
Better yet? Collabosaurus cuts this step out. When you match with another brand on the platform, each of you know what each other has to offer and is looking for from a collaboration. It’s free to start, and we’ll be there every step of the way. You really are just a few clicks from creating dreamy, effective marketing collabs!