Over the last 5 years, Collabosaurus has worked with over 7000 brands in the fashion, beauty, lifestyle, food & beverage, health & wellness space - but now it's time we offered the opportunity to collaborate with other B2B brands (yesss).
Here are some top ideas for collaborating as a B2B
A killer way to engage existing audiences, as well as reach new business owners, is through a content collaboration. Think 'how can I add value through content?' 'What else [apart from my services or products] is my audience interested in?'
This can spark ideas for complementary industry pairings for amazing Instagram TVs, Facebook or LinkedIn Lives, Youtube Q&A - even post series. Graphic Designers x Marketing Professionals, Business Coaches x Finance Experts, Social Media Scheduling Softwares x Content Creators are just some of the wonderful, complementary industry pairings that could work well for this type of collab.
An effective IGTV example is between Oh My Digital x The Founders Team. When business mentorship & social media services collide? Magic. Not only did this IGTV on '30 Days of Content Ideas' drive a bunch of cross promotion, engagement & reach, we ended up hiring Oh My Digital off the back of that IGTV! So we know it drove customers as well ;)
One of our own, effective B2B collaborations was with Microsoft Store, where we co-branded & co-produced a podcast! It was supported by a live recording event, social media promotion & paid advertising. A fabulous way to pool resources & reach new potential customers is through a podcast (a channel going absolutely nuts right now)
One of the oldest, most powerful marketing strategies is ensuring that you have great referral partners in business. People trust word-of-mouth referrals, & in few other industries are referrals so effective than in B2B. If you have been using your web designer for the last 12 months & they're at capacity & unable to tackle a packaging design project - this is a situation where a referral can work its magic in a win/win way.
It's likely that you already have referrals within your network, but perhaps you haven't formalised them? You can use Collabosaurus to set up long term, co-marketed referral partnerships to boost your new client pipeline.
You're amazing at what you do. Why not team up with a complementary business to offer a service package? Website designers & website developers are an excellent pairing example for this type of collaboration - you can offer a 'Website Overhaul' service package that combines your expertise & boosts revenue for you both!
A surefire way to surprise & delight new customers, or get in front of a new potential customer! Everyone loves a bonus, a freebie or a gift that 'surprises & delights.' Think about teaming up with a product based business to see if you can work together on a cool gift with purchase promotion, or whether you can offer a discount / freebie as part of another brands' gift with purchase. For example, I've seen a graphic designer team up with a brand photographer for a great campaign like this. The designer offered 4 x custom designed instagram tile templates with every photoshoot booked that quarter. A very clever, easy way to add value while reaching new people!
Woah is this a great way to spike social media engagement or email list growth. The higher value the prize, the easier it is to generate excitement in a B2B competition or giveaway. Make sure you limit the amount of collaborators to ensure everyone can get meaningful spotlight & value out of a collaboration. We love the Collabosaurus love story between The Small Business Community x Sourced Styling Studio who ran a competition to win content creation for your business. This campaign also took advantage of a hashtag challenge (check it out below!)
As a B2B business, you're already sitting on a mountain of value looking purely at your products & services. If you have a specific marketing goal (like LinkedIn reach, content creation or media attention) you can leverage what you already have available in a clever contra exchange. Collaborations are all about win/win exchanges of value, so if you want to grow but you don't have much promotional value to bring to the table (yet), you can tap into swapping your products or services as 'currencies other than cash'
Could you collaborate with another business to create something limited edition? Absolutely! A great example of this was when a business photographer & social media scheduling tool teamed up to create a 'flat-lay background kit.' People could purchase a pack of backgrounds in a sheet of vinyl laminate prints that they could use to create social media content. Win/win, creative, doubled their promotional opportunities, halved production costs & added a new revenue stream!
Despite COVID, events aren't dead! In fact, there's never been a better time to team up on a virtual event to reach potential customers, all over the globe. We love the example from Your One & Only, a branding & graphic design agency, who teamed up with a bunch of clever B2B businesses (from business coaches to social media managers to bookkeepers) for a jam-packed virtual event called 'ready set action.' You can, too!
Interested in collaborating as a B2B brand? We thought so!
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