How to collaborate to grow your business

Collaboration. It’s often something that I see business owners wanting to step into but not knowing where or how to start.

Collaborating with other brands gives you BOTH the opportunity to leverage each others audience while gaining access to something you need - usually without the need to exchange funds. Think about the ways you could work with someone else to give them what they are looking for while also aiding your own needs. Not ready to look for sponsors? - ask a brand if they are willing to donate product for your event but give them more benefit such as a guest speaker role or tickets to the event. Invite guest speakers into your socials or to contribute to your blog (in return for you doing the same or similar).

Reach out to smaller brands who perhaps like you are not in the position to spend big money on marketing and advertising and WORK TOGETHER to complement and support each other’s brand! A collaboration can be a real game changer - remember to focus on how it is mutually beneficial so that both parties reap the rewards.

Collaboration is not something we want to wait until we’re bigger, until we have more followers, until we’ve been in business longer or any other excuse we come up with, to start doing. It’s actually something you want to be doing early on in business. When resources can be very limited, find ways to offer so much value that the partnership is mutually beneficial for both of you. The best collabs are often a little out of the box but make a whole bunch of sense. 

Start thinking about who you could team up with, what’s in it for you and how can you show them the value that’s in it for them. Can you do a webinar together and share complementary knowledge, can you contribute to each other’s blogs or socials or can you exchange products and access new audiences? Go live together, interview each other, run a workshop together - there are so many ways to share audience.