As markets grow bigger, competition grows fiercer. With revenue in the e-commerce market expected to reach $979.9 million over 2023, it may be a huge pie but there are more and more people who want a slice of it. And with multiple channels and platforms being used by customers and potential customers, marketing budgets and teams are finding themselves increasingly stretched.
One solution to this issue is the same as whenever you find yourself struggling alone: collaboration. Collaborative marketing can combine resources and help ensure your message reaches potential customers. But unlocking the value it can provide begins with understanding its potential, limitations, and how to take advantage of it.
Image adapted from smartsheet.com
The easiest way to describe collaborative marketing is as a strategic alliance between two businesses. These two businesses will likely have similar aims and interests and the products they sell will often be complementary in some way. The products or services may even combine to offer something new and unique to their customers.
Collaborative marketing can bring together each company’s audiences and can mean that what was a limited budget becomes a larger one that can offer extended reach. The collaboration can happen between two organizations or even between a business and an influencer. For example, a business may have written a blog on the best domain names to use and a customer of their partner who wants to search for domain names would benefit from collaboration when that’s part of your business.
There may be different benefits that come from your particular collaboration. But as with all new ideas and tactics, you want to consider the general and tangible benefits that might result from any collaboration and effective marketing.
While there would likely be some overlap between each entity’s audience, each will have its own unique audience too. So, when you collaborate, your reach will automatically increase, and so will your brand awareness. When brand awareness grows, you should see knock-on effects such as increased sales.
When brands collaborate, you not only see better brand awareness but you have access to new potential customers and more leads. This can be especially true when products or services complement each other or create a new product. For example, you may sell a product while your partner sells peripherals for that product.
Working together can boost sales as you are bringing together two groups of customers with mutual interests and the people who buy the phone system are likely to consider buying any peripherals too.
One big advantage of collaborative marketing is that it can improve your engagement levels. Each partner may have different strengths when it comes to presence on social media platforms. So, both collaborative partners can see their engagement levels boosted as they will be presenting their campaign across all relevant platforms.
Partners can bring together their individual products to offer something new or they may even develop brand new products between them. Either way, you are offering customers something better than you previously did alone. When added to the increased reach and audience, this means that you should see a significant rise in your conversion rates and total sales.
Marketing budgets can sometimes be restrictive. When you enter into a collaborative marketing partnership, you will have a bigger budget for those particular products or services. When two marketing teams combine to promote the same product they’ll have more money to spend on reaching your target audiences.
Good marketing is all about ideas. When you have two teams working together and sharing customer data and insights, you are likely to see more innovative ideas. Collaborating on new tactics and strategies can often produce innovative ideas that may not have happened with the teams working alone.
You may think your brand is as strong as it can be. But the reality is that there may be weaknesses you haven’t identified. Collaborative marketing can help expose any weaknesses and find a way to overcome them. For example, a company could be offering cutting-edge VoIP with texting solutions but have poor customer data analysis processes, with the latter negatively impacting its marketing efforts.
If they partner with a company who are excellent at customer data analysis, then it could improve their marketing skills and increase their sales.
While marketing teams may have similar goals, different teams will have members with particular skill sets. By joining together, you have the opportunity to tap into those skills and also for your team members to learn them. Your collaboration partner, for example, may have team members who have strong video marketing skills, something your team currently lacks. When you work together, your team can learn how to make better videos.
Before you learn how to build an effective collaborative marketing relationship, why don't you take a second and get our Agile Marketing Quick Start Guide?
Image adapted from clickup.com
So, you can see that collaboration can bring many benefits to both you and your prospective partner. But how do you go about creating, building, and maintaining that relationship?
It’s not just a case of sticking a pin in a business directory: who you choose as your collaborative partner should be a well-thought-out process. Think about the following points:
What is the aim of your collaboration? Is it a long-term plan, a short-term one, or even collaborating on an event? Before the partnership commences, you need to agree on what the objectives of working together are. Only by deciding on a destination can you start planning the journey itself.
Now, you need to set out some rules as to how the collaboration will work. These can include:
You should now have an idea of the individuals who will be involved in your collaborative marketing plan. How will that look in reality? You also need to think about how that team will communicate when there is a good chance you are in different geographical locations. Identify the different tasks involved in your plan and who is best suited to those tasks.
Of course, management at both partners will want to know how well the collaboration is working. So, you need to identify the key marketing metrics that will measure success and how you will collect the data to analyze those metrics. You also need to set up a reporting process. That can include who reports are delivered to, and how often.
Once all the other pieces are in place, you and your partner need to design a marketing strategy. This should be designed to achieve the goals you have identified and should draw on the strengths of each team member. Strategies may vary but should include some common factors.
While the market continues to thrive, competition continues to increase. Businesses need to be continually looking at more efficient ways to market their brand and their products. Collaborative marketing is a strategy that is not only effective, but can bring many benefits to the organizations involved. However, as with other marketing tactics, you need to plan this carefully.
Your partner may be a business that sells products that complement your own. It may even be an influencer or celebrity who is a regular user of your products. Whatever partner you choose, ensure that you both have clear and common goals. With careful planning and oversight, it could be a strategy that makes a real difference to your revenue.
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