Collaborative marketing can help your budget go further
Marketing your small business can seem like an exercise in turning water into wine. You have so much to say, and so many great ideas, but feel restricted by not having the budget to shout as loudly as you’d like. A simple way to make the precious resources of time and money go further is to collaborate with a complementary, but non-competitive, business on some of your marketing activity.
Joining forces has all sort of benefits:
- It pools your resources so that you can achieve more.
- It gives both parties access to each other’s contacts.
- It gives the activity a greater feel of authenticity and usefulness by putting whatever you’re talking about in a wider context.
Some collaborative marketing worth considering…
Joint papers and / or events: If you’re preparing some sort of paper or guide, it will seem far less salesy – and therefore more appealing, if you co-author it with another expert. And, then, once you’ve prepared your paper – you have the perfect content with which to host an online or face-to-face event sharing the costs between both businesses. And, with both businesses promoting this to their contacts, your overall reach is increased.
Reciprocal guest blogging: Inviting people who you know your audience would find interesting to pen a guest post for your small business blog can add that bit of variety and a fresh perspective. It can also take the burden of writing off you from time to time. However, we’d always recommend reciprocating with a post for them to use too. This creates inbound links to your site, and puts your material in front of a wider audience.
Joint press releases: If you’ve worked on some sort of collaborative project, it can be really powerful to join forces in putting a story together for the press. Particularly if two local businesses have come together for an exciting project – the regional press love this sort of thing. You’re much more likely to get coverage by working together than you would if you tried to do so separately.
Who should you join forces with?
Have a think from your audience’s perspective. What, and who, would they find interesting and useful. Think about the products, services and processes they might go through alongside or be dependent on what they might buy from you – and join forces with a business who does that. For example – we provide strategic marketing advice, but don’t to marketing execution – so, you’ll find guest posts on here from the companies we recommend people use for executing the sorts of things we advise. They’re complementary to what we do, but not competitive.
Ideally, collaborative marketing would be an extension of other forms of collaboration – like cross referrals or working on joint projects. You’d want to feel comfortable that the company standing alongside you has many of the same values as you and will only add to your reputation. So, having worked with them in some capacity or at least knowing them well enough to have formed an opinion of the quality of their work is essential.
Can you think of anyone?
So, have a think about the suppliers or business partners in your little black book. Is there something you could work on together for the benefit of both businesses? Or, do you have great examples of collaborative marketing in action? We’d love to hear about them.
By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | @bryonythomas | www.clear-thought.co.uk
You may also be interested in:
- Case Study: Fraudscreen ‘Lifecycle of a Debtor’ thought leadership campaign »
- Blog: A typical thought leadership campaign »
- Blog: One piece of content, 20 ways to use it »
- Blog: Content marketing – key types of content and definitions »
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 4 July 2011
