4 Types of Collaborations to Help Grow Your Business

According to Collabosarus, their research found that brand collaborations can be up to 25x less expensive than digital advertising. In my experience, they’re often money makers rather than expenses, when done right! That makes them ideal for growing brands across industries with smaller marketing budgets and big brand goals.

Collaborations can be a great way to increase your brand reach to new audiences, establish yourself in a new or different space, and create media buzz around products even if they’re not new offerings!

You + Brand B - If you lived through summer of 2023, you saw some great examples of collaboration marketing with the Barbie movie’s gigantic push into collaboration marketing across categories like home décor, beauty, and food. But you don’t have to be Mattel to take advantage. Creating a product or event with a brand that offers something different than you do can be a great way to expand your audience reach (since becoming a household name like “Barbie” doesn’t happen overnight). A big bonus for this type of marketing is generally both brands make money, usually through a licensing or royalty agreement for one brand to use the other’s logo, art, etc on merchandise! A few tips for successful brand collaborations:

·       Stick with brands that make sense – using your content themes as a guide, look at companies around your size that share a mission, potential target audience, and are about the same size (if you’re focused locally, don’t call Nike just yet!) – Jittery Joes coffee collaborations are a great example of local brand collabs (like their collaboration with Terrapin!)

·       Get things in writing – not just the licensing piece, but what each brand is going to commit to in terms of promotion (whether it’s a product or event)!

·       Start small! Limited edition products or one-off events are a great way to test the waters, learn for future collaborations, and keep things low(er) stress. You can always add after a successful collaboration!

You + Artist – Artist collaborations are a great way to establish your brand aesthetic and personality, and can be a great PR play as well, even if artists don’t have a large social media following. Artist collaborations can take many forms, from limited edition packaging to working with a local sculptor to create a unique retail space, to creating something with a band (another great Jittery Joes example) that they can promote as well! These collaborations are compensated through royalties or a flat fee to the artist – remember that exposure doesn’t pay the bills for anyone! A few tips:

·       Make it a true collaboration – Work with the artist to create something that meshes their style with your brand!

·       Go beyond the finished product – many artists can document their process, giving you additional content to help promote the collaboration and give your customers a peek behind the curtain on creating the art! (Just make sure you put it in writing what’s expected for each party!)

·       Create a competition – I don’t recommend this as a first artist collaboration, but once you’ve done a few, you can always create a competition for artists to submit work and win prizes – just make sure your prizes are fair compensation for the work (there are several examples online you can look at for inspiration from companies like Slow Tide or Golden Coil)

·       Start with an artist that’s done a collaboration before! It’s ok to approach an artist even if you’re not totally sure how the collaboration could work, as long as you’re up front about it! Many artists have an idea of what they can or can’t commit to and can help guide the conversation if they’re passionate about it as well! (Shameless plug, I do pattern and surface design in my free time and would LOVE to collaborate on packaging or printed products – coastlstudio.com!)

You + Competitor – These can be trickier to get going but can be a lot of fun! The best example I’ve seen is collaboration brewing in the craft beer scene – often these come about from a sense of community over competition and can be a great way to establish your brand as one that’s positive and supportive of everyone in your industry!

You + Non-Profit – Often called Cause Marketing, this is a collaboration between your brand and a non-profit to raise money for the organization. The most important aspect of this type of collaboration is that it’s authentic – if it’s not, it can do more harm than good! Talking about the benefit of cause marketing to your own business can feel a little ~disingenuous~ but it’s not! Reframe you’re thinking – the more your business grows, the more often you can support non-profits and causes you believe in. If you’re not making money, you can’t donate it!

·       Choose a cause that makes sense. It should align with your core company values and brand (an alcohol brand sponsoring a recovery center is a bit contradictory, even if you personally believe in the mission)

·       Don’t just donate, collaborate! Get permission from the organization to use their logo and ask if they’re willing to reshare or pass along your efforts to their email list – this is how you can benefit while also helping the non-profit – chances they’re also looking for unique ways to fundraise beyond just asking for a donation! (As with other forms of collaborations – working with a non-profit that feels like a similar size to yours is more likely to agree to collaborating vs just accepting a donation).

·       Make it product or time-period specific. The goal is to do good and get your brand out there, so if you can only sustain the donation on a specific product or during a specific period, that’s still something good for the non-profit and for yourself!

·      Talk about it! Again, it can feel disingenuous to say “Look at me, how great is it that we raised money for XYZ” but framing it as thanking your customers for helping you support a mission you believe in can be incredibly powerful – for both the non-profit and your brand!

Creative marketing often takes the form of collaboration, and is an easy place for businesses of any size to expand on their marketing efforts and grow their brand awareness (and their bottom line!)