Growing Your Business With A Powerful Collaboration

A guest post by Kara and Bec!

Arghhhh Collaboration, it’s the word of the moment. You see it and hear it all the time but you just don’t get it? Unsure of how to start, where to start, how to approach someone or even what you would do to create a Collaboration aka Collab? Let us explain.

Ever wondered how the big brands like Go To Skincare, Havianas, Rollie, Nike, Jaggad etc have even been creative enough to get powerful Collab’s going or what the power of such Collab can do for their business? Yes that was us, until we started collaborating with the “right” people and executed them with intent to grow our business. 

It’s something most of our clients have never considered or thought about when launching or growing their brand and business, yet we see the “light bulb” moment happen when we start the conversation with them. 

It helps businesses grow, it allows you to tap into a new network of consumer, it connects you, it’s good brand awareness and the power of it is truly rewarding when you get it right. 

Oh, the examples!

Lets use Rollie as an example…..a funky shoe brand who has a decent following, loyal customer base and are known for their funky, stylish and comfortable brogue shoes. The have collaborated with Tiff Manuel in recent years to bring out some amazing limited edition shoes. Why? Because it created something unique, it brought a whole new demographic to their following, it tapped into Tiff Manuel’s creativity and appealed to anyone loving colour and shoes. WOMEN.

Then there’s Jaggad and J’Aton….two fashion labels renowned in their own right but in two very different spaces. One being active wear and the other high end couture fashion. What would even cross their minds to make this happen and as a consumer would we even expect this to happen or work. Well hell to the YASS it worked. It created a couture cult following for Jaggad, cos hey, who doesn’t love active wear. Those couture wearing females loving their J’Aton fashion, are also sporting around in active wear for school mum drop just like us. It also meant that active wear lovers such as the Jaggad consumer were getting a piece of the J’Aton pie with a little high end fashion. Creating a dream, inspiring them to see what it feels like wearing J’Aton, hence driving these active wear lovers into the J’Aton couture network, consumer base, stores, following and all round loving fans. Who would have thunk!

Take musicians as an example. They’ve been doing it for years and us small business owners need to be taking a page out of their book. Hey, they wrote the book and seem to be nailing it 99.9% of the time. There’s been Nick Cave feat Kylie Minoque, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey, Ed Shearan and Beyonce just to name a few. Think about the power behind these songs when both artists are sharing the song to their respective networks…..the reach is so much bigger and better. 

Two Minds Are Better Than One

It only makes sense that two minds are better than one right? And two networks are better than one right? So, then there’s the why/who/how/legalities/strategy/creativity behind it all. Get it right and it can propel your business more than you’ll ever know, but get it wrong and it can scar you for any future Collabs or tarnish your brand that you feel like you are consumed with damage control. 

We’re not going to lie, we’ve seen and heard them go wrong but there’s always been a reason. The visions weren’t aligned, the values weren’t the same, the intent was not right from one party or one party didn’t understand how to maximize the opportunity hence it flakes. But this is something we alleviate when discussing it with clients because, ain’t no-one got time for bad business decisions that aren’t mutually beneficial.

Growing Your Biz

Launching or growing your business or brand is hard enough in the small biz life so why make it any harder than it has to be. You can grow your business and take it to the next level if you take all of the right steps to execute a good Collab. We know cos we’ve worked with and seen some fabulous small businesses get them right. They’ve followed a checklist, have ensured their intent and values are aligned and its been executed at the right time with the right strategy. That’s why we wanted to bring to life an event that could educate small business owners on the power of and how to get it right the first time. Eliminating issues and concerns and learning the right way to do them is half of the battle. Because us small business owners don’t have time nor the money to get these things wrong. 

It’s a matter of creativity….and although you may not always feel you have the right creativity there is always a fresh set of eyes or a willing ear around to help you out. Or that one person that may see something you don’t, yes it might be a risk or may well be so far out of the box that no one else is doing it, and WILL take your business to the next level.

Collaboration is a topic and strategy that we, Social ConXN are so passionate about. One that we work into our social media and marketing strategy not just for ourselves but for our clients and they love it. Its an authentic and organic alignment because our clients all have the same values as us….and that we L.O.V.E. They aren’t always a short term fix but a long term relationship build to execute at the right time. It doesn’t matter whether you are product or service based there is opportunity for any business to maximize and utilize. Product with Product, Service with Service, Product with Service it really doesn’t matter. It’s the way in which you take a chance, have the right tools and resources to execute and the calculated chances you take to grow.

You WILL grow, you WILL take chances, you WILL learn, you WILL benefit as we do in small business every day….and getting it right from the start is imperative to how its executed. Because together we can achieve so much more. Go for it!

So a few things to consider when going into your Collaboration….are your values aligned? Do you have the same vision? Is it mutually beneficial? How will you formalize your collaboration? What sort of strategy will you use to execute it?

Make sure you dot your I’s and cross your T’s….cos we want to see you nail it.

Connect with Kara & Bec on Insta @social.conxn or at www.socialconxn.com.au