Top 10 Collaborative Marketing Strategies for Your Business

You can attract new clients, raise brand awareness, and enhance revenue by including collaborative marketing into your overall marketing plan. Finding a partner brand with comparable values and an audience is necessary.

From there, you can create and carry out marketing initiatives that are advantageous to both of you. You can uncover new approaches for both businesses to reach and surpass their marketing objectives when you identify brands with an audience that needs your product and vice versa.

In this article, the experts at the social media marketing agency in Singapore will go into greater detail about collaborative marketing, its use, and some crucial points to make clear when working with other firms. So, let’s get started.

What is collaboration marketing?

Collaboration in marketing is combining the resources of your business, such as assets, funds, and assets, with other companies to achieve your goals in marketing. 

Differently, you can say it’s working with businesses who share the same interests, enabling you to achieve more by marketing than you could do on your own. The final result is a mutually beneficial relationship where both parties pool their strengths to the advantage of both parties.

 

What is the process of collaborative marketing?

The concept of collaborative marketing is as follows:

The first step is to choose a brand you are interested in working with. The brand should not be directly competing; however, it should be compatible with your brand and has the same audience or objective.

In the next step, you’ll need to contact the company to inquire whether they’re interested in working with you. Typically, partners will utilize either their budgets or reach as cross-promotional currencies.

In the first case, it could mean pooling your marketing budgets to buy a joint ad that you would not have been capable of purchasing on your own. In the latter scenario, it may involve promoting the other’s product to your customers to increase the reach of your message.

Collaboration in marketing can take various varieties. It could be anything as easy as offering shout-outs to a different company via social media in exchange for a reward or a large-scale joint ad campaign and everything in between.

We’ll go into more detail about the characteristics of collaborative marketing in the future and provide some suggestions and strategies you could explore.

Cons and pros of collaboration marketing

To help you determine whether or not you should invest your time and money in the collaborative market, let’s go over one look at the major pros and cons stated by the experts at SMM solutions for local businesses in Singapore.

 

Pros	Cons
Reach new audiences	Reach new audiences
Brand collaborations with brands can boost your reach and enable you to reach highly-targeted prospective customers.	Making a collaborative marketing campaign takes much back-and-forth communication. It could take a significant amount of time to start.
Reduce costs	More control of the creative
Sharing the cost of an ad among multiple brands can drastically reduce the cost.	You must be prepared to compromise to build an effective campaign for both brands. That involves giving up some of your creative control.
Enhance your brand	Potentially one-sided
Collaboration with a partner brand can increase your brand’s credibility and reputation through association.	If a brand is not working well, the benefits could be unevenly distributed because one company comes from the collaboration much better. Therefore, choosing the correct brand to partner with is crucial.
Combining expertise	Ideas that aren’t compatible
The collaboration of two brands means you have the opportunity to make use of the best of each of your strengths to develop more powerful and effective campaigns.	Collaboration can be difficult when you don’t agree with the brand of your partner on the specifics and implementation of your marketing campaign.

 

How can you begin to implement collaboration marketing?

There are many methods to begin using collaborative marketing. To assist you in thinking about your initial ideas, we’ve collected some of our most popular strategies below.

1. Marketing partnerships in partnership

Partnership marketing involves having two companies share the cost to create a mutually beneficial marketing campaign. It could be in the form of advertising, content marketing, giveaways, or even the idea of a Pop-up store. 

The most important thing is that both brands have met their objectives and share the cost of the promotion. Apple is among the biggest champions of partnership marketing. 

Through the years, they’ve partnered with brands such as U2 and Nike to develop many of the most famous collaboration campaigns. Consider Apple if you’re searching for a brand you’d like to imitate.

Another excellent example of marketing in partnership is the partnership that was formed between Hubspot and Chatfuel. Both companies released an ebook jointly; when the users could download the eBook, they were greeted with CTAs from both brands, each offering free services.

2. Retail partnerships

Retail partnerships are almost necessary for many brands with physical products. They’re the ones that allow your product to be sold in national or international chains such as Whole Foods and Target, or even online marketplaces such as Amazon and Thrive market. 

In short, the retail partnership can expose your products to a new market and help increase sales quickly. However, retail partnerships don’t have to be limited to basic distribution contracts. 

They can expand into exclusivity products and content marketing or even retail-retail partnership -for instance, CVS recently purchased Target’s pharmacy, as an example. 

If you’re looking for examples of retail partnerships, you can go to your local supermarket. Any product not from the store’s brand is part of the retail partnership.

3. Advertising cooperatively

Cooperative advertising, also referred to as co-op advertising, is the same as partnership marketing. The major distinction is that cooperative advertising focuses only on marketing and not on general. 

That means content marketing and Instagram giveaways. are not on the agenda. A typical advertising campaign that is cooperative encourages joint ventures. 

For instance, Starbucks and Apple had an arrangement from 2007 to 2016, which allowed Starbucks customers to immediately connect for free WiFi and preview, buy songs, and download them from iTunes while shopping. 

The ads that were run in this partnership could be considered to be cooperative advertising.

4. Collaborations with Instagram

Collaborations on Instagram bring collaborative marketing to social media. There are many types of Instagram collaborations, including:

• Instagram takeovers: A brand can take over the other brand’s Instagram for a specific time.
• Giveaways: Many brands hold an opportunity to give away some of their items.
• Programs for affiliates or referrals: One brand can promote other products and earn a percentage of the sale each time a person purchases a product from the brand.
• Product shout-outs: One brand creates a post that features or mentions another brand and its products.
• Joint releases of products: A: Two or more brands team up on a product and then jointly make it available for release. Instagram is a vital element of any company’s marketing toolbox. All businesses should look at including these tactics in their arsenal.

5. Instagram pods

The Instagram pods can be described as a collaboration behind the scenes. An Instagram pod is an Instagram community willing to interact with one another’s posts. Each time one of them publishes a post on Instagram, the post is sent to the entire group, and everyone is asked to share and like it and leave comments on the post. 

Since Instagram’s algorithm is designed to boost content with high participation, this could be an extremely effective method. There is, however, an unsavory side to this: Instagram does not approve of this practice, and being in a pod may be a source of severe consequences. 

Facebook blocked a handful of groups used to create pods in 2018, and Instagram shut down a particular brand store from its platform. Overall, the risks far outweigh the benefits. Although Instagram pods can increase engagement, the results tend to be superficial. 

It’s possible to get an increase in engagement according to the algorithm is concerned, but you could end up getting an escalation from Instagram itself. Take care when you walk.

6. Brand partnerships

Brand partnerships can be described as any kind of collaboration that helps fulfill partner brands’ goals. It could refer to anything from the joint partnership in advertising to retail. Still, here we’ll use it to describe companies with a long-term relationship -typically regarding a product.

Brand partnerships over time can result in innovative products and concepts that neither brand could have imagined independently. 

For instance, when Burger King partnered with the Impossible Burger and the Impossible Burger, they made history when they became among the very first major national fast-food chains to launch a meat-free burger.

However, brand partnerships don’t have to be the source of a brand-new product. One of the longest-lasting collaborations is one between McDonald’s along with Coca-Cola. 

Even though McDonald’s hasn’t yet collaborated on a drink that is new in conjunction with Coca-Cola, it has accepted to offer Coke products exclusively in its establishments.

7. Partnership emails

If you’re eager to dive into collaboration advertising, you must ensure you break the ice. What better way to do this than by sending an old-fashioned email? 

Partnership emails allow you to connect with the brand you’re working with and let them know why you are a perfect match. For this, you’ll require:

• A brief introduction: Describe your identity and why you’re important to the company’s image.
• A thank you or acknowledgment. The brand should know why you picked the brand. What do you love with their product? Are there any recent items you’re enjoying? Send them a message Everyone loves praise!
• An inquiry This is the meat and potatoes of the email. Why do you want to write to this company? What do you expect them to help you with? Do you want to stock your product? Organize an event? Do you want to collaborate on a piece of content?
• A proposal Part 2 of the potato and meat. If they accept your offer, what do you plan to offer them as a reward? What’s the benefit for them?
• An invitation to act. If you were able to entice them, what do they do next? Tell them how they can reach you. It’s recommended to offer an appointment time in the first email you send. This takes planning off their hands and will allow them to accept and appear on Zoom when you requested.

8. Marketing through referral

Referral marketing, also known as affiliate marketing, is the process by which your brand partners create targeted leads for your business via referrals, often in exchange for certain compensation. It’s a simple, effective, and efficient method to use collaboration in marketing.

All you have to do is create your referral program. Once you have it set up, offer your brand partners their individual tracking links and promotional tools such as banners. Then, they’ll be able to begin sending customers to you.

The way you set up the system is up to the individual. Many brands choose CPA (cost per acquisition) referral models where partners get paid for each acquisition (usually an acquisition). You can implement it on your own or through an online platform such as Share A Sale.

9. Instagram’s takeover

Another effective marketing collaboration method is to hold the event of an Instagram takeover. This happens when an influencer or brand acts in the role of a host for an influencer’s or brand’s Instagram channel. 

This is a fantastic way for brands to promote content in a manner that’s reciprocally and equally beneficial. There are two options to think with this issue:

• You can even take your feed from another brand on Instagram.
• You may invite someone you’d like to collaborate with to manage your business.

Or, you can combine both simultaneously! If you take over your partners, you’ll immediately be able to advertise and market your brand to their entire community. 

If you decide to take this route, ensure that you collaborate with an influencer or brand with similar goals and buyer personas as yours and an audience size similar to yours.

10. Collaborative content marketing

Collaboration in media marketing is creating and distributing content with an important partner in your brand. Here are a few examples of what we’re talking of:

• Guest posts: publishing content on a partner’s website can be a great method to attract targeted leads and increase your standing within the industry.
• Expert roundup: creating your piece of content and asking other businesses to get quotes is an excellent method to establish relationships and increase your work’s reach.
• Podcasts consider working with a similar brand for podcasts and sharing it with your respective audiences to amp the reach.
• Interviews invite a prominent person at a partner company for an interview and then publish the interview on your website. Afterward, they can post it on their social media channels (free promotion for your blog) or offer to interview you as a reward.

11. Joint ads

It is possible to split the cost of traditional advertisement by collaborating with several partners to cut down on the expense. This is particularly useful for local or regional collaborations.

Let’s say you have a tiny boutique in a tiny shopping mall. Instead of advertising your own store, you could also advertise the mall as a whole and split costs with other businesses that operate there. Everyone gets the same benefits. The cost is considerably less.

12. Partnership deals/discounts

Another excellent collaborative marketing method is to create special promotional offers and discounts for your partners and vice versa.

For instance, a fast-food restaurant might offer coupons for a discount at the local movie theater with each purchase, while the local cinema might offer the same in exchange. In this scenario, both parties gain from not directly competing against one another.

13. Mailing list exposure

We all know that email marketing is among the top efficient marketing channels that can provide an unbeatable return on investment. Therefore, one of the most effective methods to use collaboration in marketing is to “share your email list with a brand similar to yours.

One way to accomplish this is to insert an advertisement for your product within a different brand’s email marketing campaign to get their email list. This is best for similar brands because the more targeted the mailing database, the higher your advertisement will do.

In reality, it’s exactly what we do at best SMM agency in Singapore. We connect amazing similar brands for jointly-created email marketing campaigns. If there’s no luxury in the way of an email address to broadcast at the moment, now is the perfect moment to begin building one.

If you’re considering trying this collaborative marketing strategy, make sure you look into the packages of SMM services for small businesses in Singapore.

 

Conclusion

You may attract new clients, raise brand awareness, and boost sales by incorporating marketing collaboration into your overall plan. You may jointly accomplish your marketing objectives when you work with like-minded companies with similar target markets. 

You will require marketing technology to carry out your plans, whether they involve the occasional social media post or a co-branded product. If you like the blog and want to read more about, check out our previous blog the 9 best b2c marketing strategies to grow your business.