Building a business is hard work.  You not only have to develop your business products or services, manage your team, and finances, you also have to market them and get people to know they exist.

It can be overwhelming to think about all the outlets you can showcase your products.  Should you go print or digital?  How do you grow your list?  Growing a following on social media can be tricky.

Have you thought about building relationships with other like-minded businesses to help grow your marketing reach together?  There are many reasons why collaborations and utilizing influencers can be a benefit for your business as well as helping your partners.  In this post, we'll share some ideas for how to use collaborations to grow your business, expenses and gain more reach.

Joint Photoshoot

Creating media can be expensive and time-consuming.  You have to hire a photographer, pull models, build stories, get them edited and on and on.  Instead of taking that all on yourself, work with other businesses to share the load and get images all can use.

For example, take a retail store that sells guitars.  They partnered with an outdoor company that makes chairs, hammocks, etc.  They could create a beautiful outdoor camping site and take lifestyle photography showing people enjoying the outdoor product as well as the guitar products.  Both companies get photos that are relevant to their core audience and can share in the expenses.

You can take it a step further as well!  Now that you have these amazing photos, create a partnership for how you use them.  Share photos on Instagram or Facebook and tag each other.  Educate each other's audiences on this amazing business that has a product/service that your customers might also enjoy.

Influencer Marketing

This is definitely a buzzword these days.  At a very basic level, this means that you can utilize people that have followings that match your audience to share your product with them.  Why does this work?  People don't like being sold to, they like to see products and services that other people are using and get referrals and recommendations from others they already know like and trust.

In the example below, you'll see a campaign that  H & M did with an Instagram influencer.  A quick way to tell that it's a partnership is the #ad or #sponsored that is included in the post.  The FTC has regulations for how you have to signify that the post has money or goods exchanged.

Building a business is hard work.  You not only have to develop your business products or services, manage your team, and finances, you also have to market them and get people to know they exist.

It can be overwhelming to think about all the outlets you can showcase your products.  Should you go print or digital?  How do you grow your list?  Growing a following on social media can be tricky.

Have you thought about building relationships with other like-minded businesses to help grow your marketing reach together?  There are many reasons why collaborations and utilizing influencers can be a benefit for your business as well as helping your partners.  In this post, we'll share some ideas for how to use collaborations to grow your business, expenses and gain more reach.

Joint Photoshoot

Creating media can be expensive and time-consuming.  You have to hire a photographer, pull models, build stories, get them edited and on and on.  Instead of taking that all on yourself, work with other businesses to share the load and get images all can use.

For example, take a retail store that sells guitars.  They partnered with an outdoor company that makes chairs, hammocks, etc.  They could create a beautiful outdoor camping site and take lifestyle photography showing people enjoying the outdoor product as well as the guitar products.  Both companies get photos that are relevant to their core audience and can share in the expenses.

You can take it a step further as well!  Now that you have these amazing photos, create a partnership for how you use them.  Share photos on Instagram or Facebook and tag each other.  Educate each other's audiences on this amazing business that has a product/service that your customers might also enjoy.

Influencer Marketing

This is definitely a buzzword these days.  At a very basic level, this means that you can utilize people that have followings that match your audience to share your product with them.  Why does this work?  People don't like being sold to, they like to see products and services that other people are using and get referrals and recommendations from others they already know like and trust.

In the example below, you'll see a campaign that  H & M did with an Instagram influencer.  A quick way to tell that it's a partnership is the #ad or #sponsored that is included in the post.  The FTC has regulations for how you have to signify that the post has money or goods exchanged.

So how much does this cost?  Going after local up and coming influencers can be really cost effective or just be trade.  The key thing is to remember that you still want to go after your core audience.

Events

Finding events that are attended by your core audience can be a great way to increase exposure.  Choosing the right event can be tricky.  There are several ways that this can benefit your business.

• access to a new audience.
• opportunity to network with other businesses.
• ability to share partnerships online and through social media.

The beauty of events is that you can reach audiences through your social media accounts as well as in person.  Creating Facebook events and commenting on topics will build know, like and trust with their audience.  Providing value at events will help people get to know your product or service and be more likely to get involved.

So what kinds of events are great to be a part of? That entirely depends on your business but here are some ideas to get you started.

•  create a pop-up shop for your product at coffee shops, bars, etc that your audience frequents.
• seasonal farmers markets.
• concerts.
• guest host a networking meeting.
• conference.

Let us know what other ideas you have for events, we'd love to hear them!

Conclusion

Creating partnerships can help drive brick and mortar traffic as well as help you grow your social media following.  Think of a list of 5-10 businesses or individuals you could reach out to that might be interested in a partnership that can benefit both businesses. We look forward to hearing more about how you create unique partnerships.