Is collaborating the right way to boost your Social Media engagement?
Collaborating with other brands is one of the most popular ways to grow your platforms and promote your brand online. Unlike influencer partnerships, brand collaborations are when two or more businesses join forces to create a product for a campaign.
They mutually benefit from each other. There are a variety of brand collaborations that may be familiar to you, such as Instagram giveaways and takeovers, a joint product release, and product shoutouts.
The Benefits of Brand Collaboration
One of the crucial benefits to remember is that you can save a ton of money when you do a brand collaboration. Brand collaborations are 25x cheaper than digital advertising, according to Collabosarus.
Didn’t convince you enough? Here are some more benefits that you should know about:
- Attract publicity and build buzz around your brand
- Reach new potential customers through cross-promotions
- Discover new content for your brand
- Boost in sales and social media engagement
- Grow your social media community and followers
- Opportunities to engage with your audience
- Encourage user-generated content
If these all sound great to you and you’re considering partnering up with another brand, check out some tips to help you succeed in your campaign!
Tips to Run a Successful Brand Collaboration
- Set your campaign goal.
Remember that you should not collaborate just because you see other brands doing it. Instead, start with understanding your marketing and PR objectives and how a brand collaboration can help you achieve your overall goal. Ensure your plan includes growth in specific social media channels or email lists, increased website traffic and product sales, content creation, and more.
Knowing your goals will also help you find the right collab partner to keep your campaign running smoothly.
- Find the Right Partner
So, how do you choose the right partner? In addition to aligning your goals, you should also target an audience that is similar and whose industries complement yours. These elements are essential because cross-promotion on each other’s Instagram pages will be extremely valuable to both communities and help each other grow in numbers.
We recommend spending some time researching the social media analytics of your brand and potential collaborators. It is essential to note if the level of post engagement matches their follower count and yours. We must ensure mutual benefit because a more popular brand would not benefit from collaborating with a smaller brand.
- Understand Your Value
You should always appreciate the value of your skillsets that can give you leverage in a brand collaboration. Know what you can bring to the table before contacting your collab partner. The brand’s product, services, venue space, and your PR expertise in social media, content creation, and email marketing are all precious assets to guarantee a successful collaboration.
- Be Human When Reaching Out
Remember that there is a human behind the brand you are collaborating with. When writing your introductory email, try to be personable yet professional and ensure the brand you want to collaborate with knows that you have done your research. Doing so will likely make the brand pique their interest in you since you will come off as friendly and knowledgeable, not someone leeching for free benefits from a successful business.
- Be Open to Negotiate
We know the saying that “it takes two to tango.” This saying also applies to brand collaborations since they can get tricky sometimes. You may have this fantastic idea for a campaign, but your partner could also have other ideas in mind. We recommend thinking about your goal and remaining flexible regarding creative execution. Keeping an open mind and negotiating will help you build a stronger relationship with your partner and keep things fair.
- As Always, Measure Your Results
Results are everything in PR. Before starting the campaign, you should set social media KPIs (clicks, likes, comments, shares, brand mentions, profile visits, etc.) that you can measure to indicate your success. With your goal in mind, monitoring your analytics throughout the campaign is helpful since you can adjust your strategy.