From the very start of our business journey, collaboration has been one of the pillars that Your AJency is built on. Whether we’re working in close collaboration with our many female founder clients, or establishing new networks for us and our clients to collaborate with, we truly believe that collaboration is one of the strongest tools in our toolkit. Despite working alone (and remotely for the most part), collaboration has still continued to help us grow our business and it can help yours too.

So what exactly is collaboration and what do we mean when we talk about how it can grow your business? Perhaps you have heard the term but have not yet established how you can use it strategically.

Well, a collaboration can take many different forms but, ultimately, it is a fantastic way of connecting you with like-minded businesses or influencers on a similar mission to yourself and working together to create something new. Collaborations are a great way of building your own network by leveraging the warm audiences of your collaborators, increasing your awareness, and engaging a wider target audience. For more on how to increase your business visibility, why not check out our blog with PR expert, Fiona Minett? Or continue reading below for our how-to guide for making a collaboration idea come to life and be successful.

Identify your collaboration goal and get planning

The first thing is to decide what the goal of the collaboration is. Planning in advance is crucial to collaboration success - trust us, it’s something we’ve learned over time that the best collaborations are the ones that are well-crafted and thought-through. How exactly is this collaboration going to benefit you and the brand/influencer you’re working with? What do you want to achieve from it? Perhaps you want to raise brand awareness, grow your mailing list or Instagram audience, increase product sales, or simply improve your content offering. Whatever your goals may be, they’ll help inform who you should be partnering up with, which sets up your campaign from the get-go! If it’s an influencer you’ve set your sights on, make sure you read our blog with Jess Roe (@thewindycitymama) to get her top tips on working with influencers.

Who fits the goal?

Ensuring you collaborate with an appropriate and relevant individual or brand really is crucial. You want to both add value to their content and have them add value to yours too. If you’re not pitching to the right brands or influencers, they may not be fully invested in the collaboration, meaning they may not market it as you had envisioned and therefore it may be less likely to succeed. So do your research. Come up with a list of perhaps 5 target collaborators. Ensure you know their audience, content style and product offer or previous collaborations to verify they are a great fit for you. Not only are you more likely to feel like a good fit for one another, but your audiences are more likely to have common interests and therefore more likely to become future followers and clients.

What form might the collaboration take?

Next decide how you will collaborate. There are so many options, and some involve greater investment than others.

Here are 5 of the top collaboration ideas I have seen succeed at Your AJency this year:

1. Ambassador program – chosen collaborators to champion your product in exchange for 1-2 pieces of gifted jewellery/product per launch and social media coverage on stories and grid posts. If you go down this route, get a contract in place.

2. Styled shoots: partner up with a venue and other brands and create some beautiful content together. Tag each collaborator when sharing on social and ask them to do the same. You’ll be sharing content and audiences and will all help each other reach new potential clients.

3. Giveaway – keep this simple though – no one enjoys when you need to follow loads of accounts and do multiple steps to enter, it will put people off. Also, make sure the thing you’re giving away is relevant to your audience and that they’re the type of people who want your product/services anyway. As the notorious algorithm generally doesn’t like the word ‘giveaway’, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got something great to get people’s attention. A great example is below from one of our clients, Suvarna.

4. Instagram Collaborator function: Anyone you tag as a collaborator will be shown as a co-author of the post. And they’ll instantly be able to reshare the post on their profile without having to use screenshots or a third-party regram app and gives your profiles more visibility. This works really well if you’re collaborating with someone or a business that shares a similar audience to you as it gets your content and product in front of them easily. Ideas for this type of collaboration could be tips on styling your products, gift ideas for an upcoming holiday, an influencer showcasing your product. This can be used on reels too which is likely to get even greater reach than a post.

5. Guest posting: this could be contributing to someone else’s blog or appearing as a guest on a podcast as you can see below the podcast we did with Rold Design. This can be more about you as a business owner, behind the scenes, life as a female-founder. The options are endless. This is also great for SEO. Most websites allowing guest posts will let you earn a link back to your website, increasing your search engine visibility. Of course, you can also do it the other way around – secure free content for your blog or website by allowing guest posters.

Time to Connect and reach out to your newly identified targets

When you are ready to approach the people you want to collaborate with, it is so important that you are very clear about what is in it for them. A collaboration must be of mutual benefit to ensure that you convince them. So when you email or DM them, always lead with how it will help them and their business. Remember your products, services, time, skillset, venue space, content creation, social media, and email channels are ALL super valuable business assets you can leverage in this collaboration. Don’t forget to include as many of these as possible. The best advice is to do your research and personalize your intro note! Not sure where to start? Keep it friendly but short, sweet, personalized, and benefits-to-them driven.

Decide HOW you will market the collaboration

Once you have agreed on the details of everything, you need to shout about it! Leverage is all about building a marketing plan for both of you that works to take advantage of all your marketing channels you each have available to you. That can include website, blogs, podcasts, newsletters as well as social media. If you have a super successful collaboration, you can then use this in your pitch for the next one! You’ll be showing how you can add value to other businesses with clear evidence!

Track and review performance

Once your campaign is live, it’s important to keep track of performance. Share your results with your collaborator and communicate throughout. For your business track the results against your original marketing goal, so you can get a better idea of what has worked best for you. This will ensure that you are being strategic and investing in the right collaborations for you in the future and as we said above, when they work well it also helps you secure your next collaboration too! You can easily do this through Instagram insights if you’re using Instagram to promote your collaboration. Not sure how? Read how in our how-to guide here.

How can it work in the real world?

One of our most successful collaborations that we’ve been involved in this year has been with The Homeworker magazine. Not only have we contributed to the inspiring magazine aimed at people who work from home, but we’ve also had the pleasure of hosting its’ founder, Louise Goss, on our blog. Here are just a couple of our social media posts to show the power of collaboration and how when you find a good fit, it can be the start of a beautiful working relationship.

Collaboration marketing is a win-win strategic move. It will help your business grow, potentially growing your networks too, and it needn’t be expensive. The rewards will often surpass the investment and there is no time limit on leveraging the collaboration or association so it can remain a gift that keeps on giving in our experience. Collaborations can also be super fun. You will gain new loyal supporters both in terms of clients as well as lasting relationships with fellow businesses who you can work with again and again. So why not give it a go? Head over to our Instagram for more inspiration, and feel free to let us know about your upcoming collaborations too!