What is Collaboration Marketing?

Collaborative marketing is when two or more companies work together and combine their resoruces to market their businesses.  Collaborative marketing can be done on a short-term (one-time) or long-term basis.  Collaborative marketing is also known as co-marketing and cooperative marketing.

The basic elements for collaborative marketing includes the following: 

- Share a common interest
- Have a common goal
- Pool resources:  Marketing muscle
- Invest time
- Invest financially

Advantages of Collaborative Marketing:

- Accomplish more together than you could on your own
- Save money by not having to bear the full cost of the marketing campaign
- Benefit from the collective strength of each other’s brand and credibility
- Reach an expanded audience

Disadvantages of Collaborative Marketing:

- Poor planning and execution could be costly and harm your brand reputation
- Your partner(s) could fail to live up to their end of the agreement which would results in a failed campaign
- A bad or non-existent exit strategy can leave you with an unwanted commitment

Examples of Collaborative marketing:

-  Event Planner and a Florist teaming up to market their services to potential event sponsors such as organizations and individuals who are contemplating holiday celebrations, organizational outings, family reunions, marriages, etc.

-  Web Designer Company and a Social Network Marketing Company teaming up to market their services to businesses

- Accountant, Financial Advisor and Business Broker teaming up to market their services to individuals and businesses (large and small)

Who would make a good Collaborative Marketing partner:

- If your business is local partner with other businesses that are local

- You should be able to have regular face to face meeting with your partner without having to travel long distances and incur travel cost

- Choose a partner whose business could be combined with yours to service customers better.  For example, if your business is carpentry teaming up with a business that does painting could provide customers with a one stop source for construction and paint work.

-  Look for partners that do not have a negative reputation.  Partners with negative reputation could adversely tarnish your company’s reputation.

Steps to setting up a successful marketing collaboration:

1. Establish Goals:  Identify what you want out of the collaborative pairing.  They should include:

a.     Target audience:  The spcific demographic and number of people to be targeted.

b.    Timeframe:  Establish the timeframe within which you want the marketing campaign to start and end.

c.     Financial:  Establish financial contribution limits and how much each partner should provide.

d.    Time:  Estabish how much time you expect your partner to put forth and how much your organization will put forth.

e.    Personnel:  Identify how many personnel you want to each partner to contribute to the project.

f.     Skill sets:  Identify what skill sets will be needed for the program and what each partner should contribute. 

1. Develop a Marketing Plan:  Identify how you want to market to your audience.  Specify the medium that will be used.  For example, email, Direct Mail, Video, etc.

2. Identify Potential Partners:  Create a long list of the potential partners you can collaborate with, then trim it down to a short list. 

3. Draw Up Agreement:  Start drafting a collaborative marketing agreement.  It will be finalize between you and your partners.  The agreement will address, Target audience, Timeframe, Financial cost, Time, Personnel, Skill sets, how the campaign will be measured, etc.  See sample Agreeement:

 4. Draft the Contact Letter:  This could be an email or regular mail.  This is how you will reach out to your potential partners and make initial contact.

5. Set Aside Resources:  Make sure that you have identified and set aside your resources that will be contributed to the collaborative project.

6. Start the Outreach:  Start reaching out to your potential partners.  Finalize and send out the contat letter.  Be sure to ask for a face-to-face meeting in the letter.