Brand collaborations on Instagram are one of the most popular ways to grow your following and promote your brand online. Not to confuse influencer partnerships, brand collaborations are two (or more!) brands teaming up to create a product offering that works for their combined audience. The after result? A super-flashy campaign that doesn’t blow the budget!
So, here’s it is you need to know about brand x brand collaborations on Instagram:
What are Brand Collaborations on Instagram?
You may have heard about the word ‘collaboration’ around you a lot. So it’s all too easy for business owners and brands to get confused when a collaboration opportunity comes knocking.
Influencer collaborations to internal team collaborations, to sales meetings hiding under the guise of ‘hey, do you want to Collab?’ — combining forces on projects has always been a strategy. But the new way to engage or promote your brand product online is with brand x brand collaborations.
But before this, let’s understand what brand x brand collaborations are?
Brand x brand collaborations occur when two or more businesses team up, and create an exclusive and unique campaign, and help each other grow together. In short, brand collaboration marketing is a win-win strategic exchange for both ends.
What are the Benefits of Brand Collaborations?
Before we look into all the benefits of brand x brand collaboration, the most important thing to know is that they are 25 times less expensive than digital advertising! Plus, when you consider multi-channel marketing, network growth, and alignment opportunities, brand collaboration is one of the most potent, cost-effective strategies for marketing your brand!
And if that doesn’t convince you, here are some other key benefits of the Brand x Brand collaborations :
- Reach new potential customers through clever cross-promotion
- Increase/Add Revenue Stream
- Create unique content
- Engage your audience
- Grow your social media community
- Grow your network
- Attract publicity & create buzz
The benefits are truly endless. But be sure to whom you partner with and the campaign strategy you lead together.
Brand x Brand Collaborations on Instagram
There is no better place than social media to promote your brand. Some brands create exclusive Instagram events/products as part of their campaigns because they have significant social media ripple effects. Think about competitions and giveaways, content collaborations, or hashtag challenges for collaboration ideas. These all are all great ways your business can reach new audiences quickly and cost-effectively.
How to Run Your First Brand Collaborations on Instagram:
We’re breaking down the 8-Step Plan on how to get your first brand collaboration on Instagram!
#1: Identify Your Campaign Goal
Like any marketing strategy, you’ll want to be clear about what you want to achieve in brand collaboration. Collaboration never works “for the sake of it.”
Instead, we recommend that you start with understanding the marketing objectives of your business. In this way, your collaboration can help you achieve your marketing goals, such as; Instagram growth or Email list growth, product sales, or content creation. They’ll help by informing you whom you should partner with for collaboration. In addition, it means that it is a much easier process to set up your campaign from scratch!
#2: Find the Right Brand Collaborations Partner
If you’re going to do it the old-fashioned way, make sure you have similar target markets. You’re in complementary industry locations, and your goals are aligned to add value to your communities. In addition, that way, any cross-promotion you do will be extremely valuable!) For example, a nutritionist collaborates with a personal trainer to understand thematically and with a supplement audience.
#3: First Understand Your Value & What You Bring to the Table
In Today’s trend, successful collaborations are win-win exchanges of value. So, before reaching out to them or asking for what you want, it’s great to know what you can bring to the table. Your services, products, time, skills, location, content creation, social media, and email channels are all super valuable business assets that you can leverage from collaboration. So, please don’t underestimate the value of your skills and offerings when it comes to branded collaborations!
#4: Reach Out the Right Way
Yes, it doesn’t mean ‘Hey, want to Collab?’ DM or LinkedIn message (*shudder*). Relationships are at the heart of excellent brand collaboration. Do your research correctly and personalize your intro note – no copy-pasting at all! Not sure where to start? Keep it friendly but concise, sweet, personalized, and profit-to-be-motivated.
#5: Be Open to Negotiate
It is where it can be challenging to collaborate with a fully formed idea. Therefore, we recommend approaching collaboration with a solid goal and a flexible attitude for creative execution, as this will help you negotiate a fair deal. Always get a simple, readable contract – we recommend joint marketing agreements or MOU documents for small-scale collaborations.
#6: Leverage for the Best Possible Results
You may have the best collaboration in the world, but if no one knows about it, what’s the point? Leverage is all about creating a marketing plan for both of you that works to take advantage of each excellent marketing channel available to you.
#7: Get Flirtatious
It’s a common myth that brand collaborations are one-off, massive campaigns reserved for big brands! On the contrary, brands must collaborate 5+ times each year for best results.
Want to apply Trick to this? Change the type of collaboration so you don’t exhaust your audience.
#8: Schedule, Post, Track, and Communicate!
Finally, once your campaign is locked, you’re ready to share your project!
On Instagram, it’s easy to spread the word about your new co-branded campaign primarily if you use tools and features like Instagram Stories countdown stickers and shopping tags if you’ve got a product to sell.
Once your campaign is live, it is necessary to keep track of performance and always be in touch with your partner partners. Share your results with your Collaborator and communicate accordingly. Better yet, keep track of products just like you would do for any other marketing strategy.
You can get a snapshot of the performance of your campaign posts. In addition, you can compare that performance to your other content or campaigns.
Lastly, don’t forget to share your statistics with your brand partners. Also, you can download a CSV report in flash and email it to your team further!
Brand collaboration on Instagram is one trend you don’t want to miss. With each collaboration, you’re not only doubling your reach, but you’re also growing your network and bringing something new to your audience. On the whole, without breaking the budget!
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