COLLABORATION IS THE NEW COMPETITION

The art of collaboration is a topic close to our hearts at The Creative Duck. We would like to share with you six useful strategies to show how small businesses can embrace their collaborative spirit to succeed.

Co-promote your small business with others

Actively seek out complementary businesses that share similar target audiences. You can then team up for joint marketing and selling opportunities. Here are some examples:

• A jewellery designer can team up with fashion and accessory designers to put together an event within a shop, cafe or bar to showcase their range and invite people to purchase.

• A local boutique shop can give discounts on fitness clothing to anyone who made a purchase at a nearby health food store (and that health food store can offer a free smoothie with any fitness attire purchase from the boutique shop).

• An artist emails her database with details of her upcoming workshop and includes a message at the bottom promoting a local art shop that is having a sale (and that art shop does that same, or gives each customer a workshop leaflet).
  

Join a community

No matter your industry or occupation, business is driven by referrals and connections. A web designer recommends a copywriter or SEO expert, an artist recommends a framer or printer. The collaborative small business owner is always on the lookout for opportunities to help fellow small businesses out. There’s a wide range of networking groups and communities nowadays, so it’s simply a case of trying several to find the right ones that suit you and your business. Remember, the more you put in, the more you’re likely to get out.

Most networking groups and communities also have online forums which can be a further source of inspiration and support, as well as a place to find small businesses to collaborate with.

Create an advert together

Team up with fellow small businesses that complement your offering and share a similar target audience to create a magazine advert. This is a great solution for any small business if you don’t have the budget to run an advert on your own. Perhaps you’re an independent retailer and you’d like to work with several other local independents to encourage more people to visit your high street? This collaborative approach has scope to work across other platforms too, like social media, flyers, e-newsletters and much more.

So the next time you’re looking at a promotional opportunity that seems just out of reach (or even wildly out of reach) try to think about who else in your small business community might also benefit from going after it as a team. If it benefits you both, why not go for it?

Open a Pop Up Shop The eye-watering cost of retail space on the high street, especially in prime locations, makes having a physical presence for small businesses extremely difficult. That’s where collaboration, done right, can be key to enabling small brands reach the high street and grow their businesses. Partner up with complementary brands that share similar target audiences and aesthetically sit well together. Breathe some life into an empty shop unit and understand more about your customers at the same time.

Create niche gift guide

Instead of pitching your products to other people’s gift guide, why not create your down? Approach the small brands that you think share similar customers, but naturally aren’t direct competition, and decide on a theme which ties all your products together nicely. The obvious one is Christmas, prime gift-giving season, but there are many different theme opportunities depending on the businesses you collaborate with and of course a good sprinkling of creativity. Some examples include vintage, handmade, sustainable or local. You could include adverts from businesses wanting to talk to this targeted customer-base, to help towards the costs of producing the guides.

Develop collaborative product lines

If you’re a maker and wanted to add something to your offering that is out of your skill set, support a fellow entrepreneur by employing their services. A chocolate shop owner, for example, might ask a screen printer to create Easter egg hunt cotton bags to be sold with some of their chocolate eggs in-store. They might choose to include the option of having the bags personalised to make the offering even more special. The screen printer also sells the Easter bags and chocolate eggs combo on her website.

A collaborative product line also helps you expand your customer base. If you are choosing to collaborate with them it’s a positive reflection of both your businesses and can bring in amazing referrals.

By seeing fellow small businesses as partners, small business owners can harness the power of collaboration to attract more customers, be inspired, and help their overall bottom line. Collaboration is becoming the new competition, at least when it comes to building your small business.

So on that note, how have you collaborated with other business owners, or how are you planning to in the future?

Images sources: @Rawpixel and @Pinterest