5 Things to Think About When Branding to Attract Collaborations

It is important to understand and embrace the art of collaboration. It’s not a verb or something that you “just do”. It’s a process that takes time, research, strategy, and thought. When two or more companies decide to collaborate on marketing and promotional efforts, initiatives can be mutually beneficial in a big way. If done right, it can increase exposure for both companies and produce greater overall success compared to working on the same initiative alone.

These are a few things to keep in mind when you are looking to collaborate:

1. What is your value proposition?

Get clear and what your brand stands for, what do you believe it. Knowing your values will make it easier for your brand to align with the right partners.

2. What brands match your mission?

What is your end goal? Who is your target market? The next step is finding a company that may have a new product, launch or might be having a tough time connecting with the same target market that you are going after. You have to do the research.

3. What is the end-goal?

Decide what the intended outcome is and proceed to reverse engineer the steps. Your process to get to the goal will include action-items from both parties.

4. Think “OUT OF THE BOX”!

Don’t take a basic approach to the effort. Make sure that you strategize on all of the unique qualities that each brand brings to the table. Together, there should be a campaign that gets the attention of those that may not have been paying attention before. Be thought-provoking and infuse the WOW-FACTOR in whatever you produce together.

5. What rules?

This is new. This is creative. This is intended to break rules to generate a new level of success. There are no rules. You can collaborate with your partner organization about roles and guidelines but rules are restricting. Break the rules. Try new things. See what it gets you.

GOOD LUCK!