How small businesses can work together to reach more customers using social media
Collaborating with other businesses can be an effective way of using social media to get in front of new customers.
When you’re worried about making sales, it can be difficult to think about anything beyond your own business. You may feel like you hardly have time to promote your own business, let alone work with other business owners to promote theirs.
However, working with other businesses can provide a huge boost of new customers for your own business.
In this article, I will outline how to choose which businesses to collaborate with and specific ways you can collaborate using social media. I also share my own experience with collaborations to reach new clients.
How to choose businesses to collaborate with
In order to reach new customers, you want to choose to collaborate with businesses that share your target market. In other words, your ideal customers should purchase goods and services from both your business and the business you’re interested in collaborating with.
For example, my clients Coco21 and Contouring Bodies recently collaborated with other beauty businesses based in the Sutherland Shire.
Your ideal customers may crossover in:
Location – living or working in the same area
Interests – animals, fitness, environmental causes
Painpoints – lack of time, moving house
Stage of life – university, parenting, retirement
Here are some specific partnership ideas :
If you’re a lawyer serving small business owners in your local area, you could collaborate with a local coworking space.
If your product is often purchased as a gift, you could collaborate with a business selling bespoke gift cards.
If you’re a wedding stylist, it could be a wedding photographer.
Get creative with the businesses you choose to partner with. My local homeware store recently collaborated with our local butcher for Father’s Day.
How to collaborate with other businesses using social media
Once you’ve identified businesses that you would like to collaborate with, it’s time to think about the type of content that will interest both of your audiences. This goes back to their problems, interests, wants and needs.
You can then decide on the social media platform you will create content for and the type of post you will create.
Here are some specific ways of collaborating with other businesses to reach new customers using social media:
Share Instagram Stories promoting other businesses. Don’t forget to tag these businesses so they can repost to their own accounts – getting your Instagram Story in front of their audience.
Co-host a live stream. You can live stream on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or YouTube, choose the platform where you have the most active followers or where you typically make sales. This live stream could be a formal interview, casual conversation or something fun like an unboxing.
Connect with active Facebook Groups and offer special promotions to group members. For example, a business may have created a Facebook Group for small business owners based in the Sutherland Shire. You could message the admin of the group offering complimentary website audits to the group members or a discount on one of your web design services. It’s important to always abide by the group rules and genuinely engage as an active member of the group. Nobody likes that person who joins a Facebook Group only to spam the feed with promotional posts.
Speak on their podcast. It seems like every man and his dog has a podcast these days – and I’m all about it! Finding podcast guests can be a challenge for many business owners. By offering to speak on an episode of their podcast, you’ve saved the host time researching new guests and you have the chance to get in front of new people. It’s a true win/win.
Share LinkedIn posts from other businesses. While it is quicker to repost, make the effort to add your own perspective by clicking the “share with your thoughts” button. Businesses, business owners and team members from those businesses will often comment on your post which will land your post in their followers’ LinkedIn feeds.
When sharing a LinkedIn post from another business, opt to “share with your thoughts” so you can add your own comment or perspective to the post.
Here is an example of how I collaborated with another business owner to reach new clients
I’m a marketing consultant that offers coaching services to small business owners. Latasha James also works with small business owners through group coaching as well as online courses. Our ideal customers are nearly identical so it was a great match.
Latasha invited me to join her for an Instagram Live where we had an interview-style conversation. The questions addressed topics that are relevant to freelancers and small business owners.
This was a beneficial collaboration for Latasha as she was able to demonstrate her authority within the industry. Not only does she work with other marketers and business owners, but she also teaches them a thing or two! She also demonstrated the type of person she is to work with – both an expert and a curious lifelong learner.
This Instagram Live also allowed me to reach new customers as her following on Instagram is predominantly freelancers and online business owners – the ideal customers for my coaching services. It enabled me to build trust with my own audience as I was able to share some of my marketing credentials, having completed three of Latasha’s programs on online business entrepreneurship, video content marketing and social media management.
Let’s work together
I’m open to collaborations with other business owners including as a podcast guest and speaker within closed mastermind groups. Book a virtual coffee chat to get the ball rolling.
If you’re ready to skip the introduction and dive right into working with me as a marketing coach and consultant, book a Power Hour or Breakthrough Session. These are great options if you’d like advice on how to reach out to businesses you’d like to collaborate with. We can develop an outreach plan together so you can hit the ground running.
This blog post is part of a series focused on helping small business owners reach more customers using organic social media marketing.
If you found these marketing tips helpful, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email or message on Instagram.
