79 | 5 ways collaboration can grow your business
The benefits of collaboration for online business owners
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One of the most important factors to running a successful business is having a warm audience of people who actually want to buy what you’re selling.
What if I told you that you could grow your audience quickly, even without investing in paid ads? In this episode, we’re talking about the power of collaboration and how you can leverage other people’s audiences to get in front of new people and add hundreds (or thousands) of new subscribers to your email list.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
🔗 FREE: 18 Ways to Grow Your Audience Through Collaboration
🔗 Episode 56: How I grew my email list by 4k+ in one week (without paid ads)
want to listen instead?
One thing I’ve really leaned into in my own business over the past year or so is collaboration. As entrepreneurs, we need to be visible in order to sell our offers and services. And yes, you can absolutely build this audience by yourself, but it can take a lot of time to do so. If you don’t have the time and you’re looking for fast growth, then you have the option of investing in paid marketing, such as ads. But what if I told you that you could grow your audience quickly, even without investing in ads?
As someone who really struggled with audience growth in the beginning stages of my business, I have discovered that collaborating with other business owners is one of the most sustainable ways to grow your audience organically, and do it fast!
>> Grab my free guide: 18 Ways to Grow Your Audience Through Collaboration
What is collaboration?
When you collaborate with another business owner, you are essentially putting yourself in front of their already warm audience. You’re helping each other to increase your reach, exposure and (if done correctly) your income!
Collaborating can look anything like…
Podcast guesting
Joint lives
Speaking in summits
Participating in bundles
Joint masterclasses or webinars
Affiliate programs
& so much more!
One of my most successful collaborations allowed me to grow my email list by 4,000 subscribers within the space of a week… and I also brought in over 5 figures in sales because of that collaborative event as well! If you’re interested in the story behind that collaboration and how I achieved those results, make sure to tune in to episode 56.
5 reasons you need to leverage collaborations within your business
1. IT EXPOSES YOU TO A WHOLE NEW AUDIENCE
When you team up with a “competitor”, you’re able to get in front of their audience. While they’ll likely have a similar audience to your own, they won’t have the exact same people in their audience, so you have the opportunity to reach ideal clients who may have found them, but haven’t found you yet.
2. IT ESTABLISHES YOUR AUTHORITY & BUILDS TRUST
When you collaborate with other business owners, it helps to build your authority and credibility. For example, if you appear as a guest on their podcast, you can use that opportunity to establish yourself as an expert, an authority and a thought leader within your industry.
On top of that, when you’re collaborating with an established business owner, you are being promoted to their audience - and their audience already know and trust them, so it’s likely that they’re going to trust that anyone this business owner collaborates with is also trustworthy . This is an immediate credibility boost for you as a collaborative partner.
This being said, when you do collaborate with other business owners, it’s important that you do your due diligence to ensure that they are credible, trustworthy and that they hold values in alignment with your own. There is nothing worse than an audience who feels betrayed by you because they’ve had a bad experience with someone you’ve collaborated with and recommended to them.
3. ALLOWS YOU TO BRING EXTRA VALUE TO YOUR AUDIENCE
As a business owner, you likely have a specific skill set that you share with your audience, and you’ll have certain areas of expertise that you teach on. When you collaborate with other business owners in a similar nicheS, but who have a different skill set or area of expertise than yourself, you get to share a whole new level of value with your audience.
For example, if you’re a website designer you might decide to collaborate with a copywriter, a branding expert or a brand photographer. All of these businesses serve a similar audience, but their areas of expertise are slightly different and so they can each bring value to one another's audiences without clashing or competing.
4. SAVES YOU TIME & MONEY
If you wanted to grow your audience by yourself, you would either need to dedicate a ton of time to do this, or throw money into paid marketing. Leveraging an already warm audience, that you know your ideal client is already a part of, allows you to save on both money and time.
Using the example of how I grew my audience by 4,000 people in one week…. I would simply not have been able to do this organically by myself within a week. That would have been impossible. And if I used ads to try and achieve this result, I would have had to spend thousands to generate the same results.
Whereas the fact that I collaborated with other business owners and leveraged their audiences to grow my own led to exponential growth in such a short time frame, without spending a penny… in fact, I actually made money because of it.
5. IT GENERATES REFERRALS & SALES FOR YOUR BUSINESS
If you’re collaborating by sharing free content with someone else's audience (such as podcast guesting or speaking in summits) you will often be given the opportunity to share your lead magnet at the end.
A great way to generate sales off the back of this is by setting up a tripwire so that when that person signs up, they’re immediately taken to a page that lets them know the resource they signed up for is on its way to their inbox, but then presents a low-ticket offer that relates to the lead magnet that they can then purchase. This is such a great way to generate passive income, and I spoke about this strategy in depth in episode 58.
But collaborations can bring so much more than a tripwire sale as well! I recently guested on a podcast and within a couple of weeks, I received an enquiry from someone interested in my private mentorship. They mentioned that they found me through my podcast interview, and they’re now a client of mine! So that single podcast interview has ended up generating $1,000 per month for me for as long as this person remains a client.
If you are sharing valuable content within these collaboration opportunities, not only do you get to grow your audience… you’ll also begin to expand your client-base.
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If you’re curious about all the different ways you could collaborate, make sure to grab my free guide: 18 Ways to Grow Your Audience Through Collaboration.
Whether you’re a complete newbie, or you’ve been collaborating for a while now, I can guarantee that there’s a strategy in there that you haven’t tried before!
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hey, I'm Tish!
I'm a multi-passionate business owner, digital marketing strategist, business mentor & part-time digital nomad ✈️
I'm on a mission to help you create more time, freedom & profit in your business through the implementation of sustainable & scalable business and marketing strategies!
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The Simple Marketing Podcast is for ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build a sustainable & scalable online business. With bite-sized, actionable episodes, you’ll learn how to create more time, freedom & profit in a way that feels good to you.
