Great collaborations can be one of the most useful thing in marketing, but how do you come up with them, find them, and actually make them work?
The answer, like just about everything else in marketing, lies with your clients.
Understanding what your clients truly want is at the heart of everything, and can help you think much more laterally in terms of collaborations.
Let's imagine you have a carpet shop. What do your clients want?
The most obvious answer is, of course, new carpets. Else why are they wandering around your store, looking at them?
But, why do your clients want new carpets?
Again, there are some obvious answers which many carpet shops might market to:
- they've just moved house
- the old ones are worn out
- they're changing colour scheme
There will be a variety of answers, that lead to traditional ways a carpet shop might market their service.
And then, there'll be 'outliers'. Reasons that you just never really thought of, that would potentially apply to a certain group of people.
I'm an 'outlier'. We got new carpets last year.
Despite the fact that we:
- weren't thinking of changing our flooring
- vastly prefer hard floors
- didn't really actually want carpets, at all
So, what magical marketing trick was employed to make this happen?
A conversation with a vet.
Our dog, you see, had torn a cruciate ligament. Cue 'mindblowingly expensive surgery'.
Pre-surgery, the surgeon advised that, during recovery (TWELVE WEEKS!), he shouldn't be on hard floors, as they're slippy, and he really, really needed not to be slipping.
Like any outwardly sane, yet dog-obsessed, people, we dashed to a carpet shop to cover the entire lower floor of our house with a mismatched patchwork of carpet offcuts.
It was a work of beauty. Not. (Although, not the maddest thing we did, I'll leave that for another day).
The offcuts did their job, Gus recovered well from surgery. Time to take them up and go back to 'normal'.
Except, the surgeon, the vet, the physio all told us "slipping on hard floors will be bad for your dogs knees and hips, ongoing. Carpets would be better."
And there we were, trundling resentfully around carpet shops until we found something...adequate.
I appreciate that 'dogs with torn cruciate ligaments whose owners are willing to replace their flooring' might seem like quite the niche. (Although, equally, I love a niche and think everyone should have one, especially one that no one else has considered).
However, whilst surgery may not be super common, large breed dogs with hip, elbow, knee issues or the potential to develop them? That's actually a pretty broad category.
Imagine then, chatting with a local vets, who may like the idea of the exposure of talking about this on your socials?
Maybe, they'd like to give their post-surgery clients a little voucher, towards a new rug, or carpet, to help them out?
And maybe your social feed could be less 'here is a room with a new floor' (because, honestly, that's not as exciting as you think) and more 'cute and eye-catching dog photos' in a way that makes total sense.
Great collaboration plus a more interesting social media feed?
Great collaboration plus speaking directly to people who don't necessarily even want a carpet, but know that you understand them, and their needs entirely?
Boom! You are no longer "X Carpet Shop" you are 'the shop that specialises in the flooring needs of pet owners.'
You:
- become the natural choice for all pet owners
- increase your organic social media reach with a more interesting feed (and a topic that will spark conversation and debate)
- get more well-known, by everyone
Just from asking your clients 'why?'.
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