Why do we insist on competing? Collaboration is the best key to success and business survival nowadays.
Old school marketing is traditionally represented by the 80s and 90s Pepsi vs. Coke campaigns. Old school marketing is political advertising. The goal is to make sure everybody knows that my product is the best product ever. Even if that means that I have to attack my competition.
New marketing is totally different. While we will try to promote and boost the benefits of buying our product or service, we do not disregard others. We are not trying to take over all of the market. The use of social media has made this type of marketing bloom and thrive.
We expanded the universe of consumers so much, that there’s room for everyone to sell.
Our universe of consumers or market is now global. Why should we fight other consultants, artists, or products when we can never take care of a whole market. Even the biggest corporation in the world cannot provide the whole world of products. That certainly changes schemes, strategies, and obviously marketing.
If you want to reach a bigger audience, you have to connect with those who are already talking to them. This may even mean your competition.
Part of marketing is to make your audience aware of why and how much they need your product. If your local or international competitors have done a good job of building a message. Why not joining their efforts? They are already talking about the same topics. They have already caught the audience’s attention. All you have to do now is understand where you fit in.
How did collaboration become the new strategy for business?
Influencers and artists showed us the power of joining forces. Why not listening to the new single by this new artist that my favorite artist is promoting? Why not watching the show where my favorite actor’s girlfriend just starred? Why not buying that brand that both of my favorite athletes are wearing in their off-time? If you have an audience of 10 thousand followers, and join forces with a different audience with similar behaviors or interests, you may reach hundreds of followers that did not know about you.
Actually, if we had been paying attention we would have seen that nature has many lessons in collaboration. Trees and bugs collaborate all the time. Even different species collaborate to ensure their survival. We focused too much for too long in the predator, shark model. That only leaves some people winning at the top. Why would we do that? When we can all win bigger and better battles!
What happens if you can do this without spending any of your advertising budget?
This is not a rule. In order to get true, high impact, online collaboration, you need to work a lot! You have to work on your brand, product, or service. If you do so, your customers will start finding ways to “give back” to you. Nowadays users know that they can tag, comment, or follow their favorite brands or influencers online. And that is precisely where they show you love. Users collaborate with brands. Your workers, employees, and associates, collaborate with your brand. Influencers and public figures do too!
If you do a good job offline (product quality, user experience, corporate culture), you will get awesome results online too (followers, reviews, recommendations, mentions).