Best Ideas For Business Collaboration Success
Collaborating with other businesses is a great way to grow your market share, build momentum and broaden your audience. Collaboration produces innovation as well as amplifies success by increasing resources through joint ventures of time and brainpower. In the world of design-thinking, collaboration is an esteemed means to an end. For example, it is a sign of a good designer to always gather input from other peer-designers and colleagues before designing a dress or a chair. Similarly, from a design thinking perspective, one wouldn’t go about designing a new transportation infrastructure or service delivery system for a fast food chain without factoring in others’ ideas.
In general, whatever industry you work in, collaboration sounds good and it’s something that we all know is good to do in principle. I understand that it is definitely easier said than done. After all, you would say a lot of time and money could be saved if you just did the project yourself?
Here are three keys to collaborating with other businesses to experience massive growth.
Collaborate with Indirect Competitors
This is oftentimes the scariest for most entrepreneurs- collaboration with direct competition. In today’s market, consumers are faced with far more competing interests forcing stiffer competition amongst businesses. Companies can, however, benefit a lot in attaining more of the market share by collaborating with indirect competitors, whose organizations provide great avenues to consumers within your industry. For example, event rentals can partner with planners, corporations, and even childcare centres and schools. Indirect competitors are a great way to create active relationships, establish your presence, and generate profit.
Collaborate with Customers
Many factors influence sales of a company, in the messy world that we live. Examining how increased advertising is affecting sales is often a misleading way to measure advertising impact. For example, a soft drink company conclude that there is very little correlation between advertising and sales for them because another, much more powerful factor affecting the sale of their product was- temperature. That is, the company found that although a great deal of advertising is done in the winter, sales are greater in warmer months because people drink more soft drinks in hot weather. However, as discussed in my blog Engaging Customers on Social Media, remember that the choice of brand of soft drink purchased in the summer may very well be influenced by advertising heard at other times. A quick look at what happens in a consumer’s life every day will give you great ideas to improve sales.
Customers are typically left out when we consider collaboration. Customer collaboration, however, is one of the most effective marketing tools to help increase company awareness, establish your brand and offer greater customer experiences. Simple collaborative customer efforts can include personalized services/products or product innovation with customer input. Customers take a greater sense of pride and admiration in their purchases when they have a buy-in to what a company creates. To have your customers involved in your creation, it is a good idea to roll out voting and open polls or discussions for customers on your website. Get in touch with HyperEffects to assist you with creating and maintaining a website. Also for any requirement-based features on your website, we are here to help and advice.
Collaboration with Direct Competition
A company can achieve big wins with a strategic alliance done well. They can also make you powerful in the face of other competitors, along with broadening your audience. Remember the old saying- two are better than one? That is exactly what happens when you align your company in a healthy well-structured joint venture with a competitor. Furthermore, new alliances allow for advancement in skill sets that may not be available within the current company structure and advances in technology. In addition, collaborative efforts of this magnitude can be great for increasing capital and investment, vendor sourcing, infrastructure and cross-promotions.
As you can see, collaboration, when used as a tool to grow and create demand in your business, can be an effective business strategy. While it is not possible to completely eliminate competition, you can increase your visibility and demand through collaboration. This will lead to an increase in your bottom line sales and revenue. In my next post, I am going to discuss some reasons why collaboration is important for the growth of your business. So, keep checking back!
