[00:01] You know that collaborations are an important strategy for you to grow your business, right? You've probably heard that from a host of other digital marketers and even myself maybe on this being one of the best ways to get more reach and more visibility and make more
[00:18] sales. But perhaps you're wondering exactly how to do this. How do I even go about doing this? Now if this is you, then you're in luck because I'm going to be unveiling my full proof system
[00:30] on how you can collaborate your way to rapid growth. I am an e-commerce sales coach helping hundreds of female entrepreneurs just like you grow
[00:43] their own e-commerce businesses. Now, for the best advice on how to grow your own e-commerce business using the Viroloxy formula, then subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every Thursday.
[00:56] and today I'm going to walk you through my three secrets to collaborating your way to rapid growth. Now let me tell you a bit of an experience I had with the Chalkbox. That was my first business that really brought this concept to life for me.
[01:11] Now this is a dessert bar I started over eight years ago and since then I've grown it to over five locations in Sydney. At the time really when we first started doing this we were fortunate that as the platform of Instagram,
[01:23] as the platform was growing, people were organically just growing with them, right? Which meant that not only did influencers on there have a true follower base, you know, they weren't buying followers and they weren't people just following people blindly, like
[01:38] they had people who were actually following them for a reason. So this was happening, but at the time as well, these influencers didn't really have huge expectations or huge demands because they were just growing.
[01:50] They were just starting out. They were just exploring this thing called Instagram. So really, there weren't any huge expectations put on businesses to pay them big amounts. And this just kind of isn't the case any longer, is it?
[02:04] We now need to work with them in a way that not only adds value to ourselves, but also adds value to them and their followers. And this is key. This is going to be leading into some of the things I talk about. Now, we have to remember and go into partnerships knowing that they've built an asset in their
[02:20] follower base. Now, influencers are influencers for a reason. They built this follower base, which for them is an asset. And it is in their best interest to actually protect this asset from content that is not going to be relevant to them or not going to be of value to them.
[02:35] So, about three years in with the chalkboard, Instagram was getting more and more saturated. There were so many more brands on there, so many more influencers, and I started noticing that our posts weren't getting the type of reach that they used to.
[02:49] Right? Sound familiar? I bet you probably also know this with your own account. And I'm sure we all went through this period, whether it's on Instagram or whether it's on Facebook or any other platform,
[03:02] but we always go through these growing pains of like we find a huge success and then suddenly we feel like we've gotten shut down because the algorithm changed. That's it, right? So I started thinking a couple of things.
[03:15] So A, how to enable us to stand out from a customer's perspective, but also B, how to actually enable us to stand out from an influencer perspective. So we need to start to think about these two things in tandem.
[03:28] Because remember that influencers are people as well. They are people as well. And as people, we are always driven by what's in it for me. And again, as humans, expectations rise after a period of success as well, right?
[03:41] Whatever that means to them. For influencers, success might be increased in follower numbers, hopefully engagement numbers as well. and as this happens for them, their expectations rise, right? Which means that they are used to being happy to accept,
[03:57] such as free products, for example, might no longer be the case. So remember for me, I used to work with influencers that were considered micro-influencers at the time and they were perfectly happy to be ambassadors of our brand and they just did it in a change of product.
[04:11] You know, we had influencers like Tara Mills-P who now shares like over $1.4 million. followers. Lee Koo Han was an ambassador and she now has something like 455,000 followers.
[04:23] Lily Maynard was an ambassador. She now has over 4 million followers, right? At the time we worked with them, they weren't this big. So you can see, you know, that they were growing and at the time when we were working with them, as I said, like they didn't have this
[04:36] many followers, but they were growing. And so as they were growing, I had to think about what more we could do with them. What more could we do for them? How could we add value to them and make them feel like they were a part of something. And that was it, right?
[04:48] That was my life-long moment. I was like, okay, let's make them actually a part of something. Let's get them involved. And so we decided to do new monthly desserts with a handful of influencers who we had worked with.
[05:00] Each month, we would collaborate with a particular influencer and have them help us design a dessert. They would come up with the flavor combinations and perhaps a rough sketch or provide some kind of visual inspiration for what they were thinking, and then we would bring it to life
[05:13] for them. And we would get them in, we would get them to try our initial attempt, and then we would make changes based on their feedback. It was a true collaboration based on product design And it was super exciting for them right Because one they got to actually see something their design come to life
[05:29] And then two, they got to see the process of how it actually works behind the scenes. And three, they were actually able to put their name to something tangible, right? And how cool is that? Everyone wants that.
[05:41] So giving them the ability to put their name to something, to collaborate with us on something that was unique to them, gave them an opportunity to really promote this one-of-a-kind thing that was valuable to them and their followers, right?
[05:54] And then, as a result, they promoted the heck out of it. There was a particular post that we did with Leeksy Pan, for example, that got over 1,000 likes, which is way more than our usual 100 to a couple of hundred.
[06:09] It had hundreds of shares and reposts, and it even got picked up by a local newspaper, right? We had one of our best months in sales. So it can definitely work wonders when you have the right offer for both your customers
[06:21] and for influencers. And the right promotion machine by the way behind it to completely amplify what it is that you're doing. And that all comes down to correlation, right? That's it. It is so, so powerful.
[06:33] And you see a lot of bigger brands do this. You see Amazon has that whole fashion arm where they just work with influencers who want to design clothes. it's nothing new to businesses like Nike whose whole marketing model
[06:45] is around collaborating with influential athletes on shoe and apparel designs and it's propelled them to where they are today, but how do you do this as a small business, right, that's what I'm going to be talking about today
[06:57] so let me know if you guys have done any collaborations that have worked well for you, okay, let me know in the comments below I'd love to know, okay, so let me talk to you about the three secrets behind collaborations to get your mind working
[07:09] because life is all things that will help you achieve success. This stuff is not easy, okay? It's not going to be easy, but if you put the time and the effort into it, it will net you big results. All right, so let's get into it.
[07:22] Now, the first secret is to work out who you want to collaborate with, okay? Who? Now, there are a couple of types of people who you might want to collaborate with. So I call them influencers and risk builders. The first group, which I'm sure a lot of you are aware of,
[07:37] are influencers on a social media platform like Instagram, like TikTok, like YouTube. Essentially, what you're looking for are people who have gathered a large pool of people on a social media channel.
[07:50] The classes that come into play when you're thinking about which types of influencers to work with are going to be based on things like your budget, your target audience, and your marketing objectives. So let's talk through what I mean here. So for ease, I'm going to talk about Instagram influencers because for e-commerce, they're
[08:06] You know, they're going to be, for now, probably one of the main types of influencers that you actually do work with. Okay, so definitely what I would recommend that you start with. Now, there are multiple peers of influencers on Instagram. Okay, I'm just going to chunk them down into three tiers because, although a lot of other people and businesses might have their own definitions,
[08:23] I'm going to go with this one, okay? So, micro-influencers have less than 100,000 followers. New-tier influencers have 100,000 to 500,000 followers.
[08:35] and micro-influencers usually have more than 500,000 followers. Okay, now, if you have a small budget, your best bet is going to be to work with micro-influencers. Now, at this level, they are generally happy to accept free products
[08:49] rather than charge you the post. And this is a total generalization, okay? Don't be too surprised if you reach out to someone who has, you know, for example, a 50,000, 50,000, 50K following that who's going to charge.
[09:02] Okay, now, every influencer is going to be a little bit different. But that is where you might start, and especially if you have a small budget, okay? They're also great to leverage if you're in a super targeted niche, okay?
[09:14] And your marketing objective isn't so much mass awareness, but more to have targeted conversations, okay? That is where I would work with micro-influencers. Now, working with micro-influencers is great, and I highly, highly recommend this.
[09:28] In fact, that's how I've always approached influencer marketing, okay? I really like growing with influencers as they grow. and you can build really, really great relationships that way as well. However, you're going to have to work with more of them
[09:41] to potentially get the impact that you want. So, for example, four who are a platform that manages influencer relationships, they conducted a study to assess metrics like average reach and engagement rates.
[09:53] So, for micro-influencers, especially those under 10,000, they have by far the highest post-reach and an average of 33.8%. compared to macro influencers who have about a 10.1% reach rate.
[10:08] That means, so let's say we choose the upper end of micro influencers and the lower end of macro influencers to compare the potential reach rate. So that means for one micro influencer who has 10,000 followers,
[10:20] their person you might reach 3,300 people. For one macro influencer who has 500,000 followers, I don't know what I'm saying, their person you might reach 50,000 people.
[10:34] Okay, so to get the same potential reach, there's this gap here, you'd have to work with 15 micro-influencers to get to the same level. Do you see how that works Okay so this is why I know some of you say you worked with an influencer and didn do anything for you Working with one influencer especially if it a micro is not going to get you instant results
[10:56] Okay, don't expect it to. You have to be working with quite a few of them to start to make a ripple effect, which means it's going to take some time. Okay, let's say you did want to work with 15 micro-influencers to get the, I don't know, 15 to say yes to you.
[11:11] you're going to have to reach out to at least 150 of them. I found working with other e-commerce brands that you'll get around about a 10% conversion rate on average. So just know that if you don't want to pay influencers to post,
[11:26] just like with anything, you're going to be paying your time in actually finding and reaching out and managing more of them. Let me know in the comments, guys, if that makes sense. So then the second type of group are what I call list builders.
[11:40] Now, the reason I call them this is because unlike influencers, list builders have a list. They have an email list, an email database that they are able to reach directly. And you can think of list builders as other business owners or experts because generally they're building a list.
[11:56] Experts, I would say, could be anyone, anyone really, right? Anyone that has expertise and talks about a particular topic to their predominantly email audience. So, for example, bloggers could be experts, right? Anyone with a niece or that could be an expert.
[12:10] List builders are generally forgotten as this group to think about collaborating with because I know we get seduced by the visual results of working with influencers on social media. It is seductive. But it is such a powerful way for you to grow your own email list to work with list builders.
[12:27] And that is what you want to be doing, growing your email list. Because remember that once they become part of your tribe, once they become part of your world, then you can show up for them. You can nurture them. You can get them to know, like, and trust you so they can start finding from you and
[12:42] become your aiding band. Okay? So we know that the two groups of people that we could be collaborating with, right, they're influencers or they are list builders. Is it making sense, guys, what the difference between these two are?
[12:55] Okay? Let me know in the comments. You want to try to be working with both of them if you can. because now that leads me to the second secret around how to work with them, especially when you're a small business. And that is, it all comes down to what's in it for them.
[13:11] That's it, right? When thinking about how to work with anyone, regardless of whether they're an influencer or a list builder or really anyone else, right? Anyone else. This is the first question you need to ask yourself. Okay, what's in it for them?
[13:24] Why would they even want to work with you? And that is going to be even more important when you are just starting out. Now, you can only do this by your own imagination when it comes to collaboration ideas, right? But your starting point is to always think about
[13:37] what is it that they might want. If you think it's money, which a lot of times it might be, then you could pay them for posts or stories that they do, right? Or you could create an affiliate partnership with them.
[13:49] Now, if a business is just starting out, I'm going to assume that you won't want to pay for posts, especially given the uncertain or unknown returns you might get, which means that working with them on an affiliate basis might be the best way to start.
[14:02] That might be monetarily what could be in it for them. And yes, it might be an initial hit to your margin but think about it as a cost of doing business. It's just going to be part of the amount in cost to get your product and your brand out there
[14:15] and get some sales. It's going to come down to your customer acquisition cost and that's all this is. If you don't want to work with them in this way yet then have a think about what else. Okay, what else might they want?
[14:28] They might want to get more reach, visibility, potential more followers, right? Because they themselves are growing. Okay, so this is something that they might want. How can you collaborate on something that gets you both what you want, right?
[14:40] Perhaps it could be some type of, I don't know, content. Maybe you could be contributing to a gift slide, depending on the season. Maybe it's pulling together a best stuff bundle as chosen by them. Okay, that's a great way to have them put their name on something without actually creating a whole new product.
[14:56] Do you see how you can literally only be limited by your own imagination, okay? But your starting point is, it has to be what's in it for them, okay? It has to be not what's in it for you. It has to be what's in it for them, okay?
[15:09] Once you start putting all these conditions on, right, and limiting yourself to what you want, then you won't have very many people who will want to work with you. That's just how it works. You need to give, okay? You can't just be receive, receive, receive.
[15:23] So as an example of how I might think about this for a brand that we're working on, a e-commerce brand that we're building, it's called Bakerbox NYC. Now, we don't have any set products as yet, okay? We're still in pre-launch phase.
[15:35] So we're looking to build our email list now before we launch. Now, how can we collaborate with influencers and what's in it for them given that we don't even have a product that we can send them yet? Well, if that's the case, a couple of things they might want is to align themselves with
[15:49] a cool upcoming brand, right? Make sure that your Instagram profile is looking good. Make sure that your website is looking good if you have one. And they'll always want more followers and more people on their email list, right?
[16:01] So what we could do is we could collaborate with them on a competition where one of the conditions or ways that people get the point is to also follow up that influencer or subscribe to their email list That that way you can both leverage each other audiences And even better even better if you can get a group of influencers
[16:20] or list builders to do this together because then they'd all be leveraging each other's audiences. Okay, I'm also thinking about how I can collaborate with influencers on a picture of a link magnet maybe. So we're currently building this super fun quiz
[16:33] that's going to determine what type of cakey you are. Okay, so we're doing some, I think, organic outreach to influencers. See if they'd like to do the quiz, and if they do, how can we get them an output, maybe a story asset that has their picture and a description of which cakey they are
[16:49] in a way that compels them to want to repost or share it. Okay, eventually, I imagine we'll start to actually co-create special cakey bravers with them. Cool. But really, guys, like, your imagination is the limit, okay?
[17:03] but always start always always start with what's in it to them okay let me know guys if you have any any questions on this okay so that leads me to the last secret in collaborating your way to rapid growth and that is it's already a no okay i should go a whole separate podcast episode on
[17:21] this because i know i know how daunting it can be to do to perhaps reach out for that first influencer or that first list builder trust me I actually just went through this myself like
[17:33] weeks ago six weeks ago because deep down we don't want to be rejected right we don't and that rejection is real when you're going when you're doing this because not everyone is going to want to work with you they're not they just that's that's just fact okay why would they when
[17:48] they probably have way more followers or subscribers than you do right that's exactly is exactly how I felt a few weeks ago when I decided to put together a virtual summit for e-commerce business owners. I wanted to pull together something so amazing
[18:01] that brought together multiple experts to help talk about some really important topics. I wanted to provide a lot of value for my audience, for you guys. And ideally, I wanted to get at least, in my mind, I was like, okay, target these 20 speakers.
[18:16] And it was freaking scary. It was scary to send that first message out and that first email. I spoke to a coach of mine about it and he just looked at me and was like, he does this
[18:28] thing where he goes silent for a second and he's either going to say something funny or something judgy, okay? Anyway, so he looked at me for a second and he was like, Deidre, it's already a no.
[18:40] Right now, where are you? You're at a no, right? By not reaching out to them, you're at a no. When you do, what is the worst that could happen? I was like I guess the worst is that they could say no like exactly exactly right now you're not
[18:56] reaching out to them it's already a no but and the worst that can happen is that they say no so you're at the same place so you may as well just just you know pull off your big girl panties
[19:08] and do it okay and guys I mean I already know this right I already knew this but it was so so great to get another reminder, especially when I needed it. So if you are feeling scared,
[19:20] you're feeling like no one else is going to want to work with you, that you're just a small business, then come back to this point. Okay, come back to this point that it's already a no. Let me know how you guys are feeling about this. Okay, so let's recap. Now, these
[19:33] are the three secrets to collaborating your way to rapid growth. The first one is who should you work with? Okay, there are two types of people you can work with. You can whether it be email, with influencers on social media who have a large following,
[19:46] or list builders, so they could be businesses or experts or bloggers who have an email database. Okay, now, secret number two is what's in it for them? When thinking about collaborations, you have to start with what's in it for them.
[19:59] In case, for example, is it money? Is it followers? Is it subscribers? Is it brain alignment? Is it credibility? Right? Like, what's in it for them? And therefore, how do you align those and create something that gets them what they want and gets you what you want.
[20:13] Win-win. That's what we're in this for. And the third secret is it's already a no. If you're feeling scared about reaching out, if you're feeling like no one is going to want to work with you,
[20:25] then come back to this point. It's already a no. So what do you have to lose? All right. So with that said, comment below and tell me, which type of influencers are you going to work with first?
[20:39] Now you know exactly how to collaborate your way to rapid growth using my four proof three secret method. Now, but what about implementing? I've written a one-page cheat sheet that you can have on hand
[20:53] when you are implementing and you might want to refresh that, right? So if you want that, then go ahead, click the link below, and my bot will send that straight over to you. And if you want to take what you've just learned to the next level,
[21:07] then come and join this free community of female entrepreneurs just like you where I share even more free life training on growing your e-commerce business. So guys, go join my Facebook group at the link below.
[21:20] Check out this video next on how to find and work with the right influencers and then this one down here on the secrets to building your tribe. And if you like this video, hit that like button, be sure to subscribe and share it with all of your friends
[21:34] and I cannot wait to see you on the next video. Thank you.