A small business collaboration is a partnership between two non-competing businesses that serve the same audience, built so both sides swap customers instead of buying ads. It’s the cheapest customer acquisition there is. On Businessing I walked through the five steps to build one, and I want you to steal this formula.
Why do collaborations beat buying ads?
When you collaborate with a business that already serves your ideal customer, you get in front of their audience and they get in front of yours, and nobody writes a check for impressions. The inspiration for this segment was the PacSun and Ulta Beauty collaboration, two brands that share an audience, each contributing a product, rolling it out together and getting attention neither would have earned alone. You can run the same play at small business scale. A collaboration gives you a fresh story to tell online, it shows your audience who you affiliate with, and it introduces you to a whole group of people who probably don’t know you exist. If you do it right, there shouldn’t be an exchange of revenue and it shouldn’t be difficult to set up. The right partner will get it right away.
What are the five steps to build a collaboration?
Step one, get crystal clear on exactly who you serve. “I serve women” isn’t clear. “I serve women between thirty and forty-five who have children” is. Step two, find someone else who serves that same audience in a non-competitive way. Step three, build a genuine relationship with that person. You can’t send a cold email that says “you don’t know me, but we should do business together,” because that sounds salesy and it gets deleted. Step four, identify which slice of your business fits a collaboration. Skip the 12-week course and the 90-day engagement, and pick something easy and accessible that introduces who you are. Step five, roll your item and their item together into something fresh and limited, and take it to market. When the pieces combine, the offer is better than the sum of its parts.
What does a real small business collaboration look like?
Here’s the example I built on the show. Say you’re a leadership consultant who works with busy CEOs. Who else serves those CEOs? Travel advisors, high-end car dealerships, and the nice restaurants downtown where they take clients to lunch. So you build a relationship with one of those restaurants. You can’t collaborate around your long consulting engagements, but you can collaborate around speaking and facilitation. The restaurant has a back room and wants CEOs at the tables. You create a power lunch series where only CEOs get in, you facilitate the conversation, and the restaurant provides the room and the meal. You’re now in front of the exact people you want to work with, the restaurant fills seats, and you both have a fresh story to post about. That’s the whole play, front to back.
How do you know if a collaboration will work?
Run it through three checks before you commit. First, does your partner truly serve your audience without competing with you? If there’s overlap in what you sell, the trust breaks down fast. Second, is the offer easy for a stranger to understand? If it can’t fit on a postcard, it’s too involved for a first introduction. Third, does each side bring something the other audience actually wants? A collaboration built on convenience instead of real value gets ignored. When all three answers are yes, you’ve got something worth taking to market. And when it works, don’t run it once and forget it. A power lunch series, a seasonal bundle, or a co-hosted workshop can repeat and compound, and every round introduces you to more of the people you want.
Questions owners ask
Do I need to pay my collaboration partner?
No. A good collaboration shouldn’t involve an exchange of revenue. Each side contributes something the other audience wants, and both sides win on attention and new customers.
What if I don’t know who my audience is yet?
Fix that first. The whole game depends on finding a partner who serves the same people you do, and you can’t match audiences you haven’t defined.
How long does it take to set up a collaboration?
The relationship is the long part. Expect to spend weeks building genuine trust with a potential partner before you pitch anything. The offer itself can come together fast once the relationship is real.
What part of my business should go into the collaboration?
The easy, accessible slice. Speaking, facilitation, a starter product, or a sample of what you do best. Save the deep engagements for after the new audience knows you.
Here’s the homework. Write down exactly who you serve, then list three businesses that serve the same people without competing with you, and reach out to one of them this week to start the relationship. If you want a room full of owners to brainstorm your first collaboration with, that’s what we do inside the Small Business Owners Community. You can watch the full episode of Businessing with Pat Miller for the whole walkthrough.
Related
- Referral partnership ideas that aren’t selling to each other
- How ready are you to collaborate?
- What do I sell, and who’s buying?
More on this topic: Getting clients answers from the Small Business Owners Community
The Small Business Owners Community is where small business owners get help from other owners: every week, a room full of owners works your problem with you. Owners only, nobody pitching, $19 a month. Come to an Idea Slam as a member’s guest · Join the SBOC · Watch the show