Liz Nable 0:00
Jess Rufus is a self confessed marketing geek who saw an opportunity in the market in 2014 to create a matchmaking business to help brands collaborate effectively, after getting frustrated trying to constantly source and leverage worthwhile brand partnerships in her PR job. Now, before you ask, What's that got to do with the media and PR, trust me, stay right there. Once you hear some of Jesse's collaboration, success stories, you'll see it's got everything to do with working smarter to reach the right audience, and grabbing great media attention without spending a single cent on marketing or PR. Plus, the business performance results will blow your mind. We're talking doubling your email subscribers spiking sales and taking your socials to the next level. Jess founded Collabasaurus (think Tinder for businesses) in 2015 and has grown its core revenue by almost 160%. year on year. Jess has passion for creative brand experiences and marketing was a natural progression from her background in fashion PR and SME education. She has seen time and time again that business collaborations are necessary to build a modern business, gain exposure in new locations and reach audiences in an authentic way. Whether it be for product partnerships, social media or event collaborations. Jess is a super smart female startup found out working on clever ideas way before her time. And she's got the kudos to prove it. She was awarded the Anteil 30 under 30 in 2017. The Start con People's Choice Award in 2017, the bn t 30 under 30 in 2019. And in 2018, she won the Austrade landing pads cohort in San Francisco, and the Anteil smart 100 company award. Collaboration is so damn clever. It's cost effective, and it works. So why aren't we all doing it?
Hello, I'm Liz Nable. And you're listening to Nable my business, the podcast. When I first started in small business almost 10 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. You see my background was in the media. I had spent 15 years as a television news journalist and reporter working at several major networks in Australia. And then as a freelancer in the US and around the world. I spent years dividing my time between working long shifts on a news desk and travelling the world chasing stories. It was unpredictable and exciting. Until it wasn't anymore. I decided I wanted a life where I was in charge of what happened next. And where I was working to build my own empire, not someone else's. I also never wanted to work a midnight new shift again. Now, I don't have to. There was a lot I had to learn about running my own business. But one thing I already had in the bag was how to get media coverage and free PR. I knew what the media wanted. I knew the secret formula for what made us and I knew how to leverage those organisations to build my business, get more exposure, and ultimately make more sales. During my decades of building my business, I have managed to get featured in almost every major news outlet in the country. I've been interviewed on television countless times, had personal profiles written up in women's magazines, done point of view pieces for large newspapers, and been listed in top 100 lists of women in business and in my industry. And I've never spent a single cent on PR. I took that knowledge for granted until it dawned on me one day that I could teach what I knew to other businesses, let them in on the secret. And they too could build their businesses, leveraging the media and gaining free PR. They could use my insights in the industry and my behind the scenes experience in take their business from Best Kept Secret to well known brand simply by following my formula. Welcome to Nable my business, the podcast. Welcome to the show, Jess, it's a pleasure to have you.
Jess Ruhfus 4:12
Thanks so much for having me. And we figured out just as we jumped on the call, we're just down the road from each other.
Liz Nable 4:18
I know I know we just down the road we like literally could have done it in person except I don't know how to record a podcast. People in
Jess Ruhfus 4:24
the technical gods are just never on my side with this kind of stuff. So I think, yeah, we'll keep it to zero.
Liz Nable 4:30
Yeah, we'll stay down the road. Now today's podcast to the audience might feel like a little bit of a different subject before talking about businesses collaborating with each other. But as I'm sure we're going to talk about as we go through, it's actually not that different to leveraging the media and PR to grow your business. Tell me a little bit about what you do about collabera source your business and how that came to be.
Jess Ruhfus 4:58
Sure. Well I started out in PR so I'm definitely not a stranger to that world. My first job, my first job out of uni, after a lot of hospital stints was a, a publicist for a boutique sort of fashion PR agency. So I was pulling together media launch events for fashion clients every quarter. And that was the beginnings of the idea for collab azorius, which is my big business. Now fast forward many, many, many years. But pulling together those media launch events, I was constantly looking for partnerships, I was looking for catering partners, venue partners, goodie bag inclusions, you know, makeup or beauty brands to collaborate and really enhance the experience for journalists and bloggers and things like that at the time. And I just found there was just first of all a really awful vibe around free stuff. It was like, Where can we get free coconut water from? Where can we get free, whatever. And it wasn't actually strategically leveraged, which really annoyed me because I just thought, oh, my gosh, there'd be so many small businesses out there who would benefit so greatly from getting in front of, you know, fashion media and influencer audience in a really creative way that costs them next to nothing. But publicists would often contact the other publicist friends, you know, what clients do you have? And can we use their free stuff? Pretty much. And I was a junior starting out. So I didn't have a huge network of publicist friends at the time. And I just found it really frustrating. I was scrambling trying to find all these partners. And yeah, that was annoying. And then I ended up working in small business marketing education for a while, where we would take businesses through a 12 month course as to how you can do your own marketing. Yeah, so that was fun. That's on the northern beaches as well. So yeah, I worked in that business for a little while. And partnerships were part of that course. We were teaching small businesses how to DIY their own marketing and partnerships was a major part of that. But we found so many small businesses weren't doing them because they'd been taken advantage of in the past, they didn't know where to start, they didn't have the big creative idea, or they were sending a pitch email out. That was terrible. getting any responses. So that's kind of when I had the idea for collab azorius, which is my business now. It's been in business now for eight years. It's a matchmaking platform for brands. And we work with over 9000 brands big and small, like Marks and Spencer and Estee Lauder and Bondi sands we've worked with, and a whole host of small businesses as well, which is really exciting. And we the premise is we connect brands together for really clever marketing collaborations and partnerships, which, as we were talking about before, are just so much more cost effective. As a marketing strategy, they're up to 25 times less expensive than digital advertising. When you use collab or Soros. That was one of our studies we did a few years ago. And the ad landscape just continues to get more saturated, more expensive, the media landscape is harder to get cut through. There's fewer publications, fewer journalists. And so partnerships are first of all, a really great way to reach new customers with really clever cross promotion. But it's also a really great way to generate a media hook to get you know, the media interested in something newsworthy that actually has urgency behind it, rather than hitting up press again and again with the same story of like, hey, talk about my business. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Liz Nable 8:29
Yeah. Tell me Jess, do you have any sort of good examples of collaborations either in big business or medium or small business that kind of demonstrates the audience like that match made in heaven?
Jess Ruhfus 8:41
Yes, I have a tonne. One of my favourites recently just had such a huge result and it was between St. Louis Seltzer, and Glitterazzi, which is a biodegradable glitter company. And they teamed up because St. Louis seltzer released a bunch of new flavours and glitter artsy matched, biodegradable glitter colours to the cocktail flavours in St. Louis Seltzer. And they did a big media send out with this whole story of them working together for a little bit of a couch Ella, you know, we're all in lockdown at the time. And it was like, it was so clever. And they created a bunch of social media, real content and stuff as to how you can apply your glitter. And you know, while drinking is certainly Seltzer, and that campaign reached over 90 million people, you know, and it costs both brands next to nothing to get involved. You know, it was really just the cost of the product and a little bit of time, and it just attracted so much attention, both from micro influencers, then sharing the campaign, but also from major media outlets, also talking about Coachella and St. Louis and glitterati, these partnerships, so that one's one of my favourites but you can collab to do it. tonne of different things. I think it's a common misconception that brand collabs or competitions and giveaways and that's it. And that's totally not the case. You can actually collab in a number of different ways typically on collab azorius, what we see collabs that fall under one of three major categories, there's products, social media and events. So products could be gift with purchase collaborations, or limited edition product collaborations like artist collaborations or something like that, or limited edition colorway that you could release if your product. There's product bundles, which work really well around like Father's Day, Mother's Day, you know, particular themes could work really well. Then you've got social media, which of course can be competitions and giveaways. But they can also be content series in collaboration with another brand. I mean, Pizza Hut collaborated with sanctuary to release a content series around pizza topping flavours based on your star sign, which was really clever and engaging and personalised. People shared that campaign it was it was awesome. So, yeah, there's social media ones like that. There's hashtag challenges. There's all sorts of different things you can do. And then there's events and experiential. So that's teaming up with another brand to create an experience around your business, whether it be a product or service, or whatever it might be. And that's really great for media, attracting media attention as well, because you're creating something that's really unique and an IRL experience. I think you can cut through so much better than, you know, sending out a digital pitch.
Liz Nable 11:33
Yeah, yeah. And so much more attractive to media and to making news headlines and that sort of thing. How hard is it to if you're like a small to medium business owner, and you're like, Oh, my God, I'm just gonna take out an ad or I'll put some money behind Facebook ads or, like, how hard is it to do like to pull off a successful collaboration is a lot a lot of work.
Jess Ruhfus 11:54
It is if you don't use clappers or
Liz Nable 11:57
Love it! Shameless self promotion
Jess Ruhfus 12:00
But that's one of the reasons I started it, you know, because I was spending so much time it can take just so much time to build together a collab well, especially if you don't know where to start or how to pitch a brand collab or who to go after, you know how to find the the decision maker or the contacted that company and all that kind of stuff. So collab is a is really cuts the heavy lifting time into a fraction of what that would be, because it works just like Tinder for brands, essentially, yeah,
Liz Nable 12:34
Tell me how it works. Like this steps. How does it work?
Jess Ruhfus 12:37
Well, if you've ever used a dating site, this won't shock anyone.
Liz Nable 12:41
Really. And dating sites weren't even a thing when I got married, which is really sad. But
Jess Ruhfus 12:47
through trade, you can try it on collab resource. And yeah, you
Liz Nable 12:50
basically pretend I'm dating,
Jess Ruhfus 12:53
you would create a profile as if your brand is looking for dates. So your brand profile will include things like, what is your target market look like? You know, what location? Are they situated in? What are they interested in? What's their age demographic? What you know, broad themes are they interested in maybe your target market are really interested in food or health and wellness or fashion or design, and that kind of stuff can really help you find fantastic collaborators. So you'll fill out a profile from a bunch of drop down lists and checkboxes. So it's not super daunting takes about five minutes. And that's completely free to do. And collaborators will immediately matchmake you up against there's over 9000 brands on the platform. So you'll basically get matched with brands and you'll be able to preview all of your suitors potential date, completely for free. So if you're curious to dip your toe in, that's definitely my recommendation to start because then you can have a look to see the types of brands that you've been matched made with. And then on a paid subscription. Because we run a subscription business, you can make connections, depending on what subscription tier you're on. You know, the business plan, for example, is unlimited connections every month, and you get an account support person to help you with creative ideas and to help you with curated recommendations every single month. And yeah, and basically you swipe right to connect with brands and chat with them. And by the time you've already connected with someone, you know what they're offering, what they're looking for what their target market looks like, and they know that of you. So the conversation is so fast tracked because you know they're interested and you know what they can offer you and vice versa. And so really it's just about going cool, like let's do this collab, you know, and actually rolling it out.
Liz Nable 14:40
So what does is someone's ever done a collaboration before and they go to collab or Soros is is sort of like I guess like a formula or like a template of how does a business know what they have? I know because I've got a background in the media. You've got a background in PR so you've got that part of the brain that's working to go What can I offer these people to make it a attractive to work with me. But for someone who perhaps doesn't wear that hat naturally in their business, are there any like go to no fail ideas that a business can offer another business that would make them a good match
Jess Ruhfus 15:12
death and Utley. So you'll be prompted for all of these things on page three of setting up your profile, if there's like a drop down of all of the possible things you could potentially offer someone. So that's a really good prompt, and they're just like little, you know, drop downs. But I would say if you're wanting to start thinking about that stuff, the good news is, is that small businesses are often sitting on an absolute goldmine of value. And really, it's just about knowing to how to identify that and communicate that. So I would start with your products or services straight off the bat, that is something every business will have. And that's going to be something of value, you can exchange in a really win win collaboration, partnership. And then you've also got things like the marketing channels you have available to you. So whether that's Instagram, your email list, your website traffic, your podcast, listenership, your LinkedIn network, things like that are all of value from a marketing standpoint to another brand. Even if you have 100 followers, that still 100 potential customers, your brand collaborator could get in front of that they otherwise wouldn't be able to without partnering with you. So don't get self conscious about the size of your audience. Absolutely not. Especially seeing as, you know, a brand collaboration between two brands, which I think is important to mention, you know, we don't do influencer collabs at all, it's just brand new brand. A brand collaboration is just so super valuable, because it leverages multiple channels and multiple value points. So you're not just going I'm exchanging promotion on my Instagram page, full stop. That's it. You also have your time, your skill, set your products, your services, your marketing assets, sure. But then also know that skill set could roll out or resources within your team to be like offering graphic design value, or photography or social media, post creation, things like that are all of value. But you'll be primed, you'll be prompted in collapse or so all of these things, but there are a few starting starting ideas. So I
Liz Nable 17:14
think what people are looking for, I mean, obviously, they will get prompted for all that on clever Soros. But in terms of again, if you're new to the site concept of collaborating, and you keen to try it, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're looking to collaborate with brands who complement what you offer, like Ken, is that correct? Yes. So the platform will match make you up with complementary industry spaces,
Jess Ruhfus 17:39
but it's always good to kind of, I think, get the creativity juices flowing to think what industry spaces are complementary to mine, you know, if you're in fashion, beauty can complement it really well. But you could also do something in food, you know, or health and wellness or, you know, how could that work. And I think it's interesting with collab resource, because, you know, if you're doing partnerships without a platform like that, and you're manually doing outreach, you kind of do need to have the creative idea fully formed before you pitch out to people to to entice interest in the first place. Whereas, you know, with Columbus aureus, you can connect with brands first, and then work with them on a unique idea that actually suits you to working together. Because what you would do with a food brand is going to be very different to what you would do with a beauty brand.
Liz Nable 18:26
Yeah. What about if you're like a hyperlocal business, like I know, I can think of a business in my local area. And she has beautiful shirt, like amazing shoes. They're all from Europe, they're all certain designers, et cetera, et cetera. If you've got a hyperlocal business sites, product or service, can you still collaborate with other businesses?
Jess Ruhfus 18:45
Definitely. And I would look to collaborate within the local area as the starting point for sure. Because you know, if your audience are all locals, think about how else could I reach other people in the local area. And that's, you know, other businesses in the local area, have a community of people in the local area, teaming up and doing something cool together is a great idea. We've actually had a really great example that's actually resulted in some media attention was adult toy mega store. That's the online platform. They wanted the largest for, you know, toys and things like that online, but then they collaborated with a hyperlocal business donut pappy who make donuts in Sydney. And I'm keen to hear this story. I know random Hey, so they were matched on collab resource for Singles Day, and they created their regular donuts but they put a bullet vibrator on top of the day. And it was for Singles Day and if you were single, and you came into the store, you could get you could get yourself a Singles Day doughnut and there was a line down the street. It went absolutely nuts. It got coverage in timeout and Concrete playground it reached so many people, that's a hyperlocal business really, that doing something fun with an international brand. You know, that was fantastic for adult toy mega store who otherwise basically can't run Facebook ads, because they're blocked because of the type of content that they would need to run. They could do something really creative, that engaged, you know, local area marketing, but then also got press as well on a national level.
Liz Nable 20:27
So I thought that was really, really clever. And a great example like a hyperlocal business doing a collaboration and a clever story idea for me. Yes, absolutely. The media love to talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. So what are sort of the benefits? What are the major benefits of collaborating? Like, I know, in my bricks and mortar business, we think, who could? Whose database could we tap into who's got like minded clients are the same demographic or the same kind of people who are at the same price point that my service offers? And how can we tap into that? Is that the major benefit? Or what are the other benefits of collaborating with other businesses?
Jess Ruhfus 21:05
Yeah, there's a tonne. And different types of collaborations will result in different outcomes. But I would say you can use brand collaborations or different types of collaborations to first and foremost reach new potential customers, that's massive, and a really common outcome. The second one is to grow your email database or social media community, for sure. You can use brand collabs to build buzz around your business or attract media attention, like those examples I've given already. Like, they attracted so much media attention and built so much buzz. You can also use them to really shift perceptions. So I love this as a point because, you know, collab azorius did a collaboration with Microsoft, for example. And we're a little old. Yeah, we're a tiny company and collaborating with Microsoft was major for us. To be to be fair, though, I mean, we've reached more potential customers by collaborating with smaller to midsize companies. The reason we collaborated with Microsoft was not actually to achieve major reach. It was to, you know, it was fantastic for credibility. And it was fantastic just for brand alignment, which is so hard to put $1 value on. But super, super, super value valuable for that, you know, outcome. What else could you use them for? You can use them to like add value to your existing customer base and engage customers to if you're if your organic engagement is really dropping off. A collab is a fantastic way to add value and boost up engagement too. But oh my gosh, you can increase foot traffic or an event audience with brand collaborations, you can inspire direct sales, like if you did a gift with purchase collaboration, you're driving sales, through your website or through your store. So yeah, there's a number of different things you can achieve different marketing outcomes that you can tap into, it just depends on the type of marketing outcome you're aiming for. And then the brand collaborator you team up with whether they can help you achieve that thing? And the type of collaboration that you do.
Liz Nable 23:12
Is it important for the business to identify what they want to achieve first, before they go into a collaboration?
Jess Ruhfus 23:19
Yes, and collaborate. Saurus will prompt you on that as well. It's like what do you want to achieve? From a collaboration? Is it just reaching new potential customers? Or is it you know, driving sales on your website? Or is it filling an event audience? Or is it growing your email database? Knowing that that's the one thing I would say that your entire collaboration strategy and all of the clubs that you do should be dictated by?
Liz Nable 23:45
Yeah, because if you don't know what outcome you want, you can't measure the success. You're just collaborating in the dark? Exactly.
Jess Ruhfus 23:52
They can't measure success. I would approach collaborations as you would approach any other marketing strategy. You know, if you're running Facebook ads, you know what you want to achieve off the back of that? Maybe that's link clicks, maybe that's conversions. Maybe that's video Watchers or whatever. Same goes for brand collaborations, you need to have the end in mind.
Liz Nable 24:09
Yeah, same with pitching the media, you need to underscore what you want to achieve before you start pitching otherwise, it's sort of a wasted effort. And you know, you want to make each collaboration worth your while. What are some of the ways you can? Like what are some of the metrics you can use to measure the success for collaboration? Are they the same as those goals we talked about? Or are we looking for specific outcomes? Because I know, sometimes you're like, Well, it hasn't increased my sales. But that's not the only the only measure of success, is it?
Jess Ruhfus 24:42
No, I really love to go back to your customer journey funnel, like how do people find out about you and discover your brand in the first place? How are they engaging with you in the first instance, What Kind Of Products Do They buy to begin with, and so on and so on, and how do they refer customers because all of those costs Some agenda funnel stages can really inform your marketing strategy. If you're sort of aware that for example, 90% of the people who ultimately buy from you, you know, have come via an Instagram, you know, shout out or whatever. You can collaborate with that in mind, with Instagram as the core platform, for example. But as you said, you can achieve more than one outcome from a collab, maybe you've got sales, but then you've also grown your social following. And maybe you've also grown your email list as well. So there's really great saw the outcomes as well that can come from a brand collab. But in terms of tracking and the metric to look for, that depends on your outcome. So if you wanted to grow your email list, just have a little look and screenshot your subscriber numbers before you start the collab and then check back in at the end of the collab.
Liz Nable 25:53
Is this such a thing as a bad collaboration?
Jess Ruhfus 25:56
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, Apple and YouTube exam for which is a fantastic example be saying that one? No, basically, it was. Was it the iPod or iPhone, there was some update with Apple and it automatically put the YouTube album on everyone's iTunes by default?
Liz Nable 26:17
That way I have YouTube. Oh, my gosh.
Jess Ruhfus 26:21
And so that was an interesting collab because they clearly didn't think about their audiences, you know, not everyone's gonna, like want
Liz Nable 26:33
pretty amazing to collab for you to to get automatically download on millions and millions of people's iPhones, yes,
Jess Ruhfus 26:38
but it resulted in a lot of bad press and a lot of hate. So it wasn't actually a good outcome for you, too. Because people were like, What is this doing on my phone? They should have instead made it available as a free opt in, you know, so people can actually choose. But yeah, it's just having having your customers in mind and ideal potential customers in mind as to who you're reaching as well. Think about if this collab is, is a collab for collaboration sake, or if it's actually adding value to your customer base through something exciting, maybe it's FOMO inducing. Maybe it's um, yeah, like, even if you're in b2b or something like that. You can you can add business services as as value add as well. So yeah, think about your audience. I would
Liz Nable 27:24
Yeah, absolutely. What have you seen a real shift towards collaborating? Because obviously, like, I know, in my business, we were talking before we hit record. Facebook ads aren't really working for my bricks and mortar business anymore, I can see a real shift in the landscape in my industry. Are you seeing that with your business in terms of people looking to think outside the box in growing their brand and getting brand awareness and that sort of thing?
Jess Ruhfus 27:54
Definitely. I think the landscape right now is so interesting, because yeah, ads costs are rising, the media landscape is tighter than ever. Businesses are really cash strapped, you know, we're coming off the back of the COVID years of hell,
Liz Nable 28:12
and rain.
Jess Ruhfus 28:14
Everyone's burnt out. And now it's, you know, there's another hurdle with recession and all of that kind of stuff. And I just think, yeah, brand collaborations, it's never been a more necessary time to look at Brand collabs it's the most cost effective strategy for reaching new audiences, by far because, you know, collaborations are all about a win win exchange of value and 90% of the time through Columbus or is anyway, there's no cash exchange whatsoever. So you're not paying to reach audiences, you're paying with currencies other than cash, you know, you're exchanging what you already have available to you and another complementary brand is doing the same. So you can really work together to achieve big things and achieve big reach. But we've definitely seen a big shift in behaviours, I mean, 2020, Glover, Soros quadrupled in size, and that was just purely because businesses were going, Oh, no, we this is happening. And we need to shift up what we're doing and pull back on spending, but not to the point where we're not relevant anymore and can't reach customers anymore, you know, and I think what's happening at the moment, I'm noticing is that this recession, sort of fear is happening and a lot of businesses are pulling everything back but standing still and not actually doing anything. And that's a big mistake. I think definitely shift up your strategy for sure that needs to evolve. But don't stand still. Because this is going to be a long period you know, unfortunately, it's going to be you know, another what was the word for a like? Obstacle course visit? What are they called? My Yes, yes, I get it. Like everyone's everyone's dragging themselves through And I think you know, we're stronger together. So working together is so important. And it's one of the most cost effective strategies you can
Liz Nable 30:06
use. Yeah, and being quick to make changes, when you see what you what you used to be doing doesn't work anymore. Being quick to kind of be your ability to change, I think sets you you know, streets, you know, ahead of your competitors.
Jess Ruhfus 30:21
Absolutely. And actually small businesses, I would say, have such a huge opportunity with this, and that this is actually not going to come around again, this type of opportunity. Because more businesses are agile, we can move so quickly, we can get partnerships off the ground in no time. You know, if you meet the right connection, it's like boom, boom, boom, let's get this happening and go, whereas a large brand just takes forever, you've got to go through a million people, but a large brand to shift and change their behaviour and their strategy can take years. So small businesses are in a huge, huge advantage zone right now. And I would definitely advise to take take advantage of that and use that opportunity.
Liz Nable 31:02
Is there like a magic number of collaborations businesses should be doing every year? And can you do the same collaborations over and over again? Or do you need to reinvent the wheel?
Jess Ruhfus 31:12
I love that question. Great question. So American Express actually did a business collaboration Index report a few years ago. And they determined that businesses that collaborated six or more times a year achieved a 17% revenue increase, which is massive relief for no cost. So I would say I usually recommend six, six times a year is optimal. So one every two months is ideal. That tends to drive the revenue growth that businesses ultimately want to see with any marketing strategy and very impressive revenue growth, in terms of collaborating with similar brands again, and again, absolutely, those six don't all have to be new fresh brands every single year. You can absolutely connect with a tonne of brands using a platform like lavadoras. But of course, if you do one collab that works really well, I would absolutely encourage you to do that. Again, you don't have to do the same collab, you can shift up the collab type, but keep the collaborator the same, because you know that your audiences are really aligned. The cross promotion really adds value to both of your businesses. And you can collaborate again and again, we have done that with brands like Oh, debt and CO, for example, in the past, we've collaborated a million times over. And we'll continue to do that again. And again, because our audiences are very aligned. So yeah, if we're absolutely do that, exactly. If it ain't broke.
Liz Nable 32:37
That's right. That's the that's the quote, I was looking for. Coming back to, I guess, what I specialise in, which is, you know, growing your business using the media and PR, and we talked about this before, can you give me any other examples of how great collaboration can spark media interest and can start to get you some of that free exposure on the back of the collaboration success, you can compound that result by getting media and PR? Hmm.
Jess Ruhfus 33:04
So I think the best collabs are leveraged collabs. So it's not just a post on Instagram, if you know, much bigger campaign than that, I think the best collabs really leverage all available channels to you. And if it's a creative enough idea to, you know, attract media attention, you'd be silly not to take that opportunity and try and get media attention around your collab. So absolutely approach it as a campaign rather than a post specific thing. It's, it's it is a lot of work to go through to then just have a one post thing. Yeah.
Liz Nable 33:40
And when we say leverage to anyone who's like, Okay, well, what does that mean? Exactly? We mean, that repurpose that content? Is that right?
Jess Ruhfus 33:46
Yes, across all of the channels, exactly. So, put it on your website, put it on your podcast, put it on all of the social media channels available to put it in your email signature, and pitch it to press and then your brand collaborator is doing the same and you've essentially doubled your promotional rates organically. So so exciting. So yeah, definitely leverage in terms of another example of how you know media attention was attracted I really like frozen the musical did a collaboration with cork and canvas you know, the painting said, No,
Liz Nable 34:23
oh, yeah. Yep, I know.
Jess Ruhfus 34:26
They did a whole series around you know, as the show was being released in Sydney, they activated in Sydney, cork and Canvas locations to paint Elsa and paint different frozen, you know, scenes, which is like in terms of like effort and time that goes into that. Not that much really, you know, that's such an easy to lab, but so creative. It attracted all of the frozen fans. It leveraged off both brands audiences, it got more people going to the show because you could also, you know, the best painting one best tickets, the tickets to the show. And vice versa, you know, those paint and sip nights really extended the experience of going and seeing frozen, the musical.
Liz Nable 35:14
And clever too, because this is an assumption. But I think that that coke and Canvas style business because there's a few different brands would attract possibly my target market, which is women with kids who would love to go and watch frozen.
Jess Ruhfus 35:30
Yeah, so what a gorgeous mother and daughter night
Liz Nable 35:35
and a no brainer, right? Like a no brainer because it's zero, like you say zero cash transaction, great exposure for the movie, which would have you know, had a huge budget. So it's not like they did it because they were trying to save money to Disney.
Jess Ruhfus 35:51
Well, they wanted to do things creatively to Yeah, and that was hyperlocal as well, that was in Sydney they wanted Sydneysiders to go and book tickets to see Frozen the musical. And so really raised awareness of the show that was happening. increased engagement attracted media attention, it was just so fantastic. And then for Coke and canvas that's alignment with Disney,
Liz Nable 36:11
this massive, and it's also because it's visual, because they're painting, it's going to be all over social media, people are taking photos, tagging, frozen, tagging their friends, you know, and it's it's this inadvertent advertisement, I guess, for the movie, and vice versa. It's so
Jess Ruhfus 36:29
clever. Oh my gosh, of course. And then, you know, in addition to that, they also collaborated these collaborators to team up with a number of different brands, but they also teamed up through us with koi dessert bar, who did a high tea that was themed frozen, so everything was blue, everything was like yeah, snowflake and frozen, themed. And same thing. It's like mother daughter, high teas, you know, before the matinee in the day, it was just so clever and well leveraged and visual, and just Yeah, well executed, that attracted media attention as well.
Liz Nable 37:00
And I think, you know, if you are a small bit, obviously Disney is a big business. But if you're a small business, there is advantage, like you say you can be agile, but you've also got a very niche market who's engaged with you, right? So it's, you can almost offer more value in some ways to a big business looking to get down on the ground and get granular with who they're involving, in their, in their collaborations.
Jess Ruhfus 37:23
Absolutely. I think, yeah, this this misconception that you team up with, like, you know, a ginormous brand, once a year, is how partnerships works. And that's not right at all, you can collaborate, I mean, of course, you can still do the big collabs. But I have seen so much value even for my own businesses, as well as by with, you know, teaming up with businesses similar size to me, you know, because the audiences are more engaged with smaller businesses. You know, we're more agile, and there's, there's more value that can be leveraged out of the collab with a small brand, I think, between, you know, both of us, because, because we can move quickly and tap into all of the channels and opportunities available to us, you know, we don't need to get the website edits approved by six people and
Liz Nable 38:14
so on. What do you see? Do you see collaboration being you know, if someone was to, I guess, in a small business, I keep thinking with my small business hat on, you are wearing a lot of different hats in your business, you're doing a lot of the jobs that perhaps in a bigger business would be specific to one person's role, like marketing or sales, whatever. So would you say that this? Is this just a part of a business's overall marketing plan? Or could they say I'm going to do collaborations this year, and I'm really going to focus on collaborations as the main focal point of their marketing their marketing strategy.
Jess Ruhfus 38:49
Yeah, it depends on the brand. I think you can do both. You can integrate it as part of your marketing strategy, or you can use it as a core strategy. That's up to you and your business. I think both both work. You do need someone to head up the collab and the rollout of you know, anyone campaign and posting on social and putting it on the website and no actually organising the collab. But, but it's never been quicker to pull together a collab. And it's never been more effective. I think. I mean, collab azorius. To give you some context, it takes about 10 minutes a week to use the platform, and you've made your connections, you know, for the month that you would need, and have someone you can speak to about a creative idea and actually rolling out a campaign so you're not entirely on your own. Yeah. If you're using brand collabs as a support to your larger strategy, then, you know, I would look at any one campaign you're rolling out involving a collab as like a campaign support, so maybe you're releasing a new product, you could collaborate with another brand to do a giveaway so that then this other brand is promoting your new product. Or you can do a dedicated campaign. Were like, for example Zima est and Christy Williams design or ich Christy Williams, just sorry, she's an illustrator. They did an artist collab where they created a limited edition bottle of wine with her illustrations all over the bottle. And that sold out in 72 hours, you know that that was a dedicated campaign. You know, that's a limited edition product release. But that's not to say you can't use collabs as a, you know, promotional support as well,
Liz Nable 40:27
that you can make it I guess, as much work or more more and more seamless. If you're just getting started. And you're like, I'm going to try collaboration, you can do a really easy one. To see how sure, yeah,
Jess Ruhfus 40:37
I on clever stories, the most common starting collab is a social media collab because it's so fast and quick and easy to pull together. So yeah, if you're looking to dip your toe in, that would be my recommendation, start small and get comfortable with what a brand collab can look like and how it could work for you. And then, you know, start approaching larger scale campaigns with small brands or big brands. Yeah, or longer term collabs as well. Yeah.
Liz Nable 41:05
So you don't need to have the idea necessarily, you could go on to Collabosaurus and they'll help you kind of get an idea. I think that's
Jess Ruhfus 41:13
where so many small businesses get stuck. It's like, I don't have the big idea. I don't know who I'd collaborate with
Liz Nable 41:18
multiple times a year as well. You're like, Oh, my God, I'm really...
Jess Ruhfus 41:21
It's like, what would this look like? And I think sometimes it's Collabosaurus. You know, opportunities come to you. So it might be something that you otherwise wouldn't have thought of, you know, Cork and Canvas, the Frozen The Musical opportunity came to them. And they were like, well, we have to do this.
Liz Nable 41:35
This is great. You don't say no to Disney. Yeah.
Jess Ruhfus 41:38
So it's like, you can't like plan for that kind of stuff. Some some collabs are quite reactive, just like some PR is quite reactive. You know, if there's a natural disaster that your business can respond to in the media, you've got to be quick to that and be reactive. But there's also proactive collaborations, you can do that a setup with a lot more time and care and things like that. But yeah, in terms of coming up with a creative idea that so many businesses get stuck with that I actually have. If you feel like that's the blocker for you, I've got a little idea generator, anyone can DM me on social and I'll send you the link. I'll put that in the show notes. Oh, perfect. I'll send you the link as well, then. Yeah. So it basically asks you two questions, what industry is facing you? And what's your biggest marketing goal, and it will generate collaboration marketing
Liz Nable 42:28
ideas for you? Oh, my gosh. Did you create that software? I did. Okay, Mark, cookie. But yeah, I
Jess Ruhfus 42:39
have I have that if you're looking for some ideas spark. But then we show you how to actually do that on Collabosaurus. But I usually recommend start with the connection, and then look at the idea. Because if the connection is, you know, a food and beverage company, yeah, that's that's going to really inspire a different set of ideas to a fashion company, for example. But yeah, so it's always interesting, I think, to create a listing, which is free on Collabosaurus and just preview and see what comes back, you know, you might be recommended a bunch of health and wellness brands that you haven't thought of, and you're like, oh, okay,
Liz Nable 43:11
cool. So you can just get on for free. And then when do you sign up to the subscription? like at what point in the process?
Jess Ruhfus 43:18
Once you want to make connections and do collaborations? It's a subscription fee. Yeah.
Liz Nable 43:23
Yeah. Wow. Sounds amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Yes. It's like even got me thinking about my business going. How this is, this is such a smart way we we've collaborated before, but not through a platform where we've done all the work ourselves. And I stayed away from collaborations, you know, over COVID, because there was so much else going on. And I was like, it's to me, it felt like a big job. But if you take the work out of that and get matched with someone else who's keen to collaborate, because often I've found in collaborations if you're the one to instigate it convinced them to do it with you, you end up doing all the work. And it's got to be even partnership, right. And that's cool. That's so clever.
Jess Ruhfus 44:06
Thanks.
Liz Nable 44:08
That's why it's your business, I come in for the compliments. It does take that a lot of the hard work out of it. Because if you're matching up with other brands who are already want to collaborate, it means they understand that balance is 5050. And it's not you're doing all the work. And they get to leverage or you know, your database or your social media, and then you're begging them to do the same for you.
Jess Ruhfus 44:31
Oh, exactly. And we also have, you know, if you've ever been in that situation before where you've almost been taken advantage of by another brand that sucks. We have legal contracts and agreement templates that you can just access on any subscription plan on Cloud resources. So if you let's say you team up with a ginormous brand, and you're like oh, this is so exciting. Normally really you should definitely get legal advice and you know, fork out a lot for that but we have We have a partnership ourselves with law squared, who have developed collaborations specific contract and agreement templates that you can just use, you know, so that saves you a tonne of money and time to.
Liz Nable 45:11
Yep, so you can go in with your eyes wide open and make sure it's going to work for you.
Jess Ruhfus 45:15
Exactly. And you have someone to speak to about it, you know, like we're on the other end of email or phone call. So it's not like you're thrown in the deep end and gone, you know, make this collab work on your own.
Liz Nable 45:28
I love it. Thank you, Jess, I really appreciate your time, we could talk about collaborating for hours.
Jess Ruhfus 45:33
It's my favourite topic. Anytime.
Liz Nable 45:37
Thank you so much for your time.
Jess Ruhfus 45:38
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Liz Nable 45:41
Pleasure. Thank you for listening to this episode of Nable My Business. If you've loved it, please share it on Instagram and Facebook for your friends. I'm all about listening and learning from you my audience. So please pop a review on iTunes and let me know how you're enjoying the show. I'd love to hear from you. So if you have any questions, email me at Liz at Liz Nable.com And if you want to know more about what I do, head over to Liz Nable.com I truly hope this podcast is a game changer for you. Whether you're a small business owner, franchisee you have a side hustle or you're just starting out. This is where you truly begin to build your own empire and the life of your dreams.
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