Building awareness for your brand is essential when growing a food business. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, I always encourage clients to work with other food and drink producers. Food brand collaborations are a great way to make the most of your time and budget.
Whatever type of food or drink product you produce, partnering with other businesses can open up exciting opportunities. Food brand collaborations allow you to reach more consumers, suggest buzz-worthy pairings, and strengthen (both) your brands. The right collaboration can bring fresh energy while boosting sales and here’s five reasons why.
1) It can really help raise brand awareness of your product to a wider audience. You’ve got two tribes of followers instead of just your own to speak to.
2) You can share ideas and share learnings and, if it’s not competing with your brand, you can help each other out in different areas. You might be doing something better than them in one area – they may be good at something that they can help you with.
3) It can grow your social media following and add something extra to your content plan. For example, running competitions or giveaways where you must like and follow both accounts can really help boost your number of followers
4) It can increase sales – via competitions and giveaways. You can also look at teaming-up with other brands that have similar target consumers to your brand and sell as a bundle on their online shop too. Or how about offering your product up as an ingredient in another brand? Think Toast Ale made with raspberries from Rubies in the Rubble, or Lottie Shaws Fruit Cake with Little Valley Brewery Stout…. You’re introducing your product to a whole new audience.
5) Don’t forget too about the very important benefit of delighting your customers! If you’re working with brands that your customers are going to like, you’re introducing them to something great and of interest – so you’re being helpful to them, giving them just another reason to trust you as a brand.
Shows and events are a great place to get to know other brands. Make sure you give yourself time to network at them and make connections as well as selling/showcasing your brand. When choosing which brands to partner with, you just need to make sure you choose a brand that shares the same values as your brand and the same target consumers.
If you want to find out more about this topic and see some great examples head over to our free webinar – Brand Collaborations – great ideas for food and drink businesses.