Collaborations are just a fancy work of finding a buddy that has a similar target market as you, but not a direct competitor. These types of partnerships are hugely valuable when it comes to getting your funnel off the ground and building up traction QUICK!
Once a collaboration method is decided (which I go over below), you are able to get in front of their audience, and in exchange, they get in front of yours.
There isn’t an actual rule as to how many followers or people you need on your email list in order to do this, but that doesn’t mean that the person collaborate with won’t have a preference.
I suggest mixing up the pool of prospective collaborators to reach out to those with different audience sizes (both big and small).
Here are 5 types of collaborations that any business owner can do, that will drive traffic to their sales funnel:
Online Summit
Being involved in this type of event is so much fun!
The best way to find them is to ask around. Check out Facebook groups, pages, or go to Google and search for Online Summits (in your Niche). Find the contact info. of the person that coordinates the summit and start a conversation. Ask questions, offer them a sample of your work.
Ask direct questions to find out more about the event and how you can be a part of it. Sometimes online summits require a fee for you to be a part of them, but not all the time. If you’re wondering what that fee is, I’ve seen ranges from $50-$600, depending on the various factors around the event.
I personally have been in Summits I’ve paid to be a part of, and some I haven’t paid for and both proved to be valuable. The main perk of being in an event like this is that you are exposed to hundreds or thousands of prospects and even if you don’t make sales right away, your email list will grow!!
I was recently featured in The BIG 3 Summit by successful podcaster and email marketing guru, Kate Doster. This was the first summit she hosted and she had an amazing number of registrants!
Several people on my email list registered for the event (building her audience) and I had hundreds of new leads come into my funnel as well.
Story Swap
The story swap method of collaboration is just like it sounds. You create a story that your “partner collaborator” shares on their story, and in exchange, you share a story of theirs to yours.
This is great for giveaway contests, freebies, and several types of calls to action. You can even include a link to a blog, or a flash sale.
The other perk to this kind of collaboration is that they are pretty quick and don’t require a lot of prep. Sometimes a story swap is a one-time thing, other times you can do full-on Story Swap takeovers for an entire week. Go with a plan that works for you and have fun with it!
Freebie Swap
Use your free opt in to attract a collaborator’s email list into your funnel. In exchange, you will share their freebie to your email list. Even if your list is small, go for it! A list of 100 people could multiple faster than running ads to your lead generation funnel.
In addition, if you share another person’s freebie that your audience loves, you gain brownie points with your audience too! They will appreciate you looking out for them and sharing the content!
The key to a freebie swap is that you don’t collaborate with someone that is completely off the grid compared to what you do, or who you serve.
Here’s an example of how a Freebie Swap would work:
If you were a health coach and you found a blogger that has a course on baking the best chocolate chip cookies ever, you might want to reconsider.
Your audience will certainly wonder how you are preaching health, but then taunting them with chocolate goodness (lol).
However, if you were a health coach that specialized in gut health, and partnered up with an online yoga instructor to promote a freebie into her funnel, that would be a perfect collaboration.
There are many other ways that you can collaborate, but to keep it simple and straight forward, these 3 methods that I mentioned are some of the best ways that I’ve seen work really well!
Not sure what you need in place for this kind of collaboration into your funnel? Here are a few key pieces:
- A landing page into your funnel – I love Instapage, Click Funnels or Kajabi
- An email marketing platform, like Convert Kit or Active Campaign
- A list of 100 potential collaborators – each having the same or very similar audience as yours, but that aren’t a direct competitor. Reach out to about 20 per week and follow up with those that leave you hanging.
- Get your FREE copy of the “Wheel of Funnel” here.
