EPISODE 8 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: DOUBLE YOUR REACH WITHOUT INCREASING YOUR SPEND WITH JESS FROM COLLABOSAURUS
Sonya:
Today I am interviewing Jess from Collabosaurus. Now, unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure you've heard of Collabosaurus. No, not really. But I feel like Jess is just a massive thought leader in the digital space at the moment. I love everything you're doing Jess. So thank you so much for taking the time out to come and have a chat to us today.
Jess:
No problem. Thanks for the ego boost. I don't think I've ever been referred to as a thought leader, but I'll take that, thanks.
Sonya:
Anytime. So I guess let's start from the top. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to the point you are at today, where you have this whole online platform and tool for small business owners and large business owners.
Jess:
Yeah, well, I mean I started out in fashion and lifestyle PR. I mean if we want to go further back, I started university really wanting to work in film. So I did a whole lot of film subjects and I interned on the set of The Great Gatsby, which was so much fun and did music video shoots and stuff like that, which I adored. But I think a lot of people at the time gave me the advice of, oh, you know, you're going to have to work really hard and long hours and probably have to move to LA to get any kind of career in film before you make any money, particularly in Australia. And at the time I was kind of just like, well I don't want to work really hard, and waits for years and years and move to Hollywood to make a living.
So I kind of fell into PR and really liked that and got my first job out of uni and fashion and lifestyle PR, which was full on. I was a fish out of water there but I learnt a lot, and I was going to work and arrived at, oh gosh, I think it was like 6:15 AM out in Alexandria, which was an hour and a half from my home and worked like a 12 hour day and then do it all again. But I learned a lot about collaborations in this, which actually kind of sparked the idea for Collabosaurus. So in fashion PR I was pulling together media launch events with fashion clients all the time, so that's basically when you just showcase the new season of clothing to influencers, and bloggers and media.And often for these events, it's like a little mini private VIP runway event and you've got to find things like venue collaborators, and catering partners, and photographers, and goody bag inclusions, and brands to come in and do experiences around that event to really make it engaging and fun and different from the other media events that these journalists are going to every single day.
And we just found it was a real slog. I mean it took us so long. Historically, traditionally, the way you do brand partnerships is you'd have to come up with the idea as to what you want to collaborate on. You have to research and find who to collaborate with, find the right contact and then do like a perfect peachy email and follow up. And it just took forever. And at the time as well, there was a really awful vibe around free stuff. I remember basically being told, oh, you know, we need coconut water or some kind of drink or something for this event, where can we get 500 units of coconut water for free? And it wasn't really about win-win brand collaborations, which kind of sucks.
Anyway, so I was kind of in this job for a bit and really, really far from home. And in the end I found a job a lot closer to home so that the commute was cut in half. And that was in small business marketing education and I worked there and worked with a lot of smaller businesses where we would take them through like a 12 month course on to how to DIY your own marketing and partnerships were a big part of that. That was one of the key things we taught, how valuable brand partnerships can be. And I found that small businesses weren't doing it because they'd been taken advantage of in the past by bigger brands, which unfortunately happens, not with Collabosaurus, but it happened in the past.
They just didn't really didn't know where to start or they were sending out pitches that were terrible and weren't getting any responses back unsurprisingly. So that's kind of where I had the idea of the Collabosaurus. Tinder was becoming really, really popular at the time. And I thought, wow, you know, swipe right, swipe left, this is really clever and why doesn't this exist for brand collaborations? And so that's how Collabosaurus got started.
Sonya:
Amazing. And I think that's such a big thing. I mean, even for myself, when I'm working with clients, I'm like, where do we even start when it comes to coming up with a collaboration that's going to benefit both parties. So with your platform Collabosaurus, how exactly does that work? And if a small business owner was going to use it, what would that look like?
Jess:
Yeah, so the good thing, basically Collabosaurus is like a matchmaker for brands. So it's very much like a dating site for businesses to connect for brand collaborations. And that can be in social media collaborations, so competitions and giveaways or content collaborations, products. So you know when you see the limited edition product collaborations like Chandon and Sipoli, or Nike collaborating with anyone to release a limited edition shoe that you can do product collaborations like that or online product collaborations like ebook downloads and webinars and podcasts or events. So that's collaborating exactly like my days in PR. So either to get involved in someone else's event and collaborate to create a really great experience, or if you're running an event, you can source catering partners, photographers, all that kind of stuff too. So Collabosaurus is very much, it works very much like a dating site.
It match makes brands together for these kinds of campaigns and it cuts out the need to pitch at all. So you don't need a big creative idea to get started, which I think is a huge barrier for a lot of small business. It's kind of like, well, how exactly would I collaborate and what would I do? Like I don't know how that creative idea would work, whereas Collabosaurus cuts that out and we match make you with brands first to then inform the idea that you do, because a collaboration that a fashion brand does with a beauty brand can look completely different to a collaboration that a fashion brand does with a photographer, or a florist, or whatever it might be. So that idea can really be dictated by the types of the businesses that you're teaming up with and that you're partnering up with.
So what it looks like from a business wanting to get started is, you basically list the business on Collabosaurus and that's free to do and you can preview your matches just like a dating site. So it's like listing a profile, viewing kind of who's out there, previewing who's out there. And then once you want to make connections, manage your campaign, attract opportunities, access contracts and agreements and all that kind of stuff, it's a paid subscription.
Sonya:
Amazing. So as a small business owner, what are some of the benefits of actually collaborating? And how does this actually differ as compared to, I guess working with an influencer?
Jess:
Good question. So brand collaborations are actually up to 25 times cheaper than paid digital advertising, which is crazy. We actually included influencer advertising in that research study to come up with that stat. So basically it's very different because first of all we connect brands with other brands. So we're not connecting brands with individual influencers, we're connecting brands with other brands. So think of things like GoPro and Red Bull, or Spotify and Uber teaming up on creative campaigns, that's the kind of thing that we do.
And the other thing that differs between influencer-brand, brand-brand collaborations is also the monetary side of it. I think influencer campaigns are typically influenced advertising, it's a paid relationship most of the time, whereas brand collaborations are very much about leveraging what you already have available to you in business and kind of cross promoting and teaming up to benefit each other. So 90% of the collaborations that happen through Collabosaurus actually don't involve any cash advantage whatsoever. It's really just about, what can I bring to the table? What can you bring to the table and then how could this work together to help us both out?
Sonya:
I love that, that's awesome. So I guess for you, you've gone from a background of working in PR and you're helping small businesses with their marketing. What has that change like been from you going and doing that and I guess the teaching side of things, to getting this whole platform off the ground? I mean, it's a bit of a change up when it comes to your marketing, was it a bit of-
Jess:
Oh yeah.
Sonya:
... Uncharted territory for you?
Jess:
Massively. Oh my gosh. I think I went into starting Collabosaurus quite, very actually not quite, very naive and a little over confident I think. You look around and you see so many startups killing it. So many tech startups that are just like, oh you build a website and it's amazing. And I mean B2B SaaS for example, which is business to business software as a service, which is what Collabosaurus is, of the tech platform I suppose. There are so many resources out there for building a B2B SaaS company and so I just thought it would be easy and it absolutely wasn't, it still isn't. But I've definitely learned skills along the way and I'm really grateful that I did it and also picked up skills along the way.
I didn't know a thing about coding when I started, whereas now I can do bits and pieces with coding and I can speak tech speak I suppose to a degree and hold a conversation with the developer and know what I'm saying. But that's taken years to develop and that's something I didn't expect going in. I also didn't expect how expensive it would be either. I think, from my standpoint, I'd built WordPress and Squarespace websites before and I was like, oh, this is easy. It's built so that it's user friendly and that anyone can build a website. But when it comes to a custom software, that's a completely different thing. Building something like Collabosaurus is tens and tens of thousands of dollars to get that off the ground.
And when I started, I made so many mistakes about, I way over spent on the first one and went with the first person who quoted me, I didn't even look around and we built this thing that cost a fortune and then figured out that we built things wrong and we needed to go back and change many, many things and many features and the way things were worded and the way things were designed. So yeah, there's been a lot of learning along the way. It's very different from my day to day before.
Sonya:
Yeah. And I mean, it's always going to be a work in progress though, isn't it? You're always going to be constantly updating and improving on it.
Jess:
I think also like, no matter how big and amazing and sexy and all that kind of stuff that businesses can look on Instagram, it's like everyone's putting out fires every day. I think some capacity, behind the scenes, nothing is ever smooth sailing and perfect, there's always hiccups.
Sonya:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you and I have shared messages over Instagram where we're like, what a week.
Jess:
Oh gosh. Oh yes, I feel isn't that every week?
Sonya:
I know, constantly.
Jess:
What a week!
Sonya:
And that's the thing, like so many business owners are putting up like this really, my life is amazing, business is such smooth sailing on Instagram particularly. But do you know what? It can't be further from the truth. Like at 98% of the time it's all about those fires.
Jess:
And you know where all those conversations, the real conversations happen is in the DMs. Like the amount of DMs, it's just like what you and I DM back and forth, I've got a ton of business friends that are just like, oh my gosh, what did you with this and how did you manage this? And or if there's staff issues or if there's tech issues, if there's customer issues, oh it's so good having other business owners I think in your network you can relate.
Sonya:
Oh absolutely. And to be prepared to be honest about it as well. I think that's a big thing, like dropping that sort of barrier and actually talking about it because we all go through the same thing. Now I'm going to change the direction of the conversation a little bit here.
Jess:
Go on.
Sonya:
Do you have a favorite collaboration that comes to mind? And like it doesn't have to be something that was set up through Collabosaurus, but are there any, even big business collaborations that you've seen that you've just gone, that is so cool.
Jess:
I have such a fun job in the morning. Every morning we have like Google alerts for every time the word collab or collaboration is mentioned in the news. So every time there's like a new collaboration that gets media coverage, we see it. And something that came up fairly recently, which is like a new favorite is, I love the QT Hotels and Halo Top collaboration. Did you see that one?
Sonya:
No, I haven't. Tell me more.
Jess:
So it was in New Zealand. Basically what they did is they had an ice cream themed room. So Halo Top teamed up with QT Hotels and created, they might have created more than one room, I can't remember now, where they'd had it like decked out in desert themed everything and they had like a decal on the edge of the bath which looked like there was ice cream overflying from the bath and then they stocked the freezer full of Halo Top. They had all of these little like desert experiences as part of that hotel stay and it booked out in like 48 hours for months and it was crazy. It went nuts. So I love that as a great example because it's about branded experiences, which I love. It's like going to that extra effort and teaming up to create co-branded experiences that give people an opportunity to experience both QT Hotels and Halo Top in a really cool way that then translates onto social media. So it's not all about social media, it's also about that experience. I love that.
Sonya:
Absolutely. And I think something that I always drive home to people is that, I mean you need to be doing offline activities to have something to talk about on social media. Like you can't [crosstalk 00:14:07]-
Jess:
Oh my gosh, yes.
Sonya:
... Just as your one and only marketing channel because 99% of the time that's a total flop.
Jess:
Yes. And social media should just be a support to real life. I think that's when we get... I mean I find myself scrolling for hours and getting sucked into that Instagram track, but it has such an effect on our moods and things like that as well. And I think that's when your mind tricks you into believing that it is kind of like a be-all, end-all. Like the likes and the engagement and the how much time you're spending there, and how many sales are coming from that, when really it's just like that's just a support to real life. It's not real life. And also everyone's doing their own thing as well. I really like, I don't know if you saw, there's so many other platforms as well other than Instagram I think, that can be really powerful.
I mean, I love, there was another collaboration that came to mind when you asked me what my favorite one was. They were the astrological themed Spotify playlist that is so shiny. Nicholas who's an astrologer, teamed up with Spotify and they collaborated on star sign based playlists, which I thought was so clever and they released new ones each month so you can listen to like a Leo playlist and it gives you your horoscope at the same time. But it's like that's a really great alternate platform and also Spotify have the ability to link up with your friends and stuff on that, which can be really interesting too. So I think yeah, pulling your head out of just at being Instagram being everything is super important and having a look at other platforms to create experiences around your brand and being a bit more real about it.
Sonya:
Oh I love that. I'm going to go find that. That's awesome.
Jess:
[crosstalk 00:15:51] And they change every month.
Sonya:
Oh I've got it. It's just a free thing that you can search for on Spotify?
Jess:
Exactly, yeah.
Sonya:
Love that. And that's, I think thinking outside the box a little bit as well. I have noticed that there are some brands now that will actually have their own curated playlists, which is super fun. Something that-
Jess:
Yes. I started doing that at one point. We actually do have one. There's a Collabosaurus playlist that's like only songs that are collaborations between artists, so like Ed Sheeran and Beyonce.
Sonya:
I truly love it. Well, you've got a whole Ed Sheeran album now too.
Jess:
Exactly. That's what we started with.
Sonya:
I love it. So I think going back to like social media at the moment, I run a lot of social media workshops. I'm always trying to stay on top of the stats and things, but engagement on platforms like Facebook at the moment, 0.09% is the median across all industries.
Jess:
Wow.
Sonya:
Engagement on Instagram last time there, I saw some data was 1.6% I'm thinking now that they've removed likes, it's in my opinion, it's a way that they're hiding the fact that engagement is dropping quite rapidly on that platform. Would you recommend then if a business has gone to the trouble to do, say a social media competition in collaboration with another business, to pop maybe a little bit of paid spend behind reaching their existing audiences?
Jess:
100% yes. I would look at, I mean, good collaborations are all about leverage. So if you have the opportunity to back that campaign with paid spend, I definitely would recommend you do that. At the end of the day, you're just amplifying the reach of that campaign to get more people to engage with it. And collaboration allows you to increase the prize value, which I think is important as well. I think we are, as users, lazier than ever. I think engagement is dropping also just because we are lazy at using Instagram.
Sonya:
I agree.
Jess:
Like I notice myself, I passively watch and I have to consciously be like, well hang on, you know, that's a friend of mine, I'll double tap that or like comment on it and all that kind of stuff. So I think having something that's really valuable lack a highly interesting or valuable prize can really spark engagement. So I think if you're going to back anything, any campaign with paid advertising, it's got to be something that is going to drive people to action and I think a competition or give away is a great way of doing that. Not only can you then amplify that reach through paid ads, but you're also doubling your organic reach. Because not only is it just you promoting out a competition via your own channels, you now have a collaborator doing that as well. So yeah, it can be hugely valuable. But in short, don't steer clear of paid advertising. I think it's still very, very valuable.
Sonya:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, when we're managing social media for clients now, we always allocate a small amount of budget just to go towards like promoting or boosting their content to their existing followers to make sure they see, that they're keeping engaged, they're having those multiple touch points with the brand.
Jess:
Exactly.
Sonya:
We did a collaboration with a business, one of our clients recently, they're a hotel and they're next to a really nice restaurant, small country town. And they both won awards in the Local Chamber of Commerce Business Awards. We did a give away.
Jess:
Amazing.
Sonya:
Between the two and I think that's just a really simple way that we're drawing attention to the fact that they've both won these amazing awards in their chosen field and they're close to each other, it makes sense. We're giving away a night at the hotel and then a beautiful meal. So I think there's so many ways that even if you're not in the city and you're thinking, well I can't, how am I going to do this? Look locally who can you collaborate with.
Jess:
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. And one of the key things is like reasons as to why that would work is because there's target market crossover. You know, locals go to both of those venues so it makes sense for them to both be cross-pollinating that content and cross-promoting that deal, which is highly valuable to their target market, which I think is important too. Because I see so many collaborations that happen for collaborations sake. You know, it's like, oh let's collaborate and without actually considering the target market. It's like, okay, what would the audience want? What you just mentioned is a perfect example of what the local community would adore to win, which is their exact target market and audience.
Sonya:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, an old boss of mine said once he was a Sales Trainer, he was like, you need to hang out where your customer's already hanging out. So, I feel it's not even, you know, you've got the collaboration that's happened, yes. But it also gives you a way to develop relationships with other business owners that have a similar target audience or that crossover. So that can also feed into more referrals and business down the track as well. It's almost a great tool to use to start establishing relationships with other businessmen.
Jess:
Oh, it's one of those really fabulous byproducts. It's like a domino effect of collaboration. I mean, we usually say you can use collaborations to build buzz around your brand, to engage new and existing communities, to attract media attention, to grow your email lists, to grow your social media, to create experiences around your brand. But then a really nice byproduct is that you're always growing your network with people in complimentary industry spaces who have similar target markets too, but aren't necessarily competitive to you as well. So yeah, 100% agree.
Sonya:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), I love that. So if you were a business that's just starting out and you want to explore online marketing more, where would you start? Would you start with a collaboration or would you start somewhere else? What do you kind of see as being that first step if you're a total newbie or you haven't really leveraged anything with online marketing yet?
Jess:
Oh gosh. I mean, that's a really good question. I think what I would have done back when I started Collabosaurus about four years ago is not what I would do now. I think it's just because everything has changed. I mean, when I launched Collabosaurus, I started with Instagram and we were like the only B2B software company using Instagram in an interesting way at the time, we're no longer that one person, but that really helped us stand out and I used to spend two hours a day sitting on my phone engaging with people, commenting, following, following hashtags and engaging with those people. I was really obsessively into growing it organically. And I think that strategy is still relevant, but I think if I was to get started with online, I mean I think investing in good content is really important.
So I think getting some really great brand shots done is probably would be the first thing I would do. And getting very, very clear on the audience we want to reach and the key messages we want to get across as well. I mean, a mistake I made with Collabosaurus is that I was like anyone can collaborate. When I started it was like, we're targeting anyone who owns a business, which is actually so far from what we do now, we have very specific industries and stuff that we target. But what we were doing is we will blanketing all of our marketing and also blanketing our messaging. So it was kind of like everything to everyone without actually being hyper valuable to a niche. My tip would be, if you're just starting out, is to get started on the social media platform that makes the most sense to the audience that you want to reach, get that really tight with good content and invest in photography if need be. If you're doing Instagram, invest in a photographer and get some really good brand shots. Get super clear on your messaging. I would say too.
Sonya:
Yeah, I love that. That's so true. Something I think you do really well and that you're not scared of doing is actually putting your face out there for Collabosaurus.
Jess:
I hated doing that in the beginning.
Sonya:
But you're so good at it now. And I think a lot of business owners that I talk to are like, oh no, no, I'm not the face of the brand. But what we're seeing is that even big companies now are really championing the CEO and having this personality that comes out that is then associated with the brand. And I think when it comes to social media, we have the advantage of small business owners to be able to do that-
Jess:
Yes, we're very agile. Any small business can quickly hop on and do a stories post featuring their face. I think big businesses, it's got to go through a ton of paperwork, and approval, and strategy and it's kind of like can be a little curated to the point where it doesn't feel social anymore. So yeah, huge advantage for small business owners. Absolutely.
Sonya:
So I think everyone listening to this should go and follow Collabosaurus and you'll see it, Jess' beautiful face pop up regularly on our Instagram stories. I noticed you've got some Instagram-
Jess:
Heavy on the filter.
Sonya:
Amazing aren't they? But you've got some Instagram ads going as well, where a lot of people would think when they're putting together a campaign for a platform such as Collabosaurus, that you'd have images of the actual campaign, but you've got this great ad at the moment going where it's you sitting at your desk talking about, I think you say something along the lines of, "Do you want to double your reach without ad spend?" And it's your face and you're talking. And I think that really drives home the fact that people relate to people and they're more likely to stop and watch a face than they are a really beautifully done screen recorded video with a voiceover, for example, that feels super spammy and like an ad.
Jess:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. I mean we've experimented with both and always, unfortunately the ones with my face perform well.
Sonya:
Thank you so much Jess, for taking the time to join me this afternoon. As I've mentioned, I think everyone should go and follow Jess, which is your handle at Collabosaurus. Can you spell that for everyone, Jess?
Jess:
Yes. So Collabo, like collabo in collaborate and then Saurus, like as in a dinosaur.
Sonya:
I love it. All right. And Jess releases a whole heap of free trainings for businesses to get started with collaborating. If you are a bit of a sexy business and you think it's opportunity to collaborate highly, highly, highly recommend checking out what Jess is putting out there at the moment around collaborations.
Jess:
Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me.
Sonya:
Thanks Jess. Bye.