Be careful with your brand; it's the only one you've got.

One of the things that is suggested to most small photography studios by the "experts" is to partner with other boutique businesses. Great idea right? Yes and no. While it's a great concept in theory to share your marketing efforts with other brands it doesn't always work as well as you hope. The benefits are worth the effort and risk, but risk does still exist.

The benefits to collaborating with other businesses include reduced marketing costs, exposure to new potential clients from like-minded businesses and another avenue of marketing among others. That sounds pretty good - right? It is great, but there are the risks to think about. Here are 3 risks to consider when partnering with another business.

1. While you both have the same goal of marketing to a similar target, the expected outcomes may not be the same. Let me give an example of what I mean. Recently NPR teamed up with Urban Outfitters to sell a NPR themed t-shirt via the UO online site and in their physical stores. Great idea right? Well it sounds good until you realize that NPR wasn't receiving any cut from the shirts sold on via UO. NPR was selling the same shirt on their website for $20, but UO was making $24/shirt and sharing nothing with NPR. NPR didn't just stick to allowing the shirt to be sold by Urban Outfitters, they went so far as to promote the shirt at UO without mentioning you could get it from them for $4 less (and helping support their programming)!

2. The standards you expect from your brand may not match the standards of the brand you are partnering with. If you have a different standard of customer care than your partner you can end up giving a mixed message of what your brand represents. Erin Verbeck on The Joy of Marketing blog recently went into more detail on this, so I encourage you to read her thoughts. 

3. Your partnering brand may not be in business next year, month, week. Most portrait photography studios will be partnering with other small, boutique businesses. The reality is that small businesses don't have a great track record of staying in business. It's tough to stay in business. It's a lot of work to make a business work. It's hard to make money sometimes. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but like #2 above you want to be careful about partnering with someone who won't even be around in a few months. Statistically, businesses who are able to last 5 years have a very good chance of staying in business for the long haul, so you might want to look for businesses who are a little more established to partner with. It's a lot of work to put together a partnership, and if you don't have to do it multiple times don't.

Let me wrap it up by not discouraging you from partnerships, but encouraging to think about who you are partnering with and what you expect out of the collaboration.

Andy
https://twitter.com/#!/andybondurant




Editors Note:
Photographers, be sure to check out Andy's new blog: http://www.photo-collective.com/
"Boiled down to its core, the portrait photography business is all about life. It is about providing a service that makes life better for others, so in turn your life as a photography business owner is better. Follow The Collective and you will receive tips, tricks and insight into photography, business and life."  ~ Jeff