Once you’ve registered and had a look around, it’s time to set up your profile so you’re searchable on the platform.
Simply visit add a new brand profile, which can be found in Account, under My Brand, to upload all the relevant information.
You can also visit your My Brand page to edit or delete your profile once live.
Your profile is your opportunity to showcase all that’s great about your brand – from what you can offer your ideal partners, to what you’re looking for from your partnerships, and all the latest inspiration to entice brands into connecting with you.
As with any profile, the more information you can provide the better. Here’s a quick breakdown of what to include.
Brand introduction
What do you do? What is it that makes your brand so special to your customers? How are you different from your competitors?
Brand sector
This should be straightforward, however should your brand operate across multiple sectors, please select all that apply. Alternatively you can add an additional brand profile for each separate division of your business you’d like to promote in My Brand.
Communication channels available
Please outline all potential touchpoints you have with your customers and prospects through which you’re able to promote brand partners.
This comprises both above the line advertising and owned media channels, which can be valuable media real estate.
The greater the reach, frequency of promotion and level of engagement you can provide, the more appealing you’re likely to be to prospective partners.
Think creatively here – you may have more touchpoints than you think. This could include POS in your retail stores, banners on your website, exposure in your TV ads, posts across your social media pages, space on your packaging, branding throughout your physical environments & live events, inserts in your direct mail packs or promotion across your marketing & transactional emails.
In short, any time you converse with your audience, it’s an opportunity for a brand partner to enhance your customers’ experience with you, or pay to access your valuable customer base.
In our experience, the most successful partnerships straddle multiple communication channels, creating a rich experience that reinforces the partnership to consumers, and helps each partner brand to hit their respective objectives.
Your brand values
A brand’s values typically highlight how they seek to contribute to the world – whether that be to their customers’ lives, their employees, to society, or to their personal corporate mission. Much like in human relationships, successful partnerships between brands tend to occur when values are aligned, and a common vision or purpose are shared.
Current consumer trends are reflecting a wider societal shift towards authenticity. It has never been more important to consider your brand affiliations to build trust with your consumer market.
Partnering with a brand who shares your values, can help to reinforce perceptions of your own brand, whilst you can shift perceptions by partnering with brands whose values are important to your customers.
Your brand values could simply be a selection of words that underpin how you operate, or you may wish to elaborate on the mission, purpose or principles which guide your business.
Demographic information
Who are your customers? Brands use partnerships to both connect with audiences they know they most appeal to, and as vehicles to enter new markets.
Helping prospective partners understand who your customers are enables them to better evaluate you as a viable partner.
Partnership objectives
The right partnerships can have a dramatic impact on your business and contribute to long term strategic change. So, when considering your partnership objectives, take a step back and think about your wider business objectives.
What’s going to really shift the needle in your business?
Is it attracting more customers, enhancing your offering, or changing how the market perceives your brand perhaps?
Similarly, partnerships can be adopted to solve short term tactical challenges – helping you shift excess stock, ramp up attention for a new product you’re launching, or maximise a seasonal promotion.
Please select all that apply to your business.
Sectors you may be interested in
You can see in our recent series, showcasing our favourite collaborations from around the globe, how weird and wonderful brand partnerships can be – aligning brands few would consider an obvious fit, yet which drive genuine value for the businesses and customers involved.
Brands open to the realms of the possible, tend to have a richer canvas to paint on, than those hampered by a more conservative outlook.
Partnership frameworks
Partnerships come in numerous shapes and sizes. You can find further information on the various frameworks available here.
Be sure to select the relevant side of the framework. For instance for Sponsorship, are you looking to sponsor something or are you looking for sponsors?
What you’re able to provide
If you’re looking to connect with a partner’s customer base, then you’ll likely need to provide something in exchange for this access. The more you’re open to bringing to the table, the more appealing you’re likely to be to prospective partners.
Partnerships can operate on a contra basis, whereby one partner provides discounts, benefits, content or competition prizes in exchange for exposure to the other’s audience; or they may be more transactional in nature, with money changing hands in sponsorship, affiliate, licensing and charitable models.
Other information
Should you feel there’s more that prospective partners might like to know about your brand to assist with their search process, or you’d like to elaborate on any of the points above, then please add further detail here.
This is your opportunity to be creative, and could include information on successful previous partnerships, upcoming events or launches which may create partnership opportunities, or information on areas not covered in other sections.