How we hijacked Gymshark's audience 🦈

The simple trick that helped me bring in leads and grow my following.

Hey, It’s Mike 👋

Here’s a simple trick that has helped me to bring in leads and grow my following.

It’s called permissionless co-marketing. 

Here’s how it works 👇

---

I’ve got a decent following across socials so getting eyes on my content is relatively simple.  

But what can you do when you’re just starting out, or don’t have the following yet? 

You hijack someone else's audience. 

It’s a strategy called permissionless co-marketing. 

I’ve been doing it for years, but only recently came across that terminology. 

Credit: Amanda Natividad (She’s a great follow on Twitter BTW)

The aim is to align yourself with other brands or individuals by promoting them in your work. 

Why? 

It elevates your brand. 

Your earn goodwill. 

There’s potential for reciprocation.

---

I often use this tactic on the IAM Productions LinkedIn business page.  

We’ve grown this to 4k+ followers in a relatively short time frame.

The first step is to identify brands that are on-trend, and that share our target audience. 

But make sure they’re not direct competitors.

Here’s an example I recently shared: 

Company: GymShark

Industry: Fitness Apparel

Linked Followers: 189K

Key Figures: Ben Francis, Noel Mack, Elfried Samba

Target: Active marketing team on LinkedIn (combined audience of 510k). 

We spotted that they’d shared a successful ad campaign on their socials that we liked the look of.

It was a recruitment ad with some clever copy.

We then turned the ad into a short animated explainer video.

We then tagged Ben, Noel and Elfried looking for a nibble.  

It was viewed by 100k people and was liked and shared by key members of the Gymshark marketing team. 

Job done. 

It does mean taking a risk. 

Noel (Chief Brand Officer) did give us a little scare with his comment, lord knows I don’t need any more legal letters! 

But we’ve always gone with the line:

‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’

… when it comes to marketing. 

If you’re not willing to take risks with your marketing, you’re never going to stand out. 

The point isn’t to trick anyone. It’s about elevating your brand. 

We’re now connected to the marketing team at a big brand we’d like to work with.  

If they ever need animation work, we’re front of mind. 

Plus, we’ve already secured new work from other businesses that loved what we created for them. 

Win-win. 

---

It can work with individuals too. 

Start by identifying an individual you respect with a decent following, and name-drop them in one of your posts. 

We’ve done this with Daniel Priestley in the past. 

He’s someone we came across when filming the Contreprneur formula. We liked what he was about. And he has an engaged audience of small business owners. Perfect for our explainer business. 

So, we shared a quote of his about lead generation on our company page. 

Daniel liked and engaged with the post 💗

Again, we didn’t ask if we could do a co-marketing piece. 

It’s a low-effort strategy. If Daniel didn’t like the post, it’s easy to delete. 

The potential rewards far outweigh the risks of getting it wrong IMO. 

Remember that line: Ask for forgiveness, not permission. 

If you do it right, you’ll build relationships and open more formal co-marketing or partnerships down the line. 

Reciprocity is basic human psychology. 

If you’re constantly name-dropping and celebrating others' work, it won't be long before they’re doing the same for you. 

---

Finally, a few things to avoid. 

Don’t randomly drop names into your posts because they’ve got a big following. Make sure the person or brand is relevant to what you sell. 

Don’t spam tag loads of people into your posts. 

Don’t push competitors. Not everyone agrees with my strategy when it comes to competitors. But I see them as the enemy, and why give them free press?

---

Homework 📚

Dead easy this one. 

Identify an individual or brand you respect and give them a shout-out on your socials. 

No budget required. Just your time and creativity. 

Your aim is to: 

Elevate your brand. 

Earn goodwill. 

And potentially get a shout-out back. 

If you’re stuck with how to start, DM me on slack, and I’ll help you out.

---

That’s all for this newsletter.

A simple budget-friendly strategy to get more eyes on your business.  

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. 

It’s a low-cost, low-effort strategy you can build into your marketing. 

It’s worked for me. 

As always, if you’re unsure about anything covered, or have a specific question you’d like to answer, post a question in the slack community, or DM me. 

See you again next week. 

Cheers,

Mike