Let’s talk about the best marketing strategy of all time.
There are so many ways to market a business. In fact, I have dozens of book on my shelf which contain hundreds of ways to market your business. So, clearly there's no lack of strategies out there.
The key is to find what are the best marketing strategies for your particular business. This takes a bit of experimenting — but when you discover the four or five that work for you, it is a life changing event.
Having said that, I think there is one marketing strategy that should be used by every business. I consider it to be the best marketing strategy of all time, and it is Partner Marketing. Sometimes it is known as “strategic alliances”, “affinity marketing”, or “co-branding.” Often, those terms are used interchangeably.
Partner Marketing is when you find other businesses out there that share or have same customers to you, but who are not directly competing with your brand. What you do is you agree to promote their product or service to your customers with an understanding that they’ll do the same for you.
For example: if you’re a hairdresser then a complimentary business might be a personal trainer. It could be a beauty clinic, maybe a massage center or perhaps even some fashion boutiques, just to name a few. If you have a mortgage business, perhaps, then partners could be real estate agents, business lawyers, or maybe even interior decorators.
Now you have a better idea of how Partner Marketing can work, let me share with you five reasons why it truly is a smarter way to grow your business.
Number 1: Faster
What do you think is easier? To go out there and find a thousand new customers on an individual basis, or to find one business that’s happy to tell their 1,000 customers about you?
If you go about it the first way, to go and find a thousand new customers, that may take you months or even years. However, if you do the latter, that may take you just a couple of days.
All you need to do is write a potential list of partners, do some research, and first of all find out how you can add value to them. Then, once you figure that out you can either jump on the phone or maybe get on email and say,
“Look, over the last few years I’ve had a lot of my customers ask me, do I know a good ________?” Do I know a good real estate agent? Do I know a good painter? Do I know a good insurance broker, perhaps? All I’ve been doing up until now is just sending them to Google, and factually, I would prefer to send them to a real person that I know and I trust. Would you be open to a conversation so we can talk about how we can talk about how we can help each other to better serve our customers?”
Of course that’s a rough example, but even if you used that approach four out of five business people would say, “Sure, let’s get together for a chat,” and you can take it from there.
Number 2: Cheaper
I know some businesses that are now spending hundreds of dollars just to generate one new lead for their business. Now of course, if your business is highly-profitable, that might be totally fine. However, using the example mentioned above, you’d need to invest $100,000 to acquire a thousand new leads for your business.
I’m sure you’d agree, that’s a sizable chunk of money to be placing in someone else’s bank account other than yours.
Let’s compare that to a partnership agreement, because there are no major costs. All you really have to invest is just a few hours, maybe setting up a tracking system, maybe write a few promotional emails, and away you go. Or maybe you might spend a few hundred dollars, create some brochures, and come up with a joint marketing campaign.
Number 3: Much More Effective
When you spend money on traditional marketing, most of the leads that are going to be coming your way are really cold. Even though they might want your product or service, they’re naturally going to be fairly skeptical. They’re going to be saying to themselves, “Who is this person? Can I really trust them? Why should I go with them as opposed to somebody else?”
However, when you enter a relationship with someone that does the promotion for you that already has established trust and credibility, what happens is that awesome “Brand Magic” automatically gets passed to you. From my experience it’s at least 10X more effective than if you go out there and try to dig up customers that are completely cold.
Not only are you going to be getting more leads, but these new leads that you’re going to obtain are going to be much easier to close. This means you’re going to shorten the sale cycle which means you’re going to be more revenue into your business faster. Moreover, it means you’ve got now these funds to reinvest in your business sooner creating an upward spiral of success.
Number 4: It Helps Your Customers
The reality is that your customers are going to go out there and seek other complimentary products and services — with or without your referral. Right now you’re not going to be getting anything for it. If you don’t refer them on to other people that you have a relationship with, then they’re going to waste time attempting to find the right fit for their needs. If they’re not careful, they may very well be taken for a ride by an unethical business.
You want to do the right thing by your customers. If you find a trustworthy business and you inform your customers about their product or their services, you’re going to be adding a huge amount of value to your customers — and they’ll love you for it. Remember, when your customers love you because of your help, they’ll come back more often and they’ll also tell more friends as a result.
Number 5: Good Karma for Your Brand
If you’re an up and coming business and you’re still largely unknown, partnership marketing is a great way to make yourself look bigger than you are. By displaying your logo along with your partner’s logos on your website and content, it’s going to boost your brand’s clout.
Additionally, it’s going to help to minimize the risk when other people are making decisions. They’ll probably be thinking, “Well, I haven’t really heard of these guys before, however I do recognize all these other companies. So if they’re supporting this business, then they must be okay.”
Not only will you benefit from having all these new leads coming into your business, but you’ll be better positioned to convert all of these new leads into paying customers. What you’re going to be doing is, again, creating another upward spiral for your business to grow.
In Summary
These are the five powerful reasons why partnership marketing makes sense for any business. This, for me, is such a powerful and proven strategy.
I encourage any entrepreneur to learn more about it and then begin to put these ideas into practice. If you master this marketing strategy, you’ll effectively be writing your own ticket to massive and lasting business success.
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