Creating Allies with Colleagues in Related Businesses
Not only is there power in collaborating with your colleagues, there is pleasure. What could be better than connecting in a way that helps both your business and theirs? Joint venture partnerships:
• Increase your exposure to prospects who fit your customer profile.
• Save you time and money, while making you money.
• Provide you with greater visibility and heightened awareness without having to pay the full tab (or sometimes, anything) for such benefits.
For instance, offer to include a flyer for a related business (one that complements your business, not competes with it) in your next customer mailing — in return, your joint venture partners do the same for you.
In Aspen, Colorado, three booster organizations pooled their resources to create a seven million dollar marketing budget for the ski resort town. The Aspen Chamber Resort Association, Stay Aspen Snowmass and Aspen Skiing Company worked together on some joint efforts as well as coordinated their individual campaigns.
In an article entitled, “Better Together,” Peter Frett said, “It’s about stretching your business opportunities through strategic alliances.”
Joint ventures and partnerships are two of the key affordable strategies blogging authority Michelle Shaeffer has used in marketing and growing her business. “What I love most about creating promotions, events, training and products with colleagues and friends is that it allows me to build in accountability, share the workload, and expand my own reach to new audiences,” explained Michelle.
“It also helps with the isolation that can happen when one works from home. It’s so much more fun and engaging to have someone to brainstorm and get creative with.” Some of the joint ventures she has participated in included partnering with colleagues to:
• Present list-building promotions (like the Ultimate Blog Challenge and holiday-themed giveaways).
• Host them on webinars presented to her subscriber list (and they reciprocated the favor, hosting Michelle on their webinars in return).
• Create trainings and workshops where her skills were complementary with theirs and therefore, together they made a better team and were able to deliver better value than either of them could have accomplished on their own.
• And more.
Are Your Values in Alignment?
When you are partnering with a colleague it’s important that you both have values that are in alignment with one another. In other words, is what you have to offer a good fit for the other person’s audience (and vice versa)? Are your goals, message, and business approach/philosophy in alignment with theirs (and vice versa)?
You each want to bring value to the table not only for one another, but for your customers and clients as well.
Coach and facilitator Adela Rubio has hosted numerous virtual events and more than 200 partnerships. She said, “Partnering helped me grow a really big list and make loads of money. But, I’ll be honest with you, that has not been the biggest gift of partnering. The biggest gift from partnering has been the relationships I created – people who started off as joint venture partners and we’ve actually become dear friends.”
Marketing is about building relationships. So what are you doing to collaborate and build those relationships with your colleagues? Please share you comments below because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks and here’s to your sweet success!
P.S. This is an excerpt from my upcoming book Millionaire Marketing on a Shoestring Budget(TM) due out in January 2015. Pre-order your copy here.
