When it comes to your marketing, I have two words for you:
Partner up.
It’s natural to think we have to do this all ourselves. After all, it’s OUR business. Why should anyone else be interested in helping us promote ourselves?
Because there’s something in it for them too!
That’s what honest commerce is all about, creating that win-win.
It’s just that in the case of your marketing, it isn’t a case of the professional service provider wins and the client wins … it’s you win and your strategic partner wins.
And since you’re providing a stellar service, your client wins too. Yea! Win-win-win.
There are four variations on theme here when it comes to how this partnering can work.
The first is a straight, plain vanilla strategic partnership. It’s an arrangement you make with businesses or individuals who provide a service/product to the same target market you do, but in a non-competing area. Examples: a business lawyer may have a CPA as a strategic partner. An estate planning lawyer may have a family law attorney as a strategic partner. You refer to each other. Simple, and yet, these arrangements can be wildly effective.
The second is a co-marketing arrangement. Say you align nicely with someone in a complementary business. There’s a natural synergy there.
Examples: a contractor might align with businesses in areas such as tile, flooring, painting, etc. A pet store might have a co-marketing partner that does pet photography.
You can co-promote yourselves and share the cost of the promotion … like McDonald’s and Coke do. You can do joint speaking engagements. You can feature both businesses on the same print material … the same ads.
The difference here is you’re more of a team than simply referral partners.
Now, here’s one you likely haven’t thought about. Content partners.
There are a lot of bloggers, newsletter publishers, and others in need of on-line content who’d be delighted to publish your articles and blog posts that highlight their line of business in some way that’s beneficial to them. In return, they provide you with valuable links back to your website, resulting in greater visibility to you and your business.
And then there’s one more twist. You can assemble a coalition of networking/referral partners where service providers in MANY different specialties come together to help support and refer business to each other. Such a group might include a lawyer, a CPA, a banker, an insurance broker, a real estate broker, a financial planner, a business coach, etc.
The group can meet regularly to discuss marketing strategies … pitches to specific target clients, co-presenting opportunities, new business opportunities, etc.
The bottom line: You don’t need to go it alone. There are lots of opportunities to collaborate and share the load, which makes your marketing efforts not only a lot easier, but more fun as well.
There’s energy in these natural synergies. Take advantage of them.
Partner up.