5 Tips For Attracting & Working With Strategic Marketing Partners

Strategic marketing partnerships, joint ventures and affiliate marketing arrangements providing cross promotion opportunities offer some of the best returns and widest reach for small business owners today. However, there is only one shot at making the right first impression and it pays to hone your targeting for the maximum ROI. So check out the following 5 tips for getting the most out of your efforts and realizing the best possible results.

1. Who Else Is Marketing To Your Ideal Prospects?

When seeking out strategic partners to collaborate with the first question you should be asking yourself is who else is already marketing to or has a following made up of your ideal prospects. This immediately limits the huge amount of time it can take to add to your own list, while simultaneously shaving marketing costs.

2. Non Competing Products

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that banging on the doors of your competitors and trying to get them to promote your product or service is just going to waste time and budget. Still, many small businesses are failing to target correctly and are doing just this. There can be synergy with companies who are in unrelated businesses but who are marketing to the same people you want to reach. However the easiest closes are often those within the same industry who get to double up on revenue by selling your product along with theirs whether it is bundled or an upsell.

3. What’s In It For Them

Your opening ought to be what you can do for them, not what they can do for you. Whether you are telemarketing, emailing or networking in person take a second to thin about what is most important to any potential partners and how you can help them solve it.

4. Breaking The Ice

It should be relatively easily to turn current business contacts and vendors into marketing partners, however they do not all necessarily have the lists or followings you want. At the same time reaching out to complete strangers can be profitable but also time consuming, with lots of nos for every yes. Consider breaking the ice or attracting other businesses to you using social media instead.

5. Be Prepared

Don’t just try and wing it. You only have once chance to come across as someone who they would want to partner with. So have a plan or program and stats on what you can do for them, or at least a good pitch. Make it easy and have materials ready for them to send out or affiliate links and software ready to roll or you will lose them if you appear unorganized or miss deadlines.

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