To all successful businesses…
As a business or even an industry it’s easy to think that you are successful at what you do, and that is enough for future growth. You’ve grounded your company in the best foundations, put the right infrastructure in place and created a robust and well-structured strategy that will sustain the future of your business. But have you missed something?
In this article I want to talk about the power of collaborative business partnerships (often called a Partnership Programme). Because two heads are quite often – better!
Strategic partnerships occur when two companies decide the best next step for their successful business to take is to combine forces. The key here is – you need to be successful to attract a partnership opportunity! Opening up mutually beneficial opportunities such as co-branding and advocacy marketing will add value to your company’s offerings, increase brand awareness and boost brand trust. If you think about how great friendships start it’s usually when you are recommended to someone, or introduced by someone you trust; so it is in business too. If you happen to land on a company that is transparent about its collaborative business approach, trust is subliminally already up a level (or two). One of the greatest examples is Apple and Mastercard. When Apple released their Apple Pay App they needed a credit card company to integrate with the technology. It revolutionised how people make transactions and the customer was the priority in this collaboration.
Strategic partnerships are nothing new.
Companies have been collaborating for a long time. Each partner brings a different set of values, priorities, resources and competencies – but often share the same goals. The challenge of any partnership is to bring these diverse contributions together, and decide on what those common goals are. But, so often businesses look for partnership opportunities for the wrong reason, mostly financial gain being the main driver. Without the customer in mind these businesses are simply looking inward and losing sight of their original goals. When any business is born it will intelligently position itself in a sector that needs what it can provide. Having this strong customer focus is what drives successful businesses. Lose that and you become a simple trader with no vision or heart.
So here’s the thing.
The common goal should be simple – add value to what you provide for your customers, for their benefit. Approaching the partnership vision in this way draws the right partners together and you become companies on different paths but with the same destination.
Get to know your potential partner.
It is also important that partners recognise and accept that each company will be looking for benefits that will be specific to them. When potential partners spend time getting to know each other they deepen their understanding of each other’s priorities. Increasingly a good partnering agreement will reflect the right of each partner to achieve specific goals as well as common goals.
What’s the best approach?
There are different types of business partnerships, including the Shared Customer Database
model which gives access for each partner to new customers, and embedded in this is an opportunity for free promotion. Pairing with another business in this way enables reaching out to their clients as well. This is an incredibly effective marketing strategy, and used by many in the form of co-promotion activities such as solus email campaigns.
However, my recommended and preferred model is the Referral Partnership which provides deeper benefits longer term. Let’s explore these a bit more.
Referral partnership
A referral partnership provides the opportunity to offer each other’s customers and clients different but equally beneficial services or solutions, additional to what they are already purchasing. The customer/client already knows you, so they should trust you to recommend other relevant services. This ‘added value’ message is extremely powerful to the customer/client as they are being offered more of what they need without having to look for it. For example, this may simply be professional expert advice on a business area that you don’t have the particular expertise in, or it may be a complimentary service to the ones you provide, and keeping their needs front of mind is paramount to this type of partnership. There can be a referral account commission included in the agreement, it doesn’t always need to be from both sides.
There are many advantages:
Brand reputation
Partnerships work in many ways to spur growth and attention for your business; the most important aspect is accepting the right partner. This type of business collaboration requires trust and validation. Your brand’s reputation is being tested with this type of association, therefore making the right choices means aligning business values, goals and ethics between both parties. Referred customers will be looking for the same service levels, industry standards and customer care they are used to experiencing. Get it right and the partnership will serve to increase your brand credibility, as people see that you work well with others and you’ll achieve genuinely earned organisational reputation and greater credibility.
Brand awareness
Because both businesses are effectively acting as a brand influencers, (and by this I don’t mean ‘liking’ every post) via well-constructed marketing plans you are collaboratively feeding more people with interest in your brand via organic curiosity. Simply by having a digital presence on each other’s websites the increased SEO will draw traffic to you, and leveraging from a strong marketing strategy in your partnering firm will boost your visibility.
Brand loyalty
You want happy customers who promote your services. By establishing roots with other credible companies, you increase the chance of brand loyalty which naturally gives rise to brand advocacy. Encouraging word of mouth is still one of the most powerful tools to include when marketing your business.
Access to knowledge and people expertise
By partnering with credible firms, who are well established as industry leaders in their sector, you will have access to their knowledge bank and talent. You’ll get insights that are valuable to your business and your target audience, as well as answers to questions you may not have been able to provide.
Lots to think about here, but if you take one thing from this – keep it simple, keep it customer benefit driven.
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