If you want to elevate and grow your business, you should consider partner advertising. This type of advertising is quite simple and you with relative little work get started and best of everything, very inexpensive. Below will you find a 5 step guide to get started and some real life examples for inspiration?
- Find out which values your business represents.
- Who are your customers? (Which demographic profile do they have and where to they live)
- Why do customers shop with you?
- Why do they like about your product?
If you do not know this already, you should ask your customers. There are some simple yet great free survey tools, which can use to learn about what other people think of your business.
- Start scouting for potential companies, you should look for companies which shares your:
- Brand values
- Customer target group
- Strategic targets
Say you are the lucky owner of a furniture store; you should probably look for businesses that are in the interior business. Such related businesses could sell paint, kitchens, lighting, flooring or maybe interior design consultants.
- Consider how this company, can help your business and how to can help them. You need to think of this as a two-way deal, it has to work for both of you. You are in the market to increase your turnover, by getting more traffic and / or increasing basket size. There is a number of activities to consider, below is some examples:
- Create a referral program
- Use each other mailing lists
- Is co-branding an option
- Advertise a free sample
- Advertise the experience / consultancy of the other business
- Consider an in-shop display
- Before you approach another company, work on your pitch, practice your story. You can use the below point, when you work on your pitch.
- Prepare a one-pager summary of the concept
- Highlight this can be done with no budget or a shoe string budget
- Do not oversell this. It will not grow the turnover from 100 to 100.000.000
- Be fact based. Share insight about your company, like displaying who your customers are to show how the two businesses match each other.
- Respect a concept like this takes time to implement and probably a couple of swings before perfected.
- Accept you are not the smartest guy in the room, be humble yet confident.
- When you meet, ensure you act professional through the entire meeting, not just during the pitch. Show your passion.
Which partner advertising tactics to use?
When you have decided on partner marketing, is there a number of tactics you can choose from. Below are there a few examples of what these tactics are and how they work:
Referral program
The good old word of mouth method is still valid and fantastic. In a world where you as an individual are exposed to thousands of marketing impressions each day, do you as a marketer have to be very good to make your impressions last with your targets?
A good method is establishing referral program, where you lead your customers to your partners business and the other way around. It is simplest format do you simply advise your customer to go to that particular business.
You can decide with your partner how you compensate each other, do you charge back per customer or do simply trade leads.
Mailing lists
Do you have a mailing list? If not you should get one. When you have what you can discuss with your partner how you can benefit from utilizing each other’s list.
I will advise you to advertise your marketing partners products in you newsletter, write a positive recommendation about the product. Hopefully is your newsletter digital, if not get it fixed, then you can lead traffic directly into your partners website or e-shop. Or maybe you advertise the customer can pick-up a coupon or sample at your store? There is a lot of option, consider what is best for your business.
Co-branding
This format is often used by major companies where they partner up and combine their brands to create a very attractive product. So is this solely for major brands? Nope!
Get some inspiration from my local McDonalds, they partner up with the local sport team. This means on game day all McDonalds is wearing the team jersey, moreover can you purchase a meal, where McDonalds donates an amount to the sports team as a sponsorship.
This is cleaver, because both McDonalds and the sports team benefit from this. McDonalds wins on the image part, where they cultivate their local offset, get awareness and visibility in the arena. The sports team gets a sponsorship (cash), awareness and publicity.
If you translate this to your business, you can maybe probably go very local with this. Engage with a local soccer or hockey team, market one of your products as a “hockey team product” and donate a x to the team and wear jerseys in your store and let the hockey team advertise your product in the media channels (email, newsletter, arena)
What happens if you cross two channels? Say you are a florist and you partner up with a local sports team or charity.
- Brand a bouquet of flowers with the colors of the sports team or charity
- Each party promote the product in the email channel
- You get awareness and trial
- You donate an agreed portion of your turnover to the team or charity
- You or the charity agree on a press release which the team or charity submits to the local media
I have no doubt, that this works. You get more customers to your store with very little cost. Your biggest investment is time!
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