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Developing Effective Marketing Partnerships
We're seeing more and more interest in marketing partnerships. Effective partnerships can help you acquire new customers, better serve current customers and enhance your brand perception. Use these six steps to make the most of your partnership efforts:
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Set goals. Sounds obvious, but it's easy to strike up a partnership just because a company or organization approaches you. Be clear with your objectives – is it for customer acquisition or retention, awareness, brand enhancement, or to develop new products? Have specific targets for each goal, such as the number of leads you want to generate or partnerships to develop. |
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Assess potential partners. Develop a set of partner criteria and rate each candidate on their ability to bring you high-quality prospects, the fit with your brand or the appeal of their offerings to your customers. Based on the sum of those ratings, you can prioritize what partners to approach. |
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Develop concepts. Before you reach out to partner candidates, develop a set of partnership concepts to bring to them. For example, do you want to market to their customers or do a prospecting roadshow together? Be clear on what you can offer as well, such as a commission or ongoing revenue share for customers they provide to you. |
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Negotiate. Actually getting a partnership going can be the trickiest part. Make it as compelling as you can for the candidate to want to partner with you, but decide beforehand what you won't accept so you can walk away if the deal doesn't work for you. |
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Promote. Once the partnership is under way, let others know about it. Promote it in all of your ongoing communications, but also consider dedicated promotion if it is a significant partnership or part of a suite of partner offerings. |
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Monitor results. Like any relationship, partnerships require ongoing effort. Assess each partner's performance regularly, say once every quarter, half or even year. Take action if a partnership isn't meeting your goals, either by working with the partner to improve the results or replacing the partner with another. Try new promotions and add new partners to keep the program fresh. |
Contact us to learn how Bredin can help you develop effective marketing partnerships.
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