Marketing through partnerships & collaborations

http://bit.ly/1nxKrsK

"A partnership is an arrangement in which parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.”

Above is as per Wikipedia -> http://bit.ly/1svjrgs

A great way to market your business/product or service is through forming a partnership or collaboration and this can be anything that is going to benefit your business and the partner’s business. Businesses with similar synergies can have ‘an agreement’ to collaborate in relation to promoting each others’ businesses.

It can be another business which is similar to your own however the offering might be different, it can also be a business that you can contribute towards in way of promoting, networking, advertising, etc. For example: if you are an accountant then you might want to participate in a partnership or collaboration with a financial planner, an investment business, a mortgage broker and/or even a bank. You could also have multiple partnerships or collaborations and maybe have partnerships with all of the mentioned above as these are all businesses that some of your clients may want to deal with at some stage.

Partnerships or collaborations do not necessarily

have to be at a contract level with multiple lawyers veering for your money, partnerships can be ‘an agreement’ between two parties and this can be verbal or written as you and your partner wish. It can be a referral system as well, we all get asked all the time if we know someone that does ‘X’, or is there anyone you know that can do ‘this or that’ or ‘can you refer anyone that is really good at ‘this’ - fill-in the blanks as you see fit.

We are asked for referrals all the time and wouldn't it be great if we had an agreement with other businesses and doing exactly that - referring each other when the question is asked of us? Of course both parties have to have each others' trust and be happy with our clients doing business with this partner - after all we don't want to lose a client due to someone we referred to not doing the right by our client.

Believe me when I say that I am asked for referrals on a daily basis (and multiple times during the day at times), sometimes I have a positive response however other times I wouldn’t have a clue on who is great ‘landscaper’ for example and yes, I have been asked this - I don't even have a garden as I live in an apartment!

Nonetheless being able to refer another business that we are happy for our clients to deal with gives us another way of promoting our business and that of the partner’s business - if the partnership is a fair one then both parties would be benefiting from the partnership.

There are over 3000 groups on partnerships in LinkedIn - take a look, ask questions, start talking to some of the businesses you already trust and start collaborating to form partnerships.

What do you think about partnerships and collaborations, positives and negatives you may have encountered?