Attract and Retain Customers with Partner Marketing

Posted by m4bmarketing under Marketing
From http://www.m4bmarketing.com 5564 days ago
Made Hot by: HeatherStone on August 20, 2009 4:04 pm

Partner marketing is really another way of saying, proactively teaming up or partnering with other small businesses to increase sales.Whilst it is not a new concept, it is generally conducted by many small businesses by accident. They use it as short term promotional offer versus it being proactively planned and implemented.

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Comments

Written by ShawnHessinger
5560 days ago

This can also be an added benefit of social media. And this is why using your LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever just as a free place to post little ads is so shortsighted. It's also why blogging works so well. You not only locate customers. You may also locate and develop relationships with business partners who may need your services AND have connections to a huge reservoir of additional customers you might never have reached or even known about otherwise.

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Written by MoxieWorks
5562 days ago

I advocate this when I speak to groups - I have found that without a plan they are not quite able to start this idea. I have taken to finding matches myself for small businesses - or at least helping them track them down.

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Written by ShawnHessinger
5563 days ago

Susan,

Collaborative approaches with other small businesses can allow you to leverage incredible resources that might have taken an independent entrepreneur years to build up. Communications and distribution channels, complementary products you didn't have the time or resources to develop on your own. You name it. All are possible when small entrepreneurs team up. Don't worry about there being more slices of pie to divide. Instead, remember that the pie you would have baked on your own would have been much smaller.

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Written by m4bmarketing
5563 days ago

Shawn, you are so right. I think this approach should be actively pursued when starting a business. The other thing is that you get to have others to learn from, bounce ideas off etc which is necessary when you have a small business.

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Written by lyceum
5564 days ago

As an experienced purchaser I am interested in these ideas. Do you know how many companies (percentage) are working in tight partnerships regarding marketing activities? Is it different approaches in different countries?

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Written by m4bmarketing
5564 days ago

Hi Martin,

Don't you ever sleep?

These are really good questions, however unfortunately I do not know the answers. I do think that larger companies tend to have a more strategic approach. Or at least the companies I used to work for did.

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