Identify Your Partners
So you've done some good groundwork: the nitty gritty of stating your objectives, choosing your niche and defining your target market.
You've also positioned yourself by developing your brand and rigorously reviewing the competition.
Now you need to make sure that people will see your offering once it's out there.
And you must also ensure that they take you seriously when they do—and trust you enough to become a client or customer.
That's where partnerships can bring huge benefits—working with other businesses to expand your reach and scope.
If you thought word of mouth was important offline, think what happens when that word reaches millions of people through a network of partners online.
Find Your Friends
First things first—who are you going to partner with? You want to find people and organizations that reach your target market but don't directly compete with your offering.
If you have a site devoted to breeding zebra finches, for example, you'd want to partner with businesses that sold bird food, or made cages, or maintained a discussion board for finch enthusiasts.
And you probably don't want want to partner with other websites selling zebra finches.
You'll also want to choose partners that, ideally, have good credibility and a large audience, as well as easy ways of reaching it.
One measure of success? That you're proud to show off your list of partners.
In that case, do it: showcase them in your marketing materials—and especially on your website. High-profile partners make you look great by association.
Establish Your Relationships
Your relationship with your partners needs to be mutually beneficial.
It can take several forms, including:
- Advertiser-publisher: This one's pretty straightforward. You pay your partner money to run ads or content that you submit. They run the ads, you pay on a cost-per-thousand, cost-per-click or other basis, and (hopefully) everyone wins.
- Affiliate-publisher: With an affiliate relationship, you pay a commission to your partner in exchange for driving traffic to your site or making a sale. You can use affiliate networks like Commission Junction or ClickBank. Or you can go small and intimate, and work out individual relationships with individual people and businesses.
- Quid pro quo: Here, both parties get something of value from the other—like an exchange of links. Or an exchange of ads in an e-mail newsletter. This can even extend to article marketing, where you provide free—and liberally hyperlinked—articles relevant to your industry that provide your partner with valuable content and drive traffic back to your site.
Launch Your Initiatives
What kind of activities might you and your partners engage in? Here are some ideas:
- Run a banner advertisement on a partner's site. Banner ads may offer low return on investment—and they're pretty traditional and unsexy—but they have the advantage of being highly visible and easily measurable.
- Run text links on a partner's site. These are hyperlinks that are embedded within the site's content—less intrusive than a banner ad, and arguably more effective at encouraging click-throughs. Properly formatted, they can also boost your ranking with search engines.
- If your partners have a blog or maintain an email list, have them tell their audience directly about you, your company or your offering. (And, in the spirit of mutually beneficial relationships, you then do the same for them.)
- Provide your partners with articles and other content that adds value to their offering. Blog posts, reviews and articles all raise your company's profile, and you can include hyperlinks back to your site to improve your search rankings.
Maintain Your Connections
Once you start working with partners, you'll want to keep an eye out for those delivering the most benefit. Good analytics can help, as they'll show which partners drive the most traffic and sales.
You'll also want to cultivate your relationships. It's not enough just to have great partners. You need to work with them in a consistent, responsible and productive way.
If you aren't trustworthy—if it isn't easy and rewarding to work with you—word may get around. And then you'll be like the lone kid on the seesaw—no one will want to play with you.
Remember, you're not creating partnerships just to meet your needs—although that's certainly an important aspect. You must give value to get value.
The point of working with other people and other businesses is to forge long-term relationships—creating powerful synergies that are ultimately greater than the sum of their partners.
What's Next?
Now that you've identified your partners, it's time to pick the right media for your message.
What Do You Think? Post a Comment to Join the Conversation
Download Your FREE Copy of Instant Content Optimization Now!
Discover proven techniques that successful internet marketers use to write high-performance ads, websites and landing pages.
(Or learn more before you download.)
With Instant Content Optimization, you also get free content optimization tips and tools as an exclusive member of our low-volume email list. (We never spam, sell or rent your address, and you can unsubscribe with a single click whenever you like.)
