Creating Business Partnerships

I was reading through a 2020 social media industry report the other day and came across a section that caught my attention. The heading was, “Grew Business Partnerships.” Okay, not life-shattering, but the sentence under it was kind of life-shattering or at least profit-shattering for a business. Their survey revealed that most marketers underuse social media to grow partnerships. My question is “Why?” It seems so simple, it is Cross Marketing 101. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized as a business owner myself that it takes time to groom those relationships, to make sure the business partnership complements both businesses, and to actually follow through with posting on social media. Sometimes we get so busy as business owners, that we often overlook and underuse what is right in front of us.   The internet and social media have given us the ability to reach more clients than we could ever imagine a few decades ago, but we can’t forget about forming strategic partnerships with those in our own community.  Partnerships are a great way to get businesses out of that funk or plateau and give it new life for little to no money. Ann Gatty from AllBusiness wrote a blog about this back some time ago. “Strategic partnerships can be beneficial for businesses with limited resources. When two companies that complement one another don’t have the funds to expand the way they would like to or to reach the markets they wish to, they can form a strategic alliance to help accomplish their goals.” Personally, I think strategic partnerships are good whether you have limited funds or not. Partnering with another reputable company automatically creates an additional sense of stability and reputation for a business. That is, of course, as long as you partner with a stable and reputable business. Do your homework before entering a relationship with a business and make sure their core values match up to your core values. What does a business partnership look like?

• Let your followers know about it by promoting one another’s posts or blogs. One suggestion from SocialMediaToday is to say something like, “Check out this blog on ______ written by our friends at ___________.”
• Tag one another in posts. My husband is a homebuilder; when we post a picture of a completed room, we tag our suppliers.

There are many other ways to benefit from a strategic partnership. If you are ready to take your business to the next level and create a business partnership, contact CyberSpyder Marketing Services today and let them help you create a detailed marketing plan for your business and potential strategic partnerships.