Foundation Marketing: Sponsor Your Community

Over these next few weeks I’ll be posting this entire series detailing my strategies on effectively developing strategic partnerships in your community.

I believe that developing strategic partnerships is one of the fastest and most cost effective ways of building your business. It should be one of the foundation elements that receive continual focus with direct goals in every quarter.

Now one of the big problems with strategic partnerships is that local businesses are constantly approached or solicited by others to do things, display things or post things that help other people grow their business. For the business being approached this generally just takes up valuable space and is a waste of time with little to no reciprocal benefit which is why so many businesses won’t talk to you or have a standard practice of saying no.

Here are my five steps to overcoming this. Go with a giving hand and deliver real value that leads to mutually beneficial relationships.

1. Interview the Expert
2. Sponsor Your Community
3. The Charity Lunch & Learn
4. Cross Promotion
5. Revenue Share Programs

In this post we’re going to cover the second step, which is to Sponsor Your Community.

Ok in this step you’re going to re-approach the interviewed experts from step 1.

We’re going to further enhance our relationship with them by “sponsoring them.” There’s a couple different ways we can do this, but the premise will be a low-cost (or free can often be better) trial offered to them or a select group of their customers as a reward and recognition for being someone doing something great in the community.

Generate materials to give it the right feel. For example I recommend generating a certificate and even putting it in a frame to recognize that you feel they stand out in the community. Then generate some small vouchers that explain the trial program. An example might be the “21 Day Hairdresser Boot Camp” where if the sponsored business was a salon you would invite each of the stylists to try your boot camp for 21 days as a reward for being awesome.

A program like this may have immediate value for the business owner as it’s a perk or reward for their team that had no cost to them, something that provides them additional value just for working there. In addition even if none of these stylists did anything other than attend your trial you know this audience converses with people all day long and by virtue should provide you with referrals (more on this in a future post.) Truly if you over deliver in that 21 days it should be easy to convert a few of the staff to ongoing customers.

Your offer could also be extended to provide so many vouchers to be given to top or favourite customers, further enhancing the value in the form of a thank you or an appreciation. With no cost to the business this is a high value way for them to want to send you customers.

At this stage you really have pushed the envelope of creatively creating a mutual win-win. Businesses are skeptical and reluctant so be persistent. This is why this is step 2 as first completing the interviews will ensure a stronger positive response as each steps comes closer to direct cross promotion.

Next time we’ll discuss The Charity Lunch & Learn.