Owning a business on Cape Cod, you constantly hear about the importance of being involved in the community. Everything you hear about the value of engaging with others in the community is true and if you strategically plan your efforts, you can generate specific returns. Local partnerships are a cost-effective strategy to drive awareness and sales in your market. Forming strategic partnerships with fellow local entrepreneurs allows you to share and gain knowledge that helps grow your business. You can even expand your customer base.
Before you do anything, take a step back and decide what you want to achieve (new customers, increased sale levels, repeat sales, etc.). All too often, we see businesses supporting local charities or partnering with other businesses just because they think it’s the right thing to do. It is, but if you decide in advance what you want out of the relationship, you will find better partners and get measurable results. Here are some tips on how to use these local partnerships:
- Enhance your customer experience: identify partner businesses that your customers need when they buy from you. A local moving company partnered up with a self-storage company, helping ensure that their common customers had a seamless experience. A mattress company could partner with a business that sells linens, a fashion shop with a local jeweler and more. In this case, the goal is to make the customer experience different from that of your competition and also better.
- Share Space: one of the biggest expenses of any business is space rental. So look for other businesses that are complementary to yours and who also have extra space. That’s what Fleeting Moments Photography did when they moved into space also used by Mermaids on Cape Cod. Fleeting Moments gained a terrific studio space and Mermaids benefits from the rent reduction, access to a great photographer and customer traffic. We see businesses that might not have a public taking extra space in a related business that does have a public face. When businesses are complementary they can then run joint events and merge some of their marketing initiatives.
- Amplify your brand story: stage Pop-Up events with other local businesses or artisans as a means to further define your brand and offer your customers something new all the time. You might consider an ongoing schedule of pop-up events to keep customers coming back to see what’s new. Look for businesses where you can run joint marketing programs that will benefit all partners.
- Optimize Your SEO with Joint Social Media Shout Outs: having local partners can significantly improve your SEO and help customers find your website. Identify other businesses that have the same customer as you and field a joint social media effort. Make sure that links go directly to your website and do the same for your partners. Not only does this strengthen your SEO effort but you will also attract new customers. Create a strong network of partners so this can be an ongoing effort and benefit all of you. Create content around the partnerships. If you are doing a local charity partnership, interview leaders of the charity and talk about what you are doing for them (and also your customers).
- Drive traffic: consider cross offers at a nearby business to drive traffic into both businesses. For example: a florist can provide a flower arrangement for a nearby restaurant to display the caliber of work and leave a leaflet with information and a discount or other offer for restaurant customers. At the same time, the restaurant can provide the florist with a similar leaflet and offer and at certain times of the day, have a sample tray at the florist or for walk-by traffic. In this case the two businesses have similar goals and they are complementary partners.
The key is that good partners and even good non-profit sponsorships should have a strategic reason for being aligned. A strong community program will not only help you achieve your specific goals but it’s also a cost effective way to differentiate yourself from competition and give your customers one more reason to be loyal to you.
Need help with this or other business questions? SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands provides free, confidential mentoring. Contact us at capecodscore@verizon.net, at 508-775-4884 or on our website at www.capecod.score.org