In traditional business there is a lot of emphasis placed on competition. We do a competitive analysis, we strategize on competitive positioning, and how to beat the competition. While its always good to know who and what other offerings are available to your customer, that whole approach fosters a mentality of scarcity and pits people and companies against each other. If we truly accept the idea of abundance than we accept the idea that there is enough to go around for everyone. We also accept the fact that we each have a unique and distinct offering and that there is someone out there that wants what we have to offer. It is our uniqueness that attracts our customers to us and the uniqueness of another company that attracts their customers to them.
Feeling confident in this allows us to switch from a business focus of competition and win-lose to one of collaboration and win-win. With this type of collaborative approach we view each “competitor” instead as a potential “partner”. I know it’s hard sometimes. It’s easy to fall into that mindset of comparing ourselves against others and judging who we are and what we have to offer against others. But if we can focus on the needs of our customers and who else can compliment our offerings and help our customers to be successful, we have a lot of opportunities for expanding our reach with cooperative marketing.
Here are some ideas for introducing cooperative marketing into your campaigns:
Joint Venture – team with another company to co-develop a product such as a live event, a book, or seminar. This is different from being a guest at someone else’s event where you are promoting to the host’s customers/audience usually in exchange for the host receiving a commission or later being invited to promote to your platform.
Guest Host – invite someone to guest host a webinar, live event, or be a guest blogger on your site. This will attract the guest’s audience to your event and expose you to their fans and vice-versa.
Affiliate Promotion – select other companies to help promote your product or services to their customer list in exchange for a commission. You can also do the same for them and receive commissions.
Co-Promotion – share a marketing campaign with another company or group of companies. This works well with products or services that are complimentary to yours. This can be helpful for your customers if you are offering only one piece of the puzzle for success; for example you offer a financial planning strategy and another company offers a software tool that supports your methodology.
These are just a few ideas. With a little ingenuity in the innovative marketing department you can come up with a lot of variations of these co-operative marketing examples to expand your marketing reach, help your customers, and build relationships in your industry.
Next week we’re starting a new month and will spend the month discussing feminine leadership.
Until then remember true wealth comes from within.
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