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Utilizing The Power Of Strategic Business Partnerships

Guest post by: Jeremy Edsall

Article Overview: In tough economic times businesses need to effectively utilize their marketing dollars. Using strategic business partnerships can save you hundreds of dollars a year, and help you find new customers in new places. These relationships can be created in a short time and can span years or just for a single event.

Utilizing The Power Of Strategic Business Partnerships

Corporations know the value of partnerships. In fact many of them couldn't function without the many other smaller businesses that provide needed parts and services. Years ago I worked for a transportation company that served General Motors as its main client. A fleet of trucks would travel the eastern part of the U.S. and extended into Canada picking up needed parts to build GM vehicles. General Motors was using a just in time production model so when a needed part ran out it could shut down production. At one point parts had to be flown in so the assembly line could start to move again. Corporations also partner against larger rival companies in order to survive. Small computer companies and part suppliers have join together in the past to compete against larger companies like Apple and Mircrosoft. This can be of benefit to the larger companies to a degree if they cannot fill demand for the entire market; it takes the slack off, so to speak. Companies use SBP's in marketing all the time. A soft drink company may partner with a snack food company on an advertising campaign.

You don't need to be a General Motors, or Microsoft to utilize SBP's, there are opportunities for any size business to create these relationships. A restaurant can partner with a local school. A small business can partner with other businesses in the area. A business could save hundreds of dollars just by doing cooperative advertising with other local businesses. As a young man delivering newspapers an enterprising business woman paid me to insert her business flyer into the Sunday newspaper, a good place for her advertisement to be seen.

Your SBP's can be long standing or created for just one event. Organizations partner with businesses this way for fund-raising. A scout troop partners with a convenience store for a car wash on a Saturday to take advantage of business traffic. The business gains traffic from all the extra cars pulling into their parking lot and many of those additional customers may grab a soda and hot dog while waiting.

At SMS Marketing we've created a small business marketing network which utilizes the Internet and web pages to promote and drive traffic to local businesses. The benefit of the program is essentially two-fold. First business links appear on all network pages so someone searching a page has the opportunity to visit other pages as well. Secondly, everything that is done within the network helps everyone else involved. On the Internet the key to success is getting your page seen, and this involves associations and relationships. I tell my clients it's all about who you know and how good the relationship is when it comes to search engine optimization. Within the network if one page is ranking higher than essentially all the links within that web site are ranking higher and have a better opportunity to be seen. Also we have done some traditional print advertising to promote our business as well as client businesses that promotes the businesses already involved.

In tough economic times every business no matter how big or small needs to effectively market while getting the best value for their advertising dollars. Our affordable web Market Sites is a program that is cost effective and taps into both a business network but also social media networks, as clients receive marketing on large social networking sites and video media sites. Clients have gone from no web presence to high page rankings on Google in just a few weeks. We assist our clients in their web marketing by essentially managing it for them on a monthly basis. This allows them to better serve their customers in doing what they do best.

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Article Tags: advertising, business partnerships, marketing, relationships



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