Getting Business Offline – Partnership Marketing
Most business owners who run Internet businesses heavily rely on generating a majority of their revenue from customers online. That means they are potentially missing out on opportunities found offline. This is why I want to explore in this post the idea of partnership marketing, which will compliment any Internet business.
What Is Partnership Marketing?
Partnership marketing is a strategic way to aligning one’s business with other organisations and businesses to equally expose partner brands to one another’s customers. Typically these partnerships are formed when two or more companies find value for their customers in each other’s products and/or their services. This type of partnership marketing is happening all the time on the Internet and an example online is John Chow’s partnership with Market Leverage. John Chow has an audience that Market Leverage can promote their products and services to, which in turn John Chow also receives greater exposure through Market Leverage’s existing client base. This makes it a win-win situation for both businesses.
Then we come back to the offline world and partnership marketing is about finding people who offer complementary services and products that work alongside your business or help expand the offering for your customers. Some more examples could be an arrangement between an electrician and a painter, or a hairdresser and a beautician. As you can see both businesses compliment each other and provide additional value to a consumer over and above their experience compared to just one product or service offered to them.
Where Can You Find These Partnerships?
The best way to find partnerships is to go about it the old fashion way – network with people by getting out, mixing and meeting them personally. It is about your brand being seen and the benefits are substantial. It gives you and your business the opportunity to:
- Introduce your brand, your products and services and your company background
- To learn new ideas and concepts for your business
- Find out what is happening in and outside of your market
- Meet new people
- Be referred
- Find new suppliers and consultants
- Generate new leads and prospects who could be your potential customers
- Connect with people who you know and like
- Increase your sphere of influence
Through networking you will be able to also establish new ideas and share your thoughts, so be prepared to listen and learn. It’s also a great way to present your Internet business in a personal way.
Why Is Partnership Marketing So Powerful That Makes It Work?
When we start our Internet business, we have found that finding a customer and building a relationship with them is the key to creating a sale. Without customers you do not have business. The same is true, without a relationship with potential business partners your Internet business will struggle to grow and it will eventually die. This is what makes partnership marketing so powerful. Most business relationships start off either in reputation or directly in sales by referral or word of mouth. In my personal experience, 80% of the business that comes into the Dragonboat business comes from referral or word of mouth due to the business relationships I have build with clients over the years. This is also known as third party endorsements and is usually spontaneous, objective, honest and free! Therefore it carries more weight than most other marketing tools available. Additionally I still believe that face to face contact is vital to any Internet business.
How To Manage Partnership Marketing Effectively?
When you establish a partnership with other business and create a program that will benefit your customers you will want to manage it correctly. Here are five tips to help you:
- Brainstorm what you can jointly sell and who can sell if for you. Are you finding businesses to partner with formally or informally? What other businesses around you have the same target market? What are your expectations of return on investment (ROI)?
- Find Your Partners that have already build a database and would benefit from your business offer. Your offer should be win-win for both businesses and the customer.
- Create great sales copy and provide your business partners with the sales pitch and the related promotional material. Make it easy for your business partners to promote your products and services. The less work they have to do the more likely they are to promote your business.
- Continue to look out for new business partners. Once you have established a few business partners, continue to recruit new partners to add to your business. It helps to cast your net out and to have back up business partners just in case others do nothing with your products and services.
- Look after your business partners. Contact them regularly, update them with new promotions and changes. Give them tips on how to successfully promote your products and services and how it will compliment their business.
Review and Monitor Your Partnerships.
Keep track of where you get your business from through scripts you can implement on your website or when you give a link to your business partners. Make sure you are measuring your responses from customers and to track your business partners who are bringing you the most traffic to your website. You can always reward them for their efforts when you are able to get good statistics and the results. That way you can be sure where to spend your time and resources on.
Good luck and get out there!
Tyrone Shum
Partnership Marketer
The Importance Of A Sitemap For Your Internet Business
Over the last few days I have been helping my clients submit their sitemaps to Google, Yahoo and MSN to inform search engines to crawl through their websites. What I have noticed is that sitemap submission is a much faster way for websites to be found in search engines rather than using the search engine submission tool provided. After speaking to a few people and my clients I have noticed that people are not aware of this process because it is not shared. I personally think that it does help and is a must do for any Internet business as part of their search engine optimisation strategy.
What Is A Sitemap?
I want to share with you the two types of Sitemaps. For the more technical terminology and detailed definition please read Google’s About Sitemap.
- Sitemap For Your Website
This is what Wikipedia defines the term Sitemap as:A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.
Additionally having a sitemap for your website will help any visitor browse through all sections at just one page, rather than clicking through to different parts of the website. You can see my sitemap and get an idea of what it looks like.
- Sitemap For Search Engines
There is a term that web developers refer to when creating sitemaps and it is called XML Sitemaps. Google introduced this term and it helps web developers publish lists of links from across their sites. Basically it is a simple version for search engines to use when they are crawling through any website. Currently Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask now jointly support this. You can view my Sitemap XML to see how it looks like. Since MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the XML Sitemap, it is wise to have one on your website in your parent directory. Though, the search engines do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee being indexed, it is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to find your website. Also, XML sitemaps have replaced the older method of “submitting to search engines” by filling out a form on the search engine’s submission page. Most web developers submit a sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.
The Importance Of A Sitemap
Easy Navigation
A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.
Having A Consistent Site Theme
When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.
Search Engine Optimisation
When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.
Organisation And Relevance
A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organised site with everything sorted according to their relevance.
This is why it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organised for everyone who uses your website.
For further information about sitemaps, visit sitemap.org
Tyrone Shum
Sitemapping My Websites
Butterfly Marketing & Membership Site Masterplan
Recently I was very excited to receive a special package in the post from the US. As most people know it takes at least a month to receive a mass produced item from a fulfilment centre in the US because International orders take time for them to fill. So I was very happy to receive it a week early! Check out my video to see:
Also I have a little something special for you to check out below, so keep reading as well…
Free eBook: Yaro Starak’s Membership Site Plan
As mentioned in my video a new eBook was released by Yaro Starak today. Yaro is a well respected blogger and Internet marketer that I admire.
His eBook is called the Membership Site Masterplan and as you would guess, it is a step-by-step guide for launching a profitable online membership site.
Visit Yaro Starak’s website to get a FREE copy of his Membership Site MasterPlan eBook.
In the report Yaro takes you through the following process:
- How to find topics for a membership site
- How to develop preeminence, which means people choose to join your membership site over all the other options
- What sources of traffic Yaro uses to bring members to his site and build his list
- What technology Yaro uses to deliver content (this is so simple, anyone can do it)
- How to make money from a membership site BEFORE you create the content for it
- How to fill your membership site with hundreds of new members in a matter of days by conducting a powerful, yet simple, launch campaign
- and much more…
Download Yaro Starak’s Masterplan here: Membership Site MasterPlan eBook.
Tyrone Shum
Starting A New Membership Site Soon!
Brendan Nichols Back In Sydney
Last Thursday evening, Pow Wow Events held a seminar in Sydney with Brendan Nichols titled, Make More Money in Your Business Now. I attended the seminar to see what new ideas Brendan would share and it was a fantastic night.
The seminar ran for 2 hours and it was a jam packed room filled with people from full time jobs all the way to small and medium businesses. A majority of the people were from small businesses and were looking for ways to improve their current business situation due to a slowing economy. I personally thought it was an excellent time to prosper because a lot of businesses were going under (not good for them) and therefore competition is reduced.
How I Came To Know Brendan Nichols?
I have known Brendan for about 2 years now, which was at the time I took over the Dragonboat business from my business partner. I have attended his events, been part of his Inner Circle program and generated a lot of cash for my businesses from his information. Brendan is known as Australia’s laziest entrepreneur and has worked with the likes of great business trainers such as Tom Hopkins and Robert Kiyosaki. The techniques he teaches is powerful and he’s used these same techniques himself to create three massively successful businesses. These businesses have produced large amounts of cash profits and required him to work less than 10 hours a week. A lifestyle most people dream of….
What Did Brendan Teach At The Seminar?
The most important idea that everyone would have learnt from the seminar is the Nexus Point. Here is how Brendan defines the Nexus Point:
The only time a business makes money is when engaged in the NEXUS POINT. The nexus point is when you or your agent (website, salesperson, advertising etc) meets a client or customer. While accounting, paperwork, team meetings etc are essential, none of these endeavours create a nexus point opportunity – the opportunity to make money. There are only two areas that create a nexus point: Sales and Marketing. These are the only two areas that can actually make you money.
“Marketing is getting them to the door, Sales is getting them through the door.”
Once again, the main focus of what a business owner must be doing daily is to focus on the activities that will bring in the sales and profits. The rest we should be delegating and outsourcing to others. Furthermore what I have realised over the years is that other people can do the same task better than myself and generate a better result. This leaves me to focus on sales and marketing for the business.
Other points Brendan briefly ran through that gave me more clarity that night were:
- The Morale Factor - a lot businesses are feeling scared and cutting their marketing expenses in this current economic climate. This means that competition has been reduced and many new business can come in quite easily to take market share.
- Create An Experience – consumers and your customers are willing to pay for a great experience and it is justified when you deliver.
- The Value 10 Principle – Create a product or service that you can deliver 10x the value of what they are paying for.
As always at the end of the seminar, Brendan promotes his Entrepreneur’s Boot Camp and the addtional products you can buy to help you achieve success. If you want to find more information, visit Brendan Nichols dot com.
Tyrone Shum
Catching Up With Brendan Nichols
Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: Your Future – Part 5
Over the last four posts we have been exploring the pillars of building a successful ecommerce business. If you have not read these posts, please visit them below as it will lay the foundation for this post:
Part 1: Find A niche
Part 2: Creating Content
Part 3: How To Write Quality Content
Part 4: Where To Market Your Website?
If you want to get more technical information about building an ecommerce website, please read: Moving Your Business Online.
We have discovered how important it is to research and find a niche market, and to build your ecommerce business from what the market demands rather than what you want. Then we discussed about creating unique content to attract the consumers to your ecommerce business and then learning how to write quality content using a step by step method. The second last phase was to market your website’s content and how to promote it virally to spread the information quickly on the web. Our final post is how an ecommerce business will impact your life and what will be the future of ecommerce.
The Impact Of Ecommerce On Your Life
Running a successful ecommerce business can be very rewarding and no doubt will provide you with financial stability, time freedom and the ability to pursue other interests. In my ecommerce business within the niche market of Dragonboating, I have been very able to dominate the industry by providing excellent customer service and meeting their needs. It has given me time to focus on other ventures that I am interested in and also the ability to purse my hobbies in my free time. To get it to this stage, I did apply the steps and systems I have discussed about in this series. If you take the time to follow through and apply everything that I have discussed about you will be on your way to running a successful ecommerce business. Whatever market you decide to purse, remember to take time out and balance your life with exercise, spirituality, personal hobbies and long term relationships with family and friends.
The Future Of Ecommerce
As we move forward in 2009 with a slowing economy there are greater opportunities that are beginning to appear. There will be businesses that fall away and disappear and the competition within those markets will start to shrink. Particular brick and mortar businesses who have higher overhead costs and staffing costs will feel the pinch even more. This is why there is a strong trend for entrepreneurs to start ecommerce businesses and to capture a greater market share. There is no doubt consumers will continue to spend, it is a matter of how well you can market your products and services and to provide them with excellent customer service. This is where I see the future of ecommerce and I have a very optimistic view that opportunities are everywhere.
Tyrone Shum
Optimistic About The Future Of Ecommerce
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