National Clothesline

Making marketing a joint effort

By Neil Schroeder

A few days ago, I walked into my local drycleaners to drop off some shirts and pants for a meeting. I found a $5.50 off coupon on the counter for the pizza shop in the same shopping center, which is across from my house.

Pizza sounded good. It was a long day and I didn’t feel like cooking when I got home from all of my errands. So I grabbed the coupon and walked down to the pizza place. To my amazement, there was a 20 percent off coupon on their counter for the drycleaners I was just at.

These two establishments were sending prospects and traffic to each other. They had formed a strategic business alliance. In the world of Guerrilla Marketing, this is known as fusion marketing.

As business owners, we always think we have to do everything alone. It can be quite daunting. Fusion marketing can take your business to levels that you never thought possible. There is an amazing synergy that comes from collaborating with others for a common goal — the goal of more customers.

So whom should you collaborate with? Who are your likely candidates?

Power partners are the answer. A power partner is a business that has a similar target market as yours but doesn’t really compete with you. Examples might be the drycleaner and the pizza place; a graphic designer and a printer; a realtor and a mortgage broker; or a wedding photographer and a disc jockey. The number of these power partners are only limited to your imagination.

Fusion arrangements can come in many forms. You can join your mailing list with your partners and do a joint mailing; you can make joint sales calls; you both can offer incentives for each purchase of your product and vise-versa for your partner.

Here are some easy steps to setting up your own fusion marketing arrangement:

Step 1: Define your partners. Like I have listed above, a power partner is someone who has similar prospects and customers as you and can benefit from those same types of prospects, but isn’t in the same business.

Think for a few minutes about who you have in your shopping center or close to your plant. Now write them down. Look for the similarities in prospects, not so much in business.

Step 2: Figure out with your power partner what your offer will be. Maybe a printer gives a two-for-one offer while the designer offers a logo free with any design piece. Maybe a massage therapist offers a free midday half-hour massage and the chiropractor offers a discounted back adjustment. Figure out what joint offer makes sense to both of you.

Remember, you don’t have to make a killing in profit on this coupon. You’re looking to get people in your door, and hopefully to come back without a discount.

Step 3: Write up a general letter of agreement. This doesn’t need to be an act of congress, or require hiring a lawyer, but the one thing that hinders an alliance is the lack of communication. This assures who does what and gets what. A simple typed up document and initialing it will suffice.

Step 4: Package it up. Write all the verbiage; the marketing copy, sales letter, press release, e-mail letters, etc. Have both of you write it up and compare notes, or have one of you write it while the other approves it. Be creative and be benefit-oriented. Keep this question always in mind when writing any offer… What’s in it for the prospect?

Step 5: Combine mailing lists and communicate to both sets. Get both lists and combine them. It doesn’t matter which list is larger. Do this for direct-mail or e-mail marketing. This will also force you to keep clean lists and get more information from your customers and prospects.

Step 6: Be responsive to ANY responses. Fulfill offers, always make it easy to sign up (if you’re working with a route offer) and buy your product. Follow up so your customers come back after they have redeemed the offer. Follow-up and attention will convert prospects and first time customers into long-term paying customers.

Step 7: Follow up. Both businesses should continue marketing to each of the converted people as follow-up marketing. Get them back, get them to come back more often and get them to spend more each time they do.

That’s really about it. This is a straightforward set of deliberate, planned-out steps, with a high degree of communication and execution. That’s all that marketing is. That is what we try to instill in our members. The more your plan is spelled and planned out, the greater the chance someone will act upon it. This is the key to marketing. Not everything is going to happen over night, but with steps and plans, you WILL increase your revenue.

Neil Schroeder has over 15 years experience in the advertising and marketing industry and has provided marketing and design for some Fortune 500 companies. He has consulted on-location for top drycleaners in the U.S. and is currently the senior partner of the Golomb Group. For more information, phone (800) 833-0560 or visit golombgroup.com. His e-mail is NeilS@golombgroup.com.