Partnership Marketing Now Means Sharing Your Audience

Partnership marketing has been around for a long time. It wasn’t uncommon for Bill Smith’s Plumbing Service to get ad dollars from a big brand such as Kohler for Yellow Page ads if in fact Bill Smiths Plumbing carried Kolher bath and kitchen plumbing fixtures. The ad sort of gave Bill Smith’s plumbing a leg up as being a quality contractor due to the brand association with Kohler. However, the ads were ads, one way marketing.

That model worked pretty well until consumers changed the direction of how they shop, or, more specifically, how they start their search for what they are shopping for. Channel Advisor states in a White Paper, How Consumers Shop Online:

Eighty one percent of consumers begin their product searches with Google and 11 percent begin with Yahoo. (This should convince you how important it is for your site to be listed on Google Local, as well as appear high in the Google search engine results.)

A New Way to Partner: Sharing the Audience

Big brands and local brands are still interested in you and your business. Mike Whaling from 30 Lines Marketing summed it up nicely during an interview on a partnership marketing project they are doing for a client, University Village.

Partnership marketing has traditionally been about sharing advertising … now it is more about sharing audience.

University Village, a student housing provider in Columbus, Ohio, tailored a VIP program, where they negotiated deals and discounts with local venders for their residents that align with their brand and target demographic. The cool spin to this is that they incorporated  a social media element by adding Foursquare buttons to each of the ads.

Our own company (Urbane Apartments) recently partnered with Vitamin Water and Sharpie Pens during a local festival to create Hydration Galleries, and landed on Sharpie’s Web Site;

Our friends at Urbane Apartments coordinated an area of R&R for attendees of Michigan’s Arts Beats & Eats fest over Labor Day Weekend.  Sharpie hopped on board with the great people over at vitaminwater to put this event into action.  Transforming one of Urbane Apartments’ into, what was known as a ”Hydration Gallery,” fest-goers were invited into a “chic lounge atmosphere” to cool off, rehydrate with delicious vitaminwater and create works of art with Sharpie Markers on easels that were set up around the lounge, all the while enjoying tunes provided by Livio Radio.

What is the value to your business for landing on a larger brands web site?  A really big glass of Google Juice! Small business could never afford that type of exposure in the past. You must carefully choose your partners, though. It is paramount to align yourself with like demographics that add value, or likeness to your audience.

We would love to hear your feedback or experiences on any partnership marketing projects you may have tried. There is as much value in what didn’t work, as what did. Please share in the comments.