You may have seen a recent commercial on TV in which men in lab coats stand before a table that has national brands of both french fries and ketchup on it. They sample the ketchup alone, and conclude that it is good. They then sample a french fry and conclude it is good. Then they try the two together, and determine that it is better than either one. This commercial is a very effective example of alliance marketing hard at work.
Instead of a ketchup company going it alone and promoting their product or a french fry maker buying all the air time themselves, they have combined efforts to present the idea that while their products are good on their own, they are better when eaten together. This is the classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
I can hear people out there now saying, “Sure, it works if you’re Heinz Ketchup and have a multi-million dollar ad budget, but I’m just a small business! I don’t have tens of millions of dollars to risk on just getting people hooked on other products when they should be spending their money on my product instead!”
For those doubters I’m going to have to invoke two of my Rules of Attraction to show how alliance and affiliate marketing can help a small business even more than a larger one:
Rule #10 – Collaborate rather than compete
Rule #4 – Give information away without selling
Collaborate Rather Than Compete
Instead of viewing other products and services as competitors, look for ways in which you can join efforts to help each other’s business. I do a number of seminars every year with the Christopher Howard Companies, and he is a frequent guest on my radio show. Some may say or are competitors. I teach people how to be more successful and so does Chris. So why help out a competitor? Because Chris is more of a complementor than he is a competitor. While we both target the same audience we teach completely different Methods of success. Chris works on the subconscious and I work on the conscious. Working together we are able to reach a greater market as a whole entity than either one of us could reach independently. In addition my methods are more powerful when coupled with Chris’s technologies and his are more powerful when coupled with mine.
You can find collaborators in your industry that you can team with to create a collective solution that attracts a larger audience than any one element could effectively attract on their own. If you make luggage, find someone that makes luggage carts, if you repair cars, team with car rental services, if you sell musical instruments, find a rehearsal studio bands can use and work together to cross promote. Always be on the lookout for ways in which you can work with other entities, rather than ways in which you can compete with them.
Give information away without selling
I’m going to use an example now that I’m sure you never thought you’d see from Mark Deo- while most of my readers have probably never listened to anything from Death Row Records, they are one of the most successful record companies in history, known strictly for their hardcore “gangsta” rap artists. Why bring them up? They also had some brilliant marketing techniques that helped launch the careers of artists that have since sold hundreds of millions of records. How did they do this? By giving away information without selling! With each album they released by an established artist, they included elements in a few songs that featured a new performer. Some songs on their CDs don’t even have the person on the CD cover in them for more than a few seconds! What they have done is given the fans of one performer a free taste of another they are likely to enjoy as well.
When you go to the dentist, do you get a free toothbrush? I bet it’s a specific brand that that dentist is getting for free to provide you with a positive impression of this brand. This leads to you possibly buying many more of them in the future, based upon the lended credibility and positive overall impression you get about this item. How can you do this in your small business? Do you have free samples of collaborative products and services you can bundle with yours that make your solution more attractive?
How to Make It All Work
Perhaps you’re thinking, “that sounds like a good idea, but how do I get started?”
That’s where my attraction workshop comes in. At the workshop I will take you step-by-step through developing an attraction-based affiliate plan. We will work on crafting your affiliate and alliance strategy. This will include:
- Brainstorm partner potentials (in places you never dreamed)
- How to get the best partners to “come to you” without even chasing them
- What to say and why it works nearly “every” time!
- Use guarantees and risk reversal to your benefit
- How to structure the alliance to ensure that both parties benefit
- Integrate alliance efforts into your overall marketing plan
- Use an alliance to look ten times bigger than you already are
- Use affiliates to overcome price objections
- Numerous case studies and the “in class” examples of success stories
Pre-registration is now available on-line at:http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp.
Register before July 15th for my Monrovia workshop and before August 15th for my Long Beach Workshop and receive a FREE bonus ticket and bring a friend or business associate. The pre-registration cost of this event is just $299, a savings of $200 from the event cost of $499 at the door. Once one of my associates contacts you, if you mention that you are a business update subscriber, I’ll even throw in a free telecoaching follow-up session so that you can get the most out of the event. That’s a total value of $1148 available now for just $299. Go to:http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp to pre-register now!