Transcript
Candy Valentino (0:00)
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Unknown Host (0:37)
Welcome to the Candy Valentino show, the podcast for founders, investors and entrepreneurs where we have honest conversations about what it takes to grow your business, build more wealth and create financial freedom.
Candy Valentino (0:57)
Foreign hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Candy Valentino Show. Thanks so much for tuning in and spending this time with me today as we dive into what I feel is a very critical element of business growth and something that isn't really talked about quite enough, which is strategic partnerships. Whether you're just starting out in business or you're looking to grow to your next revenue benchmark, or you're looking to scale, understanding how to leverage partnerships can make all of the difference. So let's just jump right into it. Strategic partnerships are, in summary, a collective alliance between businesses that are just aimed at the same goal, mutual growth and mutual success in business. Now these can take on many forms. Whether it's a joint venture, a co marketing agreement, sharing technology. There are a variety of ways that businesses can leverage partnerships to combine their strengths, their resources, their expertise, their customer base to really achieve goals more quickly that might be challenging if they want to reach them alone. And one of the biggest advantages to strategic partnerships is gaining access to new markets. By teaming up with another company that has a strong presence in a specific industry or community or state or region or segment or vertical, you can expand your business and your customer base significantly without it costing a lot of capital. So let's review a couple of examples so you could think of just different ways you may be able to use a strategic partnership or an alliance in your business without using the traditional sales and marketing levers that we normally use when we want to go out and acquire new customers. Let's say there's a local bakery that partners with a nearby coffee shop. By offering pastries in the coffee shop, the bakery is going to gain access to new customers who may not have visited their standalone location, and in return, the coffee shop is enhancing its menu offerings that provides a better or maybe more comprehensive experience for its customers. There are a lot of other ways that Main Street America Regular business owners, whether you're brick and mortar service or product, can leverage a strategic partnership. You could be a boutique clothing company and you partner with a local jeweler. You, you can have a retail store, maybe you offer clothing at your store and you partner with a jewelry company to create an exclusive collection or collaboration which can attract customers that are seeking maybe unique pieces that aren't available anywhere else. Imagine a food truck. You can have two food trucks. One that specializes in burgers, another one that has special ice cream. By partnering together, parking your food truck side by side at local events or festivals, you can create this culinary experience, if you will, for customers. Each one of those food trucks would benefit from the other. Another great example of this is a small, maybe a fitness studio or a gym that partners up and has a strategic collaboration or partnership with a nutritionist. Someone that offers packages that combines workout sessions with personalized nutrition plans. This not only attracts the same type of customer, but but it provides added value and expertise that maybe another business that stands alone couldn't potentially offer. This could also be something with maybe if you have a space, whether a co working space or you offer business services, leveraging one or the other. If you're the co working space partnering with a business service provider, whether it's graphic design or IT or business consulting, you can bundle services together, providing the workspace along with the services that they may need. Branding, web development, tech support. This again, not only enhances the value proposition for the tenants of the co working space, but it strengthens the ecosystem and supports all small businesses in the community. And there are endless examples of this. Let's say it's a local community bookstore that's an independent and it collaborates with local authors to host book signing events and and maybe special author readings. By featuring the works of the local literary talent, the bookstore can enhance its reputation as a cultural hub and support the careers of aspiring writers. It can also increase traffic into their store that otherwise might have been buying that book on Amazon. Another great example is if you have a product and you can partner with somebody in service. And a great example of this would be pet grooming and pet supplies, right? You have service the pet grooming and then you have supplies, the product based company. If you have a pet grooming salon and you're partnering with a nearby pet supply store to offer grooming and care packages, maybe customers who book grooming services will receive discounts on those supplies or vice versa. This partnership would enhance convenience, which anytime we can enhance convenience for our customers, that is going to drive foot traffic and overall sales and lifetime customer value. But it also creates a win win scenario that really strengthens their position in that market for pet services. And we can leverage this in a bunch of different ways. But we can also look at the really big corporations that do this, like Starbucks and Spotify. Starbucks partnered with Spotify to create personalized music lists for customers while in their store, again enhancing foot traffic and the overall customer experience.