By Jeff Levin

Have you ever experienced the power of a cooperative marketing opportunity? If you haven’t, you will decide to make this a major part of your marketing mix by the end of this article, … if you’re interested in long term success in business!

Cooperative Marketing is when…

A Bank offer’s a live Golf Swing Analysis to it’s customers from a local golf instruction school in their lobby.
A CPA arranges a series of FREE Business Workshops from a local Business Coach for their clients.
A Wedding Photographer gives their wonderful clients a FREE wedding shower cake from a local cake designer.

These are just some of the many different methods of arranging one of the easiest and most effective ways of growing a referral based business. Why is that so?

Well if you’ve ever analyzed any of the fastest growing business models that have ever existed, you will always notice that the creator has established a product, service or business opportunity where everybody wins.

As can be seen in the examples above, the Bank, CPA, and Wedding Photographer win, because they now have a way to continue to add value to their client relations that doesn’t cost them anything. The company presenting the business opportunity (Golf Instructor, Business Coach, Cake Designer) wins because it now has an extremely warm & targeted opportunity to be in front of the host company’s clients, and the client (now a prospect of yours) wins by receiving a gift & an opportunity to add value to their business or their lives!

Imagine if you had 3 other businesses that were excited to promote your business to the very clients you spend most of your time & money trying to reach - cold! How would your business look? Excellent. The secret to making this happen for you is written in bold above…

To make this situation really work - it has to be a Win. Win. Win Scenario!

Your alliance must win. Their clients must win. For you to win.

Cooperative Marketing really levels the playing field for small business to compete right along side large companies. Large companies spend a great deal of their own money promoting their business, because then can! If you are like most small businesses, you lack that capital, but what you do not lack is the human capital, the relationships that, if used correctly, can deliver far better results in the communities you have a vested interest in, than your corporate counterparts.

So let’s really bring the power of cooperative marketing into perspective….

Think about how you go above and beyond the call of duty for your clients. Now, think about how your current alliances do the very same to service their clients. So, what if you purposely arranged opportunities with the other high quality businesses in your area to promote each other in a way that your clients can appreciate & interpret it as additional value being invested in the relationship that you’ve worked hard to establish? Teaming up with one business is great! Teaming up with 20 is better! Using a great cooperative marketing strategy can deliver an equivalent effect to distributing 20,000 bulk mailers in your area, with far better results.

The most difficult part of taking advantage of this extremely effective strategy is finding companies that will allow you to have access to their database.

To do this easily, visit http://www.growthpod.com/ and get started by teaming up with your current referral partners.

There are Traditional methods of cooperative marketing available too.

Follow these steps to work towards landing a successful cooperative marketing opportunity:

1. Choose a business you wish to “cross market” to their database.

2. Explain to the business that you would like to give them something to give, with no obligation to their clients as a sign of customer appreciation.

3. If they choose to move forward, it is critical to take as much work out of the process as possible for the host company. Your offer must go out from the host company on their letterhead and signed by the host company.

4. To make it easy for them to say yes, offer to do all of the envelope stuffing and pay for the postage. If they are ok with you having a copy of their database, offer to take care of all of the administrative tasks, leaving them with absolutely nothing to do.

5. Another great way is to offer to do the same for them, with your database.

Action Plan: Make it a Point to have a minimum of one cooperative marketing campaign in action every month & watch the momentum in your business grow!

Be Outstanding!

Jeff Levin, Online Entrepreneur
Founder of GrowthPOD.com - The I Promote You. You Promote Me! Network

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Jeff Levin is the founder of GrowthPOD.com & a pioneer in online cooperative marketing. Visit http://www.growthpod.com/ to learn more.