One of the easiest, fastest, and cheapest ways to grow your business and try out new marketing ventures is by forming a small business partnership. Not only will it increase your business, it helps your customer list to grow faster and can be an endless supply of valuable resources.

As a small business owner you realize that your customers manipulate the buying procedure and are usually overwhelmed with marketing advertisements that make it extremely difficult for any one business to stick out.

For this reason, small business owners are forming partnerships with other businesses as an alternative way to help increase their business and make their list grow faster. When you form a partnership with another business, this creates the opportunity to offer your customer something of value. By offering your customer anything that saves time, money, or furnishes information that is useful, this can be considered a valuable opportunity.

The key is to have a prime product pertaining to a specific targeted market, find a partner that has a larger list ("If you can't beat them join them"), and offer them a proposal of partnership that is so enticing they can’t refuse. If all parties agree, you both have just increased your lists.

Start offering your product or service to your partner’s customer list and split the profit 50/50. You supply they product, your partner supplies the list.

Be sure to place a “sig file” at the bottom of your ad, (a short message identifying you, the sender, and offering further information about you), that includes your email address to your auto responder.

By doing this you create a pathway for expected sales and likely subscribers to your list. If you provide an outstanding product or service that your customers just can’t live without, you will create a need for the customer to keep in touch with you in order to obtain the product or service, thus building your list.

Having a good product or service will help establish your credibility. After you have mailed out your first promotion you will be surprised at just how fast your list will grow. This new list provides you with potential customers that you can now include in other mailings and they will be more than likely to do repeat business with you because their first experience was really great.
Providing a great product and service will tempt your new customers to tell someone they know which in turn will also help to increase your list.

And the best part of the small business partnership is there’s no cost involved to help grow your list.

Keep in mind that in order to make this a winning venture for both you and your partner, you must provide a product or service that is above the call of duty. If you supply a service or product that is rotten you are almost guaranteed to lose customers from the get go. This could also cost you your partnership.

By supplying a winning product or service you keep your customers wanting more, make money for both you and your partner, and your list will just keep on growing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Entrepreneur and outdoor photography adventurer Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating marketing communications materials and writing copy for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Her small business columns are syndicated online, and she publishes the popular e-Zine “Maverick Internet Marketing Secrets.” Learn insider Maverick Marketing secrets you can use immediately to find new customers and increase your sales. Get your FREE subscription at www.SmallBusinessMavericks.com today!

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