Collaborate to Differentiate

Q: It’s still early in the season, and I’m looking for some strategies that will make a big impact before the spring rush begins. Any ideas?

The early bird gets the worm! Now, before the lawn and gardening season kicks into high gear, is a great time to get a jump on the competition by getting your name in front of customers in some fresh ways. Although consumers may not be ready to buy plants, or start their lawn and landscaping services, they are out in the community running errands and shopping at other stores.

Cross Pollination

Consider creating some strategic alliances with local business to “cross-pollinate” and combine promotional efforts. For example, if you have implement dealerships in town, partner with them to provide their customer with coupons for a free gift or discount at your store. You can return the favor at your business. Or perhaps there is a local car dealership in your area that would give out $20 gift certificates toward a purchase in your store with every test drive. To reciprocate, you could promote the event in your advertising and at the check-out registers in your store.

Another idea is to focus your business partnerships around popular ideas or themes, such as “Green Teams.” You could collaborate with a group of companies that have a line of products or services that reduce energy, recycle or promote the well-being of the community, so customers will associate your business with positive qualities and dedication to green initiatives. Projects like this allow you to pool your resources on advertising campaigns over a defined period of time. In this way, the marketing effort has a greater impact than if you attempted to do it yourself. To make this work, cooperation between the businesses is essential throughout the life of the project. Depending on the extent to which you are combining forces, it may be to everyone’s benefit to draft an agreement to define roles and responsibilities.

Other Networking

Forging cooperative agreements doesn’t need to stop there. Networking and strategic alliances can benefit you in other ways. And your associations don’t have to be limited by geography. Connections can be forged between companies and organizations within your community, in other parts of your state and beyond. And those alliances can be as formal as you want.

You are probably already doing some types of networking such as staying in touch with associates through e-mail, conference calls or just getting together for coffee to share information and exchange ideas and experiences. These efforts help you to keep up-to-date on common interests and events.

Others can be more formal and involve sharing of resources in broader ways. For example, to help you maximize the ratio between your costs of doing business with its benefits, go in with others to underwrite the cost of a market survey. The results could help you gain information about your customer base to make better decisions about ways to focus your advertising or build your brand. Talk to other businesses in your area about how you can cooperate or split expenses for a mutual goal. For instance, you could launch an advertising campaign to attract traffic to your business area. Or you could partner with local shops, neighborhood associations and other properties to hire security services. Buying supplies in groups is another way to work with others. These mutually beneficial efforts could help you defray costs without diluting the returns. But keep in mind that the most successful arrangements happen when all the businesses share the same objective and everyone benefits equally.

Networking on any level is helpful in promoting your business and gaining useful contacts. These associations also provide you with the opportunity to generate business referrals and stay current on other types of industry and local business information. It never hurts to learn about other organizational techniques and systems, even with companies that are quite different than your own. I’ve found partnerships to be a great way to stimulate my thinking and give me the incentive to be more creative in finding new solutions. It can also be motivating to associate with business owners and managers who are eager to succeed in their own line of work.

Differentiating your company from others has become even more important in these times. There are going to be fewer customers with more choices, so making your business stand out from the competition is key to success. Buyers are becoming more discriminating about where they will be spending their money, and they are looking for businesses that do something remarkable and memorable. A path to that goal may be found in building alliances with others.