Imagine a business where you send something out and it automatically reaches five, ten or twenty-times the audience you’ve already built for your business without having to pay an agency or spend thousands of dollars on advertising.
Now imagine a business where your selling is done for you – all you have to do is provide the product or service you specialize in.
Alternately, imagine a business where all you have to do is help people find the right solution, but actually fixing the problem is handed off.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not.
THIS is the magic of profitable business partnerships, and a bit of our secret sauce here at ’cause.
It’s how our leadership built an editorial (and entirely free) network for one site that reached over 6 million readers using our secret StarImpact model.
It’s how another business owner was able to step back and focus only on what she wanted to spend her days on – helping people.
It’s also a key part of how the ’cause business has grown to a profitable, 16-person cause-marketing agency in under three years.
“The biggest danger with strategic business partnerships is the risk that it becomes all-consuming and doesn’t achieve the desired impact,” notes our President and strategic partnership expert, Jane Harrell.
To avoid this risk, ’cause has developed key models to help, depending on the business goal and partnership at hand. However, any small business owner should ask themselves three things before setting out, no matter the specifics:
1) What are we, as a business, great at? What do we have to offer that no one else does?
2) Where could we use some help? What are the things that are taking more time or money for us to do ourselves?
3) Are there other organizations that are great at #2, but need #1?
“If the answer is yes, then you have a great potential partner,” says Jane.
Reach out to us if you’re considering building a strategic partnership for your business.
