Partnership in Business : Ways to Increase Winning and Improve Success

Have you often thought about making changes to your business to improve growth? Where does small business partnership in business ideas with other companies fall on your list? Probably pretty low is our guess. That is the surprising response we get from many of our clients.
Partnership in business
Partnership in business
Change is not death. Fear of change is death.
Related: The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture
If you study the corporate strategy of world brands, big and small, over the past few decades, you will see one thing they all have in common.
The commonality is the implementation of a wide variety of collaborative partnerships with other companies. That holds true of even small businesses.

It can be hard to make the most of your time when you’re running a business, especially when you’re wearing a lot of different hats and trying to complete a lot of different tasks.

There are others who have been there, and they’ve found some methods to improve partnership and productivity.

Here is a short video that gives some great examples of partnership.
It is not rocket science. It is a simple process of finding complementary businesses that your clients are currently using.
Find ways, many of which we will discuss in this blog, working with those businesses to get your message in front of a wider list of clients or communities.
benefit of partnering
Are you using the benefits of partnering?

The benefits of partnering

No matter what industry you look at, some of the most successful businesses are those that have created partnerships with other establishments.
When you partner with another business, you expand your reach, increase your exposure, find new markets, develop new products, and boost your success.
And the benefits can accrue for just about any business.
We are always on the lookout for good ideas of collaboration and partnerships, with examples of each for successful growth.
In this article I will describe 9 ideas for ways to collaborate with other companies, giving you an example of each. Read carefully as they will hopefully expand your thinking on this subject.
Let’s get started with a discussion of each idea and example:
 

Partnership in business  … product development

Are you a business that markets a product that you developed? Have you thought about how to combine this product with other product(s) in new and unique ways?
That is an awesome way to create new products and services and therefore potentially creating new or expanded markets.
Consider this example where Google and Mattel combined two of their products to put a new spin on the classic “view master” toy, a rather old but strong product from Mattel.
The new product is a view master powered by Google Cardboard technology that will give kids a taste of virtual and augmented reality.
Buy Mattel’s headset, pop in an Android phone with the view master app (or any other Google Cardboard app currently in the Google Play Store) downloaded, and you’ll be able to explore simulated 3-D worlds.
Mattel will also sell “experience reels” that will offer other exclusive augmented reality content that is built around some older Mattel content products.
For example, Mattel will sell a San Francisco-themed reel that will use augmented reality to let kids explore different tourist destinations in San Francisco. Really cool.
 

Small business partnership ideas … complementary product advertising

An easy way to collaborate with another company is to implement joint advertising with complementary products or services between the companies.
An interesting example of this is illustrated in recent joint ads by JC Penney and Disney. This new partner relationship promotes the upcoming, live-action “Cinderella” film.
The partnership included a spot from JC Penney during the Academy Awards, targeting women and beauty, using the theme and story of Cinderella. A win-win objective for the companies.

 

Unused ‘capacities’

Have you ever looked around your company’s assets for unused or underutilized assets or capacities? This is always an interesting way to start a partnership. Consider the example from Purchase College in New York State.
This college had about 1,000 unused parking spaces on campus. To get the most out of them, they partnered with the nearby airport to rent out parking spaces and a shuttle service for less than half the cost of other lots.
It’s raised them over $80,000 a year – money that goes to scholarships and school improvements.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? And think of expanding your sphere of ideas, yes?

  

New market penetration

Quite often you can identify other companies in markets you covet that could benefit from the introduction of your products.
Such an example is represented where The Huffington Post will launch in Australia in partnership with the local media company Fairfax.
The Huffington Post benefits from the help in the Australian market and Fairfax benefits from access from Huffington’s skills, expertise and media platform.

Partnership in business examples … complementary technologies

Just like the example of complementary products and services, companies often have significant expertise in technologies that could be combined with other potential technologies,
The example that comes to mind here is represented by Apple and IBM. This is an example of when two competitors actually worked well together over time and naturally expanded the collaboration.
According to IBM, this collaboration brought together the analytics and enterprise-scale computing of IBM with the user experience of Apple’s iPhone and iPad to deliver a new level of value using these products.
natural synergies
Are you looking for natural synergies?

 

Natural synergies

There are many collaboration and partnering situations that arise when two companies have natural synergies with each other.
This may be a result of complementary skills or maybe products or services.
Here is an example between Benjamin Moore paints and Pottery Barn interior design products. What does one of the world’s premium paint brands and one of the globe’s most renowned home goods store have in common? It is simple … the desire to produce a gorgeous interior for their customers.
While Pottery Barn was doing everything possible to provide furnishing and bedding to make interior décor dreams come true, customers kept asking about paint colors — especially the ones in the Pottery Barn catalog.
The obvious answer was to work with Benjamin Moore to design a unique palette for every season.
Another interesting natural synergy example was between Benjamin Moore and OPI, of nail polish fame. The synergy here? They are both selling the same thing, in this case, colors. How do you make colors more interesting?
They both work hard to do it by creating stuff for fans of other brands. For example, Benjamin Moore made a series of Fenway Park series of paints for Red Sox fans featuring the park’s famous Green Monster wall and scoreboard.
OPI does it with nail polish collections based on other brands such as Coca-Cola and Ford’s Mustang.
 

Same customer target segments

Do you have companies similar to yours that target the same customer segments with different products and services? This can create all sorts of ways to collaborate.
Consider this great example of collaboration between McDonalds and Legos.
McDonald’s is a brand known for lots of collaboration with quite a few brand partners. One of the most successful was LEGO, and together the companies produced a mini restaurant (built with LEGOs of course) as well as Happy Meal Toys.
There’s nothing kids love more than LEGO, except maybe McDonald’s, which is why this partnership was easy to come by and a natural win-win for everyone involved.

Partnership in business … new market creation

Growth often depends on creating totally new markets. When you can find companies with similar objectives and a complementary skill or product set, a collaborative partnership can result.
Related examples: Is Your Small Business Coping With Technological Change?
Here is a very unique example to illustrate. Inter IKEA, the parent of IKEA, partnered with a hotelier to create a new hotel brand that oddly wouldn’t feature any of the Swedish furniture maker’s products.
Surprisingly, Marriott is the partner and Moxy will be the name of the new affordable hotel chain, which plans to open 150 locations across Europe in the next decade.
Moxy Hotels is targeting the essence of the next generation traveler, not only Gen X and Y but people with a younger sensibility, for whom contemporary style and affordability is paramount.
This will be Marriott’s first budget brand in Europe.
While the hotels won’t use IKEA furniture, the company has found a way to keep construction costs down in a different way: Many of the hotels will use rooms prefabricated offsite and then assembled like IKEA furniture, a modular type of construction that is new for Marriott.
Very different type of partnership, isn’t it?
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Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
  
More reading on small business from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Business Partnership …13 Insightful Examples of Partnership Ideas
Target Market … How to Target for Best Marketing Campaigns
11 Steps to Media Framing Messages for Optimum Engagement
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on FacebookTwitterQuoraDigital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
 

Slogan Examples: 7 Tips to Improve Success with Small Business Slogans

We don’t have an information shortage, we have an attention shortage. One of the best from Seth Godin. Does your business set growth as a measure of success? Double your business size? Just thinking about what that would take is scary, isn’t it? Almost regardless of whom you are or what you do, you have competitors that have awesome marketing.
The market leaders … if you have no competitive advantages, no understanding of the secrets of small business slogan examples, you really will have a difficult time competing.
Here is a short video that tells you how to write great slogans.
slogan examples
Slogan examples.
Lots of our clients confuse a unique selling proposition with a business tagline. But they are not the same. A tagline is a simple representation of the brand. One whose objective is to draw attention.
A unique selling proposition, on the other hand, is a business differentiation that is designed to be the reason a customer will want to buy your product or service. Its objective is to market in a way that makes the product or service stand out, pure and simple. Both are key to small business success.
Review the 5 best unique selling proposition examples we could find.
The art of tagline development is to distill the meaning of a big idea into a cogent message that’s easy to say, easy to understand, and easy to remember. It is very similar to an elevator pitch, isn’t it?
To ensure your brand expression is impossible to forget, use the following checklist to avoid the most common mistakes that plague aspiring taglines.

Slogan examples … definition of a slogan 

Tagline, strapline, slogan… Whatever you choose to call it, it’s all the same. It’s the key phrase that identifies your business by capturing the essence of three elements:
  • Your mission
  • Your promise
  • Your brand
Coming up with a great tagline is a struggle many people face. More often than not, they get it wrong by focusing on what their product or service is and neglecting what it offers.
Taglines can help or hamper your marketing efforts. They must be clear and relevant. Some taglines make you scratch your head, some don’t make you think at all, and some, the ones that work, make you think. You know what’s insanely difficult? Being succinct.
Seriously … it’s ridiculously hard. But do you know what’s even more difficult? Expressing a complex emotional concept in just a couple of words. In other words, coming up with a tagline. Yeah, it’s a head-scratcher.
But that’s why we have a lot of respect for these brands that did it right. So if you’re looking to get a little tagline inspiration of your own, take a look at some of our favorite company taglines — from past and present.
To ensure your brand expression is impossible to forget, use the following checklist to avoid the most common mistakes that plague aspiring taglines.
value promise
Think value promise.

Your value promise

The most useful definition of a good tagline is the why people should notice you and take the action you’re seeking. Be clear, not overly clever.
 This way, it guides your decisions much more clearly and can be used as the basis for marketing messages.
For example, if you own an online bookstore and have the average selection, decent prices, delivery, a guarantee, good customer service, and a website, why would anyone buy from you? There’s surely a competitor who beats you in at least some of those aspects.
You don’t have to be the best in every way. Sure, it’s great if you are. But realistically, it’s difficult enough to be the best couple of ways.
However, if you’re the best in at least several ways, you’re the best option for the people who value those promises.
You must have some promise that you can make that is unique. Something has to make you the best option for your target customers.
Otherwise, they have no good reason to buy from you.

Catchy sayings … heart of the proposition

The heart of a winning tagline is the end result value a business intends to deliver to its target customers. The end result experience. Ask yourself this question: “So what?”
The answers you’ll come up with are the benefits a visitor (or potential customer) receives from staying on your site

 

articulate for customers
Do you articulate for customers?

Articulate for customers

A unique tagline needs to be articulated for customers … not for your products, services or business processes. Products, services, processes are the vehicles for your tagline delivery.

Become your customers

“Become” your customers instead of just asking them what they want from your business. Listen, observe and study to creatively infer from what customers DO to help derive your unique promise.

  

Slogan list … utilize a slogan properly

People won’t ever buy from you if they don’t even understand why they should pay attention to you. And they notice you only if you have a unique tagline.
The usual definition of a unique tagline is incomplete. It is a promise of something the competition cannot or does not offer. It must be strong enough to move the masses, i.e., attract new customers.
A unique tagline becomes is the internal tool that guides your decisions to the best direction to maximize your customer utility.

 

Small business tagline designs … demonstrate the proof

If your tagline states you have the best pizza in the state; will people flood your restaurant? No. They won’t believe the tagline.
Without proof, you can’t say much before it starts to sound like marketing talk. No one pays attention. Or remembers. They just don’t believe. No believing, no trust. It is all downhill after that.
For example, I recently saw a digital marketing competitor site where their tagline claimed to be the secret weapon of digital marketing for the most successful companies in the world. Needless to say, we doubt anyone can take that seriously when nothing supports the claim.
As long as you don’t prove your claims, people are unlikely to really believe them. And your tagline becomes just another short sentence.
Use studies, testimonials, and common sense, among other methods, to prove your claims. Impressive numbers can be the right choice, but they don’t always work.
Instead, a few expert testimonials make the idea credible. They can even take away the need for you to make any claims’ the testimonials can make the claims for you. Similarly, you can use testimonials to build your products’ overall perceived value and take away the last doubt people might feel about your promises.
Many businesses don’t help people see what sets the company apart from its competitors. This always amazes us.
They are better than others, and they could prove it. They just don’t do it.
Instead, they try to persuade people with general promises, corporate babble, and feature lists. If your website doesn’t clearly tell visitors what makes you worth their attention, they won’t spend the time to figure it out on their own.

Be clever in communicating your claims

It’s your job to hit people in the head with what makes you different and worth attention. Clever ways to communicate your claims. In believable ways.
When people understand why they should buy your product instead of any other, they’ll do it.
So, if you were wondering where to put your marketing time and energy to optimize how to win customers from your competitors, focus on defining and delivering winning taglines.
We have a lot of respect for these brands that did it right. So if you’re looking to get a little tagline inspiration of your own, take a look at some of our favorite company taglines — from past and present.

See Food Differently

I see food differently. The tagline for this campaign is Sea Food Differently.  I think this is tagline writing at its best: clever, play on words, and RELEVANT. They are saying that Red Lobster does seafood differently (presumably better) than other restaurants. Perfect.

 

The uncola

A brave and somewhat bold way 7-Up’s tagline distinguishes its product from the cola competition. Taste wise it’s not cola, and that is 7-Ups promise.

Snap, Crackle, Pop

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies’ fantastic tagline that doubles up as a jingle, and also is descriptive – they actual do Snap! Crackle! And Pop!
This is more of a slogan, a classic slogan example really. It’s very advertising orientated – very product specific/descriptive! And the promise is freshness as the sound says.

 

Where dreams come true

This is just one of many of the dream makers at Disney, for they have so many elements and areas of operations, from Disney World to a range of other media and wonderful creations.
Disney is a dream company, whilst the word dream strikes similarity with DreamWorks; it works best for the Disney promise.

 

We make IT happen

IBM’s clever use of playing on IT (Information Technology) doubling up as IT (as in that’s it).

 

Slogan examples  … Just do it

Instantly, Nike’s tag line’s message began to resonate. It is no longer about just a shoe or a pair of shorts; it is about a state of mind. You don’t have to be an athlete to be in shape or tackle an obstacle. If you want to do it, just do it. That’s all it takes.
More to learn: Press Coverage … 9 Actionable Ways to Get Good Coverage

The Ultimate Driving Machine

 For BMW, the fact they call their vehicles “machines” shows a real truth, coupling with the word ultimate, the tagline is a well-oiled machine that works!

We try harder

This is a really strong tagline for Avis. It differentiates the brand as “going the extra mile” (this would be a relevant but more obvious tagline). It evokes that it genuinely does try harder

The bottom line

So, if you were wondering where to put your marketing time and energy to optimize how to win customers from your competitors, focus on delivering dramatic tagline design.
EMPLOY CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Employ customer experience, yes?
Please share a story or two from your customer winning experiences with this community. Perhaps a comment or a question to add below?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
    
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
What Marketers Need to Know about Personalization Strategies 
Innovation in Marketing … the Birchbox Subscription Model
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on FacebookTwitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.