If you've never considered integrating your business with another service or product that your customers already use, you should take notice of this trend.
Companies and entrepreneurs are collaborating with non-competing entities to reach the same customers, significantly increase traffic and sales, and keep their customers for a much longer period of time.
This is how it works:
Step 1: Determine who your customers are.
If you don't know who your customers are, you won't be able to find them or make money from them. Whatever your product or service is, the fact remains that NOT EVERYONE is your customer.
I'm not sure why marketers have such a difficult time with this. Because you build websites, everyone who needs one is your customer, right? Wrong. Because you make pizza, everyone who eats it is your customer, right? Wrong. You do social media marketing, so every business is your customer, correct? Nope.
When you target everyone, you actually target NO ONE. You create restaurant websites. You sell organic pizza to people who are concerned about their health. You specialize in social media marketing for chiropractors.
You must be selective in who you market to. Once you know who they are, you can determine which channels your customers are using and where they are already.
Step 2: Integrate with other people's platforms.
Your customers are already in the hands of someone else. You're looking for someone who isn't a competitor but has the same customers as you do. For example, if you offer a software service to small businesses, consider what other services they already use.
Through integrations, you can collaborate with these other channels to leverage their user base to grow your own customer base. You're tying your product or service to their product or service in a way that benefits both.
Assume you're a social media marketing expert who's created a fantastic course on how to use social media to drive traffic to an offer. Someone else has a course on how to create products, offers, and sales funnels. By collaborating, the customer receives a complete business model that teaches not only how to create hot selling products, but also how to drive traffic to those products using social media marketing.
Ask your customers to assist you in identifying what solutions you might be able to integrate with by learning what products or services they consistently use. Integrating with another company just because you think it's a good fit isn't always a good idea. However, if your customers tell you it's the right fit because they're using that other product over there in conjunction with yours, you'll know you've found a winner.
Your collaboration must be a win-win situation, and your partner pages must be top-notch. Partner pages inform visitors that you are integrating with another product or service. Then you can drive traffic to these pages with ads that show you've partnered with this other company. For example, if your software as a service company partners with Dropbox, you can create Facebook ads for Dropbox users demonstrating how simple it is to get your solution in conjunction with their existing Dropbox account.
Step 3: Persuade your new partners to promote you.
Whether you're collaborating with a small information marketer or a large software as a service provider, ask them to promote you to their user base. Don't be afraid to ask, because they will want to promote you because the more integrations their users do, the longer their customers will stay and pay.
Assume you have a membership site for online marketers. You can collaborate with non-competitive membership sites and software as a service providers. When someone joins your membership, they can also get a steep discount on your partner's PLR membership, as well as that Leadpages type of software, and so on. Or perhaps you offer them everything at a single price.
And before you know it, your member is taking advantage of all of the other sites and services that they can access through your membership site. If they cancelled your membership, they would also lose access to all of these other sites, unless they signed up for each one again at full price.
I believe you can see the possibilities here – to say fortunes are made in this manner is an understatement.
Companies and entrepreneurs are collaborating with non-competing entities to reach the same customers, significantly increase traffic and sales, and keep their customers for a much longer period of time.
This is how it works:
Step 1: Determine who your customers are.
If you don't know who your customers are, you won't be able to find them or make money from them. Whatever your product or service is, the fact remains that NOT EVERYONE is your customer.
I'm not sure why marketers have such a difficult time with this. Because you build websites, everyone who needs one is your customer, right? Wrong. Because you make pizza, everyone who eats it is your customer, right? Wrong. You do social media marketing, so every business is your customer, correct? Nope.
When you target everyone, you actually target NO ONE. You create restaurant websites. You sell organic pizza to people who are concerned about their health. You specialize in social media marketing for chiropractors.
You must be selective in who you market to. Once you know who they are, you can determine which channels your customers are using and where they are already.
Step 2: Integrate with other people's platforms.
Your customers are already in the hands of someone else. You're looking for someone who isn't a competitor but has the same customers as you do. For example, if you offer a software service to small businesses, consider what other services they already use.
Through integrations, you can collaborate with these other channels to leverage their user base to grow your own customer base. You're tying your product or service to their product or service in a way that benefits both.
Assume you're a social media marketing expert who's created a fantastic course on how to use social media to drive traffic to an offer. Someone else has a course on how to create products, offers, and sales funnels. By collaborating, the customer receives a complete business model that teaches not only how to create hot selling products, but also how to drive traffic to those products using social media marketing.
Ask your customers to assist you in identifying what solutions you might be able to integrate with by learning what products or services they consistently use. Integrating with another company just because you think it's a good fit isn't always a good idea. However, if your customers tell you it's the right fit because they're using that other product over there in conjunction with yours, you'll know you've found a winner.
Your collaboration must be a win-win situation, and your partner pages must be top-notch. Partner pages inform visitors that you are integrating with another product or service. Then you can drive traffic to these pages with ads that show you've partnered with this other company. For example, if your software as a service company partners with Dropbox, you can create Facebook ads for Dropbox users demonstrating how simple it is to get your solution in conjunction with their existing Dropbox account.
Step 3: Persuade your new partners to promote you.
Whether you're collaborating with a small information marketer or a large software as a service provider, ask them to promote you to their user base. Don't be afraid to ask, because they will want to promote you because the more integrations their users do, the longer their customers will stay and pay.
Assume you have a membership site for online marketers. You can collaborate with non-competitive membership sites and software as a service providers. When someone joins your membership, they can also get a steep discount on your partner's PLR membership, as well as that Leadpages type of software, and so on. Or perhaps you offer them everything at a single price.
And before you know it, your member is taking advantage of all of the other sites and services that they can access through your membership site. If they cancelled your membership, they would also lose access to all of these other sites, unless they signed up for each one again at full price.
I believe you can see the possibilities here – to say fortunes are made in this manner is an understatement.
