Struggling to reach new markets and increase your revenue can be the biggest obstacle standing in the way of unlocking your business’s full potential, and it can feel like you must do this on your own. But you do not have to shoulder this burden alone. A strategic partnership is a tactic at your disposal that entails creating a mutually beneficial arrangement with another company that shares your vision and complements your strengths while providing each other with new prospects and opportunities. If your business is looking to stand out in a competitive and crowded market, here are 8 steps to leverage a strategic business partnership:
- Identify Your Goals and Determine if You Have Similar Values
- Research and Evaluate Potential Partners
- Decide Your Strategy
- Initiate and Build Relationships
- Establish Clear Expectations
- Create an Agreement
- Get a Partner with a Strong Brand
- Continuously Build and Maintain Relationships
However, before we dive into the steps you can take for effective strategic business partnership development, it’s important to lay some groundwork. What are strategic partnerships in business? Let’s get started by answering everything you need to know.
What is a Strategic Partner?
A strategic partner is a business your company enters into a mutually beneficial relationship with. A strategic partner is typically a non-competing company that has similar goals.
In other words, a strategic partner is invested in your success. Just as importantly, this should not be a one-sided arrangement. You will also need to serve as a strategic partner in this relationship. This means you need to partner in their success, too. A successful partnership requires a mutual commitment.
This leads us to the next question: What does strategic partnership mean? Let’s explore these unique agreements to illustrate why they should be nonnegotiable for your organization’s success.
What Is a Strategic Partnership?
A strategic business partnership between companies is a mutually beneficial arrangement that two or more organizations create with each other. In this arrangement, these two businesses share resources that provide a substantial benefit to all the stakeholders involved.
Businesses that get into a strategic partnership agreement are generally not direct competitors and have complementary services or products.
Building strategic partnerships can open up new possibilities for your business that you previously did not have access to. The goal of these arrangements is key to answering the question, What are strategic partnerships? You must find partners with a vision or target audience similar to yours.
Partnerships are extremely fruitful when both business products or services can be used together to give the consumer more benefits and an enhanced experience. For organizations like yours, a strategic business partnership can be the key to unlocking its full potential. Here’s why.
Why Should You Build a Strategic Business Partnership?
It is impossible to understate the importance of strategic partnerships. One way to think of a strategic business partnership is to reframe your industry as an ecosystem.
While it may not be a conscious decision, the creatures coexisting in an ecosystem must rely on each other and create mutually beneficial relationships. For example, bees rely on flowers to create honey, and in exchange, bees buzz around and pollinate on their behalf.
Through these arrangements, you and your partners will lift each other so you can both flourish. Some key advantages of strategic partnerships for your business include:
- A competitive edge in your industry
- Accessing new markets
- Gaining new clients
- Increasing resources
- Reducing costs
- Learning from shared expertise
- Increasing brand awareness
- Nurturing innovation
- Accelerating growth
- Improving communication and collaboration
Still, when it comes to developing strategic partnerships, it’s important to remember that businesses can forge many types of strategic partnerships with each other.
What Are Types of Strategic Partnerships?
Strategic partnership building can be complicated because there are countless ways to partner with other businesses. The most common types of strategic partnerships are:
- Marketing partnerships: These strategic partnerships involve two organizations helping each other in a way that markets their products to new customers. These partnerships vary from solely promotional arrangements to more in-depth marketing distribution.
- Supply chain partnerships: A strategic supplier partnership is among the most common for businesses that offer tangible products. Supply chain strategic partnership examples include manufacturers offering to help produce goods at a lower cost if you take semi-finished goods or help distribute products across different regions.
- Financial partnerships: This strategic partnership plan involves a company outsourcing financial or accounting management to a specialized firm that handles all accounts. These partnerships can be especially valuable if you are a business owner who doesn’t have time to do this work or lacks the resources to hire an accountant.
- Integration partnerships: Strategic integration partnerships are incredibly common in the digital age. This partnership strategy plan often involves two software companies or a software and hardware company integrating each other’s products or services.
- Technology partnerships: Many businesses work in industries that require expensive technological equipment and savvy. This type of partnership reduces the burden this puts on organizations. An example would be entering into an arrangement with an IT company that can provide this service at a competitive rate. It could also involve a company partnering with a manufacturer who builds expensive technology to either lease or purchase the equipment at a discounted rate in exchange for a better deal on resources needed to build the equipment.
- Referral partnerships: This type of partnership strategy plan involves two related businesses agreeing to refer clients to each other to boost their revenue and grow their client base. For example, a trust accounting firm could create a partnership with a trust litigation firm, continuously bring each other into cases, and share new clients they can’t fully serve. With these partnerships, you are providing a more comprehensive service.
While these are some of the most common types of strategic partnerships, this is just scratching the surface. Working with a full-service nearbound marketing team can help you determine which type of partnership is best for your business and how to create these agreements.
Now, let’s get into the steps you can take to learn how to build strategic partnerships.
8 Steps for Building a Strategic Business Partnership
Now that you should have a better grasp of what a strategic business partnership is, let’s dive into how to develop strategic partnerships. From identifying your goals to maintaining relationships, here are 8 steps to build these vital arrangements.
1. Identify Your Goals and Determine if You Have Similar Values
The first step in creating successful business partnerships is identifying your strategic partnership goals. Clearly define what you are looking for, how you will benefit from a partnership, how many partnerships you can feasibly manage, and what you bring to the table.
Also, define how this partnership aligns with your overall business strategy. These goals will be your value proposition. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help in this process:
- What are the problems you are trying to solve?
- What are the opportunities you are interested in pursuing?
- How can you help partners in this arrangement (i.e., what problems are you solving for them)?
- How can a partner help you improve your product while maximizing efficiencies?
2. Research and Evaluate Potential Partners
Once you have defined your objectives, research and evaluate potential partners to identify the ones that match your criteria. There are several sources at your disposal in this process, such as industry reports, online databases, social media, referrals, or events.
Remember that this could also require building up your presence on social media and having a strong and compelling website. You will need to build a personal brand.
These different sources can help you identify and learn more about potential partners. As you evaluate prospective partners, ensure they have complementary skills, resources, and capabilities, as well as a compatible culture, vision, and code of values.
But you also want to do some risk management. Research their reputation, performance, and reliability, and carefully weigh the potential risks and challenges they might pose. One good way to determine if an organization is a match is by auditing its clients.
3. Decide Your Strategy
Naturally, as you learn how to develop a strategic partnership, having a clear strategy is a key component of these arrangements. Don’t lose the forest through the trees. A strong strategy is important because it will clearly outline your value and make building partnerships easier.
Your strategy should be business-oriented, meaning that you need to present clear and tangible outcomes. Metric-oriented strategies are a crucial part of this process.
4. Initiate and Build Relationships
Now that you have narrowed your list of prospective partners, you must initiate and build relationships with them. Start by reaching out via email, phone, or even a social media message. Introduce yourself and lead with your value proposition.
You should aim to create a positive and professional impression and show genuine interest and intrigue in their business and goals. Still, don’t expect them to jump right into an agreement with you! Start by simply establishing a rapport and trust.
Showcase your credibility, authority, and expertise while avoiding being too pushy or sales-y. Focus on creating value and finding common ground. This common ground will be the soil bed where you can nurture your partnership and watch it blossom.
5. Establish Clear Expectations
Once you have established a good relationship, it is time to start formalizing your partnership. Similar to identifying your goals, you must clearly establish what you seek in a strategic business partnership.
Part of this should include outlining terms and conditions, processes for communication and collaboration, and, if it comes to it, a process for termination. Creating clear expectations will bring a crucial element of clarity that all successful business partnerships have, no matter the type.
One of the biggest pitfalls you need to avoid when creating a partnership is ensuring that the expectations are achievable. If you fail to establish clear expectations, issues could arise in the future that hurt the integrity of your partnership and, ultimately, both of your businesses.
By setting clear expectations, you are creating a win-win situation for both parties. This could also be a great opportunity to address any issues or concerns.
6. Create an Agreement
After reaching out to a company and deciding that your organizations are compatible, create a partnership strategy plan and agreement. A strategic partnership agreement should outline the scope of your arrangement.
This document will help you and your partner organization understand their responsibilities and the resources you will share for a successful venture.
7. Get a Partner with a Strong Brand
The value of a brand has a lot of influence and power in a strategic business partnership. Choosing the right brand substantially improves your business’s brand value, too.
Still, don’t just target companies because of their prestige, recognition, and authority. Ensure it is an authentic fit and match instead of forcing collaboration. A vanity partnership, for lack of a better word, will not benefit you or the other organization and could hurt your reputation.
Not only will this hurt the value you get from this arrangement, but your respective customers can also see through it. Ultimately, this is why having clearly defined brand value is invaluable for strategic partnership development, as you can better determine if you are fully compatible.
8. Continuously Build and Maintain Relationships
At the heart of creating partnerships is building relationships, which is a continuous process. You need to make a conscious effort to network and get your brand in front of industry leaders. Remember that you foster relationships over time, so developing and nurutring them is an ongoing process.
But don’t neglect the partnerships you have already created. Like all relationships, this will require some maintenance. Invest in managing and nurturing these relationships, too. Communicate regularly and transparently as you share feedback, updates, insights, and new opportunities for both parties.
Also, to maximize the value of these relationships, you should focus on creating a strong collaborative process. This is the only way to leverage each other’s strengths and resources. In some situations, this may also require reviewing and renewing your partnership periodically.
Assess how satisfied you both are and identify the strengths and weaknesses you’ve both observed. Then, it will be time to explore future challenges and opportunities and determine whether you should continue, modify, or end the partnership.
How to Ask for a Business Partnership
Another crucial component of this process is determining how to ask for a strategic partnership. Here is a general overview to help:
- Identify and understand the other company’s goals and interests.
- Use a persuasive subject line if you are reaching out through email.
- Lead with the value you bring to the table.
- Focus on getting to know them on a personal level.
- Enter this interaction with a compelling offer.
- Personalize your interactions.
- Include a call to action.
Why Do You Need Strategic Partnership Marketing?
There are many benefits of partnership marketing that you can enjoy. Through this type of marketing, you can gain a competitive advantage by generating leads and acquiring customers through your pre-existing professional network.
Working with an agency specializing in this type of marketing helps expand your reach, boost your credibility, shorten your sales cycle, and optimize customer experiences by identifying and developing partnership opportunities, negotiating terms, and managing the relationship.
Ultimately, creating these partnerships is a full-time job that requires creating countless assets and experiences.
Some ways that a strategic partnership marketing agency can help you is by facilitating:
- Webinars, workshops, and in-person events. These can be a great way to build goodwill with potential partners, but they require creating valuable content and opportunities for eventual one-to-one engagement. It also involves cohesively leveraging different channels to ensure people attend these events.
- Attending or sponsoring industry events. This will help you network with potential customers and partners to generate leads, but it requires increasing your brand visibility and executing marketing strategies surrounding these events.
- Guest appearances across platforms. A marketing agency can help you establish and produce a podcast or YouTube channel that brings in strategic partners and industry experts as guests. An agency can also help you appear on prospective or current patterns’ podcasts and share guest blogs in partner- or industry-related publications.
- Public relations and co-marketing announcements. By creating press releases, other PR materials, and co-marketing materials, you will be able to reach new and shared audiences and establish yourself as a trusted industry expert within your field.
- Creating awards and other incentives for success. An agency can help you develop structured incentives for referrals, which includes creating and distributing valuable content that appeals to other industry leaders.
- Establishing yourself as an industry thought leader is one of the most important benefits of strategic partnership marketing. Remember – you want to be perceived as an industry leader. This requires producing content consistently that is also to a high standard. An agency can handle this and position you as a leader in your field.
One way to think of this is that your network is a raw resource; strategic partnership marketing refines and leverages it to fuel your success. Now, let’s get some strategic partnership examples to illustrate the power of this approach.
Related Article: Influencer Marketing Strategies to Make Your Partnership More Effective
How KWSM Has Helped Clients Develop a Strategic Business Partnership
Let’s explore how we have helped a client build a long-lasting strategic business partnership at KWSM: A Digital Marketing Agency with one of many strategic partnership examples that illustrate the value of this tactic.
Marilyn: The Musical is a Broadway-style show production on the Las Vegas Strip, while EPURI was an energy drink that launched its American version and aimed at being the top selection for bars and restaurants to serve as a mixer for cocktails.
We created a strategic partnership between these two companies that supported their launches. The Marilyn: The New Musical needed an opening run sponsor-partner, and they offered prime advertising placement and visibility through their run.
EPURI, on the other hand, wanted to get in front of hospitality decision-makers and influencers. More specifically, they were interested in shaking up the marketplace. Our team saw these two brands as a great match.
By facilitating a partnership between this production and energy drink, EPURI was partnered via an opening night party at Gustav’s Bar, located in Paris Las Vegas’ iconic Eiffel Tower.
We executed a strategy that welcomed the cast, media, industry influencers, and hospitality decision-makers to this event. And what were the results of this partnership? See for yourself:
- 1,200 attendees
- 4 food and beverage meetings
- 1 year radio partners secured with iHeartRadio
“Strong partnerships are the bedrock of business success and the secret to scaling new heights. A strategic partnership marketing agency can help you forge these relationships with the right organizations to amplify your strengths, mitigate your weaknesses, and open doors to new opportunities.”
– Jeff Soto, VP of Strategy at KWSM
Do You Need Help Developing a Strategic Business Partnership? Partner with KWSM for a Strategic Partnership Strategy.
It doesn’t matter how strong you think your brand is – growing and achieving your apex will require a helping hand. In the modern world, a strategic business partnership is essential, but creating these relationships requires time and resources you likely don’t have. After all, you have a business to run. When you partner with a strategic partnership marketing agency, they will take care of creating assets, managing relationships, negotiating terms, and even arranging events so you can focus on your business.
Partner with KWSM to find strategic partners. Visit our Strategic Partnerships page to learn how we can take the ‘work’ out of ‘networking’ for you and your business.
