business owners believe that they have to go it alone in all things. But when you look at how many of the most successful companies operate, that’s rarely the case.
What you see instead is a resourcefulness streak. These brands use all the tools at their disposal to make progress and get ahead of the competition.
Part of this involves simply sharing resources with other companies. It might not be sexy, but it is effective.
So, what does it involve? What should you be doing to spread your costs and increase your margins?
Join Other Marketing Efforts
Starting your own marketing effort and getting everything right is almost impossible for a lot of firms. There are just so many upfront costs that making a return seems basically impossible.
However, that’s not what happens when you join other marketing efforts. When you chip into a larger campaign, you suddenly find that your traction grows faster and all your metrics improve, like lifetime value of the customer, and cost per acquisition.
Over time, you gain more results. No, you’re not completely out there doing everything alone, but you’re instead piggybacking on what others are doing and adding your money to a larger pot. Usually, you’ll find that this method means you’ll have more success than going it alone.
Find New Expertise
Another thing you can do is find and share expertise with other companies. If they figured out how to do something years ago, then it doesn’t make sense for you to reinvent the wheel. All you need to do is reuse what’s already working for them.
Furthermore, once you start partnering with top companies, it changes how people see you (if you’re smaller or just getting started). All of a sudden, much of their gravitas and achievement rubs off on you. You’re seen as so much more reliable, meaning customers are more likely to want to pay you extra to work with you.
Enhance Product Offerings
Another way to collaborate with other firms is to enhance your product offerings. If you can work with companies to boost the appeal of what you can do, that’s enormously beneficial in a competitive marketplace.
One of the best ways to do this is to find something that the other company can do but you can’t, and add it to what you offer to customers. A lot of prospects flake even if there is just one feature they want that you don’t offer. Many times, it is something small, perhaps seemingly inconsequential to you, but of enormous significance to them.
Therefore, teaming up with other companies is a quick fix. You simply add what they offer to your features stack and then advertise it.
If that’s not an option, you can sometimes tap into other companies’ expertise to help you create a better product. Perhaps they have someone on their team who has experience in the area you need, and they’re in a position to massively increase the value of what you offer. Often, the small payment to them is worth it.
Reduce Operational Costs
Next, you’ll want to see whether sharing resources with other companies enables you to reduce operational costs, one of the biggest problems for any business. Sharing these fixed costs will sometimes halve the price, so it is something that is well worth exploring if you have the time.
For example, let’s say your business requires a lot of cloud resources to function. In which case, TRG’s colocation services could be worth exploring. Instead of buying all of the equipment you need in-house, you’re sharing a cloud-based platform with countless other businesses, all contributing to the cost.
You can also adopt a similar approach in other areas, like:
- Shared advertising campaigns
- Splitting warehouse spaces
- Splitting job roles for some professionals
Expand Your Audience
The biggest reason for sharing resources with other companies, however, is to quickly and easily expand your reach. You have an audience and your partner does, so it makes sense for you to both exchange audiences by communicating with both of them.
For example, suppose you want to run an event. If you did this by yourself, you might be short on numbers and it could yield a negative ROI. However, if you do it with a complementary brand, it could be much more successful, especially if there’s a big overlap between their audience and yours.
You could also cross-promote content on each other’s social media channels (something that companies are doing much more often these days). Again, these drives can make a big difference in how prospects view companies (or whether they know about your brand at all).
Accelerate Market Entry
Sharing resources may also help to accelerate market entry for some businesses. Brands already in target markets can fast-track your entry by helping you with things like getting to know the local culture or access distribution networks. Once you have a proper business in place to deal with these things, you don’t need to spend as much time worrying about them yourself, which can be a real burden off your back.
You can even sometimes get a fully functioning customer base right off the cuff. These are extremely helpful when you need to make a quick return to prove the value of a decision to shareholders or owners.
Share R&D Costs
Finally, you might want to look into the various ways you can share research and development with a business or partner. If you can both benefit from the same investigations without stepping on each other’s toes in the marketplace, these arrangements can be highly lucrative.
For example, suppose you want to develop one part of a technology for end-users, and your partner wants to develop the other. In this case, it makes sense for you both to go into it together. You can also reduce costs and make the final product even better than it would have been otherwise.
So there you have it: how something as simple as sharing resources with another business can improve your commercial outcomes.
