Marketing is a constant challenge for business owners, especially those of us in small or medium sized businesses where time and resources are scarce. Have you considered a partnership with another company to seek opportunities to bring a combined product or solution to the market?
What is Horizontal Marketing?
Horizontal Marketing is where two separate companies come together to serve a market opportunity. A recent example is a partnership between Nike and Apple with the result that the new Nike+ footwear can be connected to your iPod to display real-time information about time, distance covered, calories burned and heart pace on the screen.
It doesn’t just work for large companies though, it can be just as effective for SME’s. Consider a local B&B that partners with a local tour operator to offer a unique local accommodation experience to the tour operator’s customers. The offering gives customers an extra experience and can benefit both customers.
Some advantages of Horizontal Marketing
Cross-endorsement
Each company will endorse the product to their own customers and thereby opening up a new batch of new customers to the other partners in the horizontal marketing campaign.
Spread out the cost
Businesses entering into a horizontal marketing partnership can share all the manufacturing, sales and marketing costs. Especially for SME’s this reduction of costs will be a huge benefit.
So, have a look around for businesses you could possibly partner with and maybe come up with some ideas whereby you can join forces and create a combined solution to both your own and your partner’s customers. This can be mutually beneficial and increase the customer bases of both companies.
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Thanks,
John
