Small business owners can improve their brands, while increasing sales by 10-20% by teaming up with the “cool” businesses! On August 31 Ford announced partnership with Zipcar by which Ford will sell cars to Zipcar at a discounted rate for them to use for their rental fleet. For those not in the know, Zipcar is a next generation car rental company with a very different business model. They typically rent their cars on a per-hour flat fee that includes fuel and insurance to mostly young customers, college students and such, who do not own a car. By associating with Zipcar, Ford will improve their brand image and get more sales from the younger generation. This is a brilliant move on Ford’s part to attract buyers at an early age who typically tend to stick with them for years to come. You can find similar tie-ups at many places in the business world.
Subway has been sponsoring events for American Heart Association for many years, which helps position them as healthy food advocate. Many Hollywood movie studios promote new movie releases by partnering with fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s and Burger King who give away movie themed toys with the kids’ meal. Many celebrities have lent their names to products in effort to promote them. George Foreman has sold millions of namesake grills by endorsing them on television and Internet.
As you can see “cool” association can bring number of benefits by “rubbing some of their coolness” to your business. In particular, the associations can bring following benefits:
- Associating with the cool vendor can improve brand image of your business in the minds of existing and new customers.
- It can help attract attention to the key attributes of your brand that you want to showcase. Subway’s partnership with American Heart Association has position Subway as purveyor of heart-healthy food.
- Associations can help bring in new customers that are attached to the vendor you are partnering with.
- You can also learn how to attract and work with different customer base than the one you have traditionally worked with. This is particularly important if you are trying to attract different target market as Ford is currently trying to do.
As you can see associations with cool vendors can create a win-win for both partners and help improve sales for your business. In the next post we will show specific tactics you can use to find and use partners. In the meantime, if you have success story on cool vendor partnership to share with the readers let us know in the comments below.
