Host-Beneficiary Marketing

Is Host-Beneficiary Marketing better than coffee? There are a few of us that may think nothing is better than a good cup of joe.  And if you are a Starbucks fan well that’s a whole ‘nother level of jump up and down, can’t live without it, coffee love, right there.  But we will leave that fun for another post.

Today I want to share with you a commonly overlooked low cost technique to grow your business called “Host-Beneficiary Marketing“

If you’re a business owner or leader one of the most overlooked and often highly successful ways to develop new customers in your business is a method that involves forming “host-beneficiary” relationships. To accomplish this you develop a mutually beneficial relationship with businesses that are potentially further along in their business lifecycle stage and serve a demographic or psycographic audience similar to yours. That business is the “host”.

Using a well thought out special offer provided as a gift from the older business, the “host”, you are able to market your business to their base of customers making you the “beneficiary”.

The host business benefits by being able to offer an additional value add consideration to their potential or existing customers without any additional costs, while your business can soon connect with sizable numbers of highly qualified prospects with an indirect and implied endorsement of the established business, the “host” leading to new customers.  In the best cases the host business will also directly endorse you.  This creates a mutually beneficial relationship.

Here is a Host-Beneficiary Marketing example: One “beneficiary” new business owner who just launched an upscale self serve dog wash facility meets with several dog breeding businesses in the area and offers free dog wash gift certificates for customers who purchase certain expensive breeds of large dogs.  The breeders then give away one dog wash gift certificate to any customer who purchase a dog as a thank you gift.

Over the next three months 750 Dog wash gift certificates are given out thru the dog breeders and of those 300 come to have a free dog wash and while there learn about the new business.  75%, or 225 customers, make purchases of ancillary items for sale at an average sale of $18.00.  Additionally 35% of the 300 sign up for monthly memberships at the dog wash yielding 105 new memberships.

The cost of each free self serve dog wash was $1.05 or a total cost of $315 and yields $4,050 in ancillary sales and 105 new monthly memberships x $19 per month x 12 months = $23,940.

While variables will be different in your business situation you can see the major ROI potential of this kind of low cost small business local marketing strategy.

To learn more and gain access to a specific Step-by-Step strategy guide see Host-Beneficiary Marketing Part II at www.growology.com/blog