Your customers love your business, so why not reward them for speaking highly of your service and reliability? The time might be right for you to start up a partner program.
A partner program means you ask customers and businesses to promote your company and reward them with free or discounted dry cleaning every time they bring in a new customer.
Simply put, “A partnership program builds brand loyalty, expands your reach, and helps increase revenue.”
If done correctly, a partner program should generate 30% of your revenue and 61% of people say that colleague recommendations was the #1 reason to do business with a company.
But how do you know if a partner program is right for your business, and if it is, how do you set one up? First see if your business fits these criteria:
- Your business needs to be stable and have a clear direction for the future
- Your business should have customers organically promoting your company
- You can think of businesses who could benefit from recommending your business to their customers
If you answered yes to all three scenarios, your business may be a good fit for a partner program.
Now, it’s time to set one up.
1. Identify who will run the program
You likely don’t have a ton of time to devote to running a partner program, so for now, figure out how much time you have, and as the program grows, consider hiring someone to run the program full-time.
2. Create a valuable compensation plan
Your partner program must offer enticing incentives, such as free or discounted dry cleaning for every new customer they bring you.
3. Build a process for tracking and paying your partners
Make sure you have software in place that makes managing affiliates, adding leads, referral links, and sign-up forms easy.
4. Set up an insightful application form
Make sure your application form weeds out fake applicants by asking clear questions that gives you real data on potential partners. Your website needs to have a landing page that promotes the partner program.
5. Be a resource for your partners
Provide your partners with any materials they need to promote your brand, such as marketing collateral, images for social media posts, embeds for their website, or anything that will help draw in new referrals
6. Identify your best partners and amplify them
Once you have a few partners, identify the best ones, and direct your focus and resources on them, so they can bring in as many new customers as possible. After that, build out an ideal partner profile so you can discover other partners with similar skills that can bring in additional high-value customers.
7. Track your growth and upgrade accordingly
One of the most important metrics you need to track is what percentage of your revenue comes from your partner program. As you grow and try to hit that coveted 30% mark, you eventually will need to upgrade your team and your technology.
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