What’s one of the best ways to increase exposure for your Health IT business?
SEO?
Social Media?
Writing tons of blog posts?
Video?
Podcasts and webinars?
Yes, all those things will work. But they take time.
One of the faster ways to get the attention of prospects is to show up where they’re already spending time.
Who has the attention of your prospects… and where are your prospects spending time?
No doubt there are other businesses who already have the ear of your prospects. These are businesses complementary to your business. They also solve problems your prospects have, but not in your area of expertise.
For example, suppose your firm specializes in providing EHR solutions for OB/GYN practices. You would seek out other businesses who already specialize in providing products and services to OB/GYN practices. Perhaps it’s an insurance brokerage firm or a CPA? Maybe it’s a medical equipment firm?
So how do you identify solid marketing partners and how do you approach them to build a mutually beneficial marketing relationship?
How to ID Marketing Partners
To identify the best marketing partner fit for your business, you need to do your homework.
Conduct research on potential marketing partners to determine:
1. Do they have substantial influence in your market?
2. Do the practice strong content marketing/lead generation on their website?
3. Are your Business Philosophies compatible?
To answer these three questions, conduct these steps:
1. Identify 20+ competitive/complementary businessess
2. Check out their websites and determine:
- Do they capture email addresses on their site?
- Do they accept guest posts?
- Do they conduct podcast interviews?
- What’s the traffic of their site- check the Alexa ranking to get an idea.
- What Products/Services do they provide? What are the price points of their Products/Services?
- What other sites link to them?
Here are two tools to help you evaluate your potentail Marketing Partners:
9 Tools to Discover Influencers in Your Market
How to Know Which Partners to Invest In
After you’ve done your research and identified your top potential Marketing Partners, it’s time to approach them.
The key is to offer value to them. Patience and persistence is often needed to convince potential Marketing Partners of the value you can provide to them. In addition, you’re only “marketing” to select handful of businesses.
Forget email.
Forget cold phone calling.
Don’t waste time trying to contact at trade shows.
Here’s a smart approach from a hands-on, direct response master marketer, Dan Gallapo. While Dan talks about this for internet marketers, it’s a process that works effectively in attracting Marketing Partners in any industry.
The steps of Dan’s approach are:
1. Send a snail mail letter with an attention grabber- Use FedEx to send.
2. Prepare a specialized video.
3. Send follow-up email.
4. Phone call withg them.
The right Marketing Partner can boost your Health IT business FAST because they already have the attention of your potential clients. Roll up your sleeves and do your homework and use a smart, different approach to contact your potential Marketing Partners.
