Partnership and Scaling Your Product
This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.
Eamonn Carey is the Managing Director at Techstars Connection, in partnership with AB InBev and a board member, advisor, mentor and investor in multiple startups and accelerators around Europe.
Partnership is a great opportunity in terms of scaling and getting in front of people, there are many things a partner company can do to scale a product. For instance, a partner can sponsor a reward for a mobile game, or can stuck posters all around the places your product is available in, etc.
So having a partner is amazing, and it’s actually one of the hygiene factors that helps you scale a product, so what is the real importance of partnership roles in nurturing and scaling your product?
The right partners have scale, a simple tweet can lead t a huge amount of engagement, a huge number of downloads. Moreover, partners can bring users and this is how it went for a company called Foxy, which allows users to chat across multiple chat platforms so if you are on WhatsApp then you can talk to me on WeChat and so forth. Foxy made a partnership with Viber and Kik, which brought a half a million users in less than a week to their platform and likewise to many other companies, partnership brings many users in.
Piece of advice, never do nothing because you thought nothing will change. What I mean is take the step even when you expect nothing, this relate also to small companies regarding partnership with large corporates. Many small companies has engaged in partnership with corporates larger and have more than firm place in the market supported by a large number of clients. Anything in business is possible as long as you have worked hard on that incredible idea of yours.
Having a partnership can make an amazing effects on many companies through a product or an app, partners can bring strength to other organizations and can produce such a fairly significant results. However, what is more incredible is the media cover. An advice to many companies to over-index on PR, because a media coverage can drive a massive number of users into looking at what kind of products you sell, what services you offer and whatever else you can do for them. So getting in the media is unbelievably valuable, particularly if it’s targeted as it can get you phone calls from brands, agencies and from people who want to work with you.
Now moving into another important point is figuring out where you need to be. You have to analyze the landscape whether it is a trade media publications, a mass media publications or a tech media publications in your area and start building relationships with those people with a guarantee to pay off.
Be nice to journalists and know how to pitch them, not just how to pump information into them expecting them to spill it all out in their blogs. In fact, when engaging with the journalists be personal with them. For example, refer to story they wrote before and express your opinions on the story nicely on a personal base. Flattery works so avoid annoying answers. Once you are on a journalist’s good sides then you have got thousands of ears to listen to what you offer your users.
Lastly, buy your users….not literally though. You have to think what your customers like and what their preferences are, once you understand them then you can know how to tempt them when you know what exactly to offer them. Those are the highlighted effects a partnership can help your scale a product, remember to considering all those before hesitating to engage into a partnership and go for it!
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