How to Get More Clients Than You Can Handle for Your Small Business

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From start-ups to established enterprise brands, no one is exempt. Every one of us is trying to drum up new customers.

One of the simplest, fastest ways is to leverage the customer base of another business. It’s called a host-beneficary relationship. It’s like being a parasite, with permission.

Introducing the host-beneficiary relationship

Host-beneficiary relationship – host-ben for short – is a clunky term for a simple concept:

• Your start-up or small business is the beneficiary (ben).
• The host is an established business that serves a target audience similar to yours.
• You use the communications of the host to promote an offer to their customers

You win by gaining more awareness of your business … and new customers. The host wins by creating goodwill with its existing customers.

Let’s use a new health club as an example. We’ll call it Slipstream Fitness.

Slipstream Fitness caters to high-income men and women. Members typically live within a 15 km radius of the club. No surprise, they are interested in sports, the outdoors, and living a healthy lifestyle, often active in golf, tennis, sailing, or curling.

Clever Slipstream creates a promotion directed to members of nearby clubs. Here’s how it works:

• It offers a 1-month membership with a free fitness assessment to the members of nearby yacht and country clubs.
• The offer is included in the host club’s monthly e-newsletters; they have no printing or postage expenses.

Slipstream Fitness receives a good response. Over 100 people book an appointment for their free fitness assessment. Of those, 25 decide to become health club members at a cost of $2,000/year. Slipstream makes $50,000 in the first year from this host-ben – all at no cost, by promoting itself to other clubs in its neighbourhood.

Just follow these 6 steps to make a host-ben work for your small business or start-up:

1: Define your target audience

Be as detailed as possible. Avoid generalities. The more information you have on your ideal customer, the more potential hosts you’ll be able to identify. Slipstream knew its members were high net-worth men and women. They also knew they played other sports – and that they were interested in staying fit so they could enjoy playing these sports.

An accountant specializing in tax might identify audiences such as the presidents of small manufacturing businesses within a 50 km radius who don’t employ a full-time finance expert.

2: Find a business that serves the same audience

You’ll have to do a bit of digging to find the right business for your host-ben marketing effort. The accountant mentioned above could partner with a lawyer who serves the same clientele – or a local chamber of commerce to help find the right manufacturing companies.

3: Develop your offer

Ideally, your free or discounted offer has a high perceived value yet costs you little. You’ll find some great examples in this article from Entrepreneur, including a computer support business that offered a voucher for 2 free hours of computer repair to the customers of a local accountant and a framing shop that offered free photo framing to a photography supply store.

4: Approach your host

How do you approach your host?

Draft a short email pitch that you can send to your target hosts.

• Emphasize what’s in it for them (not what you hope to get out of the arrangement).
• Paint a clear, simple picture: how easy it will be for them, how little they have to do.
• Send the email to the most senior person in the organization. If you don’t hear back within a day or 2, call your contact and briefly outline your plan so as to gauge their interest.

5: Draft your offer

Again, make it easy for the host – give them as little as possible to do. For example, if they agreed to include your offer in their e-newsletter, draft a short notice for them, covering the details.

6: Prepare for new customers

Before the offer has been distributed by your host, make sure your organization is ready for new customers. In the case of Slipstream, they should be prepared to give each new referral a tour of the facility prior to their free health assessment.

7: Bonus! Do a follow-up

It never hurts to do a follow-up afterwards to ensure each potential new customer had a positive experience, and to provide additional information about membership benefits.

Use the energy

Athletes use host-bens all the time. Judo experts make use of the attacker’s energy to defend. Experienced bicyclists ride in a peloton, taking advantage of the holes in the wind created by those ahead to create efficiencies. You too can use the results of other’s energy to move your business ahead. All it takes is a little imagination.

If you’re wondering how you can get more clients for your business, sign up for a digital advertising consultation with one of our media experts.

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