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The Buyer’s Journey Through a Macro Lens
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Host Molly Beyer talks about the next crucial component in any business owner or entrepreneur’s success in this episode: understanding where our services are positioned in the client’s overall buying journey. Knowing what stage we occupy in the event chain of services allows us to focus our offerings on a specific area that serves a direct purpose and aligns with other companies that come before and after us in the journey.
A referral partnership is a good way to take advantage of the macro journey of the buyer. An event chain is a series of services connected in a single buyer’s pathway. For example, weddings. The journey start with jewelers for a ring, then venues for the ceremony, wedding dress shops, florists, cakes, printers for invitations, photographers… at any stage in the buyer’s journey we have an opportunity to form referral partnerships with businesses in the chain so we can refer our clients on and have other companies refer new clients to us in turn.
Molly explains how to use financial incentives to create a referral partnership, one that benefits every business in the affiliate chain. She also highlights two important caveats to consider: 1) avoid creating relationships solely for the income, as someone with lesser service quality can damage the client relationship, and 2) disclose affiliate partnerships to build transparency and trust. Molly runs through the benefits of the macro lens and strategic relationships, providing sound advice on understanding and nurturing the buyer’s full journey.
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Transcript
Molly 0:09
Hello. I am Molly Beyer, host of the Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, a podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. There are so many ands that impact being your own boss. Join us as we explore all these ands and more. Like, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts, and let's explore these ambiguous ands.
0:39
Hello and welcome to the Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. I'm your host, Molly Beyer, and I'm here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Today, we're stepping it back into the buyer's journey, and we're going to view it from a macro perspective. In our last conversation, we talked about joining the conversation happening in our ideal client's head to help direct them to our service. When we pull out from focusing on a single transaction, we start to see that our entire lives are essentially a buying journey, and as business owners, we need to understand both the micro and macro levels of that journey. The micro level is about engaging with the 1% of buyers who are ready to buy right now, while nurturing the other 99% with consistent touch points. That's something we're going to dive into in our next episode. The macro level is about positioning ourselves at the right stage in the buyer's window for our services. One really powerful way to leverage this is through a joint venture event chain. This involves strategically partnering with businesses that serve the same ideal client, but at different points in their journey. By aligning with businesses before, during and after our services, we're creating a seamless client experience while expanding our regional impact. In these event chains, we can start to see areas that to create joint adventures, whether there are referral partnerships or affiliate partnerships or even just really deep collaborations.
2:06
One of the most common examples of successful event chains is weddings. It's one that everybody knows about, and you can very clearly create it in your own head. You start with a jeweler for an engagement ring. Go to a wedding planner if you're doing that, or if you're planning it on your own, you could figure it all out. From there, you start engaging with venues for ceremony and reception, caterers, wedding dress shops, florists, bakers for wedding cakes, printers for invitations, photographers. So what we're doing in a referral partnership, is creating relationships with those above and below us in an event chain as trusted referral partners. A wedding planner, for instance, is a natural referral hub, in this chain referring to everyone, clients, florists, caterers, photographers and more. An affiliate partnership goes a step beyond a referral partnership. So there's still a referral but it comes with a financial incentive. If a florist creates a partnership with a dress shop that pays them 10% of every referral sale, that creates a strong incentive for the dress shop to send them referrals. So if you have an average wedding flower sale of $2,000 a single referral per month from that dress shop produces for the florist an additional 24,000 a year in revenue with only a cost of 2400 to that dress shop in affiliate payouts. That's an over $20,000 increase in profit for that florist that they would not have had without that single affiliate referral per month. So this florist can go farther than that and create partnerships with the people down level as well, if they say, partner with a baker who makes wedding cakes where the florist is receiving 10% of each referred sale. If we assume $500 a cake, that's an extra $50 per referral, if there's even just one a month, that's $600 a year, simply for sending business their way. And the florists can establish relationships with other bakers, multiple bakers, wedding vendors in other areas as well, photographers, caterers, printers. This additional affiliate income with all of those relationships can add up significantly.
4:28
There's two important caveats when creating affiliate partnerships, however. One, avoid creating relationships just for the affiliate income. Every referral you give is an extension of your credibility. As we discussed in the last episode, you've positioned yourself as the person best suited to solve your client's problems. If you refer them to somebody who doesn't need that same level of service or expertise, it reflects poorly on you. Trust is the foundation of strong business, and bad referrals can quickly damage that. The second caveat is to disclose affiliate partnerships wherever possible, or, I guess, wherever appropriate. Transparency builds trust. I personally disclose affiliate relationships, letting my clients know that I'm going to benefit financially from some of these referrals, but then I'm only recommending those that I truly believe in. I generally will give a couple of different options in these situations as well, so that they get to find the right person for them, regardless of what it's going to do. For me, I think this honesty strengthens my credibility, and so it's maybe not necessary or appropriate in all situations. But I also appreciate knowing when a referral comes with a financial incentive. And I really think other people believe that as well.
5:45
Our next opportunity is collaborations, and these are often a missed opportunity, but they can really offer a wide range of benefits for businesses as well as the business's clients. So the benefits of collaborations is you're expanding your audience to get greater visibility. When we partner with another business, we get exposed to their exis...
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