We’ve talked before about developing business communities within your area. Marketing a block or two of businesses, a shopping plaza or a mall to create a destination for potential customers. With this type of marketing, all of the businesses are in the same area. They are neighbors.

A community of businesses, however, do not need to be located in the same neighborhood. Depending on your situation, these businesses do not even have to be in the same city. There are many types of businesses that could come together as a community for a common goal. For example, if your goal is to provide a means for your customer to secure their financial future, then it would make sense for an accountant or tax consultant, an insurance agent, an investment broker, and maybe a banker to develop a community to provide this. In this case, it would probably be beneficial if all were in the same city but certainly not mandatory, especially if you are in a small town.

Another example of this would be a group of businesses whose goal it is to offer their customer the experience of relaxation and being pampered. In this case, the group of businesses would be a day spa, a nail salon and a hair dresser. All of which are there to cater to the individual giving them an experience of relaxation and being pampered.

There are many benefits to developing a business community such as this. The main one is the expanded list of prospective customers each has. In this community, each business has access to each others customers via community email, marketing, advertising, etc. The community markets the businesses together rather than separate and each business promotes the others in the community. People appreciate recommendations from others they do business with. It’s gives them a sense of security about doing business with someone they do not necessarily know.

The only real requirement to developing a community like this is that each of businesses must have the same values. The customers and prospective customers must get the same feel from each of the businesses. As long as this requirement is met, the community has the potential to be highly successful.

What type of business community would your business be in? Leave a message in the comments below. Let’s talk about it.

Please excuse me for repeating myself, but if you are interested in learning more about developing a business community, we are in the process of developing a program to teach just that. If you sign up to receive our free report, we will be happy to send you information and updates on the progress of the program. We look forward to being able to work with you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

In the world of travel, a destination is defined as a place or area where people travel to for recreation, relaxation, and enjoyment. How great would it be if your business, or better yet, your area of businesses, were to become known as a destination for those purposes?

Becoming known as a destination may not be as difficult as you think. How many businesses are in your area? Your area could be just one block of a street or a couple of block, a shopping plaza, a mall or even a town. The idea here is for the businesses within your area to partner for the purposes of creating yourselves as a destination, a place for people to hang out, relax, and enjoy.

Let’s say that your area has a couple of restaurants, a couple of boutiques, and a night club. Maybe you define yourselves as a destination to shop, enjoy good food and night life. Or, maybe your area has restaurants, a spa, a hair salon and a nail salon. So you could define yourselves as a destination to get pampered in. It can be done no matter what the type of businesses are. It’s a matter of being a little creative in your marketing.

A destination has the ability to attract far more people than one business can. The more people there are in the area, the better the chances of them stopping in your store are.

Talk with the businesses in your area to see how you could partner to become a destination. It’s an exciting concept and has the potential to be more profitable as well as a lot more fun, not only for the customers but for the businesses involved as well. I’ve said it before, two heads (or better yet, 10 heads) are better than one. One person may be able to do some great work but a small group can do some amazing things.

Steve and I are working on a project now to help small businesses create a community. It’s something that we both very strongly believe in and are very excited about the opportunity to help businesses with this. If you are interested in learning more about this project and receive updates, please sign up above to receive our free report and we’ll keep you updated on our progress.

Photo credit: ap.