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.

This morning I read an article by Pete Cashmore of Mashable about group buying.  I’m sure that most of you have seen advertisements where something can be purchased at a really great price if a certain number of people commit to buying it.  If the specified number of sales is not reached, the deal is off.

This is a great way for individuals to get good deals on products.  It’s also an excellent marketing tool for businesses.   (We’ll talk about the marketing side of this in another post.)

For this post, one of the big factors at play here is that the more product a business buys, the cheaper they are able to buy it.  We all know that this is why chain stores are able to sell at lower prices than small independent stores.  Price is by no means everything, but it doesn’t hurt.

What if, however, a group of small businesses got together to purchase in larger quantities?  Wouldn’t they be able to purchase at better prices?  Wouldn’t they then either be able to offer better prices to their customers or increase their profit margin?  Or, maybe a little of both.

What would it take to accomplish this?  It would take a group of businesses working together for the betterment of all of them.  Some might say that this won’t work.  To that I have to say why not?  Who wouldn’t want to work with a group of business people that are all interested in the same thing – the success their business.

I ask you to think about this concept.  It can be taken much farther than just buying power.  Not that buying power is a small thing but if you think about it, it could be so much more.

We’ll talk more on this in future posts.  For now though, what are your thoughts?  Is this something that you feel could work?

Photo credit:  didimkaem