🎖 How do you ask companies for perks/discounts for your community?
I'd imagine you could just try to "sell" the value of getting in front of the members in your community and ask companies for a special discount.
Might be as simple as that.
But curious if you all have any experience with the ask. Are there any things to consider that I might overlook?
I want to make sure I'm respectful to companies and not just assume they have free promo codes to hand out. But also really want to provide some more value for my community.
Appreciate your thoughts 🙏
Been there, done that.
Convey that your community has a need/want for the product/service the company has to offer. "Product-Community fit", if I may.
Does the community have purchasing power?
The company needs to know that the value they'll derive is higher than what they give away.
What % of your community may buy the product? What does that mean in numbers?
Of course, don't explicitly tell them you did all these calculations, but you need to make sure you do them. It helps to understand what the other side of the table gets.
Who are your other partners? If none, who else have you approached and they've shown interest? Use social proof in some way. No one wants to partner with someone no one else partners with.
Secondary interests: Does your community have members that can be of value to the company? Who can you connect them with? (Eg: Influencers, Investors, Founders, etc.)
If you build a strong enough case, they will create exclusive promo codes for you.
Would agree with this! Maybe start with "low-haning" partnerships to build that social capital. Would also want to say that if you have your users in focus (members) you will look for partnerships that are incredibly valuable to them. If you focus on solving your users problem you will find product/market fit for your asks and then they WILL make business seance for the companies you ask :)
Really appreciate this! Super helpful.
Was not thinking about the "other partners" as social proof. Makes total sense.
I would think exclusivity might also be a factor.
If I get a "partner" to offer a promo code and then their competitor sees, do you think the competitor will want to partner up as well? Or is this a deterrent?
I think that depends, case by case. If they're competitive, use it to your advantage.
Eg: I had an email automation service on a list of partners. I approached another one. They seemed reluctant because of the presence of their competitor on the "partners" page. Used this to get a better deal.
Bumped them to the first row on our "partners" page and they were ready to come on-board + offered a better discount rate :)
Ah very nice
You literally just ask! I spent about 10-20mins every other day for a week and managed to land over $100k in deals and discounts from awesome SaaS tools that our community members would actually like to use (i.e. Memberstack, Airtable, Stripe, Stripe Atlas, Segment, Zendesk etc.).
Admittedly I had some advantage as I formerly worked as a VC so I had some relationships built, but everyone wants to grow their startup. Offering a deal or discount to passionate community members has a $0 CAC other than someone's time. When speaking with reps from the companies, just make sure to illustrate your numbers and how many community member signups they can expect.
I saw someone mention "product-community fit" that's a great one. Don't bother going after discounts just for the sake of having them but go after those that your community members will LOVE and in return the company providing the discount will be happy as you drive signups for them; a true win for everyone!
Meant to say thanks for your input!! Went ahead and just asked a bunch and got some pretty sweet discounts going :)
At most they just wanted a zoom call to chat which is totally understandable.
Met some great people in the process already.
That's awesome to hear Bryce! It's crazy how easy it is hey!
Could you find a list of companies that ALREADY do this? If they do this with other communities, then they probably have someone responsible for that.
Maybe a good angle is to first ask who's responsible for "discounts for communities" and ask if they have certain requirements. Just my 2 cents.
Definitely a good route to take and one I'm looking into. Appreciate it 🙏