How to Create a Successful Partnership with a Competitor

If you're a business owner, you know that competition can be fierce.

You need to stay at the top of your game and find new ways to gain an advantage over fellow competitors to remain successful.

But what if I told you that partnering with a competitor could actually help elevate your business? It's true - creating a successful partnership with another company within the same market can open up opportunities for - growth, cost savings, access to resources, and more.

In this blog post, we'll cover everything you need to know about how to create a successful partnershipwith one of your competitors. So without further ado, let’s get started!

1. Understand Your Competitor's Goals and Objectives

Understanding your competitor's goals and objectives is the best way to get close to your competitor.

Knowing what motivates your competitor can help you come up with common points of collaboration or strategic alliances that benefit you both. This way, you'll be able to work together more effectively and build bridges instead of walls. Another thing you can do is combine your resources and put them to use and expand market share and push boundaries in product innovation.

Now how do you understand what are your competitor's aims and goals? Well, the answer is simple - research. Investigate what your competitor has been doing in the market and try to identify their strategies.

You can also take a content marketing approach and use Ahrefs to check what your competitors rank for. You’ll know what keywords their targeting and what their content strategy looks like. This will tell you if your own goals align and if there are gaps you can fill.

2. Identify Areas of Shared Interests and Synergy

A shared interest or synergy means finding common ground between you and a competitor that can be mutually beneficial for both of your businesses.

This might include a desire to collaborate on a certain project, similar marketing strategies, or simply awareness that both teams can gain from working together.

For better understanding, suppose we take Semrush and SurferSEO both have SEO and AI writing options. So if they join forces, they can create something better than either of them.

For instance, they can make up for the feature the other one is lacking, like Semrush has a better content analysis tool, while SurferSEO helps optimize your pages and posts with linking and keyword recommendations.

So if we put these features together, then it'd be a package deal - one will make up for another.

That's why identifying such synergy areas creates a win-win situation.

So try to recognize early on synergy opportunities and embrace them as an opportunity for growth.

3. Sign an Agreement for Collaboration

Collaboration is all about having a formal, agreed-upon agreement that provides a secure foundation for both teams involved.

And usually, a partnership agreement outlines a variety of criteria such as

• Roles and practices of each player,
• Specifications for deadlines and deliverables,
• Rights to ownership of any jointly created material,
• Strategies for resolving potential conflicts.

Basically, it takes care of all the points that ensure that stakeholders are clear on their goals and objectives. Plus, it provides legal protection. Should any conflict arise between you can just produce at the court.

As such, agreements clearly state every detail of the partnership. It safeguards you from any disputes regarding the partnership. All in all, having an agreement allows both teams to build trust early on so that they can focus on building the greatest success together.

4. Set Clear Expectations and Boundaries

If you ever enter a partnership with your competitor, then ensure that everyone stays on the same page. And for that to happen, both of you'd need to set clear expectations and boundaries.

This means that you must decide on -

• What type of collaboration would the partnership be,
• Who is responsible for what tasks,
• What are the standards of outcome
• Resources to be shared
• Division of profit,
• Goals to be achieved

These are some of the points on which you should have clarity.

And in the long run, this helps avoid conflicts and keep up the good work and relations.

5. Create Communication Guidelines and Protocols

Remember communication is the key to success.

A successful partnership with your competitor stands on clear and consistent communication guidelines and protocols.

You need to have effective communication protocols like -

• Regular check-ins and progress updates,
• Reporting progress against key performance indicators (KPIs),
• Coordinating joint activities with one another

And all of these protocols can be carried over a communication platform like Skype, or email. Or something more modern and synchronous like Slack.

Having these protocols in place helps you and your competitor understand each other’s goals and objectives.

6. Take Advantage Of Cross-Marketing Opportunities

Cross-marketing opportunities are a great way for you to build successful partnerships with your competitors.

In cross-marketing, two companies come together to benefit each other’s marketing objectives mutually. Not only does this help achieve company goals, but it also brings in potential customers who may want to make use of both services.

Take, for instance, when Burger King and McDonald's came together to make money for a charity. Burger King told its customers to buy from Mcdonald's for a good cause, and McDonald's responded by giving their customers discounts when they visited Burger King.

This collaboration not only helped both competitors raise money for a good cause but also increased their brand reach.

So that's why you need to keep an eye out for cross-marketing opportunities and take advantage of them whenever possible. But before jumping on such opportunities, you should go over some points, namely -

• Whether you and your competitor have the same target audience?
• What kind of products you can jointly promote with your competitor?
• How will the promotions benefit you both?

Once you have answers to these questions, you can dive further into planning cross-marketing strategies.

Start Building A Partnership

A successful partnership with your competitors takes a lot of planning and effort. But if planned properly, then it can prove to be beneficial for both.

You might have to face some challenges like trust issues, but if you do the groundwork and have an agreement in place, then you can overcome such obstacles.

And the other things you'd need to take care of are already mentioned above. Go through them, and you should get an idea about what needs to be done.