For small businesses who are looking to gain marketing exposure over and above what the marketing budget might allow, there is an answer – Business Development.

In many cases there has been a clear distinction between marketing and business development. Marketers think of business development as cold calling, or at least sales. And never should a marketer be asked to do business development.

In today’s world, if you’re not doing business development you’re missing out on opportunity. And partnerships with other organizations might be key to growth for small businesses.

Think about it like this:

Surely there are companies that you can think of, they may be competitors even, where your business goals align. They have something you want (ie. prospects, press, social media followings, technology) and you have something to offer them. So it doesn’t hurt to give them a call and get the conversation started.

I wrote about one innovative partnership between Dominos and a Country Inn and Suites I stayed at a few months ago. 

Here’s an example to drive the point home:

A prominent non-profit in the education space was approached by a for-profit school. The non-profit had something the for-profit didn’t, attention. And the for-profit had the ability to raise funds for the non-profit. That turned into a month-long campaign whereby new students at the for-profit helped to raise money and in exchange, the non-profit promoted the arrangement to their audience. The result, both sides reached their goals.

Think about how you might apply that theory to your business. Make a list of ten partnerships you’d like to develop and start reaching out tomorrow.