People in some professions, like accounting, can be great people to partner up with. You may even be able to develop a more formal revenue sharing arrangement where your accountant would have a financial interest in connecting you with their existing clients. This could be in the form of:

o A finder's fee
o A referral fee
o Subcontracting you out
o Bartering services

Other less formal ideas include a gift basket, sporting events tickets or taking them out for lunch or dinner. Work any of these ideas into your IT marketing budget.

Do Their Clients Need You?

First you want to see if they get requests from clients from time to time for this kind of thing and how they typically handle it. If they say we really don't have anywhere to send them, then those are the magic words for you to propose an IT marketing venture that makes sense.

Talk with your accountant about what IT investments can do for their business. For example, maybe you want to hold an educational seminar in your accountant's office. Of course you want to do this at a time of the year that's good for them. You certainly don't want to broach this subject at the height of tax season, but any other time of the year, especially in the fall and in the late part of the spring is a great time to hold an educational seminar with your accountant.

IT Marketing: How an Educational Seminar Works

The two of you will co-sponsor it. You will invite your customers and theirs and talk about how small businesses can better use their accounting systems or how small businesses can better protect their accounting systems by putting better controls in place and your chartered accountant friend can talk about the accounting issues and you, of course, can talk about the IT issues. The key thing is to at least plant the seeds about computer-related issues.

The Bottom Line on IT Marketing

Personal referrals are great for your IT marketing efforts. To get more referrals, you need to partner with people that get asked who they know. So align yourself with the people who can help you get referrals and reward them in doing so to help with your IT marketing.

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