Good Day,
Partnerships are a crucial part of successful visitor growth. This is a soapbox I have been on before, and that’s because I really do believe it is the number one thing we should all be focused on. Yes, we are all busy and it is often daunting to even think about reaching out to other people. However, like an action hero at the climax of the movie, it is with that final act of digging deep and pushing through, that you can succeed.
Partnerships, when all parties are equally invested, should reduce the amount of work each individual has to do in order to achieve the same result. Costs associated with developing new products/experiences are shared amongst many, as are marketing and communications expenses. The effort to reach new audiences is reduced because each partner is communicating to their followers about why they should visit you (and vice versa). These partnerships are not exclusive to businesses working with other businesses. Partnering with your local BIA, Chamber, Municipality, Region, and CCT works exactly the same way. That is the key; it is exactly the same way.
Everyone has goals and reporting metrics that they must meet in order to be successful. The very simplified goal for businesses is earning more revenues than there are expenses. But for support organizations like us, BIAs, Chambers, municipalities, regions, destination marketing organizations, and sector associations that do not actually own any products/experiences, the metrics are different yet no less important. They are often judged on web traffic, social media engagement, stakeholder engagement and overall visitation increases to the areas they are responsible for. When these support organizations partner with businesses, it is important for the businesses to recognize their role in supporting the goals of the support organization.
A formal partnership will most likely spell out expected responsibilities of each partner. However, most of the support organizations are trying to help the businesses without having any type of formal partnership in place. As a business owner/manager, being actively engaged with them will help your businesses and support the organization deliver against their goals and KPIs.
Here are a few ways to help yourself while supporting the supporters:
Keep your listing updated
You provide great information for the support organization to use, which means they will use you more often.
Share your events
They don’t need to be huge events. If you have live music on certain days, enter them in. The more events listed, the more to talk about, the easier it is to get people to visit the area.
Tag the organization(s)
When you are doing social media posts, make sure you use your support organizations’ handles. This allows people following their channels to see you and provides an opportunity for the organization(s) to push your information through their channels. It costs you an extra couple of keystrokes and helps the support organization by bolstering their followers, views and engagements through your content.
Invite them to visit
Not just once, but annually, or even two or three times a year, if you change your offerings by season. For many support organizations, stakeholder engagement is a key metric. Inviting them to visit takes away the work of reaching out to you. It also means that they now have seen first-hand what it is that you do, making it easier for them to promote you and introduce you to other businesses that may be a fit for further partnerships.
Participate
Many support organizations will hold stakeholder meetings and events. Go to as many as you can. You will meet other businesses, learn about what is coming down the pipeline and how your business can benefit from them. The cost for most of these is time, which I understand is valuable, but worth the cost.
Share your successes (and challenges)
Let the support organizations know when something worked. All support organizations must do extensive reporting to justify their budgets and focus. Make it easier for them to keep their funding by sharing with them how things are going. Many business owners focus on the challenges, which is understandable when trying to support the livelihoods of staff and faced with a myriad of hurdles that is making it harder to do. However, there are lots of great things happening in your business. Sharing those successes, in addition to talking about opportunities to overcome the challenges, provides the support organizations fantastic information to both report on successes and help formulate the programs they need to execute in the future to address the challenges.
In the coming month, Central Counties Tourism will be launching the 2026-2027 Partnership Funding Program. There is information about the focus for the program in this newsletter. One of the reasons that I shared the above is that we too have goals and metrics that our success is measured against. Every year since its inception, I have had to remind several applicants that the funding program is not a grant. It is a partnership that is designed to be mutually beneficial. Your success is our success when it comes to reporting. Our reporting is only as good as what we learn from you.
All partnerships should include working with at least one support organization if for no other reason than to spread the word about the product/experience the partners have launched. By actively engaging with these organizations, you remain top of mind and will benefit by meeting new people, learning about new opportunities and having your business seen by their audiences. Your engagement, tagging, participating and sharing make their yearly reports sing.
As I step off my soapbox, I thank you for reading this.
Have a great day!
Chuck
