Pouring into Community Partnerships in Three Steps

One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves as entrepreneurs is that we have to do it ALONE. That we have to pay thousands of dollars a month to reach people to buy our tours. I felt that way when I started my winery tour company in 2016 — I bought ads in local and industry magazines that only led to more advertisers contacting me instead of bookings and ROI.

I spent hours responding “no we don’t lower our prices to match Uber” and “yes the 21-and-up rule applies to infants.” Realizing that the right clients were needles in haystacks of false fits meant something had to change. 

I rode that struggle bus for hundreds of miles and thousands of dollars until realizing that there was a caravan of support in my rearview mirror — all I had to do was ask the right audience the right questions to turn those connections into collaborations.

I used the process I’m sharing with you here to spend less than $200 a year on advertising, become the local favorite, and develop hundreds of local, mutually beneficial partnerships, collaborations or business relationships — which I refer to as Bizlationships™ — that still work for me today even though I sold the business that created them.

Step One: Plant the Seeds

With partnerships, as with wine, there’s an important difference between quality and quantity.

In wine, it’s the difference between mass-produced wine of low quality to be consumed immediately and boutique craft wines that are made to age and appreciate in value. There’s an air of attractive exclusivity for wines that have been curated for a particular palate, while low-quality wines are forgettable and doled out to anyone with a few bucks. 

In building partnerships through an online community — take Instagram for example — numbers DO matter for certain reasons, like monetizing your accounts, but there’s a downside to inauthentic audience-building. Collecting followers by any means necessary — buying followers, using follow trains or offering incentives for follows from anyone and everyone — actually hurts your visibility. When you have a massive following with little to no engagement, the almighty, ever-changing algorithm ranks your content as uninteresting and slows your visibility. 

Strategically bringing people who are ideal clients and collaborators into your circle organically raises your visibility because they value your presence. The trick is finding and attracting them without chasing or repelling them. It’s not much different than dating — the less particular you are about who you want to be with, the more people you attract who aren’t a fit, and the harder it is to find THE ONE. 

Doing business online is like speed dating — you get a short time to make a great impression to get that second look amongst the thousands of others competing for eyeballs in consumers’ feeds. Focusing on quality will help you build a community that will make potential partners want to work with you.

Note: For more tips on how to “plant the seeds,” join the upcoming Arival | Elevate session

Step Two: Cultivate the Vines

You can plant the highest quality grapes on the best plot of land — but if you don’t prune, weed and protect the vineyard, your vines won’t produce high-quality fruit, and might even die. 

The same goes for your content — you have to be intentional with how you nurture your social feed so its value is higher to those you want to attract and work with.

This means focusing on conversations over commercials.

This flows both ways — not only do you want your social posts to inspire conversation, you also want to do the same with your comments, naturally. Your content should talk about your followers, or partners in your community as often as your own business. Remember that date we’re on? Who is better dating material — someone who only talks about themselves, or someone who asks about your interests and shares those interests with you in conversation?

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about your services — but they likely already know what you offer from your brand, “about” page and images. If that’s not immediately obvious, that needs to be addressed before anything we discuss next will be effective.

What potential partners need to know is why your company is a great choice to spend their time, effort and money to cross-promote. Talk about your partners in ways that connect your business to their interests, and tag, tag TAG. This makes other community members want to be the one you are actively promoting and collaborating with, as they see that you are pretty darn good at this social media thing!

Step Three: Harvest the Crops 

You’ve planted the seeds in the right spots with your ideal client’s characteristics, their adjacent interests, and names of businesses they likely patronize that you could partner with.

You’ve taken great care to cultivate and nurture your online Bizlationships™ with potential partners that you want to collaborate with to build offers that elevate your business and increase your high-quality crop of clients.

The final step is to harvest those gorgeous grapes that you’ve worked so hard to grow and create that collaboration that makes sense for both parties to benefit, and also create harmony for the client.

Wine pairing is the same way — you can’t grab just any bottle of white wine for someone who only drinks Riesling and expect them to love it. You also have to know which style of Riesling they like, so you want to ask a few questions to ensure the right fit, even if the pairing is just a glass and a warm sunset. 

Just a little smart research can increase your chances of planting, cultivating and finally harvesting the grapes that lead to mutually beneficial partnerships with other businesses in your community. Your offers to collaborate should be very brief and without any execution details — those come later! This message is to pique their interest in you, not teach them how to do it with someone else! 

It’s simple, but it’s not always easy — it takes time to nurture community connections to move past that “first date” to raising a glass of fine wine to creating revenue-generating Bizlationships™!

About the Author

Renee Ventrice is a US Navy Veteran and the founder of Cork & Keg Tours, which she sold in 2023. Her current business, WineauxClock Culinary Experiences, pairs wine with life and local cuisine. She’s also a regular speaker at Arival events on a variety of topics including building culinary experiences and nurturing community partnerships.

Learn More about Partnerships with Arival

Dive deeper into creating revenue-generating Bizlationships™ and get more tips and strategies on cultivating connections with Renee Ventrice at the next Arival | Elevate online session on Thursday, 26 September, at 11am EDT / 5pm CEST. Open to Arival Insider Pro Access members: register here.

Also, join us for an upcoming Arival event to learn more about building partnerships, and put your learnings into practice by making in-person connections with your colleagues and peers during THE event of the year for solutions-focused creators and sellers of tours, activities, attractions & experiences.

Header photo credit: Juwan Davis Photography