If you’re going to start a company, you may want to partner with other business entities or individuals. You needn’t think about these partnerships in formal terms. Think of them more like businesses or helpers that let you achieve your goals, even if you don’t necessarily have any sort of contractual agreement. Of course, some business entities and individuals will require that you have a formal contract.

In this article, we’ll go over examples of business partners, both formal and informal, that might help your company thrive. Consider how these entities can help you if you just started a company and you’re trying to establish yourself.

Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and Similar Delivery Services

Let’s say you make a physical product you want to sell to customers. If so, you’re in good company, as millions of other businesses follow this model.

You might feature your products in brick-and-mortar stores, or perhaps you’ll have a strictly eCommerce setup. Maybe you’ll have a hybrid business where you sell products online and ship them to customers and you also have a line of products on store shelves.

If you’re in the eCommerce niche, you will likely want to partner with Amazon, UPS, FedEx, or whatever other shipping company works best for your particular situation. 2021 saw Amazon deliver 4.75 billion packages in America, and that number keeps rising with each passing year. When you think about the kind of network Amazon has and its vast resources, it makes sense you’d want to partner with this behemoth.

You can look into featuring your products on Amazon. The company will take a cut of your profits if you use them in this way, but it’s definitely worth it.

While you can sell your products directly on your website, the power and reach of companies like Amazon, and also ones like FedEx and UPS, can benefit you immensely. Maybe you won’t partner with them formally, but if you’re using their vehicles to distribute your merchandise, you should see substantial benefits.

A Marketing Company

You should also think about using a marketing company. This usually requires a formal partnership with legal paperwork, unless you hire a freelancer. Then, you might have a slightly less formal agreement in place.

Whichever option you choose, involving your company with someone who can handle your marketing makes sense. You can always hire a marketing team and have them work for you fulltime, but maybe you don’t have the money for that in your operating budget. Even if you don’t, though, you need to market your goods or services.

The right marketing agency or freelancer will ask you about your goals and target audience. If you’re not sure about what demographic you’re attempting to target with your products or services, they can conduct focus groups.

They might also recommend some social media platforms where your target audience spends their time. They can develop an email marketing list for you.

They might talk to you about strategies like pay-per-click ad campaigns. They may also suggest guerilla marketing or some other method that they feel will work well for a company in your niche and position.

Partnering with the right marketing professional or agency can help you get ahead of your competitors, especially in the early going when you have a tenuous position in your industry. Many businesses fail within the first few months, but marketing your company, products, and services correctly can often counteract market apathy and other factors that could doom your chances of success.

Copywriters

You might partner with some copywriters as well. You need someone who can write the copy that will appear on your website. If you make physical products, you must hire someone to write the copy that appears on the packaging, assuming you don’t have the time, skill set, or inclination to do it yourself.

Much like marketing professionals, you can hire freelance copywriters if you don’t have the money to have someone salaried working for you fulltime. You must look at your finances and make that decision. If you feel like a freelancer makes more sense, you can use them to write your social media posts, the blogs that appear on on your website, or anything else that comes into your mind.

Influencers

Perhaps you will partner with an influencer. That’s advisable if you have a product or you’re offering a service that you think young people will like.

Your marketing agency might do a little research and recommend someone who they feel can promote your products and services well. Maybe you’ll know this person, or perhaps you won’t.

If you’re running a startup, then you may not have the financial resources to hire a famous actor or musician. Still, younger audiences might respond better to someone closer to their age who they know from social media. These types of celebrities can do a lot for your brand if you pick the right one.

IT Experts

Much like hiring a copywriter or marketing agency, you also need someone who can handle your IT. You might have the money to hire an IT department, or one person if you don’t have very expansive or complex IT needs.

However, in the early going, you might go with a freelancer. You can find freelancers in the IT space in just the same way you can locate freelance copywriters or marketing professionals.

Your IT specialist can handle your servers, your company’s security measures, and anything else in the IT space that you require. Even the smaller companies need IT help if they have a simple, scaled down website. Having someone who can run the daily maintenance becomes critical very quickly and it’s not something you can overlook.

You can probably think of other businesses and individuals with whom you might partner. The larger and more complex your company becomes, the more help you’ll need. Just make sure to pick the people and entities who you feel most confident can assist you.