In yesteryear marketing was simpler. You briefed your ad agency, took care of the trade, did some promotions and kept your salesforce happy.

Today is more competitive, expensive, crowded and diverse. In this arena, alliance marketing is a good way to achieve market impact to a critical mass of people cost-effectively. There are 4 phases to it - hunting, shunting, grunting and bunting.

The first is about targeting the right partners for your company. Then it's about shunting to and fro to get the right deal for the partnership. The grunt work of implementing the promotions follows and finally the celebrations for good results and working on developing the relationship further. Experience is particularly important for alliance marketing as there are many traps to avoid.

Case Study: Mobile phone retailer

Issue: In a boom period for the industry, it was important to maximise opportunities outside of their retail network to increase market share.

Solution:: Ferryman defined an approach to potential partners, short-listed candidates and agreed the basis of a deal with the largest indigenous supermarket in Ireland. A promotion was executed to hundreds of thousands of consumers resulting in thousands of profitable sales. The deal was so successful that it ran again several times.