Director of Marketing
Content at GRIN
Welcome to the GRIN gets real podcast, the show for people who want to maximize their marketing potential. From influencer marketing to eCommerce strategy and everything in between, each episode will feature industry experts that share their insights and provide actionable tips to help you achieve your marketing goals. Subscribe and stay tuned!
Founder & CEO of Appbind
Sunir Shah knows how to build partnerships that last and how to leverage those relationships to grow a company. He’s come up with many different tactics for building these relationships efficiently and productively. For him it always begins with positioning, figuring out where your brand fits into the market and then creating strategic partnerships that help get your brand’s message out to your potential customers.
“If your partners think you’re the best, your customers will think you’re the best.” – Sunir Shah, AppBind & Cloud Software AssociationInfluencer marketing is a classic form of relationship marketing because in order for influencer marketing to work, brands have to build relationships with their influencers ensuring that their message gets delivered authentically to social media audiences. But ecommerce brands should be building relationships with all different kinds of partners, from influencers to software companies, to service providers to distributors and retailers, anyone you rely on to get your products into the hands of your customers. The goal of these partnerships is to get the people and companies that your customers already come into contact with on a daily basis, to tell your brand story for you. Building lasting partnerships means establishing your company as a reliable resource for your partners. It also takes figuring out how your brand story fits into their MarCom efforts and how you can ultimately help your partners do an even better job at reaching their customers.
“It’s not just sending them swag in the mail and getting them to do an Instagram thing for you. You wanna start organizing things to grow their audience and bring them along. You need to get the train moving yourself and invite them up on your train so that you collectively are building the market. That’s authentic.” – Sunir Shah, AppBind & Cloud Software Association
“This is what relationship marketing is about. It’s proving to the other person that you are a true partner and that it’s worth their time investing in you because you invest in them and they will think of you first… And the market therefore gets tilted towards you because you’re the best and people care about you.” – Sunir Shah, AppBind & Cloud Software AssociationSunir Shah knows how to build partnerships that last and how to leverage those relationships to grow a company. He’s come up with many different tactics for building these relationships efficiently and productively. For him it always begins with positioning, figuring out where your brand fits into the market and then creating strategic partnerships that help get your brand’s message out to your potential customers. Sunir describes himself as “a robot” because of the way he maps out, then builds and manages these strategic partnerships. But really he says, this type of relationship marketing all comes back to highschool dating. In this episode of the GRIN Gets Real Podcast, Katya from GRIN talks with Sunir, CEO of AppBind and founder of The Cloud Software Association, about why partnerships are important, and how to go about building them. Sunir explains how he defines a market and how he uses relationship marketing to position a company within that market. He gives a window into his unique negotiating style, which is nothing like it’s done in the movies, and how he defines authenticity proving that there is a science behind it, and it’s not “just magic.”
“You wanna show that you’re the best partner they’ve ever had. You have to project manage your partners because they’re not gonna be able to focus on you, they don’t know whether you’re reliable, and whether you’re worth investing in. You need to demonstrate leadership and actually drive that action with them.” – Sunir Shah, AppBind & Cloud Software AssociationSunir explains the theory behind relationship marketing, but he also gives advice and insight on how to build an effective relationship marketing strategy. Sunir breaks down topics such as:
“Organize around the customer, bring your brand, all these people in… Then you’re gonna be the first person they think of, cause they don’t wanna get thrown off the train.” – Sunir Shah, AppBind & Cloud Software AssociationSunir explains how there’s an ecosystem of places your customer goes to get information about their problems and to look for solutions. These include social media, blogs, podcasts, magazines, other software or service companies, and distribution channels. In order to get your specific solution into your customer’s hands, you have to get your story into that ecosystem. That’s why you need to build relationships and partnerships, and that’s why relationship marketing works. If you want to learn more about relationship marketing, which kind of partnerships your company should be focusing on, and how to start building the most profitable partnerships, then you won’t want to miss a minute of this episode. You’ll be sure to laugh at Sunir’s quirky way of talking about serious business topics, but you’ll also pick up a good deal of in-depth knowledge. So what are you waiting for? Listen to the podcast now!
Director of Marketing
Content at GRIN
Welcome to the GRIN gets real podcast, the show for people who want to maximize their marketing potential. From influencer marketing to eCommerce strategy and everything in between, each episode will feature industry experts that share their insights and provide actionable tips to help you achieve your marketing goals. Subscribe and stay tuned!
