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One of the fastest and most profitable way to skyrocket your online sales and boost
your profits is to create alliances through joint ventures. The reason this is so is
that joint venture utilizes the powerful marketing concept known as "leverage".
What Is A Joint Venture?
Joint venture, also commonly known as host-beneficiary relationship, or strategic
alliance, is a form of marketing that involves you entering into a form of loose
partnership with another company to help each other make extra profits.
This form of marketing utilizes the existing strong bonded relationships and goodwill
that other companies have already established with people who're your potential customers.
It allows you and your joint venture partner to leverage each other's assets and
resources for the benefit of both parties.
You promote your joint venture partner's products/services to your customers, and/or
your joint venture partner promotes your products/services to his customers in exchange
for a portion of profits from the resulting sales.
Joint venture is ideal when you've a specific group of people whom you want to target,
and there're other companies already dealing with them. Cutting joint venture deals
doesn't necessarily need to be confined to only non-competitors. You can cut deals with
your competitors too, and increase profits for both parties -- an example where this type
of joint venture partnership is ideal is when you're selling products such as CDs, books
and other how-to information products.
Benefits of Joint Venture
- Joint venture is one of the most effective ways of enhancing your relationship with
your subscribers and customers. It'll reflect positively on you if you're able to find
a quality product and/or service at an excellent value to offer them.
For this to be effective, your subscribers and customers must think that you're offering
increased value to them. They must believe that you've gone out of your way to find the
offer and pass it on to them. As a result, they're more likely to take up the offer
because they feel obligated to do so.
On the other hand, if the products/services you offer them is substandard and don't add
value, it'll backfire on you because they'll think that you're out to make a fast buck
out of them.
- You can increase the size of your opt-in and ultimately your customer list very
quickly. It's not uncommon to add hundreds of new subscribers to your list within minutes
of launching your joint venture.
- You can gain instant credibility by leveraging on your joint venture partner's good
name. If your joint venture partner is reputable, and commands the trust of his
subscribers and customers, this goodwill will be passed on to you.
The fact that your joint venture partner is endorsing your products/services makes his
subscribers and customers think you're credible as well. This is called gaining
credibility and goodwill through association.
- You're guaranteed of increased response because your sales message is certain to be
read by your joint venture partner's subscribers and customers. This is third party
endorsement at play here. Your joint venture partner has already established a
relationship with his subscribers and customers and they're likely to trust his
endorsement as opposed to you trying to sell your products/services to them
yourself.
- Joint venture is a great way to acquire new subscribers and customers with practically
no costs. It allows you to leverage your joint venture partner's traffic, existing
subscribers and customers. You don't have to incur expenses in acquiring new traffic and
you can be pretty certain that the traffic you get from your joint venture partner is
targeted and therefore likely to be profitable.
- Another benefit is that it allows you to offer new products to your existing
subscriber and customer base if you don't have any products to sell, or you don't want
to incur the expense of developing new products.
You could do an endorsement of your joint venture partner's products to your existing
subscriber and customer base. This can be extremely profitable because your subscribers
and customers will think that it's a valuable product otherwise you wouldn't have endorsed
it, especially if you've a good reputation with them. They're unlikely to think that
you're trying to make a fast buck out of them.
Here's How To Cut A Joint Venture Deal
Find out who is selling to your target market, what products and/or services they're
selling, and who your target market trusts and has good relationship with. You'll then
want to contact them to cut joint venture deals by offering them complementary products
and/or services. This is a win-win proposition because it adds another profit stream to
both parties. If you're a reputable company that offers high quality products/services,
it should be really easy for you to find other companies to partner with.
Here are some examples of Joint Venture deals that you can go into:
-
If you sell accounting software to small businesses, you could contact
those who sell computer hardware to small businesses to cut a joint venture deal. In
this case, both you and your potential joint venture partner are serving the same small
business market. Furthermore, both your products are complementary which makes it ideal
to enter into a partnership.
You can promote computer hardware to your accounting software customers and prospects,
and your joint venture partner can do the same by promoting your accounting software to
their existing customers and prospects.
-
If you've a great product but don't have a big subscriber and customer list, and
website traffic, you could approach those who've a great list or a high traffic
website to cut joint venture deals with. Your joint venture partners can promote your
great product to their list in exchange for a percentage of profits from the resulting
sales.
-
Another example is the co-development of products. You might have specialised knowledge
with high demand but you lack product creation skills. You can easily approach someone
who's good at creating products, such as, ebooks, tapes and videos, to strike a joint
venture deal. You can provide the specialised knowledge whilst your joint venture partner
can be responsible for creating the products.
-
You can also enter into a list building joint venture with ezine publishers where all
partners promote each other's ezine at the subscription thank you page. After someone
has subscribed to your ezine, you'll redirect them to the subscription thank you page
where you display your joint venture partners' ezines.
Likewise, after someone has subscribed to your joint venture partners' ezines, he'll
also be redirected to their thank you pages where your ezine is displayed.
In this way, all of you can build your list much faster as all the partners are
leveraging on each other's resources.
The above are just some examples of joint venture deals that you can enter into. The
main draw of joint venture is that it benefits all parties; it's truly a win-win business
proposition. You win, your joint venture partners win, and your customers and subscribers
win.
Furthermore, it's extremely low cost and low risk, and is one of the fastest way of
bringing your product to market by using other people's resources.
Do it right, joint ventures can literally explode your online sales and profits in
short order.
About the Author
Copyright 2005 by Larry Lim, MarketingSphere.com
Larry Lim is a marketing strategist and tactician who dishes out highly
effective marketing strategies and tactics that will enable you to successfully
start and grow your business on the Internet.
Check out his Internet Marketing Strategy website that is jam-packed with internet marketing secrets and softwares that will
skyrocket your sales, and shoot your profits through the roof.
To read more, please visit
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