Joint Venture Marketing

What is Joint Venture Marketing?

A joint venture refers to an alliance where two or more businesses (regardless of their sizes and scopes) form a strategic partnership. Joint venture aims for sharing markets, IPs, know-how’s, assets and profits.

There are many purposes of forming a joint venture. For some businesses, joint ventures are established to compete with a stronger competitor any of the businesses involved in the joint venture cannot compete with otherwise single-handedly. Some other businesses join forces with other businesses with identical product and service offerings for penetrating bigger markets. Penetrating a new market requires a huge investment. Other businesses form alliances to penetrate the local market. For instance, if you want to penetrate the Chinese market, you should partner with a locally-owned business that carries the same products as yours as per the local regulations. In rare cases, a corporation may partner with a small business to acquire the latter’s critical IP, know-how and technology that the former may not obtain through other methods. Some businesses even collaborate with their competitors.

Today, joint ventures are formed on the Internet. Internet provides opportunities for an online marketer to partner with another marketer for reaching a bigger target audience. Online, however, joint ventures can take on various forms. For example, joint ventures are established to promote the marketers newsletters or cross-promote complementary products. Other marketers join forces with e-zine writers to write contents to build their own subscribers list. Other marketers form a joint venture to work on a new project from scratch like writing and then selling an e-book.

Joint venture marketing, specifically, is still in its infancy. Nonetheless, it is very effective in driving traffic, exposure, ranking and profit. At its simplest explanation, joint venture marketing is swapping adverts with another marketer. These strategic alliances obviously create win-win situations.

There are many benefits of establishing an online joint venture. First, you will instant leverage your current resources. Second, you will gain instant access to quality traffic more so if you are going to partner with a highly reputable online marketer. Third, you may capitalize on the reputation of your partner to boost your own reputation.

Joint ventures are one of the most powerful tools created for online marketers to expand different areas of operation. However, not all online marketers are ready and willing to start a joint venture with another marketer. Some are hesitant to even approach other marketers. There are instances that a marketer is providing fillers to let the other marketer know of the intention. The problem is the other marketer may think of this as a spam instead of filler.

Below are some practical tips when forming a joint venture online.

First, start by creating a shortlist of potential partners in your niche. This might be a time-consuming undertaking, but you will surely find marketers that are willing to form strategic alliances with you. You simply have to look at the nature of the business, its purpose and its product or service portfolio.

Second, contact each marketer on your list. You must get to know each of them by emailing each. You must be very precise in your email subject, so it will not land on spam inbox. If you must, prepare different versions of email proposals for each potential partner on your list. Alternatively, you may subscribe to the newsletter of your prospect partner before sending the proposal. Just make sure that the partner is made aware of your intentions.

Third, go slow when you approach a potential partner. You need to be courteous at all times. Compliment, but do so naturally and genuinely. Tell a partner why you like his or her business. You may relate your partnership intentions at first, but prioritize the developing the relationship slowly.

Fourth, be realistic especially when you talk about financial estimates. The rule of thumb is not promising something that you cannot deliver. Explain the financial and non-financial benefits of partnering with you without hyping. Make sure that you can provide incentives to your partner for the joint venture to commence.

If you are struggling to find potential partners, you may start on forums. Join a forum and start searching for other members who are directly and indirectly working on your niche. Contact them and send in your proposal.

You may also look for websites that carry out referral contests. You may sift through these sites and identify relevant promoters who are willing to market your products and services. Be ready in providing them with necessary promotional tools.

Yet another important resource is social media websites especially LinkedIn. LinkedIn users are usually professionals and business owners. In Facebook, you should target Facebook pages. Timelines are for individuals and pages are for businesses. Search for them. Get their contact details and send each a joint venture proposal.

Of course, you may also use various directories online. Practically, you may refer to a joint venture directory, which is a network of business owners and marketers who willingly partner with other promoters online.

If all else fails, you always have Google in searching for the names of potential partners. Using niche-related keywords, you may identify online marketers who might collaborate with you. Contact them as well.

You may only reap the benefits of a joint venture if you will find the right partner. You may create a list of the requirements in finding your potential partner. Through this, you may narrow down your search based on the requirements you listed.

Finally, the chances of success in forming a joint venture with another online marketer are high. Thus, you may also list critical success factors while at the process of choosing a potential partner. There are also risks involved. Make sure that the joint venture will not be a waste of time and resources for both of you. Other pitfalls are losing critical technology and IP and squandering your current reputation. With this, you have to evaluate the risks and make sure that the pros of entering into a joint venture marketing strategic alliance outweigh the cons or it will only create a win-lose or lose-lose situation that is not favourable to you.