Last week, i-bank had the pleasure of sponsoring the Greater Memphis Chamber's webinar Why Joint Ventures Matter, the second in their Equity and Diversity series. If you missed, you can still watch the recorded version! It got us thinking about other examples of how joint ventures can work. In this article, we'll explore how such a partnership could help increase your online exposure.
If you don’t have time to build an organic email list or a large audience of friends and followers, you may end up staying small for a very long time. The trick to getting that type of exposure quickly is to piggyback on someone else’s product launch that already has the Internet muscle to generate massive exposure. You may think that you need to contribute cash, but often you can trade other services that are just as highly valued during a product launch and get the exposure without paying a single cent. But first, you must locate potential new partners willing to engage your small business to leverage their exposure for your hard work.
Whose Business Complements Your Own?
This may take some brain-storming, but it will be well worth the effort. You want to locate online businesses that will provide a mutual benefit by joining up with them. For instance, if you are in business to sell tax preparation and you know someone about to launch a book on personal finance with a large audience, you can ask if you can provide a free consult to their readers as a thank you gift when they sell a copy of their book. Not only does the personal finance author get to promise the readers of his book his own wisdom, but then he can encourage early sales by using your bonus gift as a time-limited offer to ramp up sales. It costs nothing to them personally and it provides you with referrals in a business that does not compete with the other person.
Create a Complementary Offer
After you find a few people who want you as a joint venture partner, you will have to create complementary offers. Stick to things that either generate instant referrals (like free consultations) or can be mass-produced easily (like e-books). The offer should be something of great interest to those buying the first product so that you can target the people most likely to buy your own product as well. Since you will need an email address to send your offer, in the case of an e-book, you will generate that organic email list with far less effort than normal, providing a win-win scenario for everyone involved.
Rinse and Repeat
Once you’ve done some of these online joint venture partnerships, you will start to generate some name recognition among your specific marketing demographic. You can leverage that by including places where they can reach you and learn more about your business via social networking sites or a business website. Continue to actively engage your new contacts and just rinse and repeat. In a very short time, you will have much greater exposure than you started out with at a minimum of expense and effort.