Thank you for joining us here to quickly learn some fascinating stuff about Joint Venture’s and Strategic Alliances, what they are, how they can help you, who’s using them to succeed – and yes even how $88,000 was earned in 60 days!
Joint Ventures have changed the way we do business just as the Internet has changed the way we find customers and deliver our goods, services and information. Together they make an incredible and extremely powerful ally.
Stefanie Hartman works behind-the-scenes with many multi-millionaire internet entrepreneurs and info-preneurs and, she quickly realized that most people do not fully understand the full potential of joint ventures or even how to set them up.
Well we’re here to help you change all that! Overall, think of Joint Ventures in the form of this picture.
Joint Ventures can bring customers from around the world directly into the palm of your hand.
So, what is a Joint Venture?
A JV can simply be two people (or companies) working together for a specific purpose. The purpose may vary; one time can it be to promote you, then the next time to promote your partner, or both at once. Other purposes could be to make money, another is to gain exposure, another to enter a new territory or market with the help of someone who has solid ground in that market, another to add a piece of technology to your product without re-inventing the wheel, etc.
It is an arrangement where businesses come together to share knowledge, resources, target and/or geographic markets, and profits. Joint ventures can take on various forms.
- Companies can come together to form a Joint Venture that becomes its own entity with ownership rights and shares. Typically this happens in BIG Business, or multi-national companies, where the term “Joint Ventures” typically refers to a merger of 2 companies into a new legal entity.
- OR what is most common (and often the preliminary to anything bigger) they form more casual JV agreements where they launch a special one-time promotion or share resources to individually increase market reach and profits.
Joint Ventures are a phenomenon in the business community – big biz and small. It’s really powerful for entrepreneurs as it can introduce you to new targeted customers in a very fast and effective way – especially if you don’t have a huge advertising budget or none at all.
In the Internet marketing world and small or medium sized offline businesses, many people use Joint Ventures as a marketing technique where they find partners that offer different (yet complementary) products or services, and who share the same or similar target markets. They create an informal arrangement together where they work together to expand their customer reach and advertise and promote with ZERO out of pocket expense.
For example they could “borrow” each other’s company’s customer list by promoting each other and pay a commission on any leads that turn into new customers for the JV Marketing Partner – this way there are no advertising expenses or up-front costs. While this is the most common way to “JV”, there are also many others and we encourage you to discover them within our club.
Business owners are discovering that by working together everyone wins, you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. That’s how JV’s work. Don’t compete – co-operate and Partner.
Forbes Magazine wrote: “Good-bye mergers and acquisitions. In a global market tied together by the Internet, corporate partnerships and alliances are proving a more productive way to keep companies growing.”
This may be the most powerful trend in the history of business in the America’s and fast becoming world-wide, followed by Asia pacific region (China), then Europe (3rd) and then Japan and Africa – according to data collected by Thomson Financial.
Is a Joint Venture the same as Affiliate Marketing?
“Affiliate Marketing” is another term closely associated with Joint Ventures. This is a form of joint venture where one person, known as the affiliate can be the go-between for the person who has a product or service to sell, and the customer wanting to purchase it. Affiliates earn a percentage or “affiliate commission” on each sale. Affiliates can range from the average entrepreneur or individual who personally recommends a product or service to their customers that they don’t typically carry, all the way to multi national companies. An example of this is the bridal shop that recommends a particular tuxedo shop or dry cleaner. The customer is happy for the recommendation, and the bridal shop owner is happy as they may receive a commission or referral fee from the customers’ purchase. The dry cleaner or tuxedo shop is happy as they receive new paying customers.
In the last 10 years or even less, there have been virtual affiliates or “super affiliates” who have built their own home businesses, simply by finding great products and services and then matching them up with customers who want them. Some super affiliates are so good at it and make their joint venture partner who is selling the product or service so happy that they may receive 25% – 50% commission on some items. In fact, some business owners have started offering 75% or higher commissions to super affiliates on small “lead generating” products. They don’t mind large commission fees as they know that their new customers will buy other products which they can sell directly and make 100% of the profits.
Is a Joint Venture the same as a Strategic Alliance?
Strategic Alliances happen in large corporations as well. Typically a “strategic alliance” is an arrangement made between 2 or more companies where no legal entity or new company structure is formed. Instead they simply build a relationship with other companies, trades people and/or entrepreneurs where both agree to offer cross promotional opportunities. They recommend each others services and can often split advertising costs by sharing direct mail-outs.
Another form of Strategic Alliance is actually telling customers that they have formed an “alliance” with sister companies and therefore the customers will receive special treatment or discounts from other participating companies.
In this club you will have the opportunity to create all of the above forms of Joint Ventures and for simplicity’s sake, we will just call them all JV’s.
How can Joint Ventures help you?
Think of Joint Ventures or JV’s as bringing you closer to your customer (almost directly) through the channel of another business, where you each create a win/win situation. The benefit of this, besides the obvious cost savings of fewer sales people and high advertising costs, is that when both partners win, you both want to keep the partnership going and you will grow together in both profits and relationships.
Let’s quickly go through some of the fun and profitable types of Joint Ventures you can do and how they can help you. In fact, there are over 20, that we will reveal to you in this club, but below are just a few.
Some examples of Joint Ventures that you, as a member, can do:
- Agree to cross promote for zero or some commission
- Find places to advertise on member’s websites, newsletters, email campaigns etc.
- Offer an affiliate program for constant referrals
- Find people to co-create new products with
- Locate internet radio shows to be interviewed on.
- Find other experts (members) you could interview on your teleclasses, podcasts or websites to gain publicity, content and leads.
- Find other experts (members) you could interview on your to create a CD product to sell with their permission.
- Offer a lead generating product to members to use for incentive marketing (free bonus when people buy their product). Example: free 7 day e-course or e-book or report.
- Offer a lead generating product to members to use for generating traffic to their booth at trade shows & expos (free bonus when stop by booth). Example autographed book.
- Look for entrepreneurs who can endorse your product or give you a testimonial for your product or write forward in your book.
- Research your product, ask for critique/ feedback on products, ideas, services etc.
- Trade Links exchange to increase traffic to your website.
- And so much more, that we will reveal inside the club.
Here are some of the rewards:
- Do more with less
- Create visibility, increase your exposure quickly, Increases your sphere of influence.
- Find untapped markets – there are different markets to people who want your product or service and many times you will find markets that aren’t promoted too often and those are hot sellers. No one sells to them.
- Increases your closing ratio – a company may promote you to their customer that they’ve already built a relationship with.
- Open New territories. Expand globally or internationally.
- Increase credibility – align with someone well-known. All businesses especially start-ups struggle with building acceptance within their market and customer base. A key alliance with a larger known company can dramatically improve your credibility in the eyes of your customers.
- Create New Profit Centers: You could create a new product through a Joint Venture where you take something from your side and they take something from their side and repackage it as a new product.
- Gain a Sales Force for no $$: An Entrepreneur, Eric Frederickson found a company that had a huge national sales team that sells a different product than he does but they sell to his same target market. He formed a JV relationship with them where they just added his product to their catalogue and when they were doing their normal sales business they would also try to sell his product. When they did my associate paid them a commission. He paid NOTHING if they didn’t sell and he never paid for the sales team making the calls, or any of that companies expenses. He essentially got a full-time National sales force with no money down and no expenses. By formulating a joint venture with a solid partner, your company expands its sales force and distribution channel for low cost.
- Keeping Your Competitive Edge: A strategic alliance with several key players can make you bigger, keeping out competitors and maintaining high profit margins. Once these ties are in place, it is difficult for competitors to unravel these relationships.
- This is really the tip of the iceberg, and you will discover so much more!
Can you begin to see how JV’s can help you in your businesses?
Need more examples…
FREE REPRESENTATION AT TRADE SHOWS
Renting a booth, buying nice clothes, paying for ads in trade show flyers can add up. What if you offered a free CD or Book or Report or Coupon for your services to other companies that share your target market yet offer non-competing products? The companies attending the trade show benefit from this form of Joint Venture as they now have incentives and enticements encouraging people to visit their booth – they look like heroes offering free items that didn’t cost them a dime (but no-one knows that). You benefit from such an arrangement as you receive free representation at a trade show or convention that you are not even attending. New leads, prospects and future customers are leaving the trade show with your free product or coupon for service. You can even provide your JV Partner with a little sign-up sheet and ask people to enter their info to win a prize or receive your free gift.
GOING GLOBAL WITHOUT STEPPING ON AN AIRPLANE
Life or Business Coaches for example can create alliances with other coaches that have common levels of training or expertise all around the world, join forces through advertising and even work under a shared company name. Imagine a coach working part-time or full time at home, suddenly telling their customer that they have a division in England or Spain or Africa. Could Accountants, Lawyers, Financial Advisors, Stylists, Real Estate Investors or Brokers do the same thing? You bet!!!
SELLING GLOBAL WITHOUT THE AIRLINE BAGGAGE
The Internet is changing the way business is done because now you don’t need to be known all over the world to sell your products or services, you just need to be known in your particular field or niche. For example, you can often sell your product or service over the Internet to people who literally search for your topic in their search engines. Imagine companies or marketing partners that sell only to your specific target market (pregnant women, children, business men, baby boomers or bald men) which are looking for new products to offer them. Imagine having your product added to their “catalogue” of items that are offered to their customers. They provide the sales people, the Internet catalogue, the distribution channel and you just ship the “sold” items to their customers and provide your JV partner a pre-negotiated commission.
HOLD A VIRTUAL SEMINAR, PRESS CONFERENCE.
Imagine being an Author, Speaker or Expert on a subject and having someone contact you to speak at their seminar event in another country. Imagine another person asking you if they could interview you for their internet radio show. Imagine someone with a customer list that matches your target market asking if you could write a column on their website for their “ask an Expert” section. Imagine if someone with a large database or customer list asked if you could offer a training by phone or a “virtual” training session for their people. Imagine if you sold your products or services through each of these JV opportunities? What does your JV partner get in return – value for their customers. They may even charge their customer to come hear you speak. You don’t always need to offer a commission on the sale of your product. You receive sales through a very warm target market, free publicity and added credibility. Can almost anyone do this? Sure you just have to be really good at what you do. You can be a psychic, healer, handyman or tax specialist.
CO-CREATE AN EVENT
You could approach other companies or individuals who are either great at what they do, or can offer value by working together through a sales or distribution channel; or by speaking or making a presentation on a topic your target market would enjoy or; possibly by just being well known for organizing or promoting events. You could use any or all of these approaches to form a Joint Venture event, where you all share the costs and the revenue. You could even approach radio stations, news papers or printers and cut costs on advertising through joint ventures with them.
GIVE A PRODUCT, GAIN A PRODUCT
Incentive Marketing is a technique by which you can add your product to a product that someone else is selling, bundle the offer giving the consumer the added incentive he or she needs to purchase the item. For example, One author created a Joint Venture with a Champagne company. She was an author of a book on Toasting for Parties. The deal for the public was that when they purchased 2 bottles of Champagne they received her book free. The author benefits as the champagne company literally sold her product for her and she made money without lifting a finger. The Champagne company benefits as they increase their sales without expensive advertising costs and the customer benefits as they get a free item. Have you ever seen this concept on a cereal box or canned food? These are all Joint Ventures or, cross marketing by the “Big Guys”.
You could also offer complementary products (that other people created) to your customers. Your Joint Venture Partner can ship them directly to the customer for you. You can make a commission on the sale. Speakers do this when they need to sell a product at the back of the room for an event that they haven’t yet created a product of their own. Many websites are built that find products targeted to one specific market and then add a mall or catalogue of other products or services.
WHO uses Joint Ventures in their Marketing Strategy to
grow their Business and HOW?
Ok, the quick answer is probably every major business large or small, that is successful in generating a lot of income.
But let’s look at a few examples (the list is simply too long to list them all):
Internet Marketers/Experts: Alex Mandossian, Matt Bacak, Tom Antion, Yanik Silver, Joel Christopher, Lisa Cherney, Armand Morin… and countless others.
Many marketers use Joint Ventures to get their products out to the masses quickly by asking partners to participate in a product launch, or getting their book to a best-seller status, or even to gain leads for their own customer base by asking other speakers or experts to participate as a live or ‘virtual’ speaker. The JV Partner sends out a promotion about the event, both parties collect leads, and if any one of those leads buys a product, both parties share in the revenue.
Stefanie Hartman has participated in this type of joint venture herself. She asked 2 companies to let their customers know about her product and sold close to $88,000 of product in less than 60 days. Of course, she offered them a thank you commission. So both parties benefited. But this promotion cost neither partner any extra expense to put on, so if no-one bought her product at all – neither her nor her joint venture marketing partner would have lost anything.
John Assaraf, a best-selling author of The Street Kid’s Guide to Having It All and contributing expert on The Secret (movie), used joint venture strategies to help propel his book to the Best-Sellers list.
A.J. Brown of (TradingTrainer.com) promoted someone else’s program and earned $6,412 in affiliate fees for sending out only 7 emails.
Joel Christopher (masterlistbuilder.com) has been known to say his first JV project generated $33,000 in sales over 17 hours.
Speakers/Authors: Drew Miles, Robin Elliott (dollarmakers.com), Cynthia Kersey, T. Harv Eker, Wendy Robbins, Mark Victor Hanson & Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul Founders), Robert Allen (Nothing Down, Multiple Streams of Income)…the list goes on.
Almost every Author: Just open up a book jacket. Do you see testimonials? Endorsements? Many people trade their endorsement for free advertising in the book. Their endorsement, name and website URL appears on the book jacket or website. Both parties gain recognition, but also credibility through simple association. These are all benefits that cost neither party any money – no risk, no money and all reward. This is a form of Joint Venture.
Or have you seen chapters written by other contributing authors? Again, the person contributing gets more widely known and more publicity. In fact multiply that by 100 if the book they contributed to becomes a best-seller. This is a form of Joint Venture.
Just a sample of the many Big businesses:
WAL-MART
Why would Wal-Mart need a strategic alliance, as they have tons of money – you might ask?
Well because when Wal-Mart opened its doors in Mexico they needed a “friend” to help them get a foothold. Without a solid JV partner they may have had a difficult time gaining brand acceptance. It was Wal-Mart’s first experience in international expansion and in 2002 the name of the combined company, Mexico’s biggest retailer, was changed to Wal-Mart de Mexico.
Wal-Mart also has Joint Ventures with other companies internally, McDonald’s for instance, that offer services to their customers that Wal-Mart doesn’t. Why would they do that? Well a percentage of the profits, or rental space could be one. Another reason is because Wal-Mart can almost become a mini-mall, or a one stop-shop for many customers. And if a customer comes to the store for any reason, they will most likely buy something from the main department in Wal-Mart.
Home Depot
Have you ever had a burger or soda or coffee inside the store? Home depot does not make those things for you, but they offer those services through their Joint Venture partners, such as Harvey’s Burgers.
Starbucks
Is Starbucks a coffee shop or a music store? They are known for their coffee but they have expanded their brand and their services through offering their customers music on CD’s as well as candy, baby toys, books, and other items. This is a form of Joint Venture.
Gene Simons
Just watch his TV show “name” and see how this brilliant man puts his name on almost anything to understand why we put him in the big business category. He once said on the show that he has over 3000 licenses. His name is on everything from baby clothes, toys, sporting equipment, shirts, you name it, that’s 3000 items, products or services that other companies may have made but he attaches his name to. Both parties win! He gets a share of the profits, he doesn’t have to actually run the companies or make the products or distribute the products and he gets massive publicity. The manufacturers may get an exclusive product with his famous name on it to offer their customers, increasing their prestige as well as increasing profits.
Airlines
A catering company came up with the idea of creating a Joint Venture with Airline companies by providing them special meals to customers on board the plane at a time in history when airlines were not offering meals to their consumer. This joint venture idea of 1 man changed the norm for the Airline Industry. What can you do to find new customers?
Other businesses: www.thespiritualcinemacircle.com, selfgrowth.com, wakeuplive.com ALL use JV’s in some of their marketing efforts.
When I co-produced my own Travel Television Series (Aqua Planet), we traveled to almost all of the destinations free of charge in exchange for profiling airlines, travel agents and locations on the show. This deal also extended to our camera equipment, editing services, clothing, swim wear, sunglasses, snorkel and scuba equipment.
Radio Stations (they give away prizes all the time – hey why can’t yours be one of them?) The radio station gets free stuff to give away so they save $$ and the supplier of the prize or product gets all that on air advertising free from the contest itself. Free radio advertising! That’s huge.
TIP: From a marketing perspective, this is also brilliant as people tend to turn up the volume to actively listen to the contest prizes rather than turn down the volume or switch stations at commercial breaks – yes all those expensive commercial spots that companies actually paid for.
PERHAPS THE GREATEST NEWS:
The person doing it the least but yet could benefit the most is … YOU!
Small business owners, Entrepreneurs and Service Professionals…from the handyman, mortgage brokers, accountants, financial planners, investment advisors, caterers, stylists, coaches, counselors, doctors, healers, naturopaths, to lawyers – the list goes on and on.
You’re in luck, The PrivateJVClub is a powerful Joint Venture club that helps you grow your business by creating strategic alliances around the world or in your local area. Inside you will find the tools required to take your business to new heights as well as a knowledge base ensuring that you know how to get every ounce out of each idea, contact or process.
Your membership in the PrivateJVClub has the potential to open to you the secrets, the tools, and the contact relationships that many of the most successful businesses use everyday.
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