Have you ever noticed that when one of the most successful people in your niche launch their latest product or service, many of the other top players are talking about it as well? In particular, have you noticed that those top players are sending out multiple emails and hosting webinars for that big launch? This happens when the product or service creator forms a JV partnership with others in their niche. In simple terms, joint venture partnerships are those in which two people or businesses come together to share the costs, risks, and rewards of a mutually beneficial strategy. For you, as the creator, the goal is to find JV partners to not only spread the word about your latest product, but actually help sell it. Now your goal may not be to do those massive launches where everyone and their mother is sending out your canned emails, and that is fine. I don’t like to participate in those either. Nor do I like to run my businesses in that way. However, in this post, we’re going to look at how you can recruit JV partners for your business to sell products and increase revenue – in ways that you are comfortable with.
Types of JV Partnerships
There are many different ways to approach a JV partnership, each with its own pros and cons. For starters, you can have a JV partnership where you and another person or business create a product or service together to offer to your target customers. In this type of partnership, you will work together at all stages of the launch: product or service development, promotion, delivery, and support. You will both share the costs and profits throughout each step. Therefore, you have to choose someone you can trust and you want to work with closely for an indefinite period of time. It will involve the most cost and risk for both partners, but also the most reward.
You can have a JV partnership with a small group of top influencers to help heavily promote your product or service once it is ready to launch. These will be people to whom you will pitch your product or service, offering either an exclusive commission structure or higher than average commission structure. You will likely only work with these people closely during the main launch for email and webinar development.
You can have a JV partnership with a small group of top influencers who want to trade promotions – you promote their next launch, and they will help promote yours. In this case, you will want to find someone whose products or services align with yours and will perform well with your current audience without competing with what your business has to offer. At the most basic level, you can have an open affiliate program in which you both allow people to discover your product or service and sign up to promote it on their own as well as reach out to specific people to help you promote it. All of these people will ultimately be considered your JV partners. They will likely choose their own level of participation, with higher achievers choosing to host webinars with you to their audience, and others simply promoting your product or service through email or social media. When you’re considering an online-based product, such as a membership site or software as a service (SAAS), the costs and risks will generally be lower than a physical product or done-for-you service. Therefore, finding promotional JV partners will be easier because, at worst, they will lose the time they spend crafting an email series and introducing you to their audience in a webinar. This makes the profit opportunity for a JV partnership large and desirable.
Find the Right People YOU Want to Work With
Life is too short to deal with anyone who can bring you a buck. ONLY deal with people you desire. Choose people who are professional. Honest. Responsive. The people you JV with will be a representation of your business to one degree or another. Don’t become affiliated with people you don’t want to be associated with. Think long term. Don’t think short term.
Where to Find the Right People in Your Niche
Chances are, you will be able to think of a few people off the top of your head in your niche that are regularly promoting launches for others. Start following those people on social media and by email and watch how they promote product and service creators they have partnered with. Track their promotion style, decide if they are ultimately someone you would like to partner with. If you can’t think of anyone right off the bat, then start looking in social groups. Facebook groups tend to have the most popularity amongst marketers these days. You can search specifically for people open to JV partnership opportunities by searching for JV partners and joining the groups that appear in search results.
You can also look for other groups, forums, and masterminds in your niche to see if they offer opportunities to connect with others to form JV partnerships.
Build a Relationship with Potential JV Partners
While you can reach out to a complete stranger to see if they want to partner with you on your next big launch, it’s best to start building a relationship with potential JV partners prior to your launch. That way, you can skip the awkward getting to know you phase and move right into, “Yeah, I know who you are and I’d love to work with you!” So how do you get to that point? You can start by engaging in the groups, forums, and masterminds where your potential JV partners hang out. Even if you don’t talk to them directly, they will likely see your name floating about in discussions and comments. This will breed a bit of familiarity. The next step will be to move your relationship out of the communities. Follow them on the social network they engage upon the most. Not the one where they post update after update that shares content or promotions, but the one where they are having real discussions. For some, that may be Facebook – you’ll know if they are personally responding to people’s comments.
For others, that may be Twitter – you’ll know if they are replying to lots of people’s @username in tweets. You’ll have to go to their profile and look under the Tweets & Replies tab to see if discussion like this is happening.
Once you find those networks for your potential JV partners, look for opportunities to engage with them directly. The goal isn’t to sell them on your product or service at this stage – it’s just to get you on their radar and demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and reputable. Another tactic once you’ve gotten to engage with your potential JV partner is to find his or her blog and see if they are accepting guest posts or new writers. While this approach will take a little more work, it’s a great way to further demonstrate your niche authority and show them that their audience will love you and what you have to offer. Once you’ve established that, pitching them will be even easier.
Create a JV Package That is Hard to Refuse
If you plan to create a product or service with your JV partner, you will want to create a package that is beneficial to both you and your product, skewing in favor of the person that will do the bulk of the work. For example, if you’re planning to launch a membership site where your partner will create the educational content, they will get the lion’s share of the profit as you will effectively be paying them after they have created a product for you. For promotional partners, you will want to create a commission structure that fits with other products and services in your niche. For example, if most of the top players in your niche are offering 50% commission to their top JV partners, you’ll need to do that as well as that will simply be expected. In addition to a commission structure, you will also want to create special JV rewards. This can include a contest at each launch where the top JV partner is awarded something special, such as a prize or cash bonus, for being the top sales leader.
The most important thing alongside commissions and rewards you can give to your JV partners is simplicity. Most product and service creators will offer creatives the JV partners can use in their promotion. These include swipe files for emails and social updates. It can also include banner ads and hero images of assorted shapes and sizes. This will allow your JV partners to quickly customize for their own audience and promote as soon as the launch is ready. Blog posts can also be highly important during the launch, so work on some unique posts that your JV partner can feature on their blog. These can be informational pieces that send readers to register for the webinar, informational pieces that send readers to download a lead magnet and adds them to a list where the webinar will be promoted, or informational pieces that send readers straight to the product sales page. They can also be interviews, unique case studies, crowdsourced posts, or any other type of post that is relevant to the product or service you are launching. For the webinar portion, you can offer your JV partners a few webinar themes (topics) to choose from. If you have your webinar slides ready to go, you can send them over to your JV partner for review. Also give them the option to use an introduction that you have written or allow them to create their own introduction based on a couple of key bullet points you supply them. You don’t want to seem controlling, but you do want to make sure the webinar is suited to convert during the launch, from start to finish.
Choose Between Live and Automated Webinars… or Both
Speaking of webinars, you will have to choose between live and automated webinar promotion for your launch. This can get a little tricky when you are working with a JV partner as some people feel that webinars must be live in order to be authentic and effective. Others feel automated is best since that will be a proven presentation and will have less technical challenges since automated is much less prone to technical issues.
Promote Every Webinar
Once you’ve established your JV partnerships and start planning webinars for your launch, be sure to plan a great promotion strategy for your webinars, as they likely will be the greatest source of webinar for your product or service. You can follow my guides on promoting webinars organically through social media and through paid advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
In Conclusion
When you create the right JV partnerships for your business, you open the door to having hugely successful launches for your products and services. Be sure to learn how StealthSeminar can help you with your webinars so that you have the best live and automated webinars for immediate and long-term revenue generation. Do you use JV’s in your business? Any killer advice you can share?
