The Most Powerful Marketing Method Ever Invented (Joint Venture Marketing)
By Marc GoldmanOne of the quickest and smartest
ways I know of to make money both on and off the net is
called Joint Venture Marketing. Some of you may already have
experience with this marketing method while to others it may be
completely foreign. For those of you who are familiar with it,
bear with me, I am not going to simply recite the same facts
over and over again; and for those of you with no prior knowledge
of this concept, I think that you are going to be very, very
pleased with what you learn today.
Joint Venture Marketing just may be the most powerful marketing
method ever invented. It is the strategic use of a companies
underutilized assets to make profits that they did not make
before. Underutilized assets are those assets that a company has
and yet does not use, the most common of which is a companies
customer database or their list.
You see, most companies (if they are smart) maintain a list of
the people who have bought from them. This list could also be of
potential customers, those individuals who have expressed some
interest in the company's products and/or services in the past.
This makes them stand out from someone who has never contacted
the company before. In the Direct Marketing Business, we call
these people, PQL's or pre-qualified leads. They have raised
their hands and said in effect: "I am interested in what you have
to offer; tell me more".
Most companies do not realize the value of "the list". It is a
golden rule in marketing that once a prospect becomes a customer
they should be considered a customer for life. You can sell to
those customers over and over again because you have already
established trust. (This is assuming that you only sell quality
products, if you sell quality products and provide great customer
service you will go a long way in creating a lasting relationship
with your customers).
This trust is a key element in Joint Venture Marketing. JV
Marketing involves the recommendation or endorsement (keyword
remember that) of another marketer or their product to your
customer list. Assuming that I own a list and another marketer
contacts me and asks if I will endorse their new product to my
customer list, we arrange a deal where I send a mailing to my
list endorsing this person or their product.
This endorsement contains two key elements:
1. The trust between the list owner and their previous
customers/prospects.
2. The product/service of the other party.
The list owner is recommending the new product/product owner to
their list. Referrals are everything. I have seen and read
examples of this kind of endorsement marketing bringing in
unheard of sales percentages for the product owner.
The reason for the high sales percentage is based on the fact
that this is a warm list. What that means is that the list owner
has already established a relationship with the people on his/her
mailing list. They trust the list owner. In contrast, you have a
"cold list". This is one that has never heard of the person
mailing to the list. Most likely that person rented a list of
names from a list broker and is just mailing blindly to a list
that neither knows nor trusts him.
Can this endorsement really make that much of a difference? How
about going from 2% of sales to 24%.
Let's explain it like this:
You rent a list of 1000 names and send them a sales letter
selling a product for $40 dollars and you receive back $800
dollars (20 sales). That is a 2% return. That is the industry
average for returns on cold lists.
You get endorsed by the person who owns that same list and has a
relationship with that audience, and you receive $9600 dollars
(240 sales). That is a 24% return. Can this happen? Oh yes, it
depends on the list, the owner, the sales letter and how targeted
a market the list members were.
Can you see the difference between an endorsed mailing and a cold
mailing. This is extremely powerful stuff. You are leveraging the
power of the list owners relationship with his mailing list to
bring in insane profit margins. Even more important, the list
members who bought from you are now your customers and you have
every right to add them to your own very powerful list. This is a
way to grow your own customer and prospect list very quickly.
Let's break down the roles of each person involved in a JV and
see why they would want to participate.
1. The Endorser: This is the list owner. Why would a list owner
want to give their powerful endorsement of someone else to their
list. It is simple:
a) To make money: When you endorse someone else's product to your
list, you do so for a percentage of the profits. 50% is the norm.
However, you have the right to demand as much of a percentage of
the sale as you want and here is why. The person being endorsed
is gaining new customers for his/her list. They will make money
from this list in the future and you will not see one penny of
it!! You should capitalize on the profits made now.
b) To look great to a customer list: It is extremely time
consuming to constantly create new products. So, instead of
creating your own products, you can find other entrepreneurs
offering high quality products that you like and either
already use or are willing to begin using and you strike up a
deal. When you recommend other useful, helpful, high quality
products to your audience you look like a hero in their eyes.
Think that your customers will listen to you again in the future?
They sure will!
c) To test the responsiveness of your list: This is a good chance
to see what your customers want to buy. If they buy the product
that you endorse, that is a good indication of what they will buy
in the future.
2. The Endorsee: This is the person gaining an introduction to
the list by having the list owner endorse his/her product or
service. You may be wondering why this person would ever want to
give up a huge percentage of his/her profits simply to be
introduced to a list.
a) You as the endorsee have now gained new customers without
spending advertising dollars: Let me clarify one thing first: In
offline JV's you may have to cover the cost of mailing your sales
letter. However, the lifetime value of a customer far outweighs
the cost it took you to get that new customer. For instance, you
may now mail future offers to that client yourself (including the
most important offer of them all: The Back End).
b) You can make more profits with a JV than you ever could
mailing to a "Cold List": You can piggyback off the credibility
of the list owner.
There is potentially one other person in this deal and this could
very well be you right after you read this. So pay close
attention as this is an incredible way to make money:
3. The JV Dealmaker or Broker: This is a person who brings these
two parties together and takes a percentage of the profits
created out of nothing more than a list. Why would anyone do
this?
a) To make obscene profits simply for being able to bring people
together: I look at it like this: these people you bring together
do not have any idea what kind of profits they are sitting on. As
a JV broker you arrange the deal and educate the prospects and
all you ask for is a share of the profits. I think 15-20% is
fair. You DO NOT CHARGE ANYTHING UPFRONT. This will kill your
chances of making the deal and if you do make a deal for money up
front you could be missing out on a much higher percentage of the
profits.
Some of the true masters of the JV deal, Mike Enlow and Jay
Abraham, refuse to take anything upfront for brokering these
deals. This not only increases their credibility but furthermore,
when they insist on taking a percentage of all profits made off
the deal including backend sales it makes them very wealthy!!
b) To get referrals for this kind of consulting so that you begin
to get calls for educating others in the "Art of the JV": Another
income stream!
WHO IS A POTENTIAL JV PARTNER?
Anyone!!! But there are a few things that each potential partner
must bring to the table:
The potential endorser should:
HOW CAN YOU GET IN TOUCH WITH JOINT VENTURE PARTNERS?
Depending on what you want to sell, here is what I suggest for
targeting potential JV partners. I am going to stick to the net
here as most of you will be doing this online. However, later in
the article you can find a few offline ideas you can work as
well.
1. You should network: Get your name out there and let people
know that you are a potential player. Go to the forums and
participate!! Get your name known. Participate in mailing lists
and let people see your signature file. Get your name known!!! I
can't stress that enough. It will make you more credible when you
approach one of the big guns and request a deal.
2. Research potential partners by doing a search for them using
the Search Engines: This is one of the most underutilized methods
ever to seek out JV partners. Here is what you want to do. You
want to visit search engines and find the people who come up
under your targeted keywords. Let's say that you want to sell a
book on figure skating. I would suggest that you go to the top
ten search engines and put in the keyword phrase: "figure
skating". Visit the first 10 sites that come up and contact the
owners to find out if they are interested in working a JV with
you. Make sure they are not selling a product that is competing
with yours.
However, this could prove quite time consuming so I suggest you
automate the process by clicking here:
www.copernic.com to download this FREE software called Copernic. It
will visit the search engines for you and give you the most
relevant sites that come up on all of the 10 search engines
under your chosen keyword.
Once you find these sites you will need to contact the owner.
Here is a great way to find out who owns any web site in which
you are interested. It is called a "whois" search. You can
perform a whois search on any web site by clicking here:
goldbar.net and typing in the web site name.
Once you have their names and email addresses, you are going to
want to contact them all. This could be a very tedious process if
you have a lot of contacts. You could contact them all
individually so that it is more personalized. However, you should
try to minimize the amount of time that you spend on
administrative tasks so you can concentrate on marketing. I
suggest using a specialized email client that will let you send
out personalized email to your list without sending each message
individually. I use and highly recommend The Ultimate Listserver
and you can find out more about it by clicking here:
www.goldbar.net
Come up with an email that explains your concept and inquire
whether they would be interested. Many marketers may not
understand the art of the Joint Venture and you may have to spend
some time educating people about what it can do for them. This is
something that will come easier and easier with time.
HOW CAN YOU MAKE MONEY FROM JOINT VENTURE's?
Each party can make money from JV's. Here's how:
ENDORSER:
1. Take a cut of the front end: 50% is the norm but I have seen
deals where endorsers require as much as 90% of the profits!!!
This can be done because the endorsee will make so much money
from the back end and subsequent offers that they are willing to
lose money on the front end in order to get that valuable
customer name.
Here Are Some Tips To Insure The Endorsers Payment:
* Insist on a contract. These can be easily obtained from the
internet and then modified to suit your purpose. However, you
should have a lawyer review it first.
* Take the payment yourself and send the endorsee the order and
his cut.
* Ask the endorsee to set up an affiliate code for you so that
you can track hits and sales from your endorsement.
ENDORSEE:
1. Give away that front end money: This might sound crazy but it
is a proven strategy that does work. Have a back end
product/service or several backends ready to work soon after you
have the new customer name.
2. Offer new products to your new customers.
3. Set up affiliate software and only work JV's with people with
huge lists: Affiliate scripts can be set up very easily using
software that assigns a unique tracking number to your JV
partners (essentially your salespeople) and allows them to refer
prospects to a sales letter that contains their own unique code.
This code allows them to track all sales credited to their
referrals. Big money idea!
4. Have a non-disclosure agreement ready before you enter into
any deals: If you do not know what these are, non-disclosure
agreements are contracts that insure that any proprietary
concepts that you reveal remain private and between you and your
potential JV partner.
JV BROKERS:
1. Look for potential candidates for deals and make
introductions: Explain and educate both parties on what a Joint
Venture is and the potential earnings. Take a percentage of the
profits off the front end and possibly the back end.
2. Help with copywriting: A lot of clients you put together will
have absolutely no clue how to write a sales letter. Help write
it or recommend someone who can and take a percentage of the
copywriters fees.
HOW CAN YOU HARNESS THE POWER OF THIS POTENTIAL BIG WINNER TODAY?
* Network. Meet people. Always be on the lookout for deals.
* If you are someone who wants to get started quickly in
business, create a product and set up an associate program and
then roll out your targeted email campaign to get JV partners.
* If you are interested in making money from a list, keep the
names of anyone who buys from you or requests information from
you. You now have your own list. This list is a valuable
commodity, use it as such.
* If you do not have your own product to advertise, find one with
reprint rights and purchase it. Now the reprint rights allow you
to produce and sell the product as if it was your own.
* As a JV broker, try to set up a mailing list and offer deals to
everyone on the list. Educate people. Let them know how much
money stands to be made from these deals.
Here is a famous example of an offline JV. Mike Enlow had a
pharmacist who hired him for consulting. The pharmacist had a
very large customer list and always sent out Christmas cards to
his list every year. Mike arranged a deal where the pharmacist
would mail his list at Christmas but instead of sending out the
same old Christmas card, he had the pharmacist recommend
(endorse) a neighborhood jeweler. But, notice the way that he had
the endorsement structured. The pharmacist told his list that if
they brought that letter to the jeweler they would receive 20%
off of any item in the jewelry store. The jeweler would not lose
any money since their markup is so high and furthermore he would
receive new customers. The pharmacist got a cut of the profits
and so did Mike Enlow. I believe they made in excess of $75,000
dollars in a week!!
Can you do something like this? Can you marry two operations
together and structure a great deal? I think anyone can and there
are opportunities everywhere. Can't think of any?
HOW ABOUT THESE JOINT VENTURE IDEAS?
* Get a chiropractor to endorse a gym. He could send his customer
list a free trial membership at a gym and anyone who joins can
get a 10% discount off the membership fees.
* Have a local nursery recommend a landscaping company. Create a
mailing to the nursery's customer list and offer them 20% off the
first use of a local landscaper.
That was easy huh? How about online:
* Find someone who has developed software but has no idea how to
sell it online and offer to set them up with an ezine publisher
whose audience would go crazy over that software. Have the
publisher take payment for the product and get the product
fulfilled electronically. You can't beat this. Another twist on
this concept is to offer trial or demo versions of the software
so that people get hooked and want to buy the full version. The
ezine publisher takes the payment and the Software company sends
out an unlock code (a numbered code that allows unrestricted use
of the software).
In all of these deals the JV broker has made money just for
bringing these other parties together. This is what is known as a
win-win-win situation.
Can you come up with some potential JV's now? I would be very
surprised if you could not. Simply open up your yellow pages and
thumb through and see who you could put together. Give it a try.
If you get stuck give me a call (1-212-898-9048) or email me at
webmaster@goldbar.net and I will try to help.
This concept cannot be beaten!! And I do believe that anyone can
do it.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start making those
deals!!!!
