Connecting with Joint Venture Partners to promote your work

We are inundated with information every day about possible programs and offerings we might sign up for. How do those few programs and offerings that people eventually sign up for get through the gauntlet of the spam folder, the archive function, the “meh” factor? Partly because of exposure and credibility. The more people see your offering and the more credible it appears, the more likely folks are to click through to your “pay now” button. How do you achieve this? Finding Joint Venture Partners is a great strategy to use.

A Joint Venture Partner is someone else, or another business, whose work is aligned with yours, and who is willing to promote your offering to their email list. This achieves the above two goals: more exposure and added credibility when someone else is willing to promote your course.

Considerations for Partners

So, when approaching possible Joint Venture Partners, there are a number of things to bear in mind. Here is what a potential Joint Venture Partner is considering, when thinking about promoting your program to their beloved email list:

1. Relevance – Does what you offer connect with them and their list? We all want to nurture our list – our community is our lifeblood. Is your offering in alignment with what this person or organization normally promotes? The only way for you to find that out is for you to get on their list to see what they’re promoting. Get on as many relevant lists as you can. Once you have your list of potential Joint Venture Partners, start to get to know them – look at their websites, figure out what their language is like so that you know how to approach them.
2. Money – We all want to make money (gotta eat!). Is this going to be a profitable opportunity for your prospective Joint Venture Partner? You may be competing with other potential partners, so you need to be willing to consider how much commission you’d want to pay for them to promote you to their list. Generally commission is 30-40% of your program or product.
3. Reputation – They want to know that you will take care of their subscribers. They are very protective of their list so they want to know that when they send their subscribers to you, they will be taken care of and not spammed.
4. Quality – They want to know that you offer value. Make sure you build in blueprints and systems that are well-organized to help participants get results, and share those results in your marketing materials. Offering lots of good handouts in your program is one way to offer value.
5. Leadership – They want to know that you are a good leader. A Joint Venture Partner wants to be seen to be associated with another leader. Make sure your Joint Venture Partner knows what your unique service is. Position yourself as an innovator, especially if your message is not on the market yet and needs to be heard in order for you to build momentum.
6. Reciprocation – There needs to be the potential for you to add subscribers to their business. You want to help them gain more exposure to your audience so make sure your Joint Venture Partner is someone you’re excited about so that you’re happy to offer them opportunities for exposure.
7. Offer enhancement – Your program needs to add value to their product or program, so you need to ask yourself if you can offer that enhancement. Can this relationship improve their service or product? Can they add your offering as a bonus to their own offer so that they can sell their offerings more effectively?

Types of Partners

There are four types of Joint Venture Partners. The types define the motivation behind why someone would want to promote you:

1. Affiliate marketer – The motivation for these Joint Venture Partners is income first, value second. Their sole purpose is to generate income from promoting other people’s products and generating affiliate commissions. They build really large mailing lists (hundreds of thousands) and often they don’t have their own products so they’re looking to generate income from other people’s products
2. Community builder – The motivation is the opposite of the affiliate marketer – value first and income second. Those of us in the contemplative arts might feel more alignment with these kinds of Joint Venture Partners. You are adding value to their community, mailing list and audience. They love to nurture a community, to share content, resources and tools that keep their subscribers engaged. They love guest experts to interview: if they hear that you are an expert on a great topic they will be happy to interview you.
3. Service provider – The motivation is mainly focussed on the client. These Joint Venture Partners are open to sharing resources. They are not interested in big sales, but they will recommend you if they trust you.
4. Self-promoter – These folks usually have their own program or product and they’re interested in getting exposure. They’re happy to promote others as long as they get some exposure.

Understand your own motivation as a potential Joint Venture Partner. You might be a combination of some of the four kinds of partners mentioned above. Once you understand what kind of partner you are, you can connect with the partners you want to reach out to in a language that makes sense to them.

Good luck!