Joint ventures (JVs) are one of the best ways to lure new leads and customers. By partnering with other businesses whose customers are part of your market, you have an additional profit center of incremental income. For example, an attorney can refer his clients to an accountant, and the accountant in turn refers clients to the attorney. It’s a win/win situation, because many times a new business will need both an attorney and an accountant. Depending on which one they approach first (the lawyer or accountant), they’ll be referred to the other.

JVs can go much further than this simple arrangement, however. They can be very complex, and there can be 3-way deals going on. The key to making these deals work is to make sure that you let a prospective JV partner know from the start that:

- You’ve discovered an additional profit center for them that they are probably unaware of (offer projected profits, if possible).

- The additional profit center will not detract in any way from their current income stream.

- The additional profit center will not incur any additional costs or labor on their part to implement.

- The additional profit center will not incur any risk whatsoever on their part.

- You will perform all of the leg work to set it up.

- They can stop at any time for any reason.

One Tip: If you try to set up a JV with a business, and they already have a deal in place with someone else, you can take that information to their competitor and say “Your biggest competitor is already doing this.” And if your partner ever decides to stop the JV deal, you can go to their competitors and say the same thing (Hint: if you let them know you are going to do that, they may reconsider). Never feel that you have to partner with one specific business exclusively. Ideally you should have JV deals going on all over the place.

You can also do JVs between your business and another, or you can broker JVs between two different businesses and benefit in the middle.

FINDING JV PARTNERS

If you know of a company that sells a complementary but not competitive product or service as yours, you should subscribe to their list and watch their content sent to you over time. That will give you a feel for their marketing style and the types of affiliates/joint ventures they promote.

One way to find such potential alliance partners is via the good “old fashioned” search engines. Only in this case, you’re going to drill down a bit deeper.

Google is one of the best search engines to use when locating JV partners, because of the tools available at your disposal when searching.

The trick is to know what to search for and to use Google’s research tools correctly. Here are some of my favorite ways.

1) Use the inurl search.

You can go to Google and type in: inurl:[keyword] to find web addresses that contain your keyword in the full web address name itself (including parts that aren’t part of the root domain name).

For example, typing inurl:mortgage might give me:

- http://http://www.mortgage.com

- http://www.mortgage-calc.com

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage

- http://hometown.aol.com/aaamortg/mortgage.html

- http://www.mortgage-express.co.uk

…and much more.

Note that they all contain the word “mortgage” in the domain name, subdomain name or a file or directory name within the domain.

2) Use the allinurl search.

Similar to the inurl search, the allinurl search allows you to type in allinurl:[keyword phrase] and return all addresses that contain that phrase in the domain name, subdomain name or a file or directory name within the domain.

For example, typing allinurl:weight loss might return:

- http://www.weight-loss-institute.com

- http://www.technorati.com/tags/weight+loss

- http://www.drugs.com/weight-loss.html

- http://weight-loss.one-pharmacy.com

- http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/weight-loss/WT99999

…for starters.

You’ll be able to narrow your focus even more.

3) Use the intitle:[keyword] and allintitle:[keyword phrase]

Similar to inurl and allinurl, this search returns the keyword or keyword phrase in the title of the web page.

For example, intitle:exercise might return (the bolded text is my addition):

American Council On Exercise
(http://www.acefitness.org)

Exercise: A Healthy Habit to Start and Keep — familydoctor.org
(http://familydoctor.org/059.xml)

MedlinePlus: Exercise and Physical Fitness
(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/exerciseandphysicalfitness.html)

Notice the keyword exercise appears in each of the titles, but may or may not appear in the URLs.

And allintitle:corporate law might return:

Corporate Law – Guide to Corporate and Business Law
(http://www.hg.org/corp.html)

Delaware Corporate Law Clearinghouse – Chancery Court, Court of …
(http://corporate-law.widener.edu)

Gulf Law: Corporate Laws in Arab Middle East, Company Law Guide …
(http://gulf-law.com)

Company law databases and corporate regulatory issues in India
(http://www.companylawonline.com)

Look at the last two above. Notice how Google didn’t only return web pages with the exact phrase “corporate law”. It returned those that had ALL of the words in the phrase in its title, in any order.

If you want only the exact phrase returned, place double quotes around the keyword phrase, like this: allintitle:”corporate law”

Now let’s look at some ways you can use both online and offline JVs to grow your list.

JV your list building: large list. If you have a large list, one of the easiest ways to build it even further is to do a cross mailing. That is, you partner with another large list owner in your target market. You send out his message to your list, he sends out your message to his list. Simple. Just remember, once your prospects or customers are on another list that sells to them, there is increased message clutter. That is, they are now being pitched by your JV partner AND you. It’s a tradeoff you need to consider.

JV your list building: small list. Ok, if your existing list isn’t large enough to warrant a cross JV mailing as described above, here’s a clever way to build your list up quickly. I’ve done this, but not to the extent I should. I’ve got more deals like this in the works. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say your list is on the small side. “John Smith” has a huge list. You want to JV with him, but a cross swap isn’t going to persuade him. You need to be the middleperson between John Smith and another large list owner.

”Jane Doe” is another huge list owner. What if you can put John Smith and Jane Doe together to do a cross mailing, and you get exposure as well. Instead of a cut of profits, you agree to get a slice of the list. In other words, perhaps in order to get onto Jane’s list from John’s, they have to come through you first. Or, you could have John mail his list with the agreement that whatever prospects Jane gets, she’ll share with you. It’s a win/win/win situation, because all of you are gaining new prospects on your lists.

John gets some of Jane’s list.

Jane gets some of John’s list.

You get some of Jane’s list. Or, ideally, you get some of both lists. You are the dealmaker. It wouldn’t have happened without you, so depending on the deal you make, why shouldn’t you get access to both lists?

Another way to JV your list building: small list. Your list is your greatest asset, right? But if you only have 1,000 names where 50,000 or 100,000 is the norm (more is better, right?), then why not JV a list exchange. Bear with me. It’s true that you may not have much to offer to the list owner of 100,000+ names, when you only have 1,000. But it can be done.

One way to do this? Ok, let’s pretend that I convince a speaker to do a teleseminar with me that I know at least 2 or 3 other 100k+ list size owners would love to tell their subscribers about. Let’s couple that with the fact that these list owners want to build their lists even more. And you do too. You could make a deal with some of these list owners that whoever opts in to your teleseminar, you’ll do a solo mailing of a product of their choice to the entire list if they promote the call. Remember they’re delivering a message to their list that their list would be interested in, and they’re interested in getting the names of the other list owners that will opt-in. So you act as the middle-person and make all sides happy, while greatly adding to the size of your list.

I’ve personally done this, and I’ve got some big promotions on the way that will grow my list even further. All you need to do is to contact these people and let them know how they benefit from the arrangement.

Will everyone welcome the deal? No. But there are plenty who will. And everyone wins (those are the best kinds of deals, by the way). This is one of those ideas that will work just as good online as they do offline.

Seek out other businesses that cater to your market. I used the lawyer and accountant example in the introduction to this JV section. A realtor may JV with moving companies, custom framers, carpet cleaners, pest control services, lawn care companies, painters, electricians, plumbers, the list goes on. Just be sure to JV with those businesses who have products and/or services your customers may need (i.e. a realtor JVing with a video game company doesn’t make much sense).

Make a list of businesses who want and need a constant flow of leads: lawyers, doctors, dentists, realtors, home remodeling services, carpet cleaners, pest control services, etc. Broker deals between them where there is a fit to generate leads.

JV mailings. For generating leads where it’s not cost-effective, direct mail can be prohibitively expensive. That’s why card decks and Value-Paks are so popular. But aside from those types of mailings, you can always partner with a non-competitor (or two or three) that offer a complementary or similar offer with the same target market as yours. By splitting the cost of the mailing, you still get your message out, but at a much-reduced cost.

JV inserts/flyers/circulars. Similar to JV mailings, you could arrange to have your flyer, insert, or circular inserted into another publication already being mailed. This “hitching a ride” approach works best when your audience is targeted, although newspaper inserts are popular with local bricks and mortar businesses. The JV part comes into play when you pay so much per lead or a percentage of all sales resulting from the arrangement. Depending on your price structure, you can pay a percentage of the first sale only, or a tiered approach where a smaller percentage is paid for all first year purchases, a percentage of the back-end purchase, etc. You need to determine what types of deals bring in the biggest profits for you, while still providing a valuable incentive for your JV partners. And that really goes for any type of deal.

Lead generation JVs. Find out what other businesses your target market visits. For example, I sell to entrepreneurs, and a lot of them frequent the UPS Store and other such places. Fedex/Kinkos and other “copy shops” are also ideal places where I live. Many of these places don’t capture their customer’s name, address, email address, etc. So I made an arrangement with them. I setup “take ones,” where they can take a brochure for free, go online to my website, fax me, or mail me their contact info, then I send them a free report relevant to them. I give their contact info to the store I JV with (and I notify the prospects of this fact…it hasn’t seem to hurt my leads significantly so far). For those businesses (a Staples store, being one of them) that are stubborn, I offer to give them the contact info I collect from all the stores I JV with in their area. Again, you need to include a disclaimer when doing that, but in my tests, the benefit has outweighed the losses.

In a discussion with copywriter Michel Fortin recently, he mentioned that you need to really provide an incentive for these businesses to promote you. So the “take one” box may not be enough by itself. True, they are getting the contact info of some of their customers (something they themselves should be gathering), but if they don’t know enough to get that information in the first place, they may not be as anxious to promote your free report or premium.

Endorsements. There are people and businesses that have a great personal relationship with their customers and prospects. They may not necessarily know this fact. In fact, a lot of them don’t even realize the amount of pull they have with their audience. People who recommend certain stocks or trends, people who give great content and information to their subscribers, people who give investment advice, generally people who have a certain rapport with their subscribers. They are the ones you want to target. If their niche is non-marketing-related, so much the better in order to cut through this niche’s clutter. I know someone who targeted golf enthusiasts for a marketing product, simply because of their test results. In any case, if you can JV with this sort of person who will endorse your product or service, you have a huge advantage. It’s simply one of the best ways to print money on demand. Please don’t overlook this technique.

These people may not even realize the relationship they have with their list. So you would be well advised to start with those folks.

Look all around you. There are more ways to line up joint ventures and strategic alliances than you can shake a stick at. You just need to develop an open mindset that will soak up opportunities like a sponge. Reading the newspaper, business trade journals, and other publications, both online and offline, can kick start ideas in your head when you least expect them. So think of the JV examples I’ve provided in this report as just the beginning.