Joint Venture Endorsements Bring Targeted Traffic Fast and Easy

Let me begin by making a bold statement: Joint Venture Endorsement Marketing is the most underrated, yet most powerful method available to attract targeted customers to your site--bar none. I know that you may be scratching your head right about now asking yourself, "What is this guy talking about? Everyone knows that search engine positioning is the most effective form of promotion."

Granted, search engine placement is important for any web- based business to succeed. However, what makes joint venture marketing the most effective online and offline form of promotion, is that it builds on the most valuable asset of any business--customer loyalty. Still unsure of what I'm getting at? Let me explain...

The Power of Relationships

Merchants are constantly trying to build stronger relationships with their clients. For example, many web-based businesses today offer a free subscription to a weekly newsletter offering valuable information to their customers. Some merchants will even offer special discounts to their customers through their newsletters. The purpose of offering this free resource is that it gives businesses an avenue to maintain rapport with their customers and build long-term relationships to ensure repeat purchases. Once a merchant has gained a customer's trust, he is practically guaranteed sales from that customer for years to come. Now you can take advantage of that merchant's customer loyalty to sell his customers YOUR products through a joint venture endorsement. Are you beginning to see the power of this? If you were to merely send out an advertisement to one of those "red hot" mailing lists, you would be lucky to get a 1-2% response--at best. However, if you have your products endorsed by the publisher of an ezine related to your service, you can expect a response that is 20-30 times greater!

Finding Endorsers

Finding businesses to endorse your product is easy. First of all, make sure that your joint venture associate has established a strong relationship with his customers. Any business that offers a newsletter or ezine is an excellent candidate for a joint venture because they maintain constant contact with their clients.

Secondly, you want companies that have established solid relationships with their customers in a related industry but which are not competitive with yours. For example, if you own a web hosting company, you can easily joint venture with a web design company, a search engine optimization service, or even an ezine related to Internet technology. The possibilities are enormous! This is an important aspect to remember because it ensures that your product is being endorsed to a highly targeted market that is interested in what you have to offer.

Lastly, to be really effective, you want companies that have a significantly large customer base to endorse your products. Being endorsed by a company with no more than a few customers would be a definite waste of time.

Arranging the Deal

Once you have selected companies that meet the above criteria, you simply contact them by phone, fax or even email, and ask for their endorsement. I suggest you contact them by phone as opposed to fax or email because your offer will be taken much more seriously if you make personal contact.

You'll want to offer the endorser a complimentary sample of your product or service so they will be able to give a much more credible endorsement once they have actually used what you have to offer. And if what you sell is a truly top-notch product, they will be happy to endorse it because they will feel as if they are doing something good for their customers. However, you will still have to provide them with some sort of compensation in order to get most merchants to endorse your product. I suggest that you either offer them a percentage of the sales generated from their endorsement or give them access to your own customers by endorsing their product to your customer base. Either way, it is a win-win situation for both parties.

Conclusion and Summary

At this point, let me make one thing clear. Do not confuse joint venture marketing with merely a link exchange or banner exchange program. These forms of marketing do not utilize the valuable asset of customer relationships that can only be achieved through a personal endorsement of one merchant's products by another. In summary:

1. Joint Venture Endorsement Marketing is a very targeted form of marketing because the endorsement comes from carefully selected businesses with clients that would be interested in what you have to offer.

2. It is a very inexpensive form of marketing because you pay your endorser based only on the sales that result from his endorsement. If you arrange a deal where you endorse each other's products, then you have no expenses at all!

3. Since the endorser has a strong relationship with his clients, and because of his recommendation of your service, those clients will be much more inclined to put their trust in you and become a lifetime customer of yours, as well.

Start applying these principles of Joint Venture Endorsement Marketing today and watch your profits explode!