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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-31

January 31, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

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Building your business with Joint Ventures

January 31, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

Today’s business building quick tip: 1/30/2010

Building your business using joint ventures or integration marketing is a great way to attract new business. By using joint ventures as a strategy to building your business you can acquire new customers quickly, easily, and for a fraction of the amount of most other marketing tactics.

Building your business using joint venture marketing tactics is a low-cost, low-risk method that the vast majority of your competitors are not using. Yet, building your business through joint venture relationships is sometimes a miss understood strategy, yet it can be truly powerful and add new, profitable customers and a quick amount of time.

Building your business with joint venture marketing is all about creating mutually beneficial relationships with other business owners that offer laterally associated products and services that are related to yours, but not competitive.

By tapping into other business owners underutilized assets, such as distribution channels, sales forces, telemarketing efforts, direct mail outs, e-mail lists and existing website traffic pools, you can integrate your product or service into an existing distribution channel that already has the trust, credibility and awareness that will allow your product and service to penetrate through typical barriers of traditional marketing and advertising.

One of the first steps towards creating a joint venture is to define your ideal client or customer and create a persona of all the things related to your ideal client. Once you define these characteristics, your ready to start thinking about who already has an existing relationship with your ideal persona.

To find out what’s next in today’s example, give me a call at 949-209-6800 for a free, no obligation strategy session to build your business using joint venture and integration marketing tactics.

To your success,

Christian

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11 Reasons Why Companies Form Joint Ventures

January 27, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

Joint ventures are very common – and in fact, more common than you might think. Particularly, JVs are quite prevalent amongst big business. Oil and gas companies are common allies when it comes to forming joint ventures for drilling purposes. Electronics joint ventures, such as Sony Ericsson, fuel innovation and global access to untapped markets.

Here’s a look at why big businesses form JVs. Do you see a similarity to your needs? Most likely you do. Learn from the global corporate giants and get an idea of how you can form your own JV right in your own city, state, region, or even on a national or global scale.

Internal Reasons to Form a JV

  • Spreading Costs – You and a JV partner can share costs associated with marketing, product development, and other expenses, reducing your financial burden.
  • Opening Access to Financial Resources – Together you and a JV partner might have better credit or more assets to access bigger resources for loans and grants than you could obtain on your own.
  • Connection to Technological Resources - You might want access to technological resources you couldn’t afford on your own, or vice versa. Sharing innovative and proprietary technology can improve products, as well as your own understanding of technological processes.
  • Improving Access to New Markets – You and a JV partner can combine customer contacts and together even form a joint product that accesses new markets.
  • Help Economies of Scale – Together you and a JV partner can develop products or services that reduce total overall production expenses. Bring your product to market cheaper where the customer can enjoy the cost savings.

External Reasons to Form a JV

  • Develop Stronger Innovative Product - Together you and a JV partner may be able to share ideas to develop a product that is more competitive in your industry.
  • Improve Speed to Market – With shared access to financial, technological, and distribution resources, you and a JV partner can get your joint product to market faster and more efficiently.
  • Strategic Move Against Competition – A JV may be able to better compete against another industry leader through the combination of markets, technology, and innovation.

Strategic Reasons

  • Synergistic Reasons – You may find a JV partner with whom you can create synergy, which produces a greater result together than doing it on your own.
  • Share and Improve Technology and Skills – Two innovative companies can share technology to improve upon each other’s ideas and skills.
  • Diversification – There could be many diversification reasons: access to diverse markets, development of diverse products, diversify the innovative working force, etc.

Don’t let a JV opportunity pass you by because you don’t think it will fit in with your own small business. Small and big companies alike can benefit from the reasons listed above. Analyze how your company can benefit internally, externally, and strategically, and then find a joint venture partner that will fit with your needs.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

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What You Can Learn About Joint Ventures from eBay and Craigslist

January 25, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

Joint ventures can provide both partners with tremendous success, but even the best intentions can go awry. One example of an off track joint venture involves online marketing giants eBay and Craigslist.

In 2004, eBay and Craigslist entered into an agreement whereby the two companies would try to expand more into global markets. However, the joint venture soon stagnated to the point where eBay was trying to market the 28.5% share in Craigslist to other companies, and Craigslist was fighting to get it back.

The biggest problem with this joint venture is that the two companies obviously had completely different intentions and goals. Craigslist wanted to retain authority and management of its own operations, but learn from eBay about larger online classified operations. eBay wanted to use their share in Craigslist to better compete against Google in the online classified industry and maximize profit potential in Craigslist operations. Although both companies had a shared intention of expanding into bigger global markets, their alternative intentions soiled the relationship, and they are now in litigation to end the JV.

Looking at the original intention of the JV, it was a good one. However, there are things you can learn to prevent such a tragedy from occurring in your own JV. Here are some things to consider:

Write Out the Intention of the JV as a Mission Statement

Before your JV goes “live”, you and your JV partner need to know exactly what is expected from one another. Are you looking to have access to technology while your JV partner needs help in reducing expenses? Or perhaps you both are looking to enter into bigger national markets by combining forces?

The mission is critical to ensuring that you and your JV partner will not have disputes over the overarching goals.

Explicitly Write Out the Partner Responsibilities

What will you be contributing to the JV? What will your JV partner contribute? Who will manage the accounting books? Who will handle distribution?

All of the facets need to be clearly outlined in the beginning. You don’t want to have a finished product ready, but find your JV partner reluctant to distribute it appropriately. Know who is responsible for every step of the joint venture.

Shelter Your Proprietary Information

eBay used confidential Craigslist information and techniques to form its own “free” online classifieds, called Kijiji. Craigslist did not want another competitor, especially one that was using its own technology and industry secrets.

Although you may agree to share certain proprietary information to develop a new product, be careful what information you do share. Keep your proprietary information private. Remember, you are still in business for yourself.

Define the Exit Strategy

eBay and Craigslist are still in a lengthy and expensive dispute on how to dissolve the joint venture partnership. You can avoid legal litigation by defining exactly how your JV will dissolve if things go wrong, as well as if things go right.

Joint ventures don’t have to end badly. Knowing all expectations and responsibilities will help you and your JV partner get the most benefit and profit from your JV efforts.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24

January 24, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

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Talk your emails on your iPhone. 5X faster then typing.

January 23, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow.

by Mel Martin (RSS feed) on Dec 8th 2009 at 12:00AM

Put this into the ‘I didn’t think they could ever get this to work on an iPhone’ category.

I’m talking about Dragon Dictation [iTunes link] fromNuance, the developers of the very popular Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance also provides the speech recognition engine for MacSpeech Dictate on the Mac platform.

To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the text has been created from your speech, it’s possible to email it, send it as a text message, or put the result in your clipboard. After recording your message, you can edit the resulting text before you send it off for others to read.

It’s pretty slick! When you record your message, it is quickly transmitted to Nuance servers where a speech recognition algorithm is run against your data. The resulting text is returned to your iPhone very quickly; my informal benchmarks showed that it took about a second for text to be processed on a Wi-Fi network, and less than 5 seconds over 3G. You’ll need a data connection for the app to work, but having this speech-to-text capability is going to be very important to a lot of people, who will find all sorts of uses for it.

I tested the app for about a week and found the accuracy to be very good. Accuracy diminishes if you are in a very noisy environment, as I found when I tried some dictation while being driven down the interstate. There were a few errors, but they were easy to correct. To add punctuation to your text, you can say ‘period’, ‘question mark’, or ‘new paragraph,’ and Dragon Dictation adds the appropriate punctuation.

Since your dictation goes out over the internet for processing, I asked Nuance about security. Their reply was as follows:

“Search queries and dictation requests are transcribed by fully automated speech recognition software, without the use of humans. Data is uploaded and collected in order to improve performance for individual users, and to improve the general performance of the system.

All speech recognition requests and associated data are processed in data centers in the U.S. that meet stringent security and privacy standards; these are the same standards that we use for processing private information in other areas of our business.”

How much will this capability cost? Nothing. For a limited time Dragon Dictation is absolutely free, but at some point there will be a charge for it. I spoke to Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager for Nuance Mobile, and he said they see all sorts of specialized applications of this technology, such as in the legal and medical professions. The app has gone live and is available now.

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Are You Giving An Inspired Performance in Your Joint Venture?

January 20, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

We all want to perform better. Our jobs, our personal life, our marriages – all this and more require our full attention and focus in order to be successful.

With so many areas of our life pulling at our focus, how can we maintain a consistent and outstanding effort with a joint venture? Doesn’t your JV require your full effort as well? However, sometimes we lose sight and forget why we formed a JV in the first place: to make money and be more successful in business.

Evaluate Your Feelings

You can improve your JV efforts. If you have felt any of the following in regard to your JV, then you are not realizing your full potential, or are unaware of the full potential you can give to making your JV a success:

  • Over stressed
  • Health challenges
  • Feeling of futility
  • Imbalanced
  • Isolated

Here are three simple things you can do to leveraging your highest effort and give an inspired performance in your JV.

Create a Compelling Vision

What was the reason you formed your joint venture? To make more money? To gain additional business contacts? To tap into an underdeveloped market segment? You need to go back and look at your JV documents and business plan. What is the purpose? If you just review your vision, you can get back to the place that made it exciting.

Don’t have a vision written down? Now’s the time to do so or improve on what you already have. A vision needs to be compelling. “Make more money” is not a compelling vision. “Earn six figures in the next fiscal year with a global marketing effort” is more like it. Make sure your JV vision is compelling enough that it gets you excited every day.

Tackle Challenging Situations

One thing that can really get you down is dealing with tough situations. However, haven’t you felt great and gained a sense of accomplishment when you last tackled and overcame a challenge?

Don’t let tough situations get the best of you. You can feel inspired when you succeed. Approach challenging situations with a goal to tackle one small thing at a time. Break it down into smaller steps. Then check off one step at a time and soon you realize the overwhelming situation is manageable. And always remember to give yourself a pat on the back with a small reward when you complete a challenge.

Tap into Your Creative Abilities

Nothing gives a more inspired performance than when you are creative and productive.  Practice brainstorming more often. Lay out multiple scenarios and solutions to a problem. Give yourself permission to come up with seemingly crazy ideas. That is where you find yourself thinking outside the proverbial box – when you allow yourself to think of innovative and creative solutions outside the norm.

Sometimes you just need to breathe life back into your JV performance. Don’t let yourself get a stale attitude toward your joint venture. Remember what you’re working for. Get that sense of accomplishment. And allow yourself to be creative. You and your JV partner will be thankful for it.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

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Leveraging Affiliates as Part of Your Joint Venture Marketing

January 18, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

Affiliate marketing has seen tremendous growth in 2009. People who are passionate about other products, as well as individuals who want a successful work-at-home business, are finding that affiliate marketing can give them the winning edge. With this in mind, you and your joint venture partner should consider leveraging affiliates as part of your JV marketing mix.

What do affiliates do? Affiliate marketing is when a third party agrees to market your product or service for a portion or percentage of each sale they make through their efforts. Affiliate marketers can make great full-time or part-time earnings by gathering a large Internet following and recommending products for their followers.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing for Your JV

There are significant benefits associated with employing affiliate marketing for your joint venture.

  • You pay only when a sale is made – One very nice benefit of affiliate marketing is that you do not pay any marketing or advertising costs until a sale is made. No money is paid up-front. By trusting that your affiliates will bring in sales, you hold onto your much-needed cash until each sale is processed. You can even agree to pay affiliates on a monthly basis, which allows you to leverage cash in your bank account even longer.
  • Exponential sales potential – If one affiliate is bringing in an average of sales each month, then five affiliates could potentially be giving you 25 sales each month. Imaging what 100 affiliates could do! The more affiliates you have working the Internet marketing channels, the more you can profit!
  • Let others do the marketing – Why not take advantage of others’ marketing efforts to sell your JV product or service? You and your JV partner both have your own businesses to run. By leveraging affiliates in your marketing strategy, you give yourselves more time to focus on improving and expanding your own businesses, or even focus on forming new joint ventures.
  • New customer bases – Affiliate marketers can utilize their respective following to make sales. Affiliates may focus on specific market niches in their efforts, such as book clubs, video game player associations, auto clubs, and the list goes on. These marketing niches can be new customer bases for your JV business.

Affiliate marketing may have downsides as well. Some affiliates may not bring in any sales or lose interest in your product when the next best thing comes around. That is why it is important to screen your affiliates and choose the ones that have the best sales potential. You should also offer the largest sales percentages to the best affiliates. Make sure they have an established web site and verifiable list numbers. Offer up to 50% of each sale to the best affiliate marketers. You may see less profit on each sale, but remember, your sales numbers can skyrocket and total profits will increase as a result.

Affiliate marketing could be a boon to your JV business. If you have a product or service that could easily be sold via affiliate marketing, consider this as a viable option.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-17

January 17, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

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5 Ways to Improve Your Joint Venture List Building Efforts

January 13, 2010 by Christian · Comments Off 

Does your joint venture have a website? If you are like most JV marketers, you do. Whether you market your product or service locally, regionally, nationally, or globally, a website is one of the most cost-effective marketing devices you can use. And one great way to leverage your online marketing efforts is to build a list of customers with whom you stay in touch.

Understanding List Building

List building is simply the efforts you use to create and grow an online customer base. Customers who agree to be put on a list provide an email address, or less often, a mailing address. This important contact can be invaluable when you want to promote special deals to return customers or offer your online customer list a first chance at a sale, etc.

Since an online customer list can be a great marketing tool for your JV, here are some great ways you can improve your list building efforts:

1. SEO – Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your JV website popular among major search engines. People are searching for your types of products and services every day, and they can find your website from a search result. A search engine might rank your website higher when you plant certain and pertinent keywords and phrases throughout your website. Use META tags to help search engines catalogue your site. Update regularly with blog posts or articles that use a reasonable density of important keywords (2% to 3% is the current targeted density). Top SEO ranking is essentially free marketing. Make sure your website can be found by search engines.

2. PPC – Another way to draw search engine traffic is by using pay per click (PPC). When you use PPC, you agree to pay a certain fee to a search engine every time an online user clicks your link. In return, the search engine puts your paid advertisement link at the top or beside search results where a search customer can easily see it.

3. Social Media – Use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to gather “fans” and “followers” of your JV business. Your social media list can also become beneficiaries of special deals that you offer.

4. Free Download – When an online user visits your site, invite and entice them to sign up on your list in return for a free download. Giving something for free is a great way to convince people to give you their contact info. Make the free download something valuable, such as a buyer’s guide, a helpful article, or even an eBook with helpful advice.

5. Newsletter – Compose and send a regular newsletter to your list. At the beginning of each newsletter, you should invite the receiver to forward it on to others who they think could benefit from your newsletter or products. This is a great way to build your list from recommendations.

JV marketing takes many forms, and one of the most used forms is online marketing. Be sure you have a good strategy to build your online contact list so you can take advantage of return customers and recommendations.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

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