Successful Marketing Strategies and Joint Ventures

Joint ventures involve two or more businesses coming together to blend resources into a single, effective marketing machine. While some business owners go to great lengths to ensure they partner with the best possible company, many do not spend as much time formulating the best marketing strategy for their needs. When the marketing isn’t effective, the joint venture often falls flat as well.

To prevent this problem with your next joint venture, we have some successful marketing strategies that will change the way you look at your next advertising campaign.

The Art of Communication

The first step in creating a marketing campaign that potential customers are sure to notice is to remember that marketing is little more than communicating your products and services to a target audience. Instead of a conversation, you are presenting your message in a visual format, usually somewhere on the Internet where potential customers are most likely to find you.

When you think of marketing as another form of communication, it tends to change your perspective on the best way to reach your audience. Instead of simply trying to “sell” them a product, you are now relaying information that will help them make the best decision for their needs.

It’s Not About You

When you communicate with other people, you don’t spend all your time talking about yourself, right? If you did, you would probably find few flocking to you for conversation after a period of time.

The best interpersonal communicators know how to turn the conversation focus onto the other person by asking open-ended questions that stimulate interaction. Marketing can be thought of in a similar manner. Instead of telling your customer everything your product or service can do, focus on what your product or service can do for him.

This process first involves identifying your customer’s need, which is often much easier in a joint venture when you have two or more businesses partnering together to come up with an answer. Discuss the specific needs of your customers and how your joint venture can help meet those needs. If your customers want additional information about certain aspects of your business, write articles on those topics and distribute them around the Internet or publish them on your partner’s website.

The “Help” Mentality

When business owners begin to think of marketing as a means to educating their customers about the best ways to meet their needs, the process transforms from a necessary evil to one that is filled with possibilities. Instead of trying to outdo your competition in terms of flash and catchy slogans, you simply let potential clients know how you can improve their quality of life in some way. Because most people like to help others, this process comes to many business owners much more naturally than your standard marketing strategy.

Once you know how to meet the needs of your customers, you and your JV partner can work together to find the best marketing strategies to communicate your solutions to a targeted audience. When you approach your joint venture in this manner, you are much more likely to see success in building your customer base and boosting your bottom line.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

5 Traits of a Successful Joint Venture Partner

While joint ventures are one of the most effective ways to build a business, the right partner will make all the difference in just how profitable your joint venture can be. When you do your homework up front to find the best fit in a JV partner, the benefits and rewards are far-reaching indeed. We have five traits of a successful JV partner to look for when beginning the joint venture process.

Performance

The performance of the company is an essential characteristic of a successful joint venture partnership. Companies that consistently perform well individually will also be more likely to be an asset to your joint venture. Don’t be afraid to ask about the performance of potential partners, in terms of sales, profits and reputation.

Complementary Brand Values

When choosing your JV partner, you should look for a company with a complementary brand value to your own. Avoid companies that you would be directly competing with; instead, look for businesses that would have a similar target market, but sell a completely unique product or service to yours. A wedding florist and stationer are perfect examples.  This allows you to combine your brand values for the best possible results.

Positive Reputation

When you partner with another company in a joint venture, your corporate identities tend to blend as well. This is beneficial if you are working with a company that boasts a stellar reputation in your industry, but not ideal if the company has a poor reputation for service or quality. Check into potential JV partners by reading customer and industry reviews to ensure you find a partner who boosts up your own business rather than dragging it down.

Financial Security

It goes without saying that you should choose a JV partner that is financially stable, but many business owners are hesitant to ask another company for a peek at their bottom line. There is no reason why you should not be privy to at least some of a company’s financial information before partnering with them to ensure your partnership is a stable one. Choosing a partner that is not in a good financial place may result in losses for your business as well.

Marketing Savvy

When each company brings its own brand of marketing savvy to the table, the effectiveness of the joint venture is exponentially amplified. Perhaps you are a master of online marketing, while your JV partner already has a massive customer list to boast. When you put your heads together, you can make the most of your marketing efforts by expanding and stabilizing your current market base. You also get to split the cost of advertising, giving you a lot more bang for your marketing dollar.

Joint venture partners come in a wide range of types and sizes, allowing you to customize your joint venture to your specific business goals. However, the wide range of choices can also make it difficult for you to know which company will be the best fit for you. When you choose your next JV partner with these criteria in mind, you will be much more likely to enjoy a successful, profitable relationship.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

5 Common Stumbling Blocks to Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are a highly effective way for small businesses to explode their profits, but only when they are entered into wisely and with some caution. With proper planning, these partnerships can exponentially increase your customer list and your bottom line. Without it, joint ventures can quickly transform into burdens that bring few benefits and are hard to get out of.

To help you avoid the latter scenario, we have listed five common stumbling blocks to joint ventures that you should avoid.

Too Little Research

It’s important to learn everything you can about a potential JV partner, including their performance history, reputation in the industry and financial stability. You will also want to find out what their goals might be for the joint venture to ensure you’re both on the same page in your partnership. Taking the time to do the research up front will usually pay big dividends in the long run.

Not Enough Honesty

Both prospective partners need to be up front about their reasons for entering into the joint venture. They also need to be honest about how much time, money and talent they are able to bring to the joint venture table. If you feel at any time during the negotiation process that your prospective JV partner is not completely forthcoming with you, it may be time to cut your losses and search for a more honest working relationship.

Breaking Client Confidentiality

Many companies enter into a joint venture a little too enthusiastically, and they offer client information before it is really theirs to share. Before you hand over a client list, make sure you are not breaching any confidentiality agreements you have with your customers. It also warrants careful thought before turning over a list that you probably worked very hard to build. Proceed slowly and cautiously when sharing customer information with a JV partner.

Offering Too Much or Too Little

Some companies are so eager to get another business to say yes to a joint venture that they offer much more than they should in terms of customer lists or profits. By the same token, other business owners are too stingy with their joint venture offers, turning many potentially lucrative partners off completely. Your joint venture offer should be large enough to be enticing, but not so large that you end up taking a hit in your bottom line just to secure the JV partnership.

Neglecting an Exit Strategy

Even good things must eventually come to an end, and this is particularly true of joint ventures. The time to think of your exit strategy is before you sign your agreement in the first place, not after you are trapped in an unprofitable agreement indefinitely. Add the exit strategy to your contract, and you will always have an out if your arrangement begins to go south.

Joint ventures have become so popular today because they are a highly effective method for boosting customer lists and profits. With a little thought and preparation, you can enter into a JV partnership that will be lucrative for all partners involved in the arrangement.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

Types of Accounting Used in Joint Ventures

Joint ventures typically involve two or more businesses coming together in some sort of partnership agreement for the purpose of expanding sales and boosting bottom lines. Most joint ventures are somewhat limited in terms of their scope and time frame, with most considered a short-term agreement that does not necessarily constitute its own accounting system.

However, as longer joint ventures become more popular, it is important to understand your accounting options in joint ventures to ensure the financial interests of both JV partners are properly protected.

Separate Books

Even if you determine that separate books are the best option for your joint venture, you will typically open a joint bank account to hold the investment of each JV partner, as well as any profits that are made during the agreement. This type of accounting is characterized by the following:

• Contributions by each partner are debited to the joint bank account and credited to individual accounts of each partner
• Expenses for the joint venture are directly debited from the joint account
• Sales are directly credited to the joint account
• At the end of the joint venture, the profit or loss will be directly transferred into the personal accounts of the JV partners
• The account will be closed, with equal disbursements made to all of the JV partners

While this tends to be the easiest type of accounting for joint ventures, it is usually reserved for those partnerships that will be perpetuated for some time. Short-term agreements will often pass on separate books in favor of maintaining the joint venture records within each partner’s own record-keeping system.

No Separate Books

When JV partners determine that a separate account for the joint venture is not necessary, they will need to account for the transactions under the joint venture partnership on their own. This means that each partner will open an account for the joint venture and one for his partner. This allows for accounting of expenses made on either partner’s account, as well as those done through the joint venture itself.

When it is time to balance the books, each joint venture partner submits his own ledgers to ensure the numbers all match up. This helps to hold each partner accountable while maintaining the integrity of the separate joint venture. While this accounting system may be slightly more complex, there is no separate account to close out at the end of the joint venture, which is why it tends to be a preferable method for agreements that are made for a shorter term. Profits and losses are simply tallied up, and each JV partner will record his own portion.

Like any business transaction, it is important to maintain proper books during the joint venture process. Whether you choose separate books or have each partner account for the joint venture transactions in his own books, this process is paramount to keeping the integrity of the joint venture intact. When partners are held accountable for the bookkeeping of the joint venture agreement, everyone can rest assured that individual interests, as well as the financial interests of the joint venture, are properly protected.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

Using Strategic Alliances to Build Your Business

Joint ventures are just one type of strategic alliance that can help you build your business quickly and efficiently. These partnerships can take on a host of different looks and features, but the primary purpose is always the same: to partner with another business for the sake of enhancing both companies’ profits. We have five ways strategic alliances can be beneficial in building your business.

Eliminate Competition

Strategic alliances like joint ventures can effectively eliminate competition by partnering with them. This approach embraces the “bigger is better” philosophy by enlarging your customer base through a bigger inventory of goods and services. While joint ventures don’t tend to involve companies that are in direct competition with one another, they do include companies in a related industry that share a similar target market. This blows marketing opportunities wide open, from backlinks to cross sales.

Operate on a Global Scale

As the market widens, your opportunities and abilities are called to keep pace. This can be very challenging to small business owners who can barely permeate the target market in their state, let alone across the globe. However, partnering with other companies gives you automatic global clout, with a larger online marketing budget and a quickly expanding customer base. When you boost your competitive edge, you will be more likely to stand out from even the larger companies that cater to customers around the world.

Maximize Your Marketing Potential

When you combine forces with another business through a strategic alliance, you instantly gain additional talent and revenue to expand your marketing efforts. In addition, shared customer lists and backlink opportunities help you drive more targeted traffic to your website, which will instantly increase first-time sales, as well as your ability to develop a larger customer base. Joint ventures are primarily entered for their marketing potential, particularly online advertising options.

Industry Convergence Trends

As the market continues to expand, more industries are finding that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. This is true in financial markets, where insurance companies, investment firms and banks are finding there is power in strategic alliances that provide more related service options for their customers. Convenience is the key, and if your customers can find additional related goods and services through you and your JV partners, they are much happier for it.

Bigger Bottom Lines

The bottom line is what it’s all about, and strategic alliances like joint ventures have proven time and time again that they have the power to boost them. In fact, some companies are stating that as much as 18% of their total profits are coming directly from those strategic alliances. For smaller businesses, this growth is exponential in providing the ability to expand goods and services and broaden the customer base and sales potential even further.

Strategic alliances like joint ventures are just one way that many small business owners are finding to boost their profits much more quickly than by using traditional marketing methods alone. When you join forces with another entity with a common goal in mind, there is no end to the potential success you might both enjoy.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

The Players in a Joint Venture

Joint ventures are strategic alliances designed to boost the profits of two or more related companies by building a bigger target market base. The agreements can be as simple or complex as the JV partners want to make it, but most small business owners opt for the simplest model possible that can effectively help them achieve their goals.

This article will provide a list of the most common players involved in any joint venture to help you assemble your own cast for success.

The Endorsee

This business owner is typically the smaller company looking to ride the coattails of a larger, more established company. This player typically offers a portion of his profits, or another equally enticing bone, to attract larger companies to a joint venture partnership with him. Endorsees are primarily looking to a joint venture to boost consumer confidence quickly and effectively through endorsements and drive more traffic to his website through online marketing and assistance from his JV partner.

The Endorser

The larger company in the joint venture usually agrees to the partnership to gain a portion of the other company’s profits. In many cases, this bigger business also enjoys the satisfaction of knowing it is helping a smaller business make a name for itself. Perhaps the larger company likes the product offered by the smaller business or simply wants to act as a mentor. They also enjoy the benefits of free market research by discovering which of their products and services are most popular with customers from their JV partner business.

The Broker

In some cases, endorsers and endorsees might have difficulty finding one another, which is where a broker comes into play. Joint venture brokers provide a service to potential JV partners by matching them with companies that could offer the greatest benefit in a joint venture agreement. Joint venture brokers typically provide their services in exchange for a set fee or a portion of the profits generated by the joint venture. Some business owners that have seen success with joint ventures become brokers to help other businesses achieve the same benefits.

Accountants

In some cases, the accounting required for joint ventures can be somewhat complex, so an accountant who specializes in such ventures offers a valuable service. This professional can counsel the joint venture partners on the most efficient ways to keep the books for their joint ventures and offer advice on setting up accounts and reporting taxes. If you are unsure of how to set up the financial end of a joint venture, an accountant who specializes in these agreements is a must.

Lawyers

No joint venture is complete without a formal agreement that makes the partnership legal and binding. If you are uncomfortable drawing up a joint venture contract on your own, a lawyer can be helpful in drawing it up for you. This professional will ensure that everyone’s interests in the joint venture are equally protected throughout the partnership.

There are many players that might go into the establishment of a successful joint venture. With these professionals in your court, you can rest assured your joint venture will offer minimal risk and maximum potential for success.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

What is a Qualified Joint Venture?

Joint ventures are typically agreements between two companies that help each business grow their customer lists and their profits. However, there is one type of joint venture that keeps the business “in the family.” A qualified joint venture is a special type of agreement between a husband and wife that run a business together, but do not want to file their tax return as an official partnership.

This article lays out the terms for a qualified joint venture, so you can understand the difference between this type of agreement and a standard joint venture contract.

Why Choose a Qualified Joint Venture?

While husband-wife teams are rather common for many small businesses today, the problem arises when it comes to withholding taxes for the spouses. In the case of a traditional partnership, the role of each spouse within the company must be clearly defined to enable the IRS to determine how each individual will be held responsible for social security taxes.

In many partnership instances, one spouse is classified as the sole proprietor of the business, while the other is classified as an employee. The responsibility for social security taxes varies considerably between these two classifications. Employees must have both social security and FICA tax withheld from their income, while business sole proprietors do not.

On the other hand, a qualified joint venture states that both spouses have equal standing in the business and neither is an employee that requires withholding from his income. Instead, the company’s income, losses and deductions are split between the spouses, and each files an income tax report as a sole proprietor of the business.

This is a relatively new arrangement that was created under the 2007 Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act, which gave spouses another option for conducting joint business.

Criteria for a Qualified Joint Venture

To be classified as a qualified joint venture, businesses owned and operated by spouses must include the following criteria:
The spouses must own a business that is not a corporation or a limited liability company.

• Both spouses must have equal share in the profits, losses, deductions and credits within the business.
• The spouses must be the only members of the joint venture and the only partners in the business.
• Both spouses must file a separate Schedule C, which shows the profits, losses, deductions and credits for the business.
• Both spouses also file a Schedule SE to demonstrate self-employment status.
• Both spouses agree to be treated as a joint venture rather than as a partnership.

When a business meets the criteria for a qualified joint venture, the company is not required to file as a partnership and no withholding is required for either spouse. If the couple filed as a partnership in the previous year, the partnership will be considered dissolved at the end of the previous year. This enables companies to take advantage of the qualified joint venture arrangement even if they are not recently established.

Qualified joint ventures offer some tax benefits to spouses in business together. For more information about these entities, contact your attorney or accountant for your company.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.

How to Minimize Risk in a Joint Venture

Joint ventures have quickly become one of the fastest and most powerful ways to grow a business, but they are not without their share of risk. Some statistics suggest that less than half of all joint ventures survive less than four years, which is rarely enough time to see the true benefits of a successful partnership.

To ensure your joint venture is a successful one, we have some tips for minimizing risk in this sort of strategic alliance.

Establish a Common Purpose

The first step in minimizing risk in your joint venture is to ensure both partners are on the same page right from the beginning. This means that both JV partners need to be explicit about why they want to enter the joint venture in the first place and what they hope to achieve from their strategic alliance. If you both know the objectives up front, you will be less likely to suffer from unmet expectations later in the process.

A Comprehensive JV Contract

Many joint ventures dissolve because there is no accountability between partners. This makes it easy for one company to escape the joint venture with sizable benefits, while the other company merely feels put upon and taken advantage of.

If you are in this situation, get the terms of the agreement down in a contract that both JV partners sign. This protects the interest of all companies involved and provides recourse if one partner does not have his expectations met sufficiently.

Input from Both Partners

Joint ventures become much less risky if both partners are equally invested in the agreement. This means that each company should bring its own set of talents and resources to the table to ensure the partnership is as successful as it can be. When both partners put something of themselves into the joint venture, they will be more likely to stick with the partnership until the end of the venture.

Proper Leadership for the Joint Venture

Many companies fail to establish the proper leadership when they create a joint venture, which leaves this entity to flounder on its own. Create a leadership structure that holds all parties accountable and guides the joint venture into a successful enterprise. Once the leadership is set, communicate with employees of both companies so they know who to report to when working directly with the joint venture.

Ongoing Communication between Partners

Once the wheels are in motion, ongoing communication between JV partners will ensure that the venture continues in an upward direction. Communication minimizes risk by allowing both partners in the agreement to address concerns and obstacles for the joint venture as soon as they arise. Regular attention to the partnership will greatly enhance your odds for success.

Joint ventures can be profitable propositions, but they also entail their share of risk. To minimize potential loss from your joint venture, follow the steps above to properly establish the joint venture structure and provide regular maintenance so your partnership will be more likely to thrive and grow.

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 report on Joint Venture Marketing.