Host an Educational Seminar to Attract New Clients

joint venture marketing

joint venture marketing

Reaching out to potential customers through a joint venture marketing partner by hosting an educational seminar is an effective way to attract new clients. There are a couple of ways to set up and host a seminar in order to get in front of new customers, the most popular being a meeting in person or a webinar that is done over the web. It’s essential when preparing to host a seminar that the focus of the seminar is a topic that will be of interest to the audience and be educational about the topic versus a pure business pitch selling a product or service. Remember to capture the content created during the seminar in order to use it for future marketing activities. Work closely with partners to craft exciting and interesting topics that will strengthen both companies’ brands with the target audience and consider opening the events up to anyone that may be interested as another channel for attracting new clients for both companies in the partnership.

Meet Up or Webinar to Attract New Clients

The first major decision that needs to be made when considering to host an educational seminar with a joint venture partner is whether the event should be a real in-person meeting or done through the web in the form of a webinar. There are pros and cons for both and here are few of the most common differences and items to be aware of when making a decision.

A meeting in person is beneficial because a face-to-face interaction allows for a much different relationship to form with potential clients versus an online exchange. It also allows provides more structure for the seminar and can be planned around a breakfast, lunch, or dinner which is often appreciated by people attending. If setting up an in-person seminar, then it’s also important to have marketing collateral prepared and printed as well as product samples on site if relevant. Live seminars should be video recorded in order to be used online later for building a library of interesting information for other future potential customers that are also interested in learning about the topic of the seminar. The biggest drawback for a live meeting are the costs associated with hosting such an event, especially if a location needs to be rented to host the seminar and the seminar is restricted to only a specific geographic area. However, if a partner has a conference room or larger meeting space that can be utilized and the number of potential clients in a specific area warrants a seminar in person then it should be highly considered.

An online webinar is a very effective method to reach many potential customers very easily. This is the best method if the customer base is spread over a large region. Depending on the platform that is chosen for hosting the webinar, the host can still share marketing collateral, PowerPoint presentations, and links with the audience. A webinar is generally easier to record, share or publish to the web and many webinar platforms have this capability built into the product.

Utilize Social Media to Maximize Seminars

Maximize your decision to host a seminar for a joint venture marketing partner’s existing clients by opening the seminar up to the public and promoting it through both company’s social media accounts. An industry related educational seminar should always be looked at as a way for both companies to increase their presence with potential customers. If a live seminar is being recorded it can also be streamed live so anyone that is not able to attend in-person can still attend via the web. Services like Ustream and Justin.tv allow for anyone to easily live stream video from the event. If your event is open to the public you can promote it through sites like MeetUp.com or eventful.com. Make sure that all partners promote seminars through their Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as through more traditional means such as mailers, email, phone calls, and personal recommendations to attend.

Remember when hosting an educational seminar the focus should be on the topic at hand for the majority of the event and through providing interesting and relevant information. The goal is to be seen as an industry expert that can help the potential customers which will ultimately attract new clients. Spending too much time directly pitching a product or service can be a hindrance to developing relationships with potential customers and be a turn off, so go easy with the pitch and have fun educating people about a topic that can be presented with passion.

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.

Discover more joint venture marketing Strategies join his free report on joint venture marketing.

joint venture marketing

joint venture marketing

5 Tasks You Can Outsource Now to Attract New Business

Strategies to Get New Clients

The best part about developing joint ventures is the ability to create unique strategies to get new clients from the existing client base of the joint venture partner or through new marketing activities together. Some companies mistakenly, simply create a basic press release and expect the new partner to come up with all of the strategies and marketing materials to market the partnership. If a business wants to maximize each joint venture partner it’s best to be active in the marketing decision making process as well as develop creative offerings such as product bundles, free sample offerings, partner promo specials and other strategies to get new clients. If a business commits to being open to new marketing strategies regardless of past marketing campaigns and focuses on developing a complete new channel, great things can happen. At the heart of the strategies to get new clients should be the overwhelming focus to provide customers a great product or service for an affordable price. When developing consumer related joint ventures having special pricing and product promotions is critical.

Product Bundles

Identifying whole solutions or product bundles that can deliver to a customer an entire solution or package that at the same time saves the customer money over buying each component separately is a strategy to get new clients. When marketing to a new potential customer base with a new joint venture partner many of these customers may already be using a competitor’s product or service so there needs to be a strong incentive to use a different company. Product bundling is an excellent way to handle all of a customer’s requirements and give them this great deal. Include a product or service from the joint venture partner into the product bundle if applicable and jointly market the product bundle. This also increases the buy-in that a partner may have in assisting with promoting the partner product bundle.

Free / Lite Version to Partner Customer Base

Depending on whom a joint venture partner’s customer base includes, developing a targeted free or lite version or product samples that can be provided free to the customers is a well proven strategy to get new clients. Often just getting customers to try a product out for the first time is the hardest challenge a business can encounter. This is seen most especially when launching a new product to market. Working in conjunction with a joint venture partner to distribute product samples, free versions of a product or service to identified target customers, will get the product in the customer’s hands quickly and efficiently. This provides potential customers the opportunity to get to know your product before making a buy decision. Depending on the structure of the joint venture partnership a free product demo sent to existing customers can be included in the agreement between the two businesses. Small businesses developing a new joint venture with a much larger company may have the product samples subsidized by the larger corporation because it is in both company’s interest that the target customers become acquainted with the products and the smaller companies brand. These types of joint ventures can really launch a new product into market rapidly. This is a strong strategy to get new clients that all businesses should evaluate if it would work for them.

Partner Promo Specials

Developing unique partner promotions helps differentiate the deal that a customer gets by having an existing relationship with a business that is now a joint venture partner. This is important for businesses that develop multiple joint venture marketing relationships. Depending on the level of a joint venture partner’s commitment, special promos can be developed so that they can offer their customer base a unique offer that is not being provided elsewhere in the targeted market. This allows a business to structure partnerships accordingly. Those partners that do the most for driving new business and spending resources on marketing the partnership can receive better discounts and promotions for their customers. Promotions can set up as just a single offering with a company or have a new monthly promo, whichever makes sense for the partnership. Using partner promo codes is always a great way to organize business leads in a CRM system as they are coming in through the defined sales channels. Being able to record a promo code can help you track leads and determine which sales rep those sales are coming from, which can be great data for managing the partnership.

There are many great strategies to get new clients through joint venture marketing campaigns with partners.  Be active in identifying the right strategies for marketing the partnership.  A few of the ways a business can reach out to existing customers is to offer them a special promotion, product bundle or even a free product sample to provide the required incentive to try a new product.

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.