How To Turn Competitors Into Partners, Easily

[Fabian Tan]

What's the fastest way to gain recognition in your market and start making floods of sales - even if you're not an expert in the market? The answer is hidden in joint venture marketing. Simply put, joint ventures are the fastest way you can attain an 'invisible customer base' without even paying a single cent for it.

What's an 'invisible customer base'? It's a customer base you don't own, but drives sales for you - for free! If you have joint venture partners promoting your product to their mailing lists, it's like owning an 'invisible customer base'.

The first step you need to take is to create a high quality product. This is an absolute must. If your product is not of the highest quality, why should joint venture partners promote you? Make sure you have a quality product first before you proceed.

The next step is to find potential JV partners to promote your product. There are several places that I look at - the Clickbank Marketplace, forums and the search engines. These are proven grounds for finding partners. I challenge anyone not to find at least a hundred potential partners within just a few hours using these resources!

Now that you have a list of partners, it's time to contact them via email. Personally, I have found that contacting via Facebook or other social networking sites doesn't work that well, but contacting via email works better. If you get a 10% response out of the all of the emails you send, you are doing great. That means for every 100 emails you send, you'll get 10 partners promoting your product.

Keep your JV invitation email short and to the point. You want them to click over to your JV partners page that you have set up and sign up for your JV list so you can keep in touch with them about your product launch.

Fabian

[Christian Cee]

Great info, thanks!

[Pierre Placide]

Thank you for sharing this info!

[Mike Merz]

Thank you for sharing this info!

Pierre, please cut your sig file down to 5 lines.

Cheers,

Mike Sr

[Paul Flood]

Fabian,
This is great information to share. One thing I've found
increases response is to make an offer of support to
the person I'm approaching.

Big list owners get approached every day
by people saying "promote my stuff"
and very few of them actually say something
like, "Please let me know if there is anything
I can do for you."

Too many people seem to forget it's a
reciprocal relationship.

To your success!
~Paul

[Joshua Donchi]

Thanks for the information, what would you recommend to someone launching their own product for the first time that only has a very small list who is looking for joint ventures?

[Andre Stoelinga]

I agree there's lots of places where one could find potential partners, but that's where it usually stays...potential partners.
To find reliable partners who really want to do a proper JV is a lot harder lately...so I've learned the hard way. :)

I'm finally getting through to a few very good potential partners who saw my product and think it's a great product with huge potential. First I'm trying to keep in touch with them regularly...not begging them to promote for me, but just conversation, tips, questions, etc..

To have the best product in the world won't mean people want to do a JV with you though. For quite some time I couldn't show them any conversion rate numbers (still can't prove EPC), because I had no effective way to draw traffic to the page. But hopefully that will change soon. I've been asked if my product can be used for an upsell on a promising launch...that's already something innit... :)

From the 50 you approach you can probably count on 1 or 2 who are actually interested in working with you. That's what I've seen up till now. Once your name is more known in your market I believe it's easier to find better and more partners. But it's still "I scratch your back, you scratch mine...". Logically I'd say and it will always be like this when you're starting out with your first serious product.

Andre

[Eric Conklin]

I like it.

I guess the bottom line is just to e-mail people instead of waiting for them to find your JV page on their own. Seems crude but I bet it works.

[Eric Campbell]

Nice Info for affiliate marketers transitioning into big competition markets

[Dee Kumar]

I agree there's lots of places where one could find potential partners, but that's where it usually stays...potential partners.
To find reliable partners who really want to do a proper JV is a lot harder lately...so I've learned the hard way. :)


Totally agree here. It all about the reach or influence that your potential JV's have.

The bigger the JV's potential the harder it is to get in touch because they are bombarded with requests. I was out of Marketing for years but I still get requests from people who remember me, I can only imagine what it is like for the more successful.

One method I have particular success with is to write guest posts REGULARLY for a well known blog. I currently write for Entrepreneurs Journey and it gives me a lot of credibility to say I write there (of course my writing is good too). That itself has helped open a lot of doors both to other successful writers there, and to marketers who sometimes peruse the site.

It's all about credibility online, and if you can prove that other known marketers trust you,then you have a good chance of getting through the gatekeeper.

My Twitter for example has barely 30 people on it, but some of them are well known online so I gain replies and respect whenever I message well known people.

It takes time to build relationships, but you can expedite the process by being seen with other successful people.

Dee Kumar

[Felix Leech]

Thanks for the info, all of you, there's some great stuff here.

Andre reminded me of something I saw in Rasmussen's 'Get More Buyers' video which is to add your partners' product as an upsell on your own sales page. Obviously you can do this for everyone but it builds on the 'reciprocal arrangement' idea.

[Richard Andrews]

Greetings Fabian,

I completely agree. JVs are the best way to reach out to competition and leverage both your and their resources for maximum mutual benefit. When I first started out with internet marketing in my industry, there were numerous large competitors, and it looked like I wouldn't be able to make any headway in competing against them since they already seemed to have the market cornered. But everything changed when I reached out to connect and see if we could partner.

Suddenly, we were no longer competitors, but rather we were partners. This can be the one thing that truly changes your fortunes online in a very immediate (and often lasting) way.

As for your idea of an 'invisible customer base', let me tell you from first hand experience that once you tap someone else's market, they instantly transfer the credibility and trusting relationship that they experienced with your JV partner, over to you. That means that you can reap the benefits of all the behind-the-scenes work that your partner has already done in establishing a deep rapport with their list and member base. This all leads to you being positioned as an equally reputable expert in the industry. Once your offer is made, you're newly branded expert-status credibility (by way of your affiliation with your JV partner), will directly impact your bottom line.

Getting even one JV partner can be a game-changer for new internet marketers, and they can then take that new success and use it as stepping stone for building even bigger partnerships in the future.

Happy JVing!

Richard

[Miriam Slozberg]

I agree with this. Once what were believed to be only competitors can be amazing collaborators if you reach out to them, engage with them, earn their trust and they will be very happy to partner with you if they see you are sharing valuable information, and trust worthy.

Miriam

[jonny josheph]

The post is quite informative, it is a good way to convert competitors to partners.