By finding joint venture partners that "fit" you and your business, you can access new prospective clients and income streams, without adding any overhead or inventory costs. This puts more profit in your pockets!

What exactly is a joint venture?

Joint ventures, also known as JV, are a relationship between two (or more) businesses to mutually enhance their activities - in this case we're talking about sales and marketing.

By pooling some of their resources together - such as their email lists, products and services, clients and prospects - the JV partners can split expenses (if any) and garner lots of benefits through their dual efforts. What they stand to gain is credibility, a way to provide additional value to their customers, more revenue, access to a larger and targeted list, and so on.

There are many different kinds of joint ventures - you're really only limited by your creativity and vision for your business.

Some common and simple examples of joint ventures are:

1. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice that basically uses one website to drive traffic to another website.

Instituting an affiliate program is like having instant access to a powerful sales force - without having to fork over any money for salary and training costs. There are minimal or no up-front costs and you only reward your affiliates when a new customer results from the affiliate's marketing efforts.

2. Cross-Promotion Strategies

Cross-promotions have been around forever as a marketing tactic and that's because they work. By partnering up with a company that serves a similar customer base as you do, you can instantly gain access to a much larger pool of potential clients.

Ideas for cross promotion can be based on products, services, events, programs and so on. It can be as simple as: your JV partner sends out an email to their client base about information on your website that could benefit them, and you instantly gain tons of exposure without spending a dime.

In addition, you can offer your clientele "new" product offerings (your joint venture partner's inventory) - and as a bonus, you earn a commission on any products that your clients do order from your partner's business.

3. Co-sponsor a Tele-seminar or Workshop

You can have a joint venture that is based around an event such as a workshop, tele-seminar, speaking engagement, virtual tele-summit, and the like. The venture allows you and your partner to combine your database/subscriber lists to send out invitations and cross-promote the event. As well, a joint venture can give tremendous value to participants - over and above the value you might possibly provide on your own.

Plus, you have someone to share the hard costs, organizational details and headaches with!

4. Co-registrations

This is a way to build your profile, expertise and subscriber list for your ezine or newsletter. The basic premise behind co-registrations is that your JV partner promotes your newsletter on their ezine sign-up or thank you page and you promote theirs. So, when a person signs up for your JV partner's newsletter, the "thank you" page would include your newsletter name and a link to sign-up for a subscription.

Joint ventures are a great way to expand your potential client base with someone who is already targeting the "right" people for your business. Joint venture marketing is not only a savvy business strategy, but can significantly boost your sales by helping you find and keep your most profitable clients.

What do you think - could your business benefit from a joint venture?