Have you just started a small or medium sized business? Are you trying to go it alone, like thousands of other entrepreneurs? If so, you may be headed for failure. The old paradigm of competition-based marketing no longer carries a business to success. Without the addition of alliances and networking, you will not gain enough contacts and connections to sustain a small business model. That is why joint ventures can be a winning marketing model.
The Loner as the Tortoise
Going it alone, you may find yourself a lone tortoise on a barren highway. While the speed of business has moved on to new and faster highways of technology and methods, your startup is like a tortoise, plodding away on the slow road to building a business, hoping to find a customer or two along the way. The old saying, “slow and steady wins the race” rarely works for new startups.
Who’s In Your Rolodex?
It’s safe to say, the more people you know and the more alliances you have on your side, the more likely you’ll have access to help when you need it. If you’re a small retail business and your goal is to establish a marketing list in the thousands, how could you possibly get those numbers on your own? Joint Ventures can help you gather those numbers by sharing mailing lists, customer contacts, and pooling marketing resources.
One of the main purposes of a JV is to get your product to a wider market. Your network of JV partners, working together, is one of the fastest ways you can spread your marketing blanket over a wider audience.
Business Network + Market Referrals = Success!
It’s true that startup businesses always succeeded one customer at a time. However, getting that first customer or two is never easy. And the rate of referrals from one person to the next is a slow and business-killing process. But what if you had a network of business alliances and JVs who tell their large and established customer base about your startup? You could potentially get your first hundred, or even first thousand customers by simply having your JV partners give your business a “thumbs up” to their customers.
However, the road to power and profit doesn’t stop with your JV business network. Use the customers you gain as testimonials and spread the word via the referral market. Social media like Facebook and Twitter have helped businesses gain a tremendous customer network that was previously unavailable. Use that power and referral market network to spread the word about your business prominently.