Doing what you do best - and only what you do best - is the ideal situation for everyone. For example, if you make an excellent widget, then you want to keep perfecting those widgets, not deal with the online sales and shipping of your widgets. Or, if you are a writer of children's books, you want to focus on the illustration - not on the distribution and marketing of your books.
Copyright (c) 2008 Christian Fea
Doing what you do best - and only what you do best - is the ideal situation for everyone. For example, if you make an excellent widget, then you want to keep perfecting those widgets, not deal with the online sales and shipping of your widgets. Or, if you are a writer of children's books, you want to focus on the illustration - not on the distribution and marketing of your books.
Obviously, sales and marketing are still very serious needs that must be met in order for you to even have a company. Thus, other people have found these needs and are willing to fill them - if you let them do so. Makers of widgets can hire companies to process all of their orders, ship the widgets, and even handle the widget company's customer service in its totality. Children's book authors work with agents who create marketing campaigns for publication. These types of partnerships are joint ventures in which both companies win.
Focus on your expertise
The first step in forming this type of joint venture is determining what you do best. If it is a product you provide or an excellent service, you need to pin down how your time is best spent.
Then figure out what part of your company you would like someone else to handle. It could be as small as having an outside company do your payroll, or as large as forming a joint venture for your future advertising campaigns. Forming a joint venture for a small or large part of what you are doing now will allow you to focus on creating and improving upon what you already do.
Seeking out joint venture partnerships
On the other end of the spectrum, if you are an excellent sales and marketing professional, you might want to seek out a company that has synergies with your business. If you love their widgets, then propose a joint venture marketing campaign that will propel both of you into the forefront of the target audience. Or, if you find a great children's book author and you sell children's toys, then you can propose a joint venture email campaign.
The most important aspect in forming a joint venture in your belief in what you do. If we are honest, we all know there is something in which we excel. Indeed, we may have become good at many things, but chances are we all have a special skill or talent.
If you can discover your specialized talent, then you will see where others are not as talented in that area. Actually, you are likely to find people that despise doing what you love to do, and vice-versa. This is a great thing! The beauty of a joint venture is that your strengths are the other partner's weaknesses, and vice-versa. This helps you create a marketing campaign or business strategy that is more powerful than your individual efforts. Finding the synergies and capitalizing upon those differences in a joint venture can take your business to the next level.
What Type of Marketing Referral Program is Best for Your Business
To understand what type of marketing referral program is best for your business, it may be vital to first understand where referrals can come from in the first place.
When Your Referral Rewards Program Goes Wrong
The horror stories are enough to scare any small business owner into inactivity. That one business that was doing great with an excess of capital decided to enact a new referral program and the next news you heard was how they overextended their offer and were swept up and down the creek into bankruptcy. It can and does happen. When your referral rewards program goes wrong there can be a few good reasons why.
4 Tips for Preparing Your Business for Referrals Programs
If you have established your business, set up some marketing efforts and branded your company's name, it may be time to prepare your business for referrals programs.
