ChristianA joint venture marketing partnership can help promote a brand or product to a large customer base, but in order to get clients online it’s important to have a strong online presence with positive remarks from many thought leaders in an industry across many different online communities. It is not easy to quickly build a very visible brand online as most savvy Internet users rely on many different websites and personal recommendations to assist their decision making process when evaluating a new product or service. For most industries there are several places that are important for a business to have a strong brand.
The following are all sites that should be considered for creating content to achieve the product awareness that is required to get clients online. While a joint venture is extremely important for getting a name into a customer’s mind, most people will initiate at least a basic Google search for making even small purchases and will go deep in Google if the purchase is of a significant dollar value. A business person doing their proper due diligence before making a purchase will often go to at least a few of the following locations looking for additional information, personal product / service reviews and search for both positive and negative opinions. It’s common knowledge that it often takes multiple marketing approaches to reach an end customer and close the deal, so prepare for the momentum that can occur with the promotion provided by a joint venture partner.
Social Networks
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Plus are all important to utilize to develop a strong brand presence in order to get more clients online. Small businesses may only have the capability to set up a simple profile with the business owner promoting the product or service to their personal networks within these sites. Larger companies are capable of setting up more complex campaigns with larger groups of people participating with their brand online, but regardless of a business’s capability to fully capitalize on the benefits of social networking, avoiding them altogether can damage the online brand by simply not showing up at all. When a partner recommends a product or service to their customers it is important that the customer can find more information about the company when searching on their preferred social network site.
Business Listing Sites
Yelp, Google Places (which is combined with Google Maps), and the Better Business Bureau are all important locations to have a basic presence. It only takes a few minutes to go through the processes of signing up and claiming the business as your own if you are the business owner. This allows for customizing the profile and providing additional information that’s important for customers to find. Failing to go through the claim process will not mean the company does not show up on these sites, as they still will if the business has been around for more than a few days and has an active website, is incorporated, etc. However it will mean that an opportunity to craft the message customers receive about the company is lost. These sites all have a high likely hood of showing up in the top natural Google search results if a potential online client is searching for more information after hearing about the business through a joint venture partner recommendation, so take advantage of that by building out a strong profile.
News & Information
Creating basic press releases and developing a process for promoting newsworthy information through press release distribution sites like PRLeap, Reddit and Digg which are news aggregation sites and Quora or Yahoo Answers will help get broader community opinions about the product and service. While social networks and business listings are easier to control and manage, news sites have the capability to provide reader opinions which can be positive if done right and negative if done incorrectly.
Getting news stories indexed within Google news can be frustrating at first, but can be achieved through several PR websites for a fee. When participating in News Aggregation sites and Question and Answer sites it’s best not to over sell and to be supportive of the community in general rather than just talking about a specific product or service in order to build the credibility from others within a specific industry. Use industry expertise and knowledge to build a strong brand online through these sites which will result in getting more clients online.
Develop a strong brand online to reinforce the positive impacts of joint venture marketing campaigns. By developing a strong online brand a company will not only ensure that a joint venture marketing activity is more successful, it can also be a catalyst for acquiring JV marketing partners and thus should be an integral part of any efforts to develop a strong JV marketing business model.
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.
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Right on Christian…this is the 1st thing I tell my clients & partners to have when it is a start up, or brand they are trying to build.
Raul Ayala
CEO & Publicist
Secret Nightlife Society, Inc.