joint venture marketing

If you’ve begun researching the world of JV marketing, you may find that joint ventures and affiliate marketing are used almost interchangeably in the marketing industry. However, there are significant differences between a true JV partnership and an affiliate marketing structure. This article will go through a few of those basic differences to help you determine which marketing approach is the best choice for your business.

What is Joint Venture Marketing?

A JV marketing partnership involves two or more businesses coming together with the intent of promoting one another’s goods or services to build a bigger profit and a healthier bottom line. In some cases, the businesses may be equally matched in terms of size and business volume. Other times, a smaller business may connect with a larger one in hopes of attracting new customers through the larger base of the partner. The businesses are typically related but non-competing, ensuring that both businesses find equal benefit from the arrangement.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing involves an established product or service, which affiliates sign on to help sell for a portion of the profit. The affiliate may pay a small fee up front to begin working with the company, and then provides the financing for marketing efforts like a website, mailings or door-to-door flyers. The company offers support in terms of credit card services, shipping and customer service. The affiliate also enjoys the benefit of marketing an established product with a familiarity that makes it much easier to sell.

Similarities

Both affiliate and JV marketing involve parties outside the original corporate structure to build profits. In the case of joint venture marketing, those parties are businesses offering related goods and services that can help grow a responsive customer base through their own collection of loyal customers. In the case of affiliate marketing, the outside influences are typically individuals interested in selling the product or service already established by the company with the purpose of earning a portion of the sales.

Differences

Despite their similarities, JV and affiliate marketing are also vastly different in a variety of ways. Affiliate marketing already has a product or service to offer, and the company has probably been at least somewhat established to customers within an industry.

In JV marketing, a newcomer to a specific industry might cash in by relating his product or service to another business that has already been established. In this situation, there is more than one company and therefore more than one product or service involved with the arrangement.

If you do not currently have a product or service to sell, but want to enter the world of sales to make a living through commissions or a portion of the sales, affiliate marketing may be the best choice for you.

However, business owners who already have a product or service on the market and simply want to build their customer base with the help of a larger, more established company, JV marketing is probably the smartest choice. Either approach can build a customer base and a healthy bottom line for the company, or companies, involved in the agreement.

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.

To discover more joint venture marketing Strategies join his free report on joint venture marketing.