At today's mastermind meeting, Joe, Bill, Craig and I got into a
long discussion about Joint Venture proposals. This is a subject that my
coaching clients are struggling with at Your Portable Empire
University, and really, most beginning marketers struggle with.
It really hit home to me how lucky I was to be sitting at that table.
Joe
Vitale is one of the fathers of the internet marketing business, and
just keeps growing from amazing success to amazing success. His goal is
to be the world's first trillionaire. I wouldn't bet against him.
Craig
Perrine is one of the up-and-coming gurus. The gurus all know him, and
respect him. He's one promotion away from being a guru himself. He's
also got a dangerously skewed sense of humor.
Bill Hibbler is one
of my oldest friends. He's the one that got me into internet marketing,
and introduced me to Joe. He's quietly built up a very impressive
internet empire. He also used to manage rock stars- so we share the
music biz connection.
To get these guys together for a consultation would cost thousands of dollars an hour.
Let me share the wealth with you, by letting you listen in to a conversation we had about joint ventures.
There
is a temptation for new internet marketers to use the "shotgun"
approach when they try to set up Joint Venture deals. In the shotgun
approach, you send a form letter to everybody you can think of, asking
them to promote your product.
We were unanimous on this. The shotgun approach NEVER WORKS.
There. That's all you need to know about the shotgun approach. Don't waste your time
Bill
reminded me of a time, 8-10 years ago, when I tried the shotgun
approach in the music business. I put together a promo kit, with
pictures, press clippings, and my latest CD and mailed it to record
companies. Wasted several hundred dollars. I got no response.
Later, I got a record deal, publishing deal, and a couple of great agents- but I didn't get them by using the shotgun approach.
Well, what does work?
We all agreed that building a relationship was important.
So,
I asked Joe, Bill, and Craig to imagine they were sitting in...
Cleveland, Texas, or some other backwater spot, and they wanted to
establish a relationship with a potential JV partner. What would they
do?
I want to make it very clear that the first step is to
identify who you want to establish the relationship with. You need to
focus on each potential JV partner one-at-a-time.
Here are the steps they would take:
1. get on their list.
2.
subscribe to all of their newsletters and read them. You want to know
what their niche is, what their interests are, and- this is very
important- what they like. More on this in a minute.
3. send them
an occasional email telling them that you like their ezine, and telling
them exactly what you liked. quote the ezine or newsletter.
4.
once they've responded to an email, and acknowledge you, offer them a
free article or ebook to use as a bonus for their promotion. It's
important that your bonus has some relation to their promotion.
5.
politely ask if they'd be interested in promoting your product. Do NOT
send attachments. Do NOT send a long email with your biography. Do send a
polite request stressing what's in it for them.
6. repeat step five politely but persistently.
I've
seen this work with Joe, and I believe that it will work with most
gurus IF... and this is a big IF... the product you want to promote is
actually a great product and it is the sort of thing his customers will
actually buy.
For example, Craig's customers are savvy,
experienced internet marketers who are interested in the nuts and bolts
techniques of list building. My ebook, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to
Internet Wealth, would be totally inappropriate for his list.
Joe, on the other hand, has a list of people who will find that book very useful. He'll be promoting it soon.
Now, look at step two- where it talks about finding out what they like.
Now, close the door. Make sure you're alone. I'm about to tell you a secret...
You can get a guru's attention by bribing them.
This is a secret. Don't tell anybody. You didn't hear it from me.
It's true.
Here are some of the bribes that have worked:
- single malt scotch
- italian leather coat(s)
- a case of oreos
- vintage books
- steak dinner
- gourmet coffee
- official baseball-team cap (worked wonders with a Japanese record exec.)
- twenty-dollar bill
- maduro churchill cigars (I live in hope.)
note-
clever works better than expensive. You can't buy these guys. You can
amuse them. If their passion is coffee, and you send them a pound of
blue kona grown on a small coffee plantation, dried and roasted by
loving hands- they'll think of you as they drink the coffee, and they
will read your proposal. The point is that you cared enough to learn
about them, and learn what they like- and send it to them. Don't go buy a
hundred pounds of coffee and send it to a hundred gurus. Find the one
who is passionate about coffee and concentrate on him.
Or find the one who has a sweet tooth for oreos, and send him a case.
(disclaimer:
this is word of mouth. Hearsay. I have no evidence of anyone ever
receiving or responding to a bribe. If I did, it was years ago and the
statute of limitations has run on it. If it ever happened. In the case
of the case of oreos, the evidence is long gone- his son ate 'em.)
A bribe will not guarantee that the guru will promote your product.
However, some of these guys get dozens of offers a day. It's a full time job just reading the emails.
If
you send your proposal FEDEX, with a memorable bribe (remember, you've
researched them to find out what they like), you greatly increase the
chances of your proposal actually getting read.
It's still up to
you to create a great product, and offer it to marketers who actually
have access to the people who will buy it. Be sure to stress the
benefits to the list-owner and his list. This is not the place to give
your life history, or beg for help. Desperation does not sell.
A
quick and easy way to build a relationship, and create a product, is to
interview or co-write with your potential JV partner. The less work they
actually have to do, the more likely they are to agree to your
proposal.
Why would you do this?
1. When people see your name associated with a guru's name, there is a perception that you are worth listening to.
2. It gets the guru emotionally involved in the project, and he'll do what it takes to make it successful.
3.
The first one is the hardest. Once you've successfully worked with one
guru, it's much easier to connect with, and work with, others.
4.
You get to "cream" the guru's list. You can build your own list by
capturing the names of people who show interest in the product you
create with the guru.
This led to a discussion of other problems beginning internet marketers have.
Craig said it best, "If you are currently broke, you have no business creating or marketing success products."
The
funniest JV proposal any of us have ever received said, "I've got a
great marketing course, I just don't know how to market it." It's
actually become famous in guru circles as the ultimate bad example.
Bill
followed up, "The internet marketing niche is full. Not only is there
no room for anyone else to market products in that niche, if you do
compete in that niche you're competing against the best marketers on the
planet. You don't stand a chance."
I can tell this to my coaching clients until I'm blue in the face, and they'll still try it. I don't understand.
Your chance of success is higher in just about any other niche.
The trick is to discover what you're actually good at, and sell that.
What are your skills? Be honest about where you are now.
Craig, again: "Do you like being lied to? If you're marketing success products, and you're not successful- you're lying."
Craig
had the solution- "There are two kinds of people in internet marketing:
marketers and product developers. You're probably a product developer.
Find what you're good at, and make a product out of that."
This led to a discussion about product development.
It's easy.
If you like to write, and you write well, it's even easier.
If
you don't like to write, or don't write well, get an audio recorder and
record interviews. You can record interviews over the phone. You can
make camtasia videos and sell those. A cheap video recorder is good
enough to make professional videos- the bar isn't very high, because you
need to compress the videos so they can be downloaded.
Somebody
brought up the story of Joe Kumar, who was a broke student who lived in
Singapore. He emailed a bunch of gurus and asked them a simple question
about marketing. He knew that getting an answer to an email was easier
than any other form of gathering information.
He also figured out
that the gurus he interviewed would be emotionally involved with the
product, and would be motivated to see it succeed. When the product was
ready to market, his interview subjects became his joint-venture
partners.
He made a pile of money. His story after that is kind of sad, but is worth learning about. Do a Google search.
This is a great business model. Joe and I used it when we created "The Myth of Passive Income."
We bounced this around- that's the beauty of mastermind meetings. The energy just swirls around the room.
One
of the ideas that came out of this swirling energy- what if an
overweight person interviewed a group of weight-loss experts, and
created a product from the interviews? Then he could write an ezine to
document his/her progress using the advice the weight-loss experts gave
him. You could sell a lot of these.
What kinds of synergy can you create between Joint Ventures and products?
Pat O'Bryan is the CEO of Practical Metaphysics, Inc. and
Director of the Milagro Research Institute. He is the author of several
books on Internet Marketing, including the best-seller, "Your Portable
Empire- How To Make Money From Anywhere Doing What You Love."
