5 Joint Venture Marketing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

By Gina Bell

Yes, when it comes to joint venture marketing, things can go wrong if you aren’t careful. Knowing the potential pitfalls you may face will empower you to create, implement and manage more successful joint ventures.

Pitfall #1 – Your Joint Venture Goal Doesn’t Match the Partners you’ve selected: What are your reasons to create a joint venture or participate in a joint venture? Visibility, Credibility, Cash Flow? Maybe a book or product launch? Perhaps you are seeking endorsements or testimonials? Whatever the reason, it needs to be in sync with your joint venture partners.

Example: If you’re creating a joint venture opportunity solely for the purposes of credibility but you haven’t done enough research to determine the credibility of your partners, you could end up damaging vs. building your reputation.

Another way to undermine the effort is to align with experts who appear to be completely unrelated to what you do. Even though they may have great credibility, your audience will be confused by the association with them unless you find a way to clearly demonstrate the relevance.

Pitfall #2 – Poor Communications i.e. differing expectations: Being clear, ensuring there is mutual understanding of the project, confirming commitment and more is critical to the success of your venture. The communication element is HUGE. Try creating a simple and easy to follow checklist that outlines all of the details and steps involved and give it to your partners.

Pitfall #3 – Implementation Snafu’s: Implementation is where JV’s can really fall apart. People get busy, they lose emails, they misplace affiliate links… they get busy. What can you do in advance and during the implementation phase of your joint ventures to motivate and support your JV partners? For example, preparing pre-written emails that they can copy/paste or working directly with their VA. Anything that you can do to make participation simple and easy is worth doing.

Pitfall #4 – Low Incentives = Low Participation: One of the best ways to increase participation from your partners is to increase the commission you pay your JV partners. At first breath, you may be tempted to resist this one, but I assure you, the increased participation compensates for the higher commission you’re paying. Many times, your revenues are higher. The increased participation also boosts your visibility too… it’s really win-win.

Pitfall #5 – Crossing lines: When working with joint venture partners, it’s very important to pay attention to the details and to ensure that you represent them in a professional/respectful way and vice versa… spell their names correctly… inspect that they have represented you correctly too. Simply paying attention can ensure that lines aren’t accidentally crossed.

While there are things that can go wrong, there are many more things that can go right too! The best way to guarantee Joint Venture success is to learn how to leverage it in ways that really work for you.

A great place to start is by becoming a FREE member of the JV Mavens Partner and Prosper Network at www.jvmavens.ning.com. You’ll connect with other joint-venturous women and discover practical marketing strategies and must-have mindsets for joint venture success.

Gina Bell is a multi-passionate entrepreneur, successful coach and author, President and CEO of Gina Bell, Inc. a company devoted to teaching success-driven women entrepreneurs how to build “equity-rich” internet-based businesses so they can enjoy all the fun, freedom and good fortune they desire.   Gina is also Founder and President of the International Association of Women in Business Online {IAWBO} as well as the Networking Masters International to name a few of her companies and projects.   Gina is host of Women in Business Online Radio Show, author to the forthcoming book Equity-Rich Women Online: How to Love, Leverage and Leap Your Way to Wild Success; and co-author to the AWE, Association of Web Entrepreneurs Emerging Trends Guide 2009 and the Power of Mentorship for the Home-Based Business alongside prominent transformational teachers like Bob Proctor and Dr. John Demartini from “The Secret”.   Gina is known as a Catalyst for Growth and consults with multi-passionate and creative entrepreneurs from all over the world teaching them how to build equity rich online businesses and how to leverage “catalyst” strategies that enable them to up-level their success quickly and with (a lot) less struggle.   You can learn more about Gina, her companies and programs at GinaBellinc.com

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