Virtual Backscratching

I know that pretty much every coach in the country would rather be coaching than having to work on PR and marketing, so why make it extra hard on yourself by assuming you have to do all the work?

There are some very straightforward ways to get other businesses and coaches on board through a spot of mutual support. You scratch their back and they'll scratch yours. And it's all possible as a virtual, online activity!

* Basic link swaps

At the most basic level, there's the practice of exchanging website links. If you put a link on your website that recommends somebody else's site and they do the same in return, you both increase the number of incoming links to your respective websites. The search engines 'like' incoming links so the theory goes that it will improve your Google rankings.

Actually I don't recommend that you use this form of virtual backscratching much at all. And if you do, apply the technique very sparingly. Why? Because it sends people away from your website when what you want is for them to hang around and sign up to your mailing list.

* Seek out others with the same target market

The way virtual backscratching works best is when you team up with others who work with the same target market as you. At first it seems counter-intuitive... surely these people are your competitors? But the reality is that if you team up with others who offer slightly different services or products to the same group of people, then you're in a win-win situation. Not only can you now support each other with your marketing activity, both of you can also increase the value you offer to your own mailing list.

Joint ventures are big business in the online marketing world because they are one of the best ways to grow your mailing list and increase your sales. The kind of JV's that work best, of course, are the ones where you already know, like and trust the person you are teaming up with and you can genuinely recommend their product or service.

* Simple online joint venture ideas

How about setting up a straight recommendation swap? Your promotion partner recommends you in their newsletter at the same time as you recommend them in yours. That way you get exposure to your joint venture partner's mailing list and to lots of potentail new sign-ups to your own list.

Another way is to set up an affiliate deal. If you have a particular product or service you want to sell online, you can offer your promotion partners a percentage of every sale that comes via their recommendation. This is easy to set up in 1ShoppingCart.com (although you do need to subscribe to the top level package to access the affiliate software) and, again, means that your product gets promoted to your partners' list as well as to your own.

* Work with promotion partners you know and trust

The really important thing to remember is that your good name and reputation are highly valuable to you as a coach. So although joint venture promotions are an excellent marketing tool, you must make sure that you only recommend products and service providers that you know and trust. If you send out recommendations for rubbish products, you'll get a bad name pretty fast, and it's simply not worth taking that risk.

Who might you team up with for some virtual backscratching and mutual benefit?