Joint Venture Marketing: Creating a Buzz Offline

Joint venture marketing is a subset of the Internet's popular relationship marketing strategy, where the focus is placed on a company's relationship with its customers and clients. The idea behind joint venture marketing is that two or more businesses come together, share their strengths, and capitalize upon the whole of the relationship to grow their revenues. A joint venture for your marketing strategy can create both a stronger and more profitable business, as well as better relationships with your clients.

Online vs. offline presence

In marketing, even if your business is conducted online, you may still want to consider an offline presence. Depending upon your industry, your future clients may learn about your business and products offline. The Internet is an increasingly large presence in our everyday lives, but other formats still give us a large bulk of our daily data - from print to television to radio - there are myriad ways to capture and audience.

A July New York Times article states that 10 million PC users have a television set in the same room as their computers, and Amazon.com is one of the most famous online businesses with a popular radio campaign, which has no doubt contributed to its exposure and success. Online promotion is still a vital part of an online business, but many business owners overlook the importance of offline marketing in helping to attract online customers.

Offline promotion for your online business will reach out to a different crowd than solely online advertising, and it may target a new niche for your business. By advertising offline for your online business, you can potentially reach:

- People who have demonstrated what their interests are and how they spend their money by purchasing a specific magazine or listening to a certain radio station.

- People who have interests outside of the Internet, but may be open to streamlining their everyday purchases online to save time.

- People who may not have confidence in the Internet will gain assurance when a favorite media source endorses a website with which they are unfamiliar.

Working with a joint venture partnership to market offline

Many people who surf the Internet are merely that - surfers, or people who peruse the Web more for entertainment value than for actual purchases. Placing advertisements in alternate media sources has the potential to increase the traffic to your site, augmenting the portion filled with clients who are more serious buyers.

If people find the ad for your internet business in a magazine and then connect to your Internet site to further explore your business, they are a more determined potential client, and more likely to make a purchase because they have intentionally sought out your Website. Offline marketing tends to attract a serious and more committed crowd to your Internet business. If you don't have a large budget or connections in alternate media sources, a joint venture partnership may be the best way to pursue offline marketing for your online business.