Dont look for affiliates… Look for preferred partners February 23, 2010
Posted by Robert Puddy in : Business , 16 commentsLaunch Formula Marketing Preferred Partner Program
Using a membership site to deliver your product – whether it’s an eBook, a video series, a traffic exchange, or anything else – provides you with plenty of website real estate to offer Internet Marketers when arranging joint venture promotions. No doubt about it, one of the core elements of Launch Formula Marketing is partnering with other Internet Marketers to promote each other’s products.
So are their any drawbacks to this flexible approach? Just the one. Something that is common to 99.99% of online marketing strategies. Finding joint venture partners takes time and effort.
You might not see this as a problem. After all, most things that are worthwhile require some kind of investment. As we’ve previously discussed, when it comes to finding joint venture partners to promote your product in exchange for a permanent advert on your membership site, you won’t find a shortage of willing participants.
But there’s a reason why LFM become the cornerstone of my online success. Because even the time and effort required to find joint venture partners can be reduced and, eventually, eliminated completely. The technique I’m about to reveal will show you how to engineer a situation where marketers actively seek YOU out, and approach YOU with a joint venture request.
Not only does this take most of the effort out of the exchange, it also puts you in a much more powerful position. Now YOU get to call the shots!
Phase One: Channelling Traffic
I described this in more detail in the previous issue but the gist is to contact other marketers and invite them to take part in some kind of advertising exchange. There are lots of variations of how you might set this up but, for the most part, you offer to place a permanent banner or button on one of your membership pages (login page, thank you page, members homepage, logout page, etc), advertising their website and, in exchange, they agree to send one or two emails to their mailing list promoting yours.
Phase Two: Name Dropping
Once you have a few of these joint venture arrangements in place, you can start using this fact to encourage more people to say yes to your joint venture invitation. Use a little subtlety to maximise the effect. For example:
“I’ve already made similar agreements with Marketer Joe and Guru Pete so you’ll be in expert company. In fact I think you’ll feel pretty stupid if you don’t join in as well!”… Whoops Wrong way try again
“If you want to see how this will work in practice, you can see a couple of examples on my login page (LINK) that I’ve created for Marketer Joe and Guru Pete. If you’re agreeable to this exchange, I’ll be placing your advert permanently on my “thank you” page so it will be seen by every single one of my customers… PERFECT AN OFFER THEY CANT REFUSE
Of course, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to lie and pretend you have an agreement with a high profile marketer that you’ve never even spoken to. When you have a notable name onboard, only THEN can you use it as social proof.
Phase Three: Autoresponder Exchange
Once you have a customer base to call upon, you can start throwing autoresponder exchanges into the mix. As the name suggests, this means your joint venture partner places a promotional email for your product into their autoresponder. You need to be selective if you’re going to offer the same in return otherwise you can lose the trust of your subscribers. Don’t forget, however, that the exchange doesn’t need to be symmetrical. There’s nothing to stop you from offering a banner on your login page in exchange for an email in their autoresponder.
Phase Four: Preferred Partner Program
Once you have a regular flow of traffic, you’re ready for the final phase that will move you from seeking JV partners, to having them seek you. Initially this is going to sound counter-intuitive but reserve judgement until you’ve read this entire section.
You’re going to establish a “Preferred Partner Program” (although you can call it anything you like). This is a list of joint venture partners that have permission to offer their customers preferential rates on your services. This could be a discount, a free trial period, a specific bonus, anything you like as long it has a specific value and only your Preferred Partners can offer it.
Your partners will promote this preferential rate through their members area, on their thank you page, through an autoresponder email, however you want to arrange it. The upshot is that all of their current and future customers will receive a promotion for your product and an incentive to join or purchase.
So far, this is no different to any of the previous phases. The key distinction is that, on your homepage, you place a clearly visible notice informing your visitors that you operate a Preferred Partner Pricing System and that customers of these Partners are entitled to a discount. Beneath the notice you have a link to a page that lists all of your partners, including a direct link to each participating website. Yes, I know it sounds crazy to provide your visitors with a reason to leave your website and the opportunity to do. Like I said, reserve judgement for the moment.
Visitors that read this notice on your homepage and click on the link will usually do one of the following:
A) Find a Preferred Partner on the list with which they are already a member and then take a trip to that website to find the special discounted link for your product.
B) Visit one of the Preferred Partners and join their website so they can find the special discounted link for your product.
C) Visit one of the Preferred Partners but never return to your website.
In scenarios A and B, after a short delay, you still obtain a customer. Scenario C might be seen as a problem but if someone isn’t interested enough in your product to be bothered to return, even with the prospect of a discount, then it’s unlikely they were going to become a happy customer at this time anyway. In practice, this happens far less than you might imagine and any loss in this area is MORE than made up for by the combined promotional power of your Preferred Partners, all merrily advertising your product.
Now here’s the clincher. Underneath the notice about the Preferred Partner Pricing System, you have another notice that says something to the effect of, “If you are a program owner and wish to be part of our Preferred Partner Pricing System please click here for details.” This link goes to a page with your contact details (or better yet, a contact form) and warmly invites program owners to take part in this mutual exchange.
Can you see the power of this? A program owner comes to your site (maybe because one of your joint venture partners sent them a promotion about your product) and they see your list of Preferred Partners enjoying promotion directly from your homepage. Maybe some of the websites on this list are their competitors. This is superb bait for persuading marketers to contact YOU to become a joint venture partner and this has a snowball effect. The more new Partners you obtain, the more people out there promoting your product; the more visitors and customers you receive, the more marketers will hear about your joint venture operation and will contact you to get involved.
On one website where I used this system, I obtained over SIXTY Preferred Partners, and about two-thirds of those were program owners who contacted ME to ask if they could take part! You’re now free to pass judgement on this strategy. How does the idea of having 60+ joint venture partners promoting your product on a long-term basis sound?
And the icing on the cake is that though you may be sending them traffic and getting less for your product (through the discount) those preferred partners will be sending you far more traffic and new customers than you will be sending them. And there is also no reason not to make those links on your preferred partner page your affiliate links for those partner sites, further increasing your bottom line.
Potential preferred partners will get right away that you will be sending them buyers who want to buy your product through their affiliate link that gives you a whole lot of leverage in what you ask for in return.
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