Dont look for affiliates… Look for preferred partners February 23, 2010
Posted by Robert Puddy in : Business , trackbackLaunch 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.
Become a full time LFMpire Builder…http://lfmpirebuilders.com
Comments»
http://swom.com/?r=38993 try swom along with twitter it could be the next big thing great sit by the way any ideas on best traffic exchanges
Hi, Robert,
Yes you have hit the nail on the head, every word on your site, is what we need to do. Not look for affilates but for partners.
I will send you a New program, that is on Fire in Australia, and i just introduced in USA and canada, and put it on Goggle Thursday and it went to no. one slot.
So maybe you could be first to introduce in england.
The URL is below, but I’ll send you a email, with our add in it, and you can change to your information,
David L. Gibson
Gibsonteam@peoplestring.com
Great advice Rob,
Many people don’t take online relationships as seriously as they should and when you consider how profitable it can be to find people you can make money with time and time again - it’s a surprise and people should definitely follow the advice you’ve provided.
Thanks for sharing.
Andy
Hi Robert,
Excellent post about sourcing partners..
A membership site like LFM is a good vehicle for
products and then partners.
Agreed.
Do you have any advise on setting up a membership page Robert? I thought of doing a forum but its a lot of work of nurturing and can take years.- any advice?
A clarifying question on this, this is meant for partners that have their own product and not an ‘affiliate’ of someone else’s product? I just want to make sure that I understand the concept completely.
Hi Robert.
Thank you for sharing this I appreciate the down to earth strategy you gave here. I have not been doing this so I will begin that is what I think of it:) I like this form of doing it and with the reciprocal linking it makes sense for both parties. you just made being on your list invaluable to me
thanks again Robert!
-WD
Hi Robert,
I would like to know more about your membership site and what set up you use………. There are several questions I would like answered before I attempt to go ahead and order! I feel there is not enough information on you page about this………… So…….. We will see if you answer this comment……..
[…] RobertPuddy.com » Dont look for affiliates… Look for preferred … […]
Great Post! A lot of good info here. Thanks for the good info, will take advantage of this!
Hey Robert,
Great advice on attracting JV partners to your site. I have to admit it’s something I’ve been struggling with after having launched my first LFM site.
I’m going to follow this to the letter. I’ll let you know the results.
Colin
Cheers Robert, some helpful advice there… Liked the name dropping example.
Great information here. I have been trying to find jv partners so that I can advertize my ebooks on their sites and link to mine http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=27640 I am an author of scifi flash fiction and I want to use places like amazon to advertize my books.
Well Robert, You keep saying if I have a question I should ask you. So
here it is: I have a new wordpress blog hosted at Go Daddy and being
a visual person I got them to set it up as far as they would without char-
ging me a mint. I am a visual person and would like to have my blog
set up with the blue wave templet-theme. Right now it is sitting there
doing nothing because to me it is like having a thousand piece puzzle
and no picture to look at to see how to put it together. Word stuff just
overwhelmes and frustrates me, so would you please look at it and may
be guide me? It is wrightwaytofreedom.com Thanks, John Wright
Thanks Robert, for the very uselful information and sending me the link driectly. Being fairly new, I have gotten alot of helpful adivce from the emails you send me.
So cool. Great advice, especially about how to ‘drop names’ ;o)
Thanks so much for that, I’ll be definitely using that in my emails for sure.
Can’t wait for your new ‘My Best Bonus Ever’ launch to begin, this is going to be so awesome!
FINALLY, I’ll be able to connect with the ‘BIG GUNS’ with bonuses. So cool.
Wish I’d thought of it, but hey, you did! So I’ll use your system then. ;o)
Cheers…Amanda van der Gulik…Excited Life Enthusiast! ;o)