Joint venture definition is a relationship between two or more businesses/companies who agree to take on economic activity together. The goal of of joint venture relationships can be different but the point is to make profit together.

Benefits of doing joint venture are as follows:

• Joint venture will allow you to grow exponentially by increasing your market reach. This is doable because you are getting help from other companies to get new customers. For example, if your business is currently exposed to 500 people, by doing joint venture your business will be exposed to 5,000 or even more people.
• Joint venture will allow you to have access to other businesses’ assets; intangible or tangible. By bussiness assets I mean employees, office, customer database, market research, buying power, leads, sales force, testimonials, new products, old products, etc. Anything you can think of. By doing joint venture, you are able to use these assets that are not accessible to you otherwise.
• Joint venture tends to have smaller risk because the risks are usually shared between parties.
• Best of all, joint venture creates win win win situation for all parties involved.

There are 4 most commonly used joint venture models:

• You supply your business’ assets to other business. For ex, your restaurant in downtown area sells advertisement space for local businesses.
• Other business supply their assets to you. For ex, your restaurant has vending manchines that are provided by another company.
• You can be the one who arranges joint ventures between two companies. In this case you are called “joint venture broker” or “jv broker.” For ex, you go to a fitness company and gain rights of their free membership coupons. You can sell these coupons to a vitamin store and let them give the coupons away for free to their customers. The fitness company is happy because they have more free members (more free members = more leads to close to paid members) and the vitamin store is happy they have something valuable to their customers. You make money in the middle.
• You gain rights to a company’s assets and become a certified reseller. For ex, you approach a bookwriter and gain rights to sell his/her book in other countries. You split the profit.

Here is a great tip to start your joint venture deal

• create/find a product or service that is complimentary to a very strong product.

Think about anything that a customer would buy after they buy PRODUCT X. You have to make sure both products are complimentary. Your product must make PRODUCT X better.

If you do this you will close many joint venture deals that will grow your business exponentially.

Mark Joyner from Simpleology has provided me with a PDF file that outlines step-by-step instructions on how to do video marketing. I find the information is very useful as more and more people spend more time watching videos online than traditional television.

Yes, you heard it right. More and more people spend more time on watching videos online than traditional television. As a matter of fact, youtube is now the fourth most visited website in the world — more likely than not, your prospects are watching videos on sites like youtube and alike.

Big corporations know this! Big corporations will slash their TV ad budget and put more effort and money on video marketing as we speak. So if you’re a mom and pop store, you’re screwed, right? Well, not really. This is what great about the internet. It levels the playing field even for low budget mom and pop businesses. You should act now. The longer you wait, the harder it is to compete with the giants.

Here is a step-by-step video marketing action plan to download. It will open in a new window or right click and save to your desktop for future reference.

The PDF gives you ideas on how to use videos in your marketing effort. They are:

sales page video
video email
squeeze page video
video content
webinar hosting
video conference recoding
traffic generation video
videocasting
video blog
video support
video training

Please read the PDF for detailed step-by-step video marketing action that you can take. I hope you find it useful

I get this question so many times. So let me tell you what exactly a website can do for you:

1. Generate leads and sales
2. Aid positioning your product/service as a quality business.
3. Demonstrate the expertise of the team.
4. Increase ease of contact for prospects and clients
5. Provide clients with easily accessible and useful information and tools.
6. Aid image development of the company.
7. Position your company as technologically advanced.
8. Build a loyal community that’s passionate about your topic.

If your answer is yes to one of the above then having a website will not hurt.

I develop every website with these goals in mind. When a website is built on great fundamentals the rest is easy and you will not end up spending more in the future.

Here is a free wordpress theme for you to use. Right click and save as to download it to your computer.

Download this free green wordpress template here.   

The screenshoot of this wordpress template is this:

Enjoy.

High quality freebies are very commonly used to build email list of a website. If you own an ecommerce website most likely your competitors are giving free sample of their products to customers and you cannot compete if you are not doing the same thing. Visitors will not buy on their first visit. Your high quality freebies will encourage them to buy.

In the information product world almost all freebies are ebooks. Follow these 3 steps to increase the value of your ebooks:

1. Search your keywords on search engines and look for a better quality ebook and place the download link in your ebook.

2. Research other related free gifts that will benefit your readers. For example, if your readers are moms, you might want to find easy recipes for dinner because moms make dinner for their family and would appreciate your gifts.

3. Download the freebies and bundle together with your ebook.

These steps will increase your freebie value and your readers will more likely to pass on to their friends or family, thus your freebie will become a great viral marketing tool.

As a website owner you should do these 5 things to bring traffic to your website. Please read this post and use the tactics that are mentioned here. They will help your website a whole lot:

1. Exchange links with other webmasters. Not only will it bring more traffic to your website, it will also make Google and other search engines see your website as an authoritative website. Search engines will place your website higher on their search page results if you have links from other “strong” websites pointing to your page. I’m not talking about just any websites. Your linking partners’ websites should have the same topic and be in the same industry like yours. The best websites to partner with are the websites that have the similar PAGE TITLE like your site and they should share the same subject, product, and service that your visitors are interested in. Search engines, especially Google, are smart enough to find out about this.

Stay away from link farms or any other shady link building service.

2. Integrate your marketing with other websites. This is similar to link trades, but on a different and higher level. If you have a content website that targets single parent, find other websites that sells products or services that your visitors would be interested in and place their banners on your website. You can place the links anywhere you think is appropriate. Ask the other webmasters to give you higher commission for sales that come from your traffic. In exchange, they can provide your link on their websites as well; in the thank you page, in the member area, in the resource page, etc since your website provides high quality information for their customers. This is a win-win situation for all of you that will boost public awareness of your website– You get the traffic you want and their customers get high quality and valuable information from you.

3. Write articles and submit to article directories. This is a well-known method to increase your website authority. There are many article directories or ezine publishers within your niche that constantly need content for their readers. Why don’t you provide what they need? Write an article that people would read. One of the most common techniques is to write a “Top 10 list of something.” For example, in our single parent situation, you can write about “Top 10 list on how to be a great single parent.” The main point here is to create some kind of a list that people would like to read and find websites or ezine publishers to publish your articles.

Put your information on the “author information box” where you can have a link to your website. In this section write something interesting about you or your website that will make readers want to visit your website for more high-quality content.

4. Publish your own newsletter. Having a newsletter is a great way to boost public awareness of your website existance. Not only will it build your email list but also it will bring visitors to your blogs or websites. One of the most common techniques is to send a portion of your content to your email list. Write the most interesting part of your content and link it back to your actual content page. Here, you can place an adsense or other types of advertisements that you can earn revenue from.

5. Watch your target audience closely by using Google Alerts. Sign up at Google Alerts page and put in your keywords. What Google Alerts will do is they will email you everytime people talk about your topic. This is very good to keep your eyes on your audience, know what their asking, find out what their problems are, and so on. You will have the first chance to communicate with them by answering their questions or solving their problems by replying to the blog posts or forum posts. I am surprised not many people know about Google Alerts, chances are your competitions do not either.

These are the easiest and the right way to build your website authority on search engines perspective. There are more ways to do to promote your website that are more complicated. If you do not have time to do all these, don’t worry at all. Discuss this with your webmasters and hire somebody to do this for you. Just make sure the company really knows that they are doing. You don’t want to hire companies that will get your website banned.

Using video on your website could very well increase your website revenue, therefore, you should consider its placement while desining or redesigning your website.  For us at InixMedia the challange is to  outperform other webmasters and think of ways to be able to reach this goal.

Let’s talk about product reviews or other informational videos that you can use to get bigger affiliate commisions. Many tips and technigues being taught in order to record and publish top notch screen-caputured videos. One of the most common screen capture software is Camtasia, please visit their website for more info. The most obvious reason why using video will increase your conversion is because your audience can actually see the information you are trying to spread. Nothing is more powerful than showing your products or service actually solves your customers’ problems.

Take acne products advertisements for example. They are very successful in convincing by showing before and after condition of their customers. This strategy can be applied to any products and service.

So back to Camtasia; they are very popular because their software is easy to use. You can easily record your screen activity in a single click; put the video on your web page or blog; then publish the content for the world to see.

According to a reasearch that we do on websites and blogs, a simple campasia video can increase sales because audiences feel their senses are engaged. It also will reduce refunds and other customer issues because they can visually learn how to use the products. Another point that we take is videos have a tendency to reduce skepticism among some customers.

If you are selling informational products and not using videos you are losing money, period. Use screen capture to publish a high-quality infoproducts that you can use as an upsell at a higher price. If you are a business owner please discuss the use of videos on your website with your webmaster to gain all the benefits mentioned above.

Viral marketing is an aggressive strategy for marketing on the internet. This is a very important aspect of every website design project that website owners should seriously consider. Viral marketing stimulates individuals to pass on marketing messages to other and eventually it turns into chain dispersal of mail, videos, ebooks, or whatever it is that is being circulated. It is leveraging the effectiveness of exponential growth. Viral marketing is a similar trend at different places referred as ‘word of mouth, creating a buzz, leveraging the media and network marketing’. Usually it contains a controversial message or something that is worthy to be passed around.

Hotmail.com has proved the most classic and effective example of viral marketing. Basically, the triumph of viral marketing is prominently focused on individual’s marketing approach.

Savvy viral marketers understand the power of ‘free.’ Hence, they offer free e-mail services, free ‘cool’ buttons, free information, free software programs and so on. But open incentive proposals may direct your mail into spam box. So, marketers use to cap the incentive to a specific quantity.

On the internet copying anything in digital format has become very simple. So, one should use short and simple marketing message because such messages are easily transmitted without any degradation. For instance, check out classic hotmail message; “get your private free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com.

In viral marketing, try to avoid the referral. In general practice, it has been experienced that verbiage might be effective. So, in referral mail, one should ask receiver’s choice whether he/she would like to receive such mails in future.

Instead of referral, viral marketers should prefer personalized e-mail message. This recently introduced trend, ‘a message from recognizable source’ is proved to be a very effective viral marketing strategy.

Ideally the work of viral marketers does not finish with the send button after composing mail. Result tracking and performance optimization are the next prime duties of viral marketers.

Often friends share emails, videos, web pages, or any kind of information with each other. The funnier or the more controversial the materials the better chance to be very effective viral marketing materials. Similarly, quizzes, personality tests and gaming materials are also good viral marketing methods.

At InixMedia, we install a tell-a-friend script on every website we develop to make sure all of our clients have the capability of launching viral marketing campaign on their websites.

Now, a very important aspect of viral marketing is yet to be precisely discussed. Whenever we speak about viral marketing, basically we speak about several forms of marketing simultaneously. Basically, your materials need tobe worthy enough to be passed on. The quality of your marketing materials will make or break your viral marketing campaign.

Also, you have to think about “What’s In It For Me?” question that visitors/viewers will ask. You have to give a reason for them to pass on your content.

There are several types of viral marketing that are currently used by big websites. Let’s explore one by one:

Value Viral Marketing: Finest samples are Amazon and Yahoo. The prime objective of this strategy is to share quality experiences with others.

Guile Viral Marketing: Quixtar and MyPoints are its good examples. Under this strategy, people try to sell in exchange of incentives.

Vital Viral Marketing: People prefer to share experiences pertaining to certain products. Few examples are ebay and AOL.

Spiral Viral Marketing: In this segment, shared experiences may be funny, dirty, or any interesting experiences for instance, ‘JenniCam’.

Vile Viral Marketing: This strategy is for the people who warn others of negative experiences, ex. Real.com.

Thus, the bottom line is, ‘one should be very particular about the form of viral marketing’. A crystal clear image of requirements will provide an edge in viral marketing.

Unlike old days, time has changed and instead of local stores, people prefer online shopping. Undoubtedly, it is an open door opportunity for e-commerce companies. Hence, e-commerce website is the finest one medium to display products and advertise them at low cost. Features like live chat rooms and feedback system make the whole e-commerce website more effective business making innovative approach. It is an unfortunate situation that most of the companies do not have basic ideas about the differences between website designing for e-commerce and other business.

Let’s check out different aspects of such web designing:

Professional e-Commerce solutions providers minutely observe/study your rivals’ websites. They mark their strengths and weaknesses and then draft their entire plan to obtain ultimate result.

E-Commerce websites are online shopping destinations. They need simply immaculate shopping cart software in order to provide hassle free shopping experience.

A well designed eCommerce website enables you to send an instant confirmation mail to the customer and update entire online database simultaneously whenever an order is placed. On the other hand customers also can get satisfaction through the track of their order status.

E-commerce websites have unique domains, external and internal links. Its e-commerce shopping carts links with online e-commerce merchant accounts, email accounts and auto responders.

Mostly e-commerce websites are encrypted. Hence, they provide safe and secure online payment gateway.

E-commerce websites provide complete information about products and services. It can be accessible on demand via. E-mail or newsletter or direct download option.

E-commerce websites must be search engine friendly so that potential clients could easily access your website and services.

Besides all above mentioned features and advantages, e-commerce websites provide user friendly process to update products, pages, text and graphics on regular basis. It can be done manually and with the help of software as well. One must be concern with the fact that software should use only for simple websites.

As a prudent website designing and development service provider, companies must have idea that nowadays web surfers always look for smooth and pleasant shopping experiences. They want crystal clear deal on all sorts of products and hassle free checkout process/system. Professional treatment, perfectly polished looks and functionality of e-commerce website provide and edge to establish credibility.

Thus, the point is very clear that ideal e-commerce website must be designed as a store as it offers products for sale. Its text must be convincing and help visitors in product decision making. Few additional stuffs viz. adequate amount of information about product, common and suggested uses, a great gifts section, and any other information that will help sell the product will also work like catalysts.

‘Marketing’ is a very broad terminology in contemporary commerce domain. As per the quote of American Marketing Association (AMA), “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders”.

Marketing primarily refers to four P’s, named as; Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Three more P’s (people, process and physical evidence) make it ‘extended marketing. Similarly, in other context like web 2.0, we interact with bit different concept of marketing. Today, strategic marketing decisions are determined by consumer-driven approach or the product innovation approach and the latest entry in this segment is web 2.0.

Web 2.0 Marketing

It is completely based on internet and its ingredients can be segregated into four parts; personalization, participation, peer to peer and predictive modeling.

Predictive modeling revolves around our understanding about algorithm and its accuracy. In other words, it is method to choose a model on the basis of detection theory (probability of set amount of input data).

Theory of personalization is quite dynamic. It keeps on changing accordingly the emerging social media or advanced algorithm. For instance, amazon.com is the oldest one and myspace.com is the best one newest sample.

Peer to peer marketing is an evergreen marketing practice. One of the major setbacks with such sort of practice is its ‘interruptive’ nature. It becomes more visible in terms of TV advertising.

The more appropriate term for Web 2.0 sort of marketing domain is ‘internet marketing’. Latest inclusions in this sort of marketing practice are e-marketing, affiliate marketing or online marketing. It is not an absolute new domain rather an integration of traditional marketing. It includes entire general concepts of traditional marketing which can be segregated into above mentioned four P’s as per the AMA.

The primary concern of marketing is specifications of the actual products or services. Moreover the way, it relates to the end user’s needs and requirements. Warranties, guarantees, and support are its additional essential elements.

Price setting pattern is again required here including discount packages and offers.

Products are useless if there is lacking of public awareness. So, promotion is quite essential in all sorts of marketing practice. There are varieties of promotion viz. publicity, advertising, sales promotion, personal selling and branding.

There are specific selling mannerisms. One can not sell everything everywhere. Hence, ‘placement’ becomes a very prevailing terminology in marketing.

In contemporary practice, marketing experts feel that there are additional three P’s (people, process, & physical evidence) and they named them as extended marketing mix.

In this context, if anyone from clients’ side contacts the support system of the company then it has huge importance for the company. Their ultimate contentment measures the success of marketing campaign.

The whole process of support system and in return public behavior also determine the impact if effective marketing.

It is very obvious that one can not experience the quality of services until it is delivered. So, marketing executive must manage a trial portal for potential customers and the proper terminology this sort of marketing practice is ‘physical evidence’.