What is a strategic alliance? It is an alliance between two or more entrepreneurs or business owners who work together in a strategic fashion for mutual benefit. It is a double “win” arrangement that is based on a solid joint relationship.

If you are considering a joint venture or strategic alliance, begin your process with a few questions: Who is your ideal customer? What is your target market and demographic?  Who is your competition? Who else provides similar services or products in your industry? These questions can help you discover potential strategies that can be achieved through an alliance with another business owner.

What are some sample strategies that could work with your joint venture alliance?

• Use seminars, workshops, and other public forums to promote you and your partner to the marketplace.

• Offer creative combinations of your products or services as a package deal.

• Create a newsletter, or contribute to each other’s newsletters by writing articles.

• Endorse your strategic alliance partner’s business to your clients and customers through your mailing list.  Have your partner do the same.

• Include a special offer coupon to your joint venture partner’s email and snail mail packets.

• Incorporate each other’s products or services with recommendations.  For instance, a real estate agent might recommend a mortgage broker to her clients looking to buy a home.

• Provide links on your website to you joint partner’s website.  Have them do the same.

• Write and publish a helpful “how to” ebook or publication and send it free to joint clients and customers.

• Create an affiliate program where you and your partner receive a fee for each new customer that was referred to the other.

• Look on a national level for strategic alliances, as well as locally.  You could reach a great many more customers with a national strategic alliance.

Your strategic alliance does not have to be limited to just you and another partner. Consider a group of alliances where all can benefit. An example could be a real estate agent, a mortgage broker, and a title insurance officer who combine efforts to meet the needs of individuals and families buying homes.

Be sure to always know your potential partner and their products or services. It doesn’t make sense to automatically recommend another business’s product to a customer if you have not reviewed or used the product yourself. If the product turns out to be faulty or low quality, your reputation could suffer. Make a full effort to get to know your strategic partner and the products and services they offer.

When it comes to forming a strategic alliance, keep in mind that you are forming a partnership. Your negotiations in forming the details of the partnership should include win/win strategies that benefit both parties. But also remember that your joint partnership should benefit customers from both parties as well.

There is no better time than the present to take a look at your current business needs and discover ways you can profit and benefit through one or more strategic alliances. Don’t wait for another business owner to approach you. Get out and start forming alliances today.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to your website, and this is a key technique for a strategic marketing platform.

Search engine optimization drives traffic to a website by matching targeted keywords with searches performed by a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the list of search results, or the higher it ranks, the more people will visit that site. If someone performs a search for “cosmetics” and your website comes up in the first position on the first page, more people will go to your site than the site in the first position on the second page, or even to the site that is the fifth position on the first page. Search engine optimization can also target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, industry-specific, and vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s placement and relevance, search engine optimization considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. Search engine optimization may involve a site’s coding, presentation and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site.

Another class of techniques know as black hat search engine optimization or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm the search engine user’s experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.

SEO History

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to “crawl” that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine’s own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

SEO for Your Strategic Marketing Strategy

Having your website high in the rankings of a search engine is a strategic marketing way to increase your exposure. The higher you rank on a search engine, the more likely people are to visit your site.

The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages are found automatically and do not need to be submitted separately. Some search engines, notably Yahoo, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. These programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.

These are a few ideas on how to start thinking about applying search engine optimization to your business-marketing plan. The first step to gaining new customers is by driving them to your site. Search engine optimization can be an important part of your successful strategic marketing plan by increasing the easy search-ability of your company’s website and making your business more noticeable.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

Let’s say you have a successful Internet business with a successful e-marketing platform, and you feel you have good relationships with existing customers and fair success at gaining new business but then you hear about Collaboration Marketing and you wonder why all the hype? Why should you consider changing anything or expanding in a new direction?

Collaboration Marketing may not be a must for your business, but it’s certainly something worth exploring. You may not need to collaborate with other companies to grow your business, and you may be satisfied with the size and scope of your business. But even if you are not looking to grow, change, or expand, a collaboration strategy may help you maintain the smooth running of your current operations, which could mean less day to day work for you.

There are two distinct types of Collaboration Marketing that are important to understand. One deals with the actual advertising and marketing of your products, the other relates to the market in which you sell and distribute your products. Before making a decision about whether a collaboration strategy is right for your business, it is important to understand and explore both aspects of this type of marketing.

Advertising Collaborations focus on shared industry resources and word of mouth partnerships. If you have a small business specializing in making wedding cakes, you will benefit by making contact with other wedding industry professionals such as photographers, caterers and consultants. If a photographer has a client who has not yet decided on a bakery for their special cake, the advertising collaboration creates a point of contact and referral to recommend your wedding cake business to the client.

By the same token, if you have clients who have not yet selected a photographer for their wedding, you can recommend your collaboration partner, who is a wedding photographer. The success of your Advertising Collaboration will depend on your ability to form and develop successful business relationships.

Market Share Collaboration deals directly with the market in which your products are bought and sold and may be a large undertaking, but it’s an important process to understand in any marketplace. This type of collaboration has to do with banding together with other small businesses in your area, and forming a small cooperative to maximize cost savings for products you all use or need to do business.

For example, the Central Minnesota Buckwheat Growers formed a 16 member cooperative in order to market their buckwheat directly to larger buyers, and they received a substantially higher price for their product than they could have received individually.

You are probably not growing or selling buckwheat over the Internet, but this model holds true and translates across the board for any business. If you are a small business, you may benefit from partnerships with other small businesses in your same industry just like the Buckwheat Growers did when they formed a collective.

Collaboration Marketing is a model I believe you will find merits exploration. If done properly, it will provide a helpful way of expanding and solidifying your business for years to come.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

To begin an effective strategic marketing strategy, it’s imperative to know your customer, as well as your competition. Knowing what your target audience is, and who your target customer is, will be the first step towards developing a successful marketing strategy. Once you have identified your audience, you can begin to tailor your strategy to include your collaborative marketing efforts.

Who is your customer?

Start by making a series of imaginary profiles of your potential clients and customers, asking specific questions such as:

• What is the age range of my potential clients?
• What is their income range?
• What are their lifestyles and hobbies?

Depending on the product you are marketing, your phantom client profile will vary. The motivation here is to think of the customer as an individual, rather than as an amorphous group of unknown clients. Once you identify a potential client profile, it will be a more natural process to tailor a marketing scheme.

An effective marketing plan begins with thinking specifically in terms of whom your market is, and who you are trying to entice to use your products and services. An advertisement, email or website display will vary greatly depending on whether you are targeting college age, financially conservative students, middle income families, or single, young professionals. However, a cohesive, well thought out series of advertisements is more likely to appeal to a diverse variety of clients rather than an assortment of ads tailored to reach a specific audiences. Your product or service may very well be suitable for a variety of clients, but is less likely to sell to a varied consumer base with too many individual marketing strategies.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Knowledge of your competitors’ marketing scheme and how they market their products is almost as important as being able to identify your prospective clients. There’s a lot to be learned from studying a competitor, especially if they are a well-established business with a solid marketing strategy.

Build upon what has proven successful

If you know of a business in your industry that has catchy marketing ads, it’s a good idea to understand what they’ve done to be successful. This is important for two reasons: you don’t want to exactly replicate another marketing strategy, and you want your advertisements to stand apart from what is already being produced. This will help you to develop and tailor your marketing scheme to your target audience, in a way that is different from your competition and get you noticed!

Awareness of how similar businesses in your industry approach marketing will help you develop the edge you need to target your own clients. Intimate knowledge of which these prospective clients are will set you in the right direction for developing a successful marketing strategy that is unique and specific to your business. Knowing your target market, and how others target the market in your industry, will put your business on a successful path for growth and recognition. Based upon this knowledge, you can even choose a synergistic competitor and create a collaboration marketing campaign.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

Millions of people read the newspaper every day. Many others read magazine articles. Most of these two groups combined believe and trust the better part of what they read.

What is published on those pages becomes regarded as truth, or at least it holds an inkling of truth. The stories are often the topics of morning radio talk shows, people chatting at work or among friends. In short, the stories that make it to print have an impact on consumers.

Therein exists a very effective form of collaboration marketing. With the media, you are building the trust of consumers, who will in turn be more likely to buy your product or service. The trick is to get the newsmakers to write about you and your business, which starts with news releases. In accomplishing this goal, you will form a strategic alliance with the media. The key to success with this strategy is to have well written releases. The media receives countless press releases each day and if it’s not in the proper form, or you’ve a made a mistake, your release goes in the trash.

Hiring a communications firm to write them for you is a great idea. They will have a large media list with specific contact information for publications in your area and around the country. Getting your release to the right person is important. These contacts can be found on your own in most cases, although it make take a lot of work. Chances are you will have to make your way through many gatekeepers before you find the right person. There are online services where if you subscribe, you will have access to their media lists. However, some of these sites can be hundreds of dollars to obtain.

If you are going to give it a go yourself, here are a few key things to remember in writing a news release. Never call members of the press members of the press. It is thought of as a negative term these days. So, at the top of your page it should read ‘News Release’, not Press Release. If the content of your release is time sensitive, then the words - for immediate release’ should be in the second line. This will tell the media that the info in the release has an upcoming expiration date. If it can be used for a while, then it should read ‘for release at will.’ This will give your release a longer shelf life and it has a better chance of seeing its way to print. Be sure to include your contact information. Keep paragraphs very short, one or two sentences. Keep the entire news release to one page when possible.

Consistency is going to play an important role in this strategy. Forming a strategic alliance with the media will be key to your collaboration-marketing plan. Some will choose to send media releases once a month for an elongated period of time. Some plans span 3 months, while others choose a more secure year or more. Of course, not all releases will turn into articles because big news happens and you’ll get sent to the bottom of the pile. But chances are if you consistently send your releases, you’ll see your name in print.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

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A strategic alliance can significantly open your market opportunities, connecting you with a desired audience. Forming an alliance should begin with taking an honest look at the many aspects that make up your business and making sure the other partner is a good fit. Finding the right strategic alliance is crucial.

The following are critical elements to take into consideration:

Vision: Assess what the company wants to become. Then, based on current practices, compare the vision with the company’s potential to achieve its vision. With that information, you will have a clear idea about what the company needs to achieve that vision.

Core Values: Determine the organization’s values. Ask what it cares about and whom will it benefit. These answers will play an important role in choosing your alliance, as you’ll want to find a company with beliefs comparable to your own.

Evaluation: Evaluate your strengths and be objective about your weaknesses. Determine where you succeed and where you are challenged. Your time is best spent doing what you do best. If you spend more time doing things you struggle with, you are losing money. Find a company who succeeds where you struggle. Chances are an alliance with them will come with added value to your own clients and will give you more time to pursue your strengths.

History: Evaluate when the company started, its major successes and failures. Make sure your understanding of their history is detailed and complete.

Real Issues: Now it’s time to start thinking about the real issues the company has. Make bullet points of everything that is happening internally and externally. Include economic conditions, legislation, and public perception.

Goals: The Company’s goals should be not be to make money, but to provide a tangible benefit to someone or something. Making money is a symptom of filling a need. Strategic alliances could enhance the benefit to your clients, which will equally greater profits.

Key Publics: This may be the most important aspect to consider when shopping for an alliance partner. Pick at least ten of your key publics and prioritize them. Define their importance: who they are and why they are important. When two companies have mutual publics, they have a common goal.

Message Statement: Consider the perception your public will have about your company. Now ask yourselves what are the top three things you want to be known for. Forming an alliance can create or re-enforce the essential message you want your clients to hear. Sending the desired message is invaluable and many companies have used alliances as a creative marketing tool ultimately getting the attention they desire.

When considering a strategic alliance, there are many issues to consider. Once you’ve collected all the data, analyzed the company’s current situation in comparison to where they are going and ultimately where they want to be, you may find an alliance a great vehicle to get you there.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

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Strategic alliances have become a major factor in today’s business models with their ability to enable business owners to offer more services to their most valued clients while delivering some of the most profitable streams of revenue.

Strengths of Strategic Alliances

According to recent research, 80% of surveyed CEOs found strategic alliances beneficial for several purposes:

• Quickly enter the marketplace
• Promptly obtain technology advancements without research costs
• Minimize budgetary costs typically associated with growth

To ascertain what type of strategic alliance is right for you, it is important to assess your business thoroughly. Are you looking to penetrate a greater volume of the market share? Are you looking to reach a potential partner’s customer base? Would you like to launch a new product line? Understanding your specific goals, as well as your market position and available resources will help you craft an appropriate strategic alliance.

Keep in mind, the main reason strategic alliances fail is because at least one of the partners is not happy with the results. Why does this occur? In most cases, it is because a solid plan was not created at the outset of the project.

Know Your Business and Your Partner’s

All strategic planning deals with three key questions:

• What do we do? It may sound simple, but to effectively join efforts with a strategic partner, you must have a good concept of what your business offers. Without a clear defined understanding of every aspect of your goods and/or services, it is nearly impossible to target a valuable strategic partner.

• Who do we serve? Every business has a target customer or client base. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your business will solely market to that target profile, but it gives you a deep understanding for who is using your products. This allows you to key in on the specifics when choosing an alliance partner.

• Who is our competition? In order to stay at least one step ahead, it is important to keep informed as to whom your competitors are and what they are doing. By ignoring this issue, it only gives your competition an edge on rising above your business.

Develop Your Plan

Alliances succeed with good planning. Whether you are looking to join email marketing campaigns, or perhaps a new product launch, a strategic alliance must have a clearly developed plan.

Your plan should define the following elements:

• Goals of the strategic alliance
• Specific marketing plans
• Analysis of cost sharing
• Defining the success of the relationship
• Encouragement of formal communication
• Marketing plan management details

Once a plan is in place, you can begin your proactive search for strategic alliance partners.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

Many budding Internet business people and entrepreneurs think that the best way to establish a successful business is to sell to a wide market. They may be afraid to pursue a smaller niche at the risk of limiting themselves and turning away potential customers. However, this philosophy actually runs counter to what a niche-based business is all about. With a market of specialized products or services, there is less risk. So begin by gaining expertise in one product area, rather than trying to spread yourself too thin with little, to no experience.

Occupying a niche means that you won’t be competing with many similar businesses solely on price. As a new start-up business trying to compete with established companies, you may not have the capital to do so, via price competition or a slick marketing campaign. A niche market product is a great way for newcomers to get a start, but there are a couple of integral strategies that will accompany it.

Benefits of a Niche Market Business

A business that sells to a niche market offers products or services that are specialized and often customized to a client’s particular requirements. Because what you are selling will have a unique set of qualities, you are often able to charge more as there is less competition in your field. You distinguish yourself by offering a product or service that almost nobody else has.

Offering a niche product can present some difficulties when it’s time to market your company. Being so specialized, how do you get word out about what it is you do? Establishing a collaborative relationship with your contemporaries in similar but not identical industries is an important aspect of a strategic marketing plan.

Strategic Alliances and Niche Markets

In small business, it is important to get to know your contemporaries, as well as your competitors. You may be trying to gain the same business that your competitors are, but occasionally they may be out of a product and send a customer your way, and vice versa. This is less likely if you have a corner on a small niche market, but it’s still a possibility and good relationship practice for your business.

Strategic alliances are an important aspect of niche marketing because these relationships will help raise awareness for your products and services. For example, if I own a company that rents designer wedding dresses, it makes sense for me to form a business alliance with a photographer and/or caterer since they are both in the wedding industry.

Strategic marketing alliances are particularly important as they relate to niche businesses because they operate largely by word of mouth. If that word of mouth suggestion comes from another professional in a related industry or field, it will lend credibility to your business. Small businesses partnering together will help ensure a future where niche markets and small companies continue to be a success.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report