Joint ventures used to be a term that caused a lot of confusion over who, what and why. The “who” related to the parties working together; the “what” referred to the goals of the joint venture; and the “why” was really about the decision to partner rather than to go it alone. These days, creating joint ventures make a lot of sense both offline and increasingly online.
In my most recent blog about the California governor candidates, I pointed out that there is an inverse relationship between marketing spend and Internet “success.” Witness Meg Whitman’s $900,000 investment in Internet marketing and the poor results she’s garnered with Facebook “Fans” and Twitter “Followers” compared to her rivals, Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown.
Joint ventures in this case made a lot of sense. From an offline perspective, it certainly did not hurt Gavin Newsom to get an endorsement from the hugely popular Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton likely pushed Mr. Newsom’s acceptance level in this political battle by several percentage points.
In fact, Mr. Newsom has some 58,000 fans to Ms. Whitman’s 4,500. What is not so obvious, though, are the online joint ventures he created to drive his popularity into the stratosphere … including his one million plus Twitter followers. While it’s possible to grow ones followers and fans organically, it generally takes a lot of time to create that many followers.
Let’s flip the analysis. Over the last several months, I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of celebrity personalities. A common theme always seems to pop up, “doing great, but would like to do better.” This, by the way, is what makes America great … striving for improvement … not just sitting around being happy with the status quo.
When evaluating joint ventures it’s always a great idea to create win / win / win scenarios. Make sure you understand what each party gets out of a relationship. In addition, since these days everyone has limited financial resources and are time constrained, creating a joint venture makes a lot of sense for a very simple reason – shared risk, shared reward.
Let’s take a real example. In creating a new online marketing campaign, we have several requirements for success: testimonials, saleable products, exclusive content, a well known brand, and much more. With limited time and financial resources, the decision to build vs. buy vs. joint venture becomes glaringly obvious – joint venture for those areas where you lack resources or talent and build or buy those pieces which you can control.
Joint ventures don’t have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler they are the more likely they are to succeed. Another simple example of this is obtaining content. Imagine that you are selling timeshares. You can try to create content on your own, but it would be much easier to joint venture with a real estate company. In return for their support, you promote their timeshare inventory.
The possibilities for joint ventures are limited only by your imagination. These days the blueprint for success is to think WAY outside the box. Don’t let naysayers say that it’s never been done before. President Obama didn’t!
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