Standing Above the Crowd to Find JV Partners - Day 17 COWPetition

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A couple days ago we posted about the idea of “brown nosing” to get friends (JV Partners) and today we want to expand on that by providing you a real life scenario of what we truly meant by that and how we were able to gain some wicked exposure for our COWPetition blog GamerzReviewz.

First of all, we want to clarify something, we used the term “brown nosing” because of the shock value and we see it worked… which is cool but you will see today that the messages we sent people is not really that type of message BUT it depends on who is interpreting it. The BIGGEST thing we want to emphasize here however is the point that you do NOT want to be fake… it comes down to being respectful. What we mean is being fake is transparent and will eventually come back to bite you, however being respectful and sticking to facts is solid and will not turn around to bite you.

An example of this is an argument we got into with a friend at a wedding. We married sisters and my friend accused us of being fake because our wives ornery grandfather likes us much more then him. The basis of his argument was that we always acted pleasant and happy to see him even though he was often not a pleasant person to be around and is very set in his ways. My friend looked at this as being fake because he feels he should not have to act different for anyone and if he does not like someone then it is how he is going to act.

The way we looked at it however was…

• 1. We love our wife and this is her grandfather and she loves him very much
• 2. He is 89 years old and is very set in his ways
• 3. Who benefits from being rude and confrontational with him?

You see we look at it as to how can we make this a WIN/WIN and by digging our heels in the ground and being confrontational with him is only a win for one person (our selfish pride) but is a lose for everyone else. So instead, by us having to give a little more by being patient and overlooking certain things we make our wife happy which makes us much more happy

Now we need to stress one point, this respect only goes so far. Being respectful does not entail letting people walk all over you and take advantage of you. We get into debates with him and he knows where we stand on things however we are respectful to him.

Now lets carry this over into business examples. When you are looking at making WIN/WIN partnerships with people, ask yourself how can you get the most benefit out of this partnership. You need to look past appeasing your inner selfish pride and look at what is good for your business not just right now but for the long term as well. So often we get caught up in the here and now and fail to see how this will affect us in the future.

Our belief (and we have proven this in our own business) is that by going the extra mile for someone now helps to ensure a solid relationship in the future. For example with a new site that has little traffic and search engine influence, to approach someone and ask for a link trade or to be mentioned on their blog is not really a fair trade. This person has worked hard to be able to get to where they are and in our opinion to simply expect them to link to you or mention you because you link back is actually a little disrespectful in our opinion… especially if the person has never heard of you before.

Now one can argue that it is more effective to try and build a relationship first with the person and we 100% agree with this to a point. Examples are being solid contributors to their blog, providing constructive feedback about their products and things like that. The challenge we had here however was that we only had 30 days with this COWpetition to get as much exposure as we could with our blog and building relationships like that take time.

So what we did was first of all we made a list of all potential JV Partners that we could think of and we divided that list up into what type of partner they might be, which were….

• 1. Mailing List Partners: These are sites that have targeted mailing lists and might mail for us about our site
• 2. Content Partners: These are sites that might allow us to add content about our site
• 3. Banner Partners: These are sites that would put our banner on their site

Our main focus was to be on number one (mailing list) as that is the quickest way to get exposure.

Once we had our list we then had to research the most effective way to contact them. Some where friends but most were complete strangers. Contacting people we already had relationships with was easy, these were people that we have made contact with over the years in the IM world that we knew had a presence in this market. You see we have sites and mailing lists in dozens of niches and so do our friends and it is wise to know this. By having a close network of friends and knowing what markets they are in is very helpful when you have an interest in a similar market. Since we already had a relationship with these people, it was much easier to just send an email, get on skype or call them up and ask for the favor.

Now it is important to understand that we also made it clear that it was not just a one sided approach and we made it very clear as to how we would make it worth their while… the cool thing is since we already had proven our value as a friend to them, most simply did it as a friend.

Now, contacting the strangers on the other hand is the hard part. As stated above, we have had no time to build a trustworthy relationships with these people and so we needed to be able to ensure that our request stood above the crowd as something that was truly worth their consideration and this is were some might look at it is “brown nosing”.

The first step was to ensure we had the best possible contact method for them. Most was email but some had phone numbers available and we also looked for the name. Using the persons name in the communication is very important. Once we had the contact info we needed to create a personalized communication for each one. A huge mistake a lot of people make is by using just one template and simply replacing the name and url of the site… this is what is called being fake. Instead you need to look at their situation and see how it is you can add value to what they already have. If someone has a forum that already has loads of backlinks and traffic, by offering a link back to them is pretty much useless but perhaps offering to make a major mention of them as a sponsor with a link in a paid press release that you are sending out might be more enticing. For others we noticed that they had a good size list but were not showing up for certain main terms in the search engines and so we figured we could offer some targeted link building on certain terms. We looked at each site and tried to figure out the best value we could offer.

Next we needed to make sure we communicated in a professional way. By sending emails from a gmail or hotmail account is usually not a great idea for first impressions, so we made sure to create personalized email accounts using the domain of the blog. Next we made a basic template that only covered certain things, such as describing who we were. It is important that you try as best as possible to sound professional, so if you have a company name, then use that in the email.

Next we created very personalized messages for each site, that focused on what we saw of value in them and how we were willing to go above and beyond to work with them to make this a true win / win.

Here is an example outline that is very similar to what we actually used. We modified it slightly and PLEASE do NOT just copy and replace this message below, make sure you make your own custom messages and use your own voice with own introduction, make your message stand out from the crowd.

Start of Email –>

Dear (Insert Name Here),

My name is (Your Name Here) and I am the Marketing Manager of (Company Name Here), and we are looking for some powerful partners to align with in a new endeavor we are partaking and you immediately came to mind. (Their Name here), I have known of your site (url here) for a while and I absolutely love how (enter something you really like about their site or service and do NOT be fake, this is were you build them up).

(This section is now where you explain what you are doing, we mentioned that we are building a Video Game Review blog that was part of a contest on a popular blog, that we were giving away a free gaming console and what we had planned for marketing with the site, we also gave them the URL and explained all the plans for the blog.)

We have a host of diverse and experienced skill sets that are going to make this endeavor a success, including:
(In point form mention things you could offer. Even if you are the only one doing this or if you have a few out-sourcers then mention what you have to offer in services, you do not need to mention you are doing everything yourself but do not lie and say you have an office full of staff if you do not and make sure to make it sound as professional as possible. For us since we have in house staff we used that to our advantage and mention all that we had to offer )

(This section is to now explain how we envisioned them working with us. We explained what we thought was great about what they could bring to the table, we let them know we respected what they have done so far and how we would be willing to go above and beyond to work with them and we explained in detail exactly what we would be willing to do in return. You need to made it clear what you will do for them, set it up to make it a no brainer for them. It is important that you do NOT expect them to see the benefit of a partnership right away, even though you do, you need convince them of it by going above and beyond.)

(This section is to now close the conversation and add urgency to it. It was important for us to not put excessive pressure on them but they needed to know that there was a time frame involved here. For us this was very short and so we needed to be a little more aggressive but if you do not have an immediate short term then save this for a follow up message.)

Thanks (Enter Their Name Here), for taking the time to consider our proposal. My team and I are standing by to make this a very worthwhile partnership. I am also open to any ideas you might have in regards to this proposal.

I look forward to working with you,

Kindest Regards,

Name Here
Your Company Name and Position
Phone Number
Email Address

<– End of example email

IMPORTANT –> Do not contact any potential partners until you have something worthwhile to show them. Make sure your blog or service is ready to go, nothing says “Delete Me” more then a partner request from someone who only has a vague idea about something. If it is just a plan then make sure you have a written out plan with details you could send them… so often we have been asked to talk to someone who sounds like it might be a good idea only to find out they have no idea, just a hunch. Make sure you have something concrete for the potential partner to grab onto.

Well this is the end of another super long post

Hope you enjoyed it and tomorrows post is going to be much shorter and we are going to talk about following up with potential partners after the initial message is sent.

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