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Even the biggest companies use the JV tactic to expand their market reach. Ever seen a McDonald's in a Wal-Mart? McDonald's benefits from the foot traffic of the Wal-Mart customers, and Wal-Mart benefits from the foot traffic of the McDonald's customers. The companies combine their brands to maximize their customer base. It's a win-win situation, and those are the kind of deals you need to broker online to win in your own business.
A Joint Venture is a win-win agreement between two or more companies with competitive products or services to create something bigger than any one company would be able to create on their own. For more details please visit www.joint-venture-softwares.com The companies are stand-alone entities that share knowledge, experience, markets, expenses and revenue of specific projects.
Several small businesses can band together to tackle giants in their industry. Big businesses can join JV with smaller business to quickly acquire otherwise hard to obtain resources like technology or intellectual property. Or small businesses can ally themselves with big name brands to accelerate their growth.
An example of the latter form of the JV partnership is a company called Mello Smello. Before they formed an alliance with Disney, their company was unknown. Through the partnership, they developed scratch and sniff stickers of Disney characters and turned their unheard of entity into a multi-million dollar business.
JV's are equally as powerful in the online world.
Like you, other people in your niche are developing lists and gaining loyal customers. By joint venturing with such people, you utilize the relationships these people have with your potential customers by leveraging their assets.
In its most basic form, you leverage each other's assets by promoting your partner to your list, and he promotes you to his list. And you both share in the revenue generated from the promotions.
One way to start generating revenue is to develop a list-building Joint Venture with other ezine publishers in your niche. This is called co-registration and utilizes the space on your subscription Thank You pages. You can also visit at www.jointwebventures.com
After a person subscribes to your newsletter, redirect him to your Thank You page where you have ads displayed for your JV partners' newsletters. And after a person subscribes to your JV partners' newsletter, he is redirected to a Thank You page where your newsletter is displayed. This is a powerful way to double the size of your opt-in email list overnight.
Another type of Joint Venture is in the form of a personal endorsement. An endorsed JV involves the person you are partnering with directly recommending you to their list. Endorsements practically guarantee increased response and conversion rates because someone they already know, like and trust is communicating your sales message to targeted customers. Other examples of Joint Ventures you can use to drive traffic to your site are:
1. Exchange banners or text links with related web sites.
2. Swap testimonials for each other's products.
3. Offer your newsletter or a report as a bonus for your partner's products.
4. Develop a web site with your JV partner that you both promote. The doubled marketing efforts mean double the traffic.
5. Combine your products with your partner's products to create one big package. Then split the profits on the sales of that package.
Once you start discussing ways to generate traffic with your JV partner, you'll realize there are no limits. Just be sure you join into joint ventures with reputable people who sell quality products. If you start offering your list junk, soon they will lose their trust in you. Then you'll see a drop in the sales of your own products.
Server Logs
Typically, there are two server tools available to you. Server logs are on your server and analyze site activity. The log keeps track of the files created on the server, the number of times there is a request for the file, where the hit came from and the exact phrase typed in by the person accessing the page of the site. Every system is different, but these basic elements should be included.
The second tool, a traffic analysis program, is pretty standard for most hosting companies, but you may have to ask them to turn it on. The programs analyze the raw data from your server and convert it into fascinating charts, diagrams and statistics. Most of the information is overkill. You have to be careful not to get overwhelmed by numerous ways to look at the data. Try to focus on the following information:
1. What sites are sending you visitors?
2. What search engines are sending you traffic?
3. What keyword phrases are people using to find your site?
4. How often are major search engine indexing robots visiting your site?
As you access the data, you are going to find some very surprising things. Actually, you are probably going to be stunned.
Initially, you are going to be amazed when you see which keyword phrases that are sending traffic to your site. Many of the keywords will not match your meta tags. Instead, they will be a combination of various keywords on a particular page. This is reflection of the fact that search engines mix and match your keywords as they see fit. So, should you change your meta tags to reflect the phrases shown in the data? No. The data you are seeing typically reflects keywords with little competition. Since you are already getting traffic from them, keep focusing on your original goals.
In looking at your data, the second key piece of data is identifying where the traffic is coming from. This data often falls under the “referrer” heading. By reviewing the data, you can see what search engines are producing data for you. If you are running advertising on a site, you should also be able to track the campaign.
The final area to analyze is the robot visit information. Depending on the program, the robot information may appear under “robots” or “user agents” headings. Robots are programs used by search engines to index web sites on the net. In reviewing your data, you should be able to determine how often the robots are coming to your site. If at all possible, make sure you add new content to your site before the next visit. The robots for the top search engines are Yahoo – Slurp, Google – Googlebot, and MSN – MSNbot.
In Closing
Analyzing the traffic to your site is a key element to marketing your site. The more you know about your customers, the more you can cater to their needs.