Joint Venture Marketing can take many forms -- and if done properly, can significantly enhance your business. Don't let the name fool you, you have already been a consumer of a number of joint venture marketing promotions. Have you ever purchased a pizza during the Final Four, and received a free basketball? That is a result of a joint venture. There are countless other examples, but you get the general idea.

Another form of joint venture marketing that has gained popularity on the internet is the dawn of virtual marketplaces. Many niche sites offer this type of marketplace, and they allow the members to pool resources to generate traffic, and of course, sales. One of the most powerful benefits to this type of venue is the appeal of their ability to pool advertising dollars to obtain a promotional presence that members might not have been able to acquire individually. In addition, these venues are often able to procure significant discounts and special offers for members from common suppliers, which creates a stronger buying presence for the group as a whole. Members gain visibility in the marketplace and in the search engines, and they enjoy the benefit of increased traffic to their individual businesses.

An extreme and exceptional example of this is a little company called Microsoft. The head of this small company had some software called MS-DOS and no customers. He reached a deal with a company called IBM who made computers and was already a known and respected company in the computer industry. They also had a large number of customers. The deal was for every computer sold, it would have MS-DOS already installed with the agreement that this little company called Microsoft would give lifetime upgrades for its software. Well, the rest is history and it made the head of that small time company a billionaire by the time he was 31 years old.

Another benefit would be the mutual use of experts in other areas of expertise and or technology. By using the above example for this point, the computer company has a great writer and the software company's programmers are not good at explaining how this software works or what it can do. The computer company's writer can then be used for a tutorial on how to use the software along with the tutorial on how to operate the computer. This then will make using the computer and software much easier for the customer.

From a consumer perspective, it is a winning situation as well. Collaborative marketplaces create a "one-stop-shopping" experience, providing consumers with the ability to browse several merchants during one browsing session. The ability to quickly obtain comparative pricing among similar merchants create a strong value among customers, and create a natural environment of competition. This forces participating vendors to strive for a higher quality product, at a competitive price.