One of the best ways to quickly sell more products, get bonus points in perceived expertise, and build your list is to form partnerships and take advantage of the success others have already had—you’re going to leverage the success of others. This is a lot easier to do than you think.
There are many, many people out there who have already found the kind of success you’re looking for. As they say, there’s no reason for you to reinvent the wheel. Successful people are out there and they will work with you.
It’s so important to form relationships with the readers and customers in your niche. But you can do that much more quickly if you can get an in with those who are already really well respected in your niche. You need to have the goal of becoming popular by association.
With this method, your goal is to partner up with very successful marketers. If you get them to work with you, you can sell more products and grow your list—big time! Don’t think big name marketers will work with you? Think again…
The first thing you have to do to make this work is figure out exactly who you want to connect with. Maybe you could instantly list off dozens of marketers you’d kill to work with or maybe you’re not sure at all. If you’ve been in your niche for a while then it’s likely you’re pretty familiar with those names. If you’re new, it’s more than likely that you don’t have a clue.
No matter what your experience is right now or who you know, it’s so important to be strategic about this. That’s why you need to make a list of the people you’d most like to partner up with. Who would you like to mail for and have mail for you? Who would you like to collaborate on a project with? Who would it be most beneficial to be “seen” with online? Really study this and think about this. The idea of connecting with people as a relative newbie can be challenging but it can also be really fun.
How do you find these people or make the list of those you’d like to collaborate with? You have to find the influencers in your niche.
Find the marketers who have:
Popular blogs
Popular social media pages and groups
Popular communities
Large lists
Responsive lists (even if smaller)
Relationships with other heavy hitters in the niche
Thought leaders and newsmakers
I want to mention that you’ll find successful marketers of all types in your niche. Some of them will be people you really admire and look up to. Some of them will be people you don’t really want to work with even though they are really successful.
That’s just fine. In fact, it’s very important to have standards and to know who you are and who you want to associate with in this business.
You can gain a lot of respect, really quickly, by associating with certain marketers but you can lose respect just as quickly by associating with certain other marketers. You have to be careful and know what you’re getting yourself into.
After you’ve figured out who these top guys and girls are in your niche, start to brainstorm what your collaboration and connection could mean for your business. Maybe one connection would help you make another connection. Maybe one person has a skill that would help you create a groundbreaking product. Maybe another has a list that is perfectly suited to one of your products. Take very detailed notes about the expected outcomes of working with these great marketers.
Your list of potential JV partners and great marketers you’d love to work with could be short (around 20 people to start with) or fairly long (around 100 people to help you dominate a niche and become a successful marketer extremely quickly). It doesn’t matter—what matters is that you form the list and take action with it.
After you’ve made your list and brainstormed about the possibilities, it’s time to start to reach out and make this a reality. The great thing about working online is that reaching out can be a lot less intimidating than it is in person sometimes. Even so, some people still get nervous. Don’t get nervous—there are way too many benefits and people are very nice and helpful on the whole. You’ll find that even the most successful marketers are often very willing to help you out.
That brings me to a very important point. You can’t spend all of your time thinking about what other people can do for you and not at all about what you can do for other people. There are surely skills and benefits you can bring to even the most established marketers. They are very busy and likely stretched thin—if you want them to work with you, you have to give them a very clear picture of what you bring to the table.
With that made clear, it’s time to get started reaching out. How and where can you connect? We live in a great time where social media makes things extremely easy these days. You can develop friendships and partnerships quickly.
I highly recommend you join and socialize on Facebook, Twitter, or whichever social networks tend to be most popular for your niche. I’ve noticed especially that Facebook seems to be extremely popular for the Internet marketing crowd.
You can communicate on your personal Facebook profile or on niche pages and groups. I’ve found that niche pages and groups are where the real in-depth conversation takes place. This is where the real relationships are formed.
You can also find popular blogs and join in the conversation there. You’ll often find that people get very passionate and that there are many regulars on these blogs. You can showcase yourself as an expert, network with the blog owner and other experts, and really get your name out there.
You should have your own blog or hub on the web at this point. One great way to endear yourself to other marketers is to talk about their products or content on your blog. You can link out to them, giving them a valuable link. They’ll take note of it and you’ll win some definite points in their eyes.
You can also find those with products that are on a similar topic as yours. If the products are well done, you can promote their products to your list without even being asked. This can definitely get you on the radar of any marketer and they’ll be a lot more likely to return the favor later on.
At first, you might want to focus on just a few marketers at a time. Once you have the first few relationships in your grasp it will be so much easier to develop others.
If you’re desperate to get people on board to promote you or your product, you might consider sending something physical through the mail to them. Certain marketers have done this in the online marketing space in the past and it’s been quite effective. Snail mail is something of an anomaly these days so it can really stand out. Anything you can do to get the attention of these marketers (in a good way) is a good thing.
You can also get affiliates and JV partners on board by incentivizing them. People are a lot more likely to promote for you if there’s a little something extra in it for them. People also like a competition—it adds to the excitement and can really put you on the map.
One of the best things you can do to start to become known among the experts in your niche is to join masterminds and groups where you interact with like-minded people. There are Facebook groups (like my group, The IM Inside Track) where marketers interact and form relationships every day. There are also many Skype groups, private memberships, and more. Join all the “elite” memberships you know the favorite marketers in your niche hang out on. Networking is truly the name of the game.
It’s also an excellent idea to attend live events. There’s no connection quite like the connection you make in person. Hosting them also has their benefits. You can even host informal Meetups in your area with great benefit.
Above all, create, innovate, and be different. Lend a helping hand where needed. Show people that you have value and that you care about what they’re doing. Your relationships are the most important and valuable things you have in this business—make them count.
Create a list of people you want to work with and who you want to leverage and go after it. Build relationships and bring something to the table and you will succeed.
Market yourself, stand out, and win.