What Rhianna Can Teach Small Business Owners About Joint Ventures!

One of the great tricks of the trade in business, whatever your business may be, is forming joint venture partnerships or collaborating with other businesses. This can add additional revenue by providing your existing customers with further services to add in to what they’ve already bought from you, or it could introduce you to a whole new marketplace.

One of the best examples of great collaboration is the pop star Rihanna. She’s hugely successful all over the world, sells millions of records, has an enormous fan base, millions following her on Twitter and the Paparazzi and gossip magazines can’t get enough.

What is most interesting from a business point of view though is the partnerships she’s made with other artists. She’s worked with acts like Eminem, Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, David Guetta and Jay Z amongst many, many others. Typically, all these artists have very different fan bases and styles, yet Rihanna has had a huge amount of success from these collaborations.

The reason this has been such a great strategy for her is that each collaboration puts her in front of a different fan base. It forces the radio stations to play more of her songs because they include other people, again appealing to multiple fans for the radio station. It’s also great for the artists Rihanna works with as it puts their work out to a wider audience courtesy of Rihanna’s huge fan base.

Rihanna’s many and varied collaborations also shows that it pays to think outside the box. On the surface, a Rihanna fan may be very different to an Eminem fan, and yet between them Rihanna and Eminem have managed to produce a record to appeal to both sets of fans.

This concept of collaboration is something that can be applied to any other business too. Think about a gap in your customer base that you have struggled to make headway into, and then think about how that niche is best served at the moment.

Possible Ideas for Joint Ventures

For example, if you own a cake shop, a less obvious partner may be a slimming club! But you could partner with a slimming club to sell healthy cakes and recipes for healthy cakes, or run an offer exclusive to the slimming club members. This would ensure that you win customers from a group of people who might otherwise shun cakes. Of course, there may also be some of your regular customers hoping to lose a few pounds, meaning that the slimming club would also benefit!

Another example might be for a tailor or alteration shop to partner with a cobbler so that customers can get their shoes and clothes fixed under a joint offer.

If you are an estate agent and new properties come on to your list that have been left vacant but filled with old furniture, then you may think about striking up a deal with a house clearance firm that will come in and take away the furniture. The estate agent gets a clean and tidy space to market and the house clearance firm gets to make some money from reselling the furniture.

The Benefits of Joint Ventures

One of the great benefits of joint ventures is that you get to benefit from the marketing efforts of the business you partner with. In Rihanna’s case she possibly benefits from the album sales of her partner, along with their tour publicity.

While your own collaborations may not be as beneficial as Rihanna’s , partnering with another business can still bring you great referrals and leads.

How do you find businesses to collaborate with?

You could maybe start by joining a local networking group and meeting with other likeminded business owners. Get an idea of their goals and challenges to see if there is any way that you and your business can help to fill the gap. Maybe a Web designer and an SEO specialist could help each other, or a Landscape Gardener and a Kitchen designer could try marketing to each other’s clients.

Collaboration has to be two ways. You shouldn’t expect someone else to put in the hard work and for you to get all the benefit. It’s up to you and your business creativity to find the right collaboration for your business, and to figure out at what level that relationship should be at. So if you and another business decide to market to each other’s databases do you get

  • A commission for any leads that convert?
  • A referral fee?
  • Or would you just be pleased with the opportunity to get your brand in front of some new names?

Only you can figure out what is right for you and your brand.

Even if there is no obvious way to put an offer together between your business and another business you could look at just referring people, or something really basic like putting an advert in your shop window. Just make sure that you can track the leads that you’re sending their way so that you get the recognition you deserve!

If you want to move your brand in a different direction then collaboration with someone who’s already an expert in that field or well established in the local business market can help get you there. This can be something as simple as having guest posts on your blog. The other person would get the exposure on your website, you would gain credibility from having an expert opinion.

Remember that in business even if you work alone you don’t need to do all the work yourself. Whether you outsource work to a third party, bring in a consultant for a specific job or your team up with other businesses to provide client with a great experience, it’s likely that the right joint venture is out there waiting to be found. It’s up to you to make your business partnerships as successful as Rihanna’s!