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Various types of strategic alliances and joint ventures exist.  To avoid confusion, I feel it's important to be aware of the thought behind the words and the names and define the terms, as they are normally used in business beyond online marketing.

Joint ventures are typcially thought of as arrangements where organizations remain independent but set up a newly created organization jointly owned by the parties involved.

A consortia may involve two or more organizations in a joint venture arrangement. An example could be the Star Alliance (a group of several air transport companies), gigantic building projects (like the ones that builds bridges and tunnels, connection two countries) or major aerospace undertakings (like Airbus).  In these circumstances, the organizational relationships are likely to be formalized either in shareholding or agreements specifying asset sharing and the distribution of profits.

At the other extreme are networks, which are arrangements whereby two or more organizations work in collaboration without formal relationships but through a mechanism of mutual advantage and trust.

In Internet Marketing, more opportunistic arrangements arise, which are likely  to be more focused around particular ventures or projects, but that may not be highly formalized. These arrangements are much nearer to market relationships than to contractual relationships.  They exist for a number of reasons:

1) Because assets do not neet joint management - capital, expertise, know-how and so on can come together more informally (as in StomperNet, where the teachers are not employees per se, but have their own companies).

2) Assets cannot be separated easily from the firms involved, or without harm being done, for example, it may be that one partner is providing access to distribution channels that are part of their operation as a whole (one company's list of customers, for example).

3) If the assets involved were split off into a separate organization, there would be high risk of their being appropriated by another party involved. This would be particularly the case for the know-how and skills of the different parties involved.

Types and Motives For Strategic Alliances

Forms of Alliances:

    A) Loose (Market) Relationships

          Networks

          Opportunistic Alliances

Here, assets do not need joint management. But the assets cannot be separated and there is a high risk of the assets/skills or know-how being appropriated. This is where most of us are in online businesses

    B) Contractual Relationships

          Sub-contracting

          Licensing and franchises

In this type of alliance, asset management can be isolated.  Assets/skills can be separated, but in some cases there is still a high risk of assets being appropriated, whereas in other cases, there are low risks involved.

    C) Formalized Ownership/Relationships

          Consortia

          Joint Ventures

In formalized ownership, assets need to be jointly managed. Sometimes assets/skills can be separated and at other times they cannot, depending on the instance.

    D) Formal Integration

          Aquisitions and mergers

This is complicated and any and all combinations can occur here.

Sometimes, strategic alliances (or joint ventures) do not work out very well.  Sometimes, they are not a good match, even though, on the surface, all the criteria and rationale for matching options with circumstances seemed to be a perfect fit.  Why is this?

Angela Wickenberg

P.S. Have you joined us yet?  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656

It's an auspicious time for us all in business and especially those of us who have waken up to the enormous opportunities online.

While there are many great challenges in the economy and for business owners, many have spoken of the gold rush of opportunity that is on the Internet today. And this is so true! Never has there been so much opportunity and so many resources, literally available at our fingertips!

But for many, this has escaped them. This is because as small business owners, we tend to try to do it all ourselves. All of the successful businessmen have told us, time and again:

"Make offers more attractive for potential buyers!"

"Know your strengths and weaknesses and delegate your weaknesses, or form a joint venture!"

"Take what is working and exploit that to the fullest!"

"Take MASSIVE ACTION!"

So how are you going to do this if you have no resources, no time or no money? Strategic alliances or joint ventures are the answer to this.

Please leave comments or message me with your thoughts.

Strategy Calls.com also invites you to answer the questions below:

1) Is there a particular aspect of strategic alliances that you feel you do not grasp, or in other words, that you would like to learn about?

2) Have you tried joint venture relationships before and what are your experiences from this/them?

3) If negative, what went wrong? What was missing?

4) If positive, what was right? And has the relationship continued?

5) Is there something that particularly frightens you about strategic alliances/joint ventures?

6) Would you like help creating a joint venture or strategic alliance?

7) Please state in what area you need assistance.

Would you like to be a case study?

I hope to hear from you soon.

Strategy Calls!

Angela Wickenberg

P.S. Please join us!   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656

Hi,

Just click on the link below to claim your free $47 book on how to create a video that will get lots of traffic and help you make sales!

This product sells for $47 at http://ViralVideoSecrets.com. It
shows step-by-step how Len Foley made a viral video for $82.50
in a couple of hours that:

- Has over 475,130 views on YouTube
- Drives traffic to a membership site that has over 1,000
members
- And makes Len $14k every month

This link is good only for the next 2 days, so act fast!

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=520204

To your online success!

Angela Wickenberg

Strategy Calls! - The Strategic Alliance of Online Businesses - is a new group on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656&ref=mf 

formed for the purpose of being a forum of opportunity for online businesses to network with each other, and to offer tele-seminars, courses and conferences that may be of interest to the online business owner.

In online marketing, this is known as the JV or joint venture.

As was recently pointed out in the astute online marketer, Rich Schefren's recent article on the subject,
http://www.strategicprofits.com/blog/1-plus-1-equals-3/, many marketers have treated the JV as an email campaign, but a joint venture relationship, or a strategic alliance, is what you make it to be.

Traditionally, the ability of a firm to price higher than competitors is called differentiation. A product or a service which offers something unique,or is or greater value than the competition, could then merit a sustainable higher price.

But a firm may also choose to offer a differentiated product or service at a similar price to competitors in order to increase market share and volume.

It is, of course, of no value in achieving competitive advantage unless it is of value to the user, so that the user has preference for those products or services over those of competitors. Focused differentiation through strategic alliances lead to a perceived added value to a particular product or segment, which may also warrant a price premium.

The aim with strategic alliances is to achieve higher market share, and therefore higher volume, than competitors by offering better products or services at the same price; or enhanced margins by pricing slightly higher.

It is much more difficult for a competitor to imitate a basis of differentiation linked to a mix of activities or features rather than just a product or a service, if the mix is a good one, then this is highly likely to benefit many of the businesses online.

Strategy Calls! - The Strategic Alliance of Online Businesses - encourages businesses of all kinds to join this group to

*network
*find possible partners to form strategic alliances or enhanced joint ventures with
*receive information on the subject
*listen to experts being interview from the comfort of your home or office
*receive information on upcoming networking conferences and seminars.

The Strategy Calls!  website, to be located at http://StrategyCalling.com,  is under construction and a schedule of calls is forthcoming and will be available very soon.

Strategy Calls! Please join us!

Angela Wickenberg
Founder

In that spirit, Business 2.0 magazine sent senior writer Paul Kaihla and a team of reporters on a quest to find some of the best "best practices" in business today. The companies they interviewed have stumbled upon their own unique methods for doing everything from running meetings and generating product ideas to troubleshooting M&A deals and keeping board directors on their toes.

Following are 25 ideas that are truly gems, broken down into five categories: finance, HR, management, marketing, and R&D.

They're methods that help keep some of the best-run companies, like Procter & Gamble (Research), Google (Research), Southwest Airlines (Research), Microsoft (Research), Intel (Research), and Coke (Research), at the top of their game. You've probably never heard of most of these practices — but you might want to start implementing them tomorrow. 

HEWLETT-PACKARD CEO Mark Hurd loves numbers–and insists that his managers learn to love them too. Since Hurd came onboard last March, one of the key tools he's used to keep pace with rivals is his extreme form of industry benchmarking. Instead of comparing HP's sales and profits with Dell's or IBM's, the company now tracks itself against rivals by every conceivable measure. "We want to make sure we break down every unit and business function," explains Marius Haas, senior strategy officer at HP, "so we can become best in class in each one."

Here's how it works: Imagine a matrix with various business units running down the side (printing, servers, storage, IT services, etc.) and business functions across the top (finance, HR, marketing, R&D, etc.). Now create benchmarks for each of the 72 resulting cells and you have a good idea of how Hurd is managing the $87 billion company. The benchmarks are the best guess of where HP's rivals are going to be in 2007, based on more than a dozen variables, from real estate cost per square foot to operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin.

Before Hurd took over, HP measured itself primarily against IBM, using one very blunt tool: costs as a percentage of revenues. That ignored IBM's higher gross margins and the fact that it has more gross profit to spread around. Hurd's new benchmarking method formed the basis of HP's reorganization effort announced last July, through which HP has promised to save $3 billion by 2008. Already there is key evidence of success: Operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin dropped 2 percent in 2005, helping to fatten profits by $385 million. — E.S.

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After reading this article by Russell Wright of ThemeZoom, http://www.theme-zoom.com/167/are-you-putting-content-in-the-wrong-place/,  I realized that I may have set up my sites in the wrong way, using the content in a way that did not help me.  Even Twittering in a way that was not helping me.

I was a member of ThemeZoom when they first introduced their service back in 2005 or early 2006, but I didn't understand a thing.  Since then, I have changed quite a bit, and ThemeZoom seems to have developed their services as well.  I think the people at Themezoom really put out a lot of quality info. Take a look at the article about how content can be scored and placed correctly or incorrectly, as the case may be. For example, much is talked about the importance of researching your online "verticle market" and "keyword clusters".  It's all very scientific and detailed.  No messing around when it comes to marketing.

There are also articles and video instruction  talking about tests they have carried out and are in the process of carrying out, like the difference between using Tube  Mogul and Traffic Geyser.  Russell Wright says that  you will get ranked for keywords with fewer than 500,000 competing pages on Google when you submit a properly tagged video.  That we should only use You Tube videos on our main site if it has relevance, otherwise You Tube videos should be used on your support sites and only HD quality videos should be used on your main sites.  Hmmm - now that's interesting - that there are quality scores associated with the quality of the audio and visual content on your site.  They talk about where to use widgets, about the purpose of your primary website (you USP of course) and that it is the business question you are proposing to answer with your USP that is presented on the main site, that we should not use spun content on primary website, when you use excerpts from books…

The membership they have is called Krakken and is by invitation only.  I'm inviting you:

<a href="http://www.themezoom.com/amember/go.php?r=171&i=10&s=1">By Referral Only - Qualified Candidate Link</a>

                                                                                                                                        Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Content, Right place for content, content strategy, Russell Wright Themezoom

Thursday, Google announced through their blog, that they are about to introduce a major change on all inactive keywords.

By activating all inactive keywords, they seem to be letting the customer pay for tweaking minimum bids, and by doing this, Google will further punish less conscious advertisers and reward those who are aware of their system. Google is likely to see a spike in their income in the coming and following weeks. Google says: "The new per-query evaluation of Quality Score affects you in that keywords will no longer appear as 'inactive for search' in your account. Instead, all keywords will have the chance to show ads on Google web search and the search network (unless you've paused or deleted them). Keep in mind, however, that keywords previously marked 'inactive for search' are not likely to accrue a great deal of traffic following this change. This is because their combined per-query Quality Score and bid probably isn't high enough to gain competitive placement."

'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid'

"As a result of migrating to per-query Quality Score, we are no longer showing minimum bids in your account. Instead, we're replacing minimum bids with a new, more meaningful metric: first page bids. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search. They're based on the exact match version of the keyword, the ad's Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword. Based on your feedback, we learned that knowing your minimum bid wasn't always helpful in getting the ad placement you wanted, so we hope that first page bids will give you better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals."

"It's worth mentioning that the impact of these changes will vary from advertiser to advertiser; some might see no changes to their ad serving, while others may see a noticeable difference. As always, we recommend optimizing ads to prevent them from receiving a low Quality Score."

You can read the entire blogpost here:

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/08/quality-score-improvements.html

/Angela Wickenberg