Most of us have heard of Strategic Alliances, but do we really use them? If you are a business owner, they are the most effective way to increase your market reach faster, more efficiently, with less cost and less risk.

Let's say for example you have a new product you would like to take to market. How are you going to do it in a traditional approach? You would set aside some funds to hire staff to run the project, or take your own time away from your core business to get this thing off the ground right? You may consider hiring a sales team and targeting your end user, let's say in this case a consumer, not a business.

With this traditional approach, you will have risked your money if the deal goes bad or the market doesn't respond like you hoped. You would have put in time and/or money into hiring people. And you would have spent time and likely money developing your product.

Now let's take an approach that integrates strategic alliances. Let's say you are already at the point where you have a product... you hopefully did some market research before dumping too much into it at this point... Taking this approach you would want to know everything you can about your target market. Once you identify these people. You want to figure out where they hangout online. Once you have identified the top ten places they hangout, you want to approach those companies with an opportunity to work together.

If you are able to structure and land one of these deals, you will be able to leverage this short amount of effort to get in front of an exponential audience. You would have lowered your risk of hiring, because you were able to land a marketing channel first. You increased your likelihood of success, because of landing a recommendation from your strategic alliance partner and you leveraged this partnering company's effort, time, and money in developing their list and customer base.

It's a win-win-win for you, the strategic alliance, and the consumer.