How Cross Promotion Can Boost Your Business
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You know the saying “Two heads are better than one”? That applies to many areas in life and business, and especially in marketing. This idea is demonstrated in what is called “cross promotion.” Cross promotion is when you promote another business and that business in turn promotes you. It can also mean collaboration between two businesses to put their resources together for a marketing campaign. You can either put up brochures in your store for another store and vice versa, or you and the other store can pool your money or resources to develop an ad campaign that touts both companies’ products. If you buy Company A’s Product with Company B’s Product you get a 50 percent discount on both.
The Benefits of Cross Promotion
Get exposure in businesses you wouldn’t normally. You stand out by providing more valuable, eye-catching offers through your partner in ways that your competition can’t. For example, if you run a spa and you want to reach working mothers, you could partner with a day care – putting up flyers or brochures at the day care and in exchange display brochures of the day care at your spa. Either place a mother goes, she’ll realize that the other would work well for what she wants to do – wants to go to the spa? Drop the kids off at a day care. If she’s dropping the kids off at day care and needs some relaxation time, go to the spa. You could also employ greeting card printing – share the costs of printing greeting cards at the holidays to remind your spa and day care customers about your partnership with a signature from both businesses.
Save money and time. You save money by sharing expenses or resources with a partner. Also, you’re not paying for ad placement or to rent any kind of space. You can also split costs of a common offer, such as a postcard or flyer mailed to homes about buying one product from each company and getting a discount for buying both at the same time. You split the brochure or postcard printing costs and mailing costs, and reach twice as many people as you would with the same budget.
Broader audience. You and your partnering business won’t have the same customers. By partnering, you each reach customers you never could have connected with on your own.
Customers will remember you. Cross promotions are still unique. Because it’s not a common methodology, people are more likely to remember both businesses and think of one when they see the other. Again, using greeting card printing will help: customers that see both businesses’ names on the card will remember that you had some kind of joint offer going.
You get noticed. You get more news coverage and more word-of-mouth marketing when you partner with someone, especially with a non-profit group or a group people wouldn’t naturally associate with you.
Cross Promotion How-to’s
Target your market. Get specific. Pick a niche you want to reach more, differently, better or credibly (for example, entrepreneurs, fishing enthusiasts, new parents).
Target your potential partner(s). Brainstorm to figure out what other businesses or products would complement yours. You can also partner with universally needed businesses that people frequent often: gas stations, supermarkets and banks.
Start safely with a “jump start.” Get a jump start by suggesting a partnership with someone you already know or work with. Demonstrate goodwill by making the first cross-promotional activity more beneficial to your partner than to you.
Start with something simple. You could start by just pooling your mailing lists and splitting postcard printing costs to mail postcards out to potential customers announcing your partnership offer.
Put it in writing. This is a sad, but true and very important aspect of any business arrangement: get it in writing. Decide who will contribute what, and how much money each business will contribute just to protect yourself later on. Write it up and get everyone to sign it, then make copies for everyone.
Praise afterward. Thank your partner(s), employees, vendors and everyone else that helped pull it off. Praise them to each other also. People will be more likely to partner with you again if they know you appreciated their time and effort.
Debrief. Meet to discuss the successes and failures of the partnership. What can be done differently next time, new ideas that cropped up during the process, and—if it was successful—what to do for your next cross-promotional activity.
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