Cross-promotions are one of the most powerful tools in a marketer's arsenal. Sadly, cross promotion programs are often some of the most poorly implemented attempts at strategic marketing. The goal of business cross promotions is to find products and services offered by other businesses that can be bundled with your own. Finding the right mix of promotional tie ins can be a real challenge, but successful cross over promotions include collaborating with another business on advertising, offering joint discounts, or simply joining marketing forces to reach a broader customer base.
Using effective cross promotions will allow marketers to experience the following benefits:
The process of marketing and cross promotions of product offerings requires a thorough analysis of your current customers and marketing efforts to reach them, in order to determine what services or products have the greatest potential for tie ins and what will be the target market. Once you have identified these things, take the following steps to develop a successful cross-promotions plan to integrate into your marketing strategy.
Search for cross promotion programs online
The Internet enables businesses to communicate more easily, which makes it ideally suited as a vehicle for launching discussions on cross promotions tie ins. There are a number of sites which list companies, as well as their niche or products, and can provide ideas for ways you can build sales tie ins with them.
I recommend: IntroNiche is an online matchmaking service for companies looking to establish cross-promotion partnerships. They were the first, and are, arguably, the largest service of the kind on the web. Also, consider affiliate programs for cross-promotions by checking out forums like
AffSpot.com, which lists a number of affiliate programs, affiliates and cross over promotion opportunities.
Use social media sites to create effective cross promotions
Social media is becoming increasingly popular as a source of cross-promotions for companies in every industry. No matter the product, service or target market, there are a variety of social media sites with members that will match as potential customers for any business. Social media sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, display ads strategically geared to their user base, all of whom share easily measurable demographics.
I recommend: Start with the big social media sites, particularly
MySpace,
Facebook, and
LinkedIn. Each of these sites reaches millions of people and maintains reliable data on their members. They also have advertising departments which can guide and assist you to find the right ad strategy for your budget.
Partner with a cross-promotion expert to develop new cross promotion ideas
Cross-promotions are not a new marketing technique. There are numerous companies that can assist you in finding a cross-promotion partner and setting up cross promotion programs. Having their expertise available for planning and implementing your cross-promotions will be invaluable, especially on larger programs and promotional tie ins with multiple partners.
I recommend: Contact
Kare Anderson for cross-promotions. She is a prolific writer on the subject of cross-promotions and has a proven track record of enabling successful cross-promotions. If you are looking for a larger base of support, there are other companies that can assist you, such as
Cross Promotion Marketing, LLC. Investigate both options and see which one works best for your business.
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