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RISING WOMEN EXPERT
ADVICE...
I have heard a lot about business cross-
promotion. What is it exactly and I how can get involved in it effectively?
Cross-promotion is generally a practice that is undertaken
between two businesses who target similar markets yet do not directly
compete with one another.
Cross-promotion can be achieved in a variety of ways, from advertising on
one another’s websites, promoting the other company in newsletters or
brochures, promotional messages on receipts, or offering reduced prices if a
customer buys from both companies. The possibilities for cross-promotions
are only limited by your imagination!
Marketing is the only thing that makes you money! Everything else is merely
an expense. As a business, if you use the motivation of saving money to
determine your marketing efforts, you are headed for disaster. You have to
plan for what is most effective in driving both sales and traffic,
regardless of cost. Every marketing strategy you engage in needs to have an
appropriate ROI - planned, tracked and realized. In this respect,
cross-promotion is another effective way for a business to expand its
product into new consumer markets by riding on an already-successful
product/business. However it is important that a logical connection exists
between the two. For example, an MP3 player and free MP3 music is a natural
cross promotion pairing because the one needs the other to operate and
neither are in direct competition.
Cross-promotion starts with finding a suitable business to partner with. You
can do this by doing research on what other businesses your customers shop
at, or what other businesses complement your type of product/service. Once
you have found a suitable business that is willing to participate in the
program, the next step is to both establish the clear benefits and
rationales of working together. Things to consider are what you are
cross-promoting and how each partner will equally promote each other. Will
there be additional costs incurred for creating new advertising campaigns to
publicize this program? Will this require new “point-of-sale” materials,
such as brochures?
Agree on a test-run cross-promotion to start. Keep it simple at first just
to test your relationship and to make sure that it will work. Once you have
completed the test-run, evaluate the partnership. Did you both bring in more
business? If it didn’t work, try to figure out why it didn’t and if there is
any way to rework it to make it more effective next time.
Renee Clydesdale of Impressions By Renee |
