Cross-promotion is a mutual agreement between two or more brands to jointly expose their products to their customers. These brands may be selling different products but they both have the same target customers. This way, each brand advertises its own product as well as that of the partner to its audience without competing. Although largely underrated, cross-promotion has proven an inexpensive, easy, and effective marketing strategy for diverse types of businesses.
There are numerous benefits of cross-promotion and brands should not hesitate to leverage this amazing marketing strategy. Some of the obvious benefits include a win-win relationship for the partners, cost-effective, expand brand reach, and boost brand equity among others. With that said, let us dig into some of the plausible ways to use cross-promotion to grow your brand.
Find the Right Partner
A cross-promotion partner can break or make your brand. It is a no-brainer that you have to meticulously select the partner that meets your goals, objectives, and values. It is the only way to use cross-promotion, tap into a whole different market and make sure your brand reaps the benefits. When assessing potential partners, you need to think about the impact of that partner to your brand. The primary question that should come to your mind is whether this partner is genuinely non-competitive.
Check their products and make sure they aren’t giving you direct competition. The product should at least complement your products or services so that you can fill the niche you create when selling your product alone. This means the partner’s product is related to your product. Another important point is to check the usefulness of your partner’s product. If the product doesn’t appeal to customers, you might end up tarnishing your brand by associating with flopping brands.
Select the Right Channels and Methods
One of the things you can’t avoid when striking a deal with your partner is to decide the kind of methods and channels for cross-promotion. Social media is one name that first pops up because the importance of social media in marketing cannot be underestimated. Social media has innumerable active usage and posts can be shared with ease. The good news is there are several popular social media platforms you can use. Mention Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube among others. Post relevant content on these platforms to allow your followers to share and reach a wider coverage. Stage a good social media campaign like Instagram’s “take over” campaign where you temporarily take over and engage your partner’s audiences for a designated time.
Another good method is podcasts and YouTube channels. Yes, you can liaise with a podcaster that has an audience. Sponsor something like an episode or an interview. Do the same via YouTube channels and see how you can drive more traffic with podcasts and YouTube channels.
Blogs and content sites are other plausible channels. There are popular bloggers and sites with frequent and huge visits. Giving them your content allows your brand to reach their audiences and on the other hand giving the bloggers or sites some fresh content. Other possible options worth giving a try include the use of influencers and joint advertisements.
Make your Promotion Memorable
In as much as cross-promotion targets a wider reach and more customers, one of the most important things is cultivating customer loyalty. Naturally, you can retain customers by designing quality products. However, this is more fixed and you don’t have more degrees of freedom to change it. You should brainstorm alongside your partner on probable ways to make your product to enhance the lives of the customers. Some of the most effective and proven methods is using promotions, discounts, and other price cut options while maintaining the quality of your products. Such subsidies create a memory that is too hard to forget by the customers.
Be Creative
Cross-promotion is not a rigid strategy. There is a lot more flesh that can be injected into this strategy to boost your brand’s growth. You need to be creative and integrate better ideas into cross-promotion to make it memorable, relevant, and beneficial for your products. When laying out the channels and methods to leverage, think deep. Be creative in how you are going to utilize these channels to maximize reach and appeal to several audiences. Think about how you are going to capitalize on trends and emerging technologies to popularize your products alongside that of your partner. With more creativity into the cross-promotion mainstream, you can significantly reduce the associated costs while improving the product’s equity.
Final Remarks
Cross-promotion is a proven marketing strategy that can inexpensively and easily transform your business fortunes like never before. However, you need to be acquainted with how to deploy this strategy before putting the strategy to practice. You can only reap the benefits of cross-promotion if you do it right!
Robert Garcia- Robert is a freelance graphic designer and adores to write business based content. Apart from his profession, he is a father of two children and dreams to own a Nissan GTR one day.
