Beginner’s Guide On Cross-Promotions For Your Small Business

A small business depends on how well you are expanding your business. The more reach you have, the chances of getting better conversion and sales improve as well. 

Cross-promotion helps the business to improve its reach by expanding the brand. It’s an interesting technique that can help in marketing your brand. 

Cross-promotion focuses on remaining with other brands and promoting your services as well as products through them.  The deal is based on mutual benefits and it’s not direct with the competitors. ,

With the help of these techniques, you can step up your game and target the people you are not in reach with. 

perfect guide on cross promotions

However, how to cross-promotion can help your small business, and how to start with this technique, here is everything you should be knowing. 

Contents

What Is Cross Promotions And How It’s An Ideal Deal For Small Businesses?

Image Source: Hubspot Blog

In nutshell, Cross-promotion is basically about two brands working together to promote their services or products through their partnered business. It includes using their resources and platforms and vice versa.

There are different ways to do cross-promotion such as website banner, shout out, social media, etc. you can consider the cross-promotion strategies and campaigns to get better results. 

For a small business, cross-promotions is a win-win situation.  It’s cost-effective and a brand boost to equity.  

Both parties get to benefit from this technique. However, small businesses should consider not captive brands when they are looking for partners. The non-competitive brands have higher sales as they have overlapping audiences. 

The cost-effectiveness helps the business to help in getting more attention without spending on marketing.  Compared to traditional methods, it includes less investment.  The cost usually gets shared between the partners, so you don’t have to use your capital for it. 

You get backlinks and traffic which boosts your SEO. This helps create a positive impact on yours in search engines. If you are partners with prominent businesses, the benefits get better. 

Cross Promotion Is Not Affiliation 

Lots of people get confused with both terms. Well, cross-promotion is no affiliation, they both are different.

However, cross-promotion island affiliation does have similarities like they both drive more sales,  expand rich and overall win-win relationships. 

But comparing affiliation to cross-promotion is not the same. The affiliation is tracking traffic and getting conversions from special links or affiliate links which adds the commissions too. 

reason choose cross promotion for business

Whereas Cross-Promotion is a direct approach with the agreement that includes podcast features,  specific ad campaigns,  guest posts, etc. 

Cross-promotion is not required to have involvement of money, Its generally about agreement between two parties sharing and promoting the products and services 

Types Of Cross Promotions That You Can Use For Small Business 

There are several types of cross-promotions and you can use as per your requirement and suitability. Here are the listed types along with cases where you can use it. 

Promotion Based On Offers 

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Image Source: Shortstack

One of the famous types where two or more brands share their offers on each other platforms. Offer based cross-promotion is ideal for generating leads as well as getting more traffic. 

With this type, you can build loyalty among customers. It also focuses on getting attention from buyers of other brands,  It’s a win-win situation with a chance to attract more attention toward your business. 

Offer based promotions are most common due to the following reasons – 

  • It’s simple and easy to set up. You need to get a coupon code and landing page for the audience.
  • Here you get overall benefits that include loyal customers and traffic generation to your brand. 
  • It includes no cost for marketing. Except for making your customer aware of the offers. 
  • Here you reward your loyal customers along with new customers. You get a more satisfied audience for you. 

Promotion Based On Brand Awareness 

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Image Source: Findawaymedia

For creating brand awareness, cross-promotion can help in creating the buzz. 

Two brands connect to promote their services. However, there are some key points that small businesses should consider. 

It includes no cost for marketing but you are required to be aware of your audience about the brand products. 

The campaign-related to brand awareness cross-promotion depends. It includes two brands integrating their products to promote each other’s brands. 

When you are running the campaign,  make sure you are offering something beneficial to your audience or at least they are engaged

Promotion Based On Contes

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Image Source: Easypromos

Well in case your brand is offering something like membership or sponsorship or free products, the lucky draw can help you in getting more audience. 

In this campaign, your brand gets promoted as the winner of someone else’s brand contest or vice versa. Well, here are a few points to consider about this cross-promotion type. 

The prize should be something that can keep your audience excited and encouraged

It includes no cost for marketing. You just need to consider communicating the audience’s cost.

Before promoting, consider making a budget regarding the contest winners. It also includes the promotion of digital properties. 

Promotion Based On Content 

In content-based cross-promotion, two or more brands work together for creating user-interactive content.  

The content includes each other’s products or brands for targeting the audience. 

The content can be anything and any form. It can be a social media post,  videos,  movies, infographics, blog posts, events,  presentations, images, e-books, merchandise,  magazines, etc.

What Cross Promotion Can Do For Your Small Business?

Since the technique is based on merging with other brands to support each other products and services. You get lots of benefits from it if you know what you are aiming for. 

why business go for cross promotion

The top best and most leverage cross-promotion benefits you can get are-

It Helps You In Improving The Online Reach

Well, the major benefit you get from the cross-promotion is online reach. The technique uses other brands to showcase your services and products through their channels, it helps in getting attention to their audience to your brand. 

Not just you get more reach but a new set of customers who are looking for similar to what you are offering.  This helps in creating more buzz about your brand and improving awareness.

With the help of the right partners, you can make your promotion more visible to your customers. 

It Helps In Reducing Marketing Costs 

Collaborating with other brands helps you in saving your money, and time that you might spend on the marketing of your brand.

When you are sharing the platforms, you get more resources and channels to increase your brand awareness. 

The cost gets divided between the brands which help you in saving your cost on marketing. It’s helpful for small businesses since the capital is a vital part of running a business and such scale business has limited sources. 

You also get the chance to use other starting areas and vice versa. With the help of cross-promotion, you can boost the strategic plans related to your marketing.

It can be helpful if you are running a one-man show and facing difficulties. In both situations, you get support from other brands who can help you in finding a solution. 

It Helps In Meeting With New Customers 

Since you are using another brand’s sources and platforms for promoting your services and products, you get a whole new set of audience. With this, the new audience also gets a chance to learn about what you do.

The new audience gets to read what you are offering and if they are looking for something similar, you can use their attention to get more potential customers for yourself. 

They can get in touch with you via email, customer support, or another medium to connect with you. If they find you are offering what they want, you can get your ideal customers. 

It Helps In Improving Visibility And Engagement 

When you are choosing to cross-promote your brand as well as services, you are also improving your social media visibility. 

The business these days are connected with social media platforms. Almost everyone is using social media for promoting and helping the audience to connect with them.

The partnered brand of yours also has either a set of strategies for social media marketing. With this, you can promote your products and services via their social media presence like  Youtube, Google, Linkedin, Twitter, and  Facebook. 

This will help you in getting more customer engagement and make your brand visible to the audience.  Those who are interested will likely follow you on social media sites.

Get Started With Cross-Promotion  – What To Know And How to Do it?

steps start cross promotion

Cross-promotion is based on how well you do the research and execute your plans. . Cross-promotion can be a great help for small businesses in promoting their brands as well as what they are offering to new audiences.

With the help of the right idea about what to do and how to do, you can get what you are aiming for. 

Here are the basic steps that you should consider when you are planning to cross-promoting your brand. 

Do the Research And Find The Right Company 

Start with finding the right company which is suitable for your partnership.  It’s the most important step to decide if the market you aim for is the same. 

Make sure when you are doing it, you also search about the motive and core values you both share. When you are cross-promoting, you are not just sharing the brands or products but each other’s reputation too.

The audience is going to buy your products or their products based on how well they trust you. Also, you don’t want to use their trust for selling something which is not up to the standards.

That’s why finding the right company and brand which have a good image in the market is important. Being credible is important and makes sure you are not teaming with someone who doesn’t understand the point.

It Should Be a Natural fit

Image Source: Spotify

You can’t sell something which is not relatable at all. Your audience is visiting your sites for what they are expecting, selling something they don’t need will degrade your brand name. 

Also, cross-promotion should be based on natural fit. Make sure you are not going far away from your brand, keep things related so your audience likes to try it. 

The product should enhance each other instead of being polar opposite. Also, the products or service should have their credibility to attract more customers. 

Pick Your Strategy And Consider Other Points 

The strategy should be something that can help you in promoting your brand along with eliminating online marketing as well as print or other media sources.

Use the tools which can help you in promoting your cross-promotion. Focus on what you are aiming for as the results. Make sure you do all the important steps before you decide to partner with other brands. 

Plan the strategies, add the call to action, and make sure it’s easy for your new customers to get in touch with you. 

Add Special Offers And Email Marketing 

Discounts and special offers can help attract people’s attention. You can use social media as well as the website to attract the people towards what you are offering. 

With special offers, the audience would naturally want to know what you are offering to them. It does not just attract a new audience but also you can satisfy your loyal customers as well. 

Adding email marketing is another ideal tool for getting a better return on investment. It can help you in promoting your new post or offers along with making your customer aware via newsletter.

 How To Find The Right Partner And Channel For Cross Promotion?

Once you know what steps include finding the implement your cross-promotion, you will get the idea of how important it is to find the right partner and channels for cross-promoting. 

But to choose the right partner for your promotion, here are a few points to get things right. 

Its A Credible And Non Competitive 

Choose a company that is not competitive. Well, it’s important to focus on this point so you don’t end up selling similar products or services to the customers.

The partner you choose should have credibility in the market and the audience trust what they are offering. Teaming up with someone who has a bad impression will ruin your reputation as well. 

It Should Be Useful For Customers

Don’t forget that in the end, you are serving your customers. So what you are offering or serving should be beneficial for your customers, not just for your business. 

Think about what will pair well and your audience will like to buy with the products you are offering. Choose something which complements and relates to your product. 

You Both Share Same Thoughts 

Not exactly to be the same, but something you both agree on. It should be something you both want and work for.

Having a partner whose idea is different than yours can end up creating conflict. Also focus on adding the points like quality standard,  image,  vibe, and compatibility with yours. 

When you are promoting their products, you are asking your audience to trust them. Your reputation is on stake too, so make sure you are trusting the right partner. 

To choose the right channel for your promotion, you can consider social media platforms. People are widely using it and it’s ideal for cross-promoting since you get more audiences there. 

channels for cross promoting business

You can also use youtube and podcast like channels for combining both industries. It can help you in attracting more audience by offering something information to them.  

However, choosing your medium and channels depends on where you have a better audience. It should be easy to connect and a larger audience can see you. 

Ideas For Cross Promotion To Boost The Growth Of Your Small Business 

Cross-promotion is one of the effective options for small businesses to get more following. Use it correctly you will get more conversions and audience engagement. 

With the help of cross-promotion, you get more tactics to expand your reach to promote your brand.  Get to connect with more potential audiences and people who can bring growth in your business. 

Conduct Your Research First 

To start with your cross-promotion, start with doing your research first. You can find out who is promoting or who is not for the options. 

Well, the good news these days you don’t have to do cold calls. However you can try but for having better results, you can use social media platforms for interacting with the brands.

Don’t limit yourself to your industry, you can reach out to more people and brands. Content with them for promoting your brands. 

With the help of Twitter,  Facebook, and LinkedIn, you can easily connect with the brands and get quick answers. 

Make sure you do your research to choose how you are going to cross-promote your products. 

Get More Strong Relationship With Brands

Image Source: Feedough

For having potential brands and partnerships, it’s important to focus on building connections. 

With the idea of who you want to connect, you can get your research more firm and narrow down. Also instead of messenger everyone, stay focus and cautions 

The small business should focus on relationship building but with that be cautious too. Don’t jump to every opportunity without thinking. 

Before you agree to a partnership, make sure you do the research and check if it’s accurate or not.

Also, relationship building is important and based on how much your values match with other brands. Keep in mind that you don’t want to go too far from your brand. 

It should be similar and something your customer can relate to. 

Don’t start your relationship building without planning.  Make points on what you are expecting and get key points ready for how long you want this companion to go. 

Keep in mind how you want to market your products and what you are expected in the end. 

Get A Meaningful Cross Promotion 

Your cross-promotion should not look like a market opportunity to boost your profit. Your customer should feel like they are getting something from it too. 

Cross-promotion should be meaningful for you as well as your customers. Don’t make it look like a shout out. Make sure you are focused on creating something bigger and better. 

You can connect with other brands for creating an ebook. Not just you are helping your audience in getting something information but also it’s a valuable tool. 

You can also co-host webinars. It’s one of the training and people get lots of information from such events.  With the help of a webinar, you can get a successful and meaningful cross-promotion campaign.  

Promote And Offer discounts 

For driving more sales, there is nothing better than promo codes and discounts. Not just our audience gets a beneficial shopping experience but you get more traffic and sales. 

You can use the promotion and offers in cross-promotion.  Promote each other’s products and get more leads. 

You can market your products through some other brands, targeting their audience along with satisfying your audience. 

Create coupons, grow your list for emailing or get the card abandoners target, these are ideal options to use your cross-promotion.

Advantage From Social Media 

Social media platform use can be an advantage for your cross-promotion. To get the best results, establish your brand first in social media.

But since social media are different from each other, it requires a few changes in approach too. For example, Twitter can be suitable for the engaging audience. Whereas you can share in-depth articles and content on Facebook. 

Pinterest can be used for sharing materials that can be downloaded.  The basic idea is to have your niche in different social media so you can attract the interested audience.

Use social media to create and connect. Also, get your brand partners’ images and content on your social media platforms.  You can start with writing reviews of their products which can be meaningful and help the audience as well.

You can shout out as well. In return, the brands do cross-promotion as well. So you can get more traffic to your social media. 

Start With A Referral Program 

Referrals are effective and one of the effective ways to promote your brand. Especially when referrals are coming from close families, co-workers, and friends. 

As per Neilsen’s research,  92% of the audience believes in recommended products from the people they know.

The references work as authentic and unbiased to the customers. The recommendation from their party is genuine for the customers. That’s why people are going after influencer marketing

Use the reward program to encourage more people for cross-promotion.  Track the people who are referring to your products and services, ask them to sign up, and reward them. 

Get Bundles Deals For Cross Promotion 

Make sure that you are not going far from your brand. Partner with someone who is selling relatable or something similar to your brand. 

You can use the cross-promotion for creating the bundle deals for your audience.  You can create awareness and drive more sales. 

With the bundle deals, you can promote more than two products together.  These items can be something that can enhance the main product, so the buyers can think about buying it. 

Use your product as main and your partners as bundle deals. With that, add deals or discounts to drive more people to buy it. This will help you in offering more to your audience without making them feel you are promoting some other brands on them. 

Consider Non- Competing Brands 

With the help of non competing brands, you can expand your business. The ideal partners can be nonprofit organizations,  local businesses,  influencers, someone who is doing a business different form of niche. 

However, for promoting the products, you have to find the natural tone to make it relevant to your customers. With this, your customer will know that the offer is beneficial for them or not. 

Well, you don’t have to do something different. You and partnered brands can simply share the content you both have. This will introduce you to the different audience along with a good image if your partner brand is popular.

Build Your Presence In Different Platforms 

To maximize the benefits of your cross-promotion, you should not limit yourself when it comes to building your presence.  

Social media is indeed the best option for promoting and connecting but step out from your comfort zone to reach out to more audiences. 

It will also help you in boosting the social media presence as well. You can write a quiet post or offer one, use sites like Inc.com and Huffington. 

Guest posts are an incredible way to promote your product along with driving more audiences from other platforms to yours. It helps you in targeting a whole new audience out there. 

Use Medium and Tumbler like websites to create the content for engaging more audience. 

With this, you can use a multi-channel for your marketing approach. It helps in getting more audience and reaching more potential buyers. 

Find Willing Brands For Cross Promotion 

Cross-promotion is ideally used by the mobile application industry.  The chance of getting willing brands who are looking for the same thing can help you in getting a huge advantage in your favor. 

If you get a brand that is willfully wanted to cross-promotion, you can start with reaching out to those companies. Ask them if they want to partner with you.

With the help of a newsletter, you can create content including both brands, and use it for cross-promotion. Make sure you are doing your research and work so you know they are right for you. 

Content Creation For Cross Promotion 

Content marketing is one of the popular strategies. The content marketing directly affects the behavior of the buyers, the impact of content marketing is huge as well. 

People search for things online before they buy anything. Offering them content that can help them along with promoting what you are offering can help you in getting more reach to you. 

You can use cross-promotion with content marketing. Add the links for introducing your audience to a new market. The respected brands will return favors by adding your links to their content. 

However, make sure you are not adding relevant links to your content. Also, keep the information updated so you are sharing links that are currently suitable. 

Use Your Pinterest For Cross Promotion 

Unlike  Google, Facebook, or other platforms, Pinterest is still new to this race. But it doesn’t affect its reach to the customers.  The platform is ideal for creating and promoting your market content. 

Start with creating a customizable board. Pin the images that can help you in promoting your product. Pin those images in your blog, landing pages, Facebook, etc. This will help in a certain link to the source. 

To promote your loyal followers who want to promote your projects, create group boards for them. They can pin the products which will show to their followers as well. 

The board helps you in improvising your visibility and customizing the content according to your audience. 

Successful Cross-Promotion & Co-Branding Partnership Case Studies

Burger King & McDonald’s

Image Source: GritDaily

Burger King and McDonald’s are amongst the most surprising cross-promotion partnership occurred in 2019.

They are the top-sharks of the food industry yet partnered up for a campaign called ‘A Day With Whopper” The campaign was organised to raise money for the charity through cross-selling their products on each other’s target customers.

Although it confused the customers of Burger King but since both brands came together for a charity, it was very well-received and amongst successful ones.

BMW & Louis Vuitton

Image Source: Louis Vuitton

This co-branding campaign was name ‘The Art of Travel’ where car manufacturer giant BMW and designer Louis Vuitton came together for a cross-promotion collaboration.

What you should learn here is both of the brands are have a similarity towards Travel niche. Louis Vuitton’s signature luggage lines and BMW Luxurious cars are both known for their ultimate high-quality craftsmanship and perfection.

BMW released its sports model car BMW i8 where Louis Vuitton designed their exclusive set of four suitcases and bags that perfectly fit the rear parcel shelf of the BMW i8 model.

Starbucks & Spotify

Image Source: Pinterest

Starbucks is a premium coffee chain expanded globally where it uses music to elevate their coffee experience for users and create an ambience around them.

Spotify, on other hand is a music streaming platform crowned to be listened for more than 2.4 billion hours around the world.

Both came together for this first-of-its-kind music ecosystem under their co-branding collaboration to cross-promote each other.

This unique “music ecosystem” offered artists to access consumers of Starbucks and gave Starbucks access to their extensive music library.

Under this campaign, employees at Starbucks get premium Spotify subscription, so they can play music in the store all day.

Artist were getting exposed to the Starbucks consumers which was really great for them.

Overall, this music eco-system proven to be one of the most successful co-branding collaboration and cross-promotion cases ever.

Nike & Apple

Nike CEO Mark Parker and Apple CEO Steve Jobs during the unveiling of a partnership between Nike and Apple announcing the Nike+iPod, which combines the Nike Air Zoom Moire and the Apple iPod to communicate with each other via the Nike+iPod kit, using a sensor in the shoe to communicate wirelessly with the iPod to relay information from the shoe such as distance, pace, time running, and calories burned. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/WireImage)

Athletic Brand Nike and Technology giant Apple collaborated together for their new campaign releasing the first line of news iPods.

They have been working on this collaboration since the early 2000s and finally came up with their new product line.

It was started as to reach the music from Apple iPods to Nike’s workout and athletic customers. Apple focussed on how technology can participate in the fitness goals of Nike’s customers.

They came up with Nike+iPod products including fitness trackers, iPods and more. The fitness trackers allowed Nike customers to listen to music as well as track their fitness activity as well.

It is essential for small businesses to learn how products leverage their utilization to other’s target customers to make it an effective cross-promotion.

Later, it evolved as Nike+ product line including Apple’s technology and athletic clothing and gear from Nike syncing with Apple iPhones. There are dedicated applications for it as well.

Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)

Why is cross-promotion relevant to my small business?

The small business should use cross-promotions for advertising their brands. Target your customers and potential buyers with the help of partnering with the brands. Where it can help you in getting more reach, you can get resources and channels. 

Why should I consider crossing promoting my business?

The businessman should consider cross-promoting if they are looking for ways to expand their reach through their partnered brands. It gives a credible introduction and helps in improving the presence overall. 

How can I do cross promotion using social media?

You can share the content of yours or others on your social media. And ask them to do it same, today marketing includes social media thus most of the business has their established name on social media. 

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