The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Cross-Promotional Techniques

What Is Cross Promotion?

Cross promotion is defined by 2 marketing strategies. In one, you can partner with another company to showcase each other’s products or services. In the other, you advertise your product or service on several different platforms to expose your product to diverse audiences.

• Business Cross Promotion Ideas

  1. If you were looking to introduce a new blog in the travel space, one of the business cross promotion ideas is to partner with an upcoming travel brand producing a new piece of luggage. Your blog would promote their bag in return for them promoting your blog to their customers.
  2. Among cross promotion examples, a local auto repair shop could cross promote services on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in different forms such as long-form text or video marketing.

Cross Promotion Is Most Successful When You Find Good Partners

If you are interested in cross promotion marketing, it’s ideal to work with a business that offers a product or service that complements, rather than competes, with your own business’s product or service.

All businesses are looking for ways to make that next sale, and presenting business cross promotion ideas can create a win-win situation. If you wisely choose your cross-promotion partner, you can each benefit from current customers’ goodwill. Your partnership acts as an endorsement of each other, and you can gain new customers or clients from the deal.

As one of the cross promotion examples, a flooring business could reach out to local real estate agents. You can promote them as a real estate agent in exchange for referrals for people looking to renovate a home they sell.

How to Start Cross Promotion

Evaluate current performance across your marketing channels. How is your return on investment (ROI)? What are your key performance indicators (KPI) reporting? Look for untapped opportunities to reach a new audience altogether—or pursue tactics that would improve engagement with the one you have.

When it comes to forming a partnership, if you don’t already have an ideal partner in mind, it’s recommended you start with social media listening tools such as BuzzSumo, Sprout Social or Brand24. Review social media for mentions of your business as well as keywords relevant to your business and your cross-promotion ideas.

How to Start Partnerships

The structure of your respective businesses will determine who your outreach person or team is and who is your best contact to make overtures about a cross promotion marketing strategy. Sometimes an email is the best initial contact, and it should be followed up with a phone call or virtual or in-person meeting. Don’t forget to note what value this collaboration promises for the potential partner.

Cross Promotion Marketing Adds Value, Saves Money

According to a 2018 survey by research company Gartner, companies polled spent an average of 10.8% of their budget (7.3% of annual revenue) on marketing. While this ranges heavily on industry and scale of business, small business marketing budgets tend to run thin. Cross promotion can help squeeze every single penny to work like a dollar.

By leveraging a cross-promotion type of marketing strategy, you can tap into your partner’s customer base, gain leads faster (and at less cost) than through traditional networking or advertising efforts. You can also share costs with partners. This method is a lot less expensive than spending your marketing dollars on “solo” billboard advertisements or digital ads, and potentially more effective as well.

So what are some small- and medium-sized businesses that have executed cross promotion marketing?

Cross Promotion Marketing Examples

Here are just a few examples of what small or medium businesses like yours can do with a cross promotion marketing strategy.

Real Estate and Loan Officers

Nearly all real estate transactions will have a real estate agent and mortgage loan officer involved in some fashion. If you are in either of these positions, your job is based mostly on referrals. If you can partner with someone on the other end of the bargain, you save an incredible amount of money in marketing dollars and increase your reach to your local community. If you 2 decide to run Facebook ads, you can split the cost while filling your sales funnel.

Financial Planner and Insurance Agent

Many of us will eventually see a financial planner to evaluate our current financial picture and create a plan for the future. Part of planning for the future is also preparing for what happens to your assets in case of a life-altering event. This is where an insurance agent can come into play.

Both of these unique professions are wrapped around the scenario of “what if.” An example of a cross promotional marketing strategy to promote your business locally could be partnering together to sponsor your town’s high school baseball team, and you both were able to target parents with high school students. Similarly, you could invest in attending local chamber of commerce meetings to broaden your reach in your community.

Each of these ideas could be low-cost and high-reward for both parties involved!

Accident Attorney and Local Body Shop

If you are in an auto accident, the first place your car is going to go to is a body shop for an estimate of repairs. While searching on Google for a body shop, you may also be searching for an accident attorney if you have experienced any injuries. If a local attorney and a body shop could co-create digital marketing advertisements targeted to people Googling specific words within a certain radius, they could make their dollars go far.

Leads for both these types of businesses are incredibly lucrative and working together to invest in cross promotions could change your business outcomes.

While all of this sounds exceptionally lucrative, where should you start?