Cross-promotion: What Is It and How Can It Benefit Your Business?
Cross-promotion could be the key to generating more business. This post delves into precisely what cross-promotion is and how it can benefit your business - as well as offering a few examples of cross-promotion strategies that could be worth trying.
What is cross-promotion?
Cross-promotion occurs when two businesses form a pact to promote one another. You advertise their business, and they advertise yours.
For cross-promotion to be successful, you need to work with a business with a similar audience to yours but not a direct competitor. A few examples could include:
A personal trainer and a physical therapist
A hairdresser and a make-up artist
A hotel and a local restaurant
A web design company and a social media marketing company
A dog trainer and a dog groomer
A realtor and a mortgage lender
How can cross-promotion benefit your business?
Cross-promotion has a few clear benefits. By partnering with another company to promote each other’s businesses, you can achieve:
Increased reach
A cross-promotional strategy allows you to tap into each other’s audiences. This could extend your marketing reach by accessing customers who aren’t aware of your brand. Meanwhile, they receive the same benefit.
Better credibility
Being recommended by another company can significantly boost your credibility. If they already trust the company you’re partnering with, they will likely trust your company. Partnerships can also suggest that you’re well-known within your community.
Reduced marketing costs
In many cases, cross-promotion can save you money. Specific cross-promotional strategies like in-person recommendations and guest blog posts are free. In other instances, like joint advertising, you can share the cost of an advertising campaign instead of taking on the whole cost yourself. This makes it ideal for companies that have a tight marketing budget.
What are some cross-promotional strategies to try?
While many companies see the benefit of cross-promotion, they can often struggle to develop unique strategies. There are quite a lot of different cross-promotional tactics that you can try. Below are just a few other examples.
Guest blog posts
Guest blog posts could be a great place to start. This involves each writing a blog post to publish on another’s website.
Your blog post could be centered around a topic related to your business and contain a link to your website. This will give you extra exposure and potential leads.
Meanwhile, they get to post a blog post on your website. This could be a chance to diversify your blog content by calling in an expert to write on an interesting topic you may not know enough about. And their guest post could potentially earn them some extra business.
Sharing social media content
A simple way to cross-promote is to share each other’s social media posts.
Sharing another company’s post can help gain their exposure while allowing you to vary your social media content. If most of your content is self-promotional, a shared post could be a great way of breaking up this content.
They, meanwhile, can share your social media content with their followers - potentially getting you more engagements. You may even get some extra followers and potentially extra leads.
Sharing each other’s social media posts could be something you plan out, or you could do as you feel like it. You should avoid sharing all of their content - it is better to be selective and only share content that you think is genuinely interesting and high quality.
Sponsored content
Sponsored content is often content you create yourself - however, it usually contains a shout-out to another company. This shout-out could be a subtle brand mention or a more apparent sales pitch.
With regular sponsored content, a company pays you to mention their brand in your content. In the case of cross-promotion, you do it for free, but they also sponsor you through their content in exchange.
Sponsored content could include many types of content, such as:
A YouTube video that features a brief sponsored sales pitch at the beginning.
A blog post written by you that mentions their brand.
A social media post in which you may reference their brand - either directly with an ‘@’ or just in plain text
Posters and flyers
A traditional form of cross-promotion involves using posters and flyers. You could agree to hang up a poster of their company with your store in exchange for them doing the same. Alternatively, you could hand out their flyers to customers in exchange for them handing out your company's flyers.
This cross-promotional strategy could involve spending money - if you want quality flyers or posters, it’s often best to use a professional design and printing company. Some websites allow you to design your custom flyer or poster using templates. These could cost less than paying a graphic designer to create your flyer/poster from scratch.
Private recommendations
Often, the most effective form of cross-promotion involves simply recommending companies to customers in conversation.
For example, if you run a wedding venue hire business and a customer is looking for a DJ, you could recommend a DJ you’re cross-promoting with there and then. At the same time, they can recommend your venue to potential customers at wedding trade shows.
This type of cross-promotion doesn’t have to come with a quota or timeline - in fact, it is much better if you both naturally recommend each other’s businesses when the situation arises, as it will feel more like a genuine recommendation than a sponsorship deal.
Affiliate links
Affiliate marketing can be a way of introducing customers to one another and receiving commission. It typically requires sharing a link to another company’s product or service page. You then receive a commission for every customer they receive via your link.
Affiliate links could be published in blog posts, shared in social media posts, or embedded into videos or ads. These links have a unique ID that allows a company to trace where traffic has come from and whether visitors then go on to buy their product.
When turned into a cross-promotional strategy, affiliate linking could involve both of you providing links to each other’s products and giving commissions. This commission could be an equal percentage of each purchase, or you could agree to pay each other the same flat commission fee.
Joint advertising
Joint advertising involves creating an advert together that promotes both of your companies. This allows you to share the cost of producing the advert while getting brand exposure.
This could be a static display advert or a video advert. You could agree to give each product equal attention, or you could focus on one product more than the other if you feel this is more appropriate (however, in this case, the company with the greater focus should contribute the most money to the ad).
Co-promotional emails
This is an email that promotes your business and a partner business simultaneously. They similarly send a co-promotional email to their subscribers, promoting yours and their business. As a result, you both gain extra exposure by marketing to each other’s subscribers.
Co-promotional emails could contain links or could involve a brand mention. You could even send an entire email promoting their business. It’s up to you to decide the level of promotion you want to provide.
Exclusive discounts
This can be another great way to generate business through cross-promotion. It involves recommending another business and providing an exclusive discount on their products/services. This discount may only be accessible if they purchase from your company - and typically involves providing a physical voucher or online voucher code.
This could be an ongoing discount or a limited-time offer. Limited-time discounts are often better as they can stop customers from using vouchers.
Selling products
Another cross-promotion strategy to consider could involve selling another company’s products through your own store. You and the other company would then benefit from this sale.
Alternatively, you can sell your product through another company’s store. This helps you get exposure for your product while they also profit from the sale.
Competition gifts
A final cross-promotion strategy worth mentioning is competition. You could run a contest that your customers can take part in. The prize could be a gift from a business you’re working with.
Competitions are great for building up buzz around your company. At the same time, you’ll be promoting another company’s product or service by giving it away as a gift.
Conclusion
There are many cross-promotional strategies to try, and they can each help you gain more reach, help you gain better credibility, and reduce marketing costs.
The key to successful cross-promotion is finding the right company to work with. They need to be a company you are proud to promote, which will keep to their side of the deal while being relevant to your business but not a direct competitor. You can find a company willing to cross-promote by networking and private approaching companies.
