Attract More Customers With Less Effort Through the Right Cross-Promotions
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by Kare Anderson, Author & Speaker
Last Valentine’s Day, several neighborhood businesses -- including a massage practice, bookstore, women’s medical clinic, florist, healthfood store, shopper newspaper and beauty salon -- joined forces for a month-long promotion. The bookstore hosted a series of "Beauty Inside Out" - themed series of in-store demonstrations and mini-seminars each led by a manager of one of the participating businesses and highlighting a book collection and related products and services.
Each presenter offered a handout that also included reference to at least one of the other cross-promoting business, plus a joint offer of services with one of them, and included a bibliography of related books attendees might want to purchase at the bookstore. Each presenter wrote a guest column based on their presentation, which was featured in the shopper newspaper, with the author’s follow-up offer noted at the bottom of the article.
You don’t have to work alone, when you attempt to market your products or services. It is not as fun nor as efficient. Regardless of the size or kind of business (or non-profit or government agency) you operate, you can grow it faster, not through "solo" networking, advertising, or other promotional efforts, but through cross-promotion with others.
Look for other successful, non-competing businesses that also serve your kind of client. Propose ways you can improve how you contact or service your "mutual market." For example, the administrator of a new laser and dermatology clinic decided to make a big splash with a small budget for their "Grand Opening Month," targeting the local, upscale, over-30 women which he most wanted to reach. He devised a series of cross-promotions with other likely and unlikely partners who also reached that market. One cross-promotion involved a gourmet Italian food home delivery service, beauty salon, graphic designer (designed the flyer), nutritionist, luxury bedroom linens store and a museum gift shop. Together they underwrote the design, and production of an elegant, accordion-fold mini-poster, self-mailer series of perforated coupons, headlined "You deserve more self-indulgences in your life (don’t you?) . . . " When you opened up the mailer, the follow-up headline read: " . . . .and don’t the ones you love deserve them too?"
This flyer went on to list offers and eye-grabbing statistics. It was mailed and displayed in the outlets of all the participating businesses. The benefits? Each business gained credible access to prospective customers through vendors those people already used and trusted. Plus the cross-promoting partners could afford to put more into the design costs because, by working together, they dramatically reduced their individual promotion costs.
These are not isolated incidents. Cross-promotional marketing is a growing phenomena and one of the least-expensive, most efficient, least time-consuming and most-credible methods for marketing a business. Simply put, cross-promotional marketing is the act of strategically aligning businesses that target the same market but do not directly compete with each other. Cross-promoting provides an avenue for any business, from home-based, to corporate to franchise, to reach larger audiences of prospective clients for less money by pooling resources (time, money, ideas, on-site space for events or display space, contacts and more) to get more bang for their marketing buck.
Simply put, a cross-promotion is whenever two or more organizations join forces to better attract and/or serve their mutual market of customers. It is being enthusiastically adopted by all kinds and sizes of businesses because it is more cost-effective than traditional "solo" marketing, networking, advertising or other public relations efforts could be. Further, conducting cross-promotions gives business managers a satisfying, often fun, way to share expertise and to get to know other entrepreneurs in her community.
Why Cross-Promote?
Cross-promotional marketing offers several benefits because it helps you:
- Stand out in a crowded marketplace.
- Stabilize cash flow and you helped each other through your different cycles
of fast and slow business times.
- Generate more reasons for people to buy -- and buy more.
- Improve your support of community causes.
- Reach more prospects, more frequently, while spending the same or less on
promotion.
- Build credibility with your clients and your community.
- Have fun collaborating to your mutual benefit.
- Where do they live and/or do business?
- Where do they go or do before or after they see you?
- What is their profession or industry?
- How did they learn about you?
- What other businesses do they tend to use?
- Why do they use your service?
- Why have they chosen you over your competitors?
- What local publications do they read?
- What are their most frequently cited complaints or compliments about?
- When are they most likely to use your service?
- What else could they buy or otherwise use in conjunction to your service
that would make your service more pleasurable, convenient, cost-effective,
time-saving or otherwise beneficial for them?
- How could you adjust how you offer your service (with the support of partners) to make it more valued by your customers (hours, places available, ways to purchase, bundled with other purchases, etc.)?
- Serve the same kind of customers, but do not compete
- Have managers you already know so they will be more receptive to working
together
- Serve the kind of people you want to attract to your business
- May be able to help you during your slow times, because those are their busy
times, and vice versa
- Have a reputation that can lend prestige, credibility or other value to your
practice
- Have a customer base that is at least as large as yours
- Have some different resources than you (highly visible site, mailing list,
celebrity staffer, expertise, event space, one different niche market, etc.)
- Have products that could be bundled with your services, and vice versa
- Have compatible values
Website: www.sayitbetter.com
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