4.6 Cross-Promotion
Last updated
Last updated
Cross Promotion are actions aimed at promoting products from different brands with similar audiences that are not in competition. It helps promote products and services, generate leads, boost sales, and establish brand awareness.
One of the most effective ways brands can expand their reach is Cross Promotion. An often overlooked approach when creating a marketing plan, Cross Promotion can help businesses reach new markets and position their products and services in front of interested buyers.
Companies, both big and small, are taking advantage of Cross Promotion to grow their brands. Through product bundles, limited editions, co-hosting podcasts and many other methods brands are leveraging partnerships to generate business success.
When brands cross promote they share each other’s networks and customer bases, exchange ideas while creating a reciprocal relationship that supports growth.
Advantages of Cross Promotion:
Lower advertising costs;
New sources of leads;
New markets;
Increased revenues.
You want to increase your sales and your brand awareness;
You want to find a partner who logically fits your brand. Your products/services should complement each other and make sense from the buyer's point of view;
Finally, it’s essential that you choose the right platform to reach your cross promoting goals. Instagram and Facebook can be great for cross promoting for growing brand awareness while email marketing can work well for generating new leads. It really depends on which platforms have worked well for you and who your target audience is..
PRO TIP: Remember, you are supporting another brand and putting your own reputation on the line. A potential partner should:
Match your marketing style;
Be reliable and have integrity;
Have quality products and services;
Have a solid reputation;
Not conflict with your brand values or mission.
The idea of social media Cross Promotion is to share your content, as widely and efficiently as possible, across multiple social networks. It enables businesses to access many consumers, some of whom are not yet customers. Mention your partner's business in all of the social media campaigns you run to drive sales. Competitions and discount codes on social media can also serve to promote sales for both companies. You can use different paths for different target groups:
a. Add Social Tabs to your Facebook page
The good thing about Facebook is that you can use a third-party app to add a tab for LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Users can click these tabs and see posts from other social channels, which is a way to promote those posts indirectly. Most apps provide an option to customize the thumbnail of the tab so that it matches your business branding. The following are some third-party tools for adding tabs of other social networks:
Instagram feed tab for Pages;
ShortStack;
Pinterest Page App by Woobox;
Pagemodo.
Tabs appear under your profile’s cover photo. The audience can expand it by clicking on the “More” drop-down arrow (situated on the right). Consider these tabs as navigation bars for your other social channels, allowing visitors to browse all the posts they have to offer.
b. Partner with a brand and cross promote on social media
Look for a brand that isn't directly competing with you. When you find such a brand, you can partner with them to cross promote each other’s social media posts to respective followers. When doing so, both you and your partner should craft the description for the post in a way that relates to the particular audience. When it comes to selecting a partner, you can go with:
Influencers (it's easy to partner with influencers if you know how to connect with them);
Local businesses (neighborhood businesses could work pretty well);
Businesses outside your niche / industry (these are unlikely to be your direct competitors);
Nonprofit organizations.
As for the content, you can create a post on behalf of your partner, post the content supplied by your partner, or co-produce a social media post.
c. Integrate email with social media
Have you ever wondered how much visibility you could achieve for your social media posts by combining these two channels together? It's one of the most strategic integration you'll ever make. That's because you probably use social media as a CRM tool to strengthen the connection with audiences before converting them. And you use email for the same purpose i.e. maintaining customer relationships and increasing customer retention. So with the same goals, these two channels integrate pretty well. The best way to promote your social media posts is to add them to your weekly newsletter. This enables the company’s email subscribers to check out the latest posts on social media and engage by participating, liking, sharing, retweeting, pinning, or leaving comments. Likewise, you can use social media to promote your email newsletter as well as grow your email list. To encourage people to subscribe, consider adding a newsletter sign up to your social media channels where possible. The two tactics will work well together as people first need to subscribe to the newsletter before they can read the content. So you can get new email contacts by targeting your social media audience.
d. Cross promote on your website/blog
While people who regularly visit your website / blog will be following you on social media, there will be new visitors coming via search engines now and then. You can easily promote your social media posts to these new visitors. The same can be done on social media for your website’s or blog’s content (you’re probably doing that already). Visitors who follow you on social media without coming across your website/blog will know what you post on your native digital properties. If your website/blog is hosted on WordPress, you can use a plugin like Publicize to automatically send your content to your social media channels. "Search Engine Journal" has a great list of advanced tips on how to promote a blog post on social media. For promoting social media posts on your website/blog, you can just embed the posts, or display the latest ones in the side bar, or in another part of your website.
Influencers are social media personalities who have built large audiences based on their content. Whether informative or entertaining, people enjoy the content they produce. You can leverage the trust they’ve built with their followers by having them promote your products. The key here is to make sure they are relevant and logical partners.
The term “influencer” is still relatively new, but it’s something most people are familiar with. And according to research, influencers have a significant amount of sway when it comes to promoting product purchases.
In fact, 58 percent of people say they’ve bought an item because of an influencer recommendation within the last six months. Further, “Nearly two out of every three consumers say that they trust influencer messages about a brand more than a company’s advertising about their own brand”, "Convince and Convert" explains.
So, a cross-promotion idea worth considering is collaborating with an influencer, specifically where they show off your product in a video. In exchange, you feature the video and give them a shout out to boost their personal brand.
Podcasts have become incredibly popular in recent years. People love the long form, unscripted style of podcasts that are basically down to earth conversations about interesting topics. Whether your brand has a podcast or not, you can still team up with another business and co-host their existing podcast or even start a new one. This could be about your shared industry or subculture. You could also be a guest on podcasts to help deliver content while also promoting your brand and even your own podcast.
Competitions and giveaways are excellent ways to boost engagement, spread awareness and create buzz. They’re twice more effective when you cross promote. Brands can run a contest together offering products that compliment each other or are in demand within the same demographic.
Offer discounts for individuals that buy both services together. This is likely to result in increased sales for both services because people are typically drawn to products and services on offer.
For example, if you advertise in a specific region with your LockTrip landing page, you can work together with the following businesses:
Restaurants;
Cafes;
Clubs;
Shuttle services;
Taxi companies and taxi drivers;
Beauty shops;
Golf courses;
Hairdressers;
Shops for travel goods, suitcases, etc.
Advertise at your partner’s place of business using signs and/or flyers with cross promotion. Customers are likely to be attracted by signs and advertisements that they see in the restaurants, cafes, shops, etc.
Cross Promotion can strengthen your digital product brand in many ways, with increased reach, lowered overall advertising costs and improved brand equity. It's up to you to create a promotion that will be memorable and relevant to your audience (and your partner's audience).
