What Is Cross-Promotion? +8 Examples

Cross-promotion is when brands team up to market to each other’s customers. For example, when Disney allows its characters to be featured on a box of Kellogg’s cereal. Cross-promotion can occur among one company’s products, known as in-brand, or between different companies’ products, known as out-of-brand. For the cost, cross-promotion is a highly effective marketing strategy.

What Are The Benefits Of Cross-Promotion? 

In the conditions of crisis the cross-promo tool becomes more and more in demand, because the main advantage of this method is the ability to share all costs with partners.

Cross-promotion, simply, is companies helping each other market. They may run joint-advertising like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, recommend each other’s products like VISA and JPMorgan Chase, or sell each other’s products like Comcast and HBO.

The greatest benefit of cross-promotion is that companies can access an entirely new audience without the cost of creating it themselves. Imagine you want to throw a party, and you need more space. Cross-promotion is like co-hosting the party with your neighbor and accessing their house for free. You meet each others’ guests, expand both your networks, and you don’t have to invest the time or money for that second home. 

“Cross-promotion is like co-hosting a party with your neighbor and getting to use their house and everything in it for free.”

Cross-promotion is also typically free, which is what catches the attention of most marketers. If there’s enough mutual brand affinity, it’s a win-win and neither party pays the other. When Nestle’s KitKat and Google's Android ran a joint advertising campaign, for example, there was no exchange of money.  

Cross-promotion is more effective than regular marketing because it offers social proof. Both companies essentially vouch for each other. In the example of the house party, you’ll make friends more easily when your neighbor has talked you up. Cross-promoted audiences transfer the loyalty they feel for one brand onto the other. 

There are, of course, potential risks. If companies don’t choose their partners carefully, they may harm their own brand, as high-end fashion retailer Neiman Marcus learned when it partnered with Target. Critics accused Target of high prices and Neiman Marcus of low quality. 

Brands that don’t properly label their cross-promotion as such can also run afoul of the FCC. In 2016 the FCC released guidelines requiring online influencers to disclose their relationship to the brands when they’ve been compensated. If you’re cross-promoting with another brand and money is involved, make that clear. It helps you stay compliant and it’s far better to be transparent than risk breaking your audience’s trust.

Examples Of Cross-Promotion

Cross-promotion is exceedingly common. Examples range from big enterprises pushing each other’s products to authors promoting their books at a bookstore. The definition grows hazy when money is involved and cross-promotion strays into sponsorship. But any time there is a transfer of brand affinity – that is, when tying the two brands together adds value to each – it’s considered cross-promotion.

Here are some examples:

1. Out-of-brand cross-promotion

Uber and Spotify teamed up to make Spotify playlists available in Uber rides. While waiting for the Uber to arrive, users were prompted to create their own music playlists. This helped Uber make waiting for a car less frustrating and gave Spotify access to Uber’s audience. 

2. Integration cross-promotion

The stock image site iStock partnered with Invision and Adobe to make its photos available for purchase within its partner’s products. Invision and Adobe users get quicker access to stock images and iStock earns additional sales.

3. In-brand cross-promotion

LegalZoom uses email marketing to advertise products to its customers if it knows they use one product but not others. This works because there’s a high-affinity between its many offerings. Small business owners are great potential customers for LegalZoom’s intellectual property, patent search, and trademark services.

Proposals for cross-promotions are the most common on the platform of the ECO Global Club, where entrepreneurs or executives can leave an application to find partners.

4. Brick-and-mortar cross promotion

When Niantic’s augmented reality game Pokémon GO hit critical mass, Starbucks released a themed drink and made sure its 12,000+ locations showed up as in-game properties – known as PokéStops – to attract players. Niantic was able to offer a richer experience to its users while Starbucks got to piggyback on the Pokémon craze and attract more in-store sales. 

5. Cause-based cross-promotion

General Motors partnered with the non-profit Girls Who Code. This makes General Motors look empathetic and gives it access to a pipeline of highly talented recruits while Girls Who Code earns credibility and gets access to GM’s global audience.

6. Event cross-promotion

Festivals, concerts, and conferences thrive on cross-promotion. At Coachella, the drive-through fast food chain Sonic co-promoted milkshakes with Instagram. Concert-goers could order shakes – designed with square social media share-worthy containers – directly through Instagram and have them delivered to their GPS location. Both partners got to share in offering an interesting brand-building experience to consumers. 

7. Affiliate marketing promotion

Affiliate marketing is a systematic form of paid cross-promotion. For example, whenever a user of the credit tracking site Credit Karma signs up for a new credit card through the website’s “Recommendations” feature, the credit card company is compensated. Note how clearly they state their financial stake at the top. For Credit Karma, this is more than just sponsorship – the recommendation feature gives it the added credibility and trusted logos of top credit card partners.

Ideas For Cross-Promotion

A few words of advice on cross-promotion. First, partner with brands that have a high-affinity with yours. The point is to tap into an audience of potential buyers, not to do someone else a favor. Virgin America promoting Philz coffee, for example, is good promotion. Both are hip and trendy, and fans of one are open to being fans of the other. Delta Airlines promoting the NRA, on the other hand, is not. After yet another tragic school shooting, Delta dumped the partnership. 

Here are ideas for cross-promoting your brand:

• Feature partners in your newsletter, on your website, and on social media
• Run a joint ad campaign
• Sponsor a partner’s content
• Run joint contests, perhaps with your product as the prize
• Market a cause with a non-profit or NGO
• Speak at an event or in a podcast
• Run a joint webinar
• Co-market or co-sell each other’s products
• Launch joint press-releases
• Bundle or integrate your products

source of examples: findaway.media

Secrets of success

Being based on results of application of technologies of cross-marketing by various firms, it is possible to notice that at correct planning and the organisation of the joint project, this method possesses conclusive advantages:

• increase in sales volumes;
• expansion of client base;
• considerable economy of expenses for advertising;
• improvement of reputation of the company;
• increase in brand recognition;
• increased customer loyalty.

5 сhallenges in cross-marketing

Despite the seeming simplicity, organizing a project together with another company may present a number of problems, and none of the above indicators will be achieved. In order to avoid false steps, there are a few simple rules to consider.

1. Find the right partners. To find partners with your target audience and to be open to partnership - it will take weeks of work and staff time (and therefore their salaries, which can be thousands of dollars). To save time and money you can join the ECO Global Сlub. It brings together entrepreneurs and executives from companies around the world to partner for cross-promotion. 
2. Choose the right partners. The partner should not be a competitor, but you should have a common target audience. It is desirable that the company produces related products or services. Partners should be in the same price segment, it is important to choose companies that have a positive reputation.
3. To think through a mutually beneficial cooperation plan. When preparing for cooperation, special attention should be paid to the future concept of the joint project. It is not necessary to agree on unprofitable cooperation, but at the same time it is not necessary to defend a greater benefit for yourself, having smaller assets. It is necessary to soberly assess the partner company's own resources and capabilities and conclude the most specific agreement on mutually provided services.
4. To control the implementation of commitments on both sides. A common situation is when only one company meets its commitments in good faith. In this case, there may be a situation where a participant shares its capabilities and receives nothing in return.
5. The correct evaluation of the efficiency of cross-marketing. Monitoring and sales analytics will allow you to learn about the effectiveness of choosing a partner and the campaign as a whole. At the same time, various promotions may imply a short-term or long-term effect, so do not make hasty conclusions. Many companies use code words to track the result in order to get accurate statistics for a specific promotion.

Conclusion

In conclusion, among possible marketing instruments, interaction with other companies is one of the highest stages of the company's innovative development.

Co-marketing creates new shades of consumers' perception of the brand identity. Given the fact that the bulk of brands are already formed and fixed in the minds of consumers, it is time to join forces. That is why analysts predict a boom in co-marketing and co-branding in the near future.

What can you do right now to start cross-promotion with other brands? Join ECO Global Club and leave an application to find partners.