You are probably familiar with cross-promotion as a technique to repurpose content across social media channels while tailoring your message to better suit individual audiences and communities.
Most businesses share similar content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest, but few take the time to treat each channel—each community—with nuance. That means taking the time to vary tone, content formats, visuals, and posting time accordingly.
But that’s not all:
Cross-promotion is also about partnering with other brands to introduce yours to new markets.
It's a technique to use their social media channels for expanding your marketing efforts. Isn't it a win-win for both parties involved?
Benefits include:
- More exposure for less cost
- Increased brand awareness
- A broader community and potentially more qualified leads/sales
A primary example of cross-promotion is the 2013 partnership between KitKat and Google. Remember that chocolate bar with Android inviting us to win gift cards or Nexus Tablets?
Source: KitKat
As for examples on social media, let's take a cross-promotion ad of CoverGirl and LucasFilm. Recognizable Light Side and Dark Side makeup series has captured Star Wars fans and made CoverGirl shoppers excited about the movie.
Source: CoverGirl
Want to achieve the same with your brand?
Consider these 3 ideas of cross-promotion—also called co-branding or co-marketing—to put in place for your best SMM campaigns.
1. Join up for a joint ad campaign
Many brands practice joint ads to increase exposure, awareness, and loyalty. For example, a cross-promo offer allows both partners to exchange audiences and drive more traffic and sales to each other's websites.
That's how Lean Blend and Face It did it on Instagram:
Source: Lean Blend
Another example is Macy’s. Having shared the post of Make-A-Wish-Foundation on Facebook, they helped to gather over $2 million.
Make-A-Wish-Foundation thank them on Twitter:
Source: Make A Wish
A partnership with nonprofit organizations is a great way to add visibility and prove your values. But make sure you discuss the nature of the content with your partner before crafting and sharing your posts.
Your tone should apply to the respective market. For example, here's what Macy’s cross-promo looked when they partnered with Special Books by Special Kids:
Source: Macy's
There was no need for the nonprofit to create a new post to stay consistent with their social media marketing campaign. What they did is just shared Macy's post, creating a strong affiliation with the brand.
Cross-promotion works for external advertising too.
Here’s a little case study of this strategy in action:
The joint installation of Dasani and Sports Illustrated cost them least but resulted in most creativity and visual attraction for all potential clients around.
Source: Blogspot
This trick works online, either — create a relevant and witty collage to use as a visual representation of your cross-promo campaign.
On Facebook, you can maximize the relationships with your brand partner by shares and mentions. Just make sure it's suitable for both.
Case in point:
The eco-clothing design store mentions and shares a publication from a fashion blog:
Source: J'aime Bridal
Related niches, related followers, relevant content — a win-win collaboration by all means.
2. Collaborate on a contest
Come together with a complementary brand to conduct contests and gain user engagement.
Also, it's a proven way to grow your email list and attract new visitors to your brand. Instead of organizing a contest alone, cooperate with a partner to double the reach.
Just look at what happened to Cineplex and The Weather Network cross-promo:
Source: Cdn
Their #WeatherOrNot contest — when Cineplex offered free popcorn to those guessing if lightning stroke a 20-foot tall bag of popcorn — allowed The Weather Network to engage more people to the topic.
Another one took place between Akkie Dokkie and Nivea. Facebook users needed to answer a question to get a chance of winning a Nivea product.
Source: Akki Dokie
A contest should look natural for both brands. Also, promoters should fit together by niche, topic, and followers number.
How it looks:
You and your brand partner announce a joint contest on social media accounts. One of you controls organizational issues and gives awards. Participation conditions are typical — follow organizers, like and share the post, comment, answer a question, etc.
Your brand can also run joint contests with social media influencers to attract a broader audience and build brand loyalty. For example, @TruHairBeauty cooperated with Avi Y R on Instagram:
Source: Aviyr
Details to remember when organizing a joint contest:
- Clear guidelines for participants
- A beautiful image your followers will want to share
- A meaningful contest prize
- Fair giveaway
- A thankful note to all participants and congratulations to a winner
Organize or sponsor related events, videos, or podcasts with your brand partner. Benefits include awareness, a broader audience outreach, and leads generation.
NB! First, decide on marketing goal you want to achieve with a partnered marketing event. The more specific you are, the better (and right!) partner you will choose for positive results.
Specify the roles, collaborate on co-presentations, and take care of JOINT social media campaigns.
Also, you can mention each other as sponsors, participants, or partners on landing pages. For example, that's how Bid4Papers promote their essay writers for hire (partners) on the website:
Source: Bid 4 Papers
And that's what we (their writers) do in return:
Source: Lesley J. Vos
How to cross-promote events:
Organize a brunch with 2-3 non-competing businesses. Share a demo on social media, publish a short press release to promote it to followers, and invite local social media influencers to help you.
Use geo-marketing to outreach the related audience.
Consider Facebook live streams from your joint event and remember tagging speakers and brand partners.
Create a landing page for your event and promote it on social media, too.
Speakers can help with promotion. For example, digital marketing consultant Alex Tachalova shares the news on her speech at IBG Live:
Source: Alexandra Tachalova
Consider a consistent #hashtag for social media communication about the event.
And once your co-event is over, provide a detailed feedback session on social media for participants and your new followers to understand what this all is about.
Besides offline events, you can co-organize and co-promote projects like webinars. For example, Digital Olympus partner with many brands, inviting their representatives to speak at free online conferences.
They work great for cross-promotion on social media:
Source: Digital Olympus & AccuRanker
Another example is a webinar HubSpot hosted with Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick. Partnership with such notable influencers brings marketing benefits by all means:
Source: Hubspot
Guy shares HubSpot content:
Source: Guy Kawasaki
Peg blogs about the event and backlinks to HubSpot:
Source: Peg Fitzpatrick
And the audience is happy to see them together, liking, sharing, and therefore promoting the brand across the web.
Joint events like Twitter Chats is another way to drive your cross-promotion.
For example, here's how ManageFlitter teamed up with Dede Watson to invite their audiences to communication and both brands’ social promotion:
Source: Manage Flitter
Include a partner logo in the promo image and tag them in the post to drive awareness and attract visitors.
The above is a partnership with influential bloggers and vloggers, and you might want to consider it when promoting your content online.
Why?
Bloggers write detailed reviews of products or events, describe all pros and cons, and then share the info on their social media accounts.
Users trust bloggers rather than marketers or media, so the conversion is higher here.
Search engines better parse social media content from bloggers.
Bloggers can generate video content about your brand, which is more visually appealing for social media users.
Source: Roshtein
Opinion leaders can become your beneficial partners too.
Forums generate tons of content on products and services. Their members are not professional journalists but experts in their niches, discussing the pros and cons of brands they use or events they visit.
The difference between forum members and bloggers lies in a timespan of their publications.
For example, Reddit threads live for weeks and months, while posts from bloggers mainstream in the moment of publication.
After the joint event is over, measure the results.
- Check if you've reached the initial goals.
- In case of failure, think of whose fault it was — yours or your partner's?
- Examine the generated leads — their number and quality. Do you attract better leads when promoting alone? How many of them have become your customers after the cross-promotion campaign?
Once you decide on the cross-marketing strategy, 2 questions appear:
Where to look for partners and how to choose the right ones?
You can call or email colleagues. Or, invite brands to co-marketing when meeting their representatives at conferences. But remember: far from all contacts can turn into beneficial cooperation.
Before organizing a cross-promotion campaign on social media, check your potential partner by this list:
- Your products/services don't compete.
- You have related target audiences.
- Your product/services are in the same price segment.
- You complement each other.
- Your brand partner representatives are responsible, and it will be comfortable to work with them.
A flawed example of cross-promotion would be joint giveaways or ads of a fitness club and a yoga school. First, they have a different target audience, and second — their services compete against each other.
A good case of cooperation with the right partner is the campaign of VistaJet and Faberge:
Source: VistaJet and Faberge
VistaJet designed the tail of their flagship plane with an egg for Easter. And Faberge offered the collection of egg pendants to those on board.
The results: better sales for Faberge and more loyal customers for VistaJet. Luxury and art devotees, they caught it fancy and affordable to buy Faberge products on board.
Write a Co-Marketing Agreement
Once you've found a partner for cross-promotion on social media, write up an agreement. You need it to cover the basics and have a legal document in case of misunderstandings and miscommunications.
Set expectations and agree on the topic, beneficial to all partners and their audiences. Plan your cross-promotion campaign, determine the timeline, and assign tasks to all participants.
Besides, a co-marketing agreement should cover the timeframe for promotion, ownership of every content asset, social media channels to host them, and details on lead sharing.
Conclusion
Cross-promotion on social media allows you to grow a brand because this marketing format drives sales, opens new channels for generating profit, and contributes to client base updates.
It's a partnership that helps to save a marketing budget and yet get tons of benefits:
- Access to a broader audience
- More sales through client base growth
- Communication channels and resources of a partner
- Brand awareness growth
- Customers loyalty to the brand
- Extra PR
- Experience exchange with other players in your niche
- A chance to test alternative marketing tricks
A key factor of cross-promotion campaign success is your drive to provide surplus value to consumers. The more benefits you offer, the more effective return your co-marketing campaign will get.
Meet the author
Lesley Vos
Freelance Copywriter
With 7+ years in marketing, Lesley Vos specializes in sales copywriting and storytelling and regularly contributes to publications on business, digital marketing, and self-improvement. Feel free to check her works on Twitter.
