One great way to promote your business is by doing good for others. You can donate a percentage of profits from sales to your local animal rescue or soup kitchen or a larger organization like Amnesty International or the Red Cross. Raising funds for a charity gives people an extra push to buy from you, since they’ll be able to feel good about their purchase. Your charitable efforts also gives bloggers, local papers and other writers reason to talk up your business.

You can stretch the power of your charitable work by enlisting the aid of partner businesses. Form a coalition of businesses selling products complementary to your own and agree to donate a share of your profits to the same charity. Next, agree to have a promotional page on your websites (or a promotional display if you’re a brick-and-mortar business) talking about the fund raising efforts and mentioning the participating companies. This cross-promotion effort gives consumers a listing of companies they can patronize and help raise funds for the charity.

To drum up extra attention for your charitable promotion, consider sending out a press release about the fund raiser. If it’s feasible, you might even want to do some extra advertising promoting the fund raiser. Brick-and-mortars might do this in the local paper; online businesses can promote their efforts on the web. For example, if you’re a group of online companies raising funds for an animal rescue, it might make sense to run an ad on cuteoverload.com (a popular animal lover blog) letting their audience know about your efforts for a cause they care about.

As with any promotional campaign, plan to track your success in advance. Online shops can create a special landing page for visitors who’ve come to check out the fund raising promotion. Brick-and-mortars might go with a lower tech option, such as asking customers how they heard about the business.