If you’re a small business owner, the concept of branding may be a somewhat nebulous thing. You might have your marketing strictly focused on your bottom line. Big companies care about this too, but their way of going about achieving their goals is a little different. They don’t expect to trace every sale back to the highway billboard sign you drive by every day, nor do they expect that the first time you see it you’ll make a purchase. The goal is to get their brand on your brain so that when you are in the market to buy what they’re selling, you’ll think of them.

What does this have to do with the small business owner? Last week I wrote a post about how to maximize your cost-per-click spending. While I am all for this highly traceable form of marketing, I am firmly against companies relying on it entirely. Cost-per-click marketing needs to be supplemented with branding efforts so that your company’s name can become familiar to your target demographic. This familiarity will bring your target demographic to shop with you rather than bothering to explore the web for your competitors. This type of marketing is what makes t-shirt companies like Palmer Cash and Noisebot premier destinations for t-shirt lovers. These two t-shirt companies have their names plastered all over pop culture websites like Perez Hilton and Cute Overload. Can consumers find better or cheaper t-shirts elsewhere? Probably. They choose these companies because they know them.

To maximize the effect of your branding campaign, be sure to really analyze your target customer demographic. Who buys from you and why? How can you reach these people in large numbers and in a cost effective manner? The more accurately you target your audience, the better your results will be.

A great way to research targeted branding opportunities is Google’s placement targeted ads. Two things I like to try are keyword suggestions and URL suggestions. Let’s say I want to run ads for a independent music record label. The first thing I might try is searching for the keyword phrase “indie rock.” This search will give me a list of URLs I can advertise on where this topic is discussed. I might also do a search for popular indie music website pitchforkmedia.com to see what URLs Google suggests that are similar to that site. My searches will yield a list of websites I can market my record label on that are visited by my target audience. Google accepts both impression-based bids and cost-per-click bids for these types of campaigns, so you can experiment to see what works for your needs.

If a branding campaign is too pricey for your budget, consider a co-branding venture with other companies that share your target customer demographic. A great example of this is ishopindie.com. This site enables small boutiques and artisans to all contribute to one large ad budget, and this budget advertises ishopindie.com. The companies contributing to the site’s budget all benefit from the marketing efforts because everyone who discovers ishopindie.com through its branding campaigns discovers the site’s member companies. When visitors to ishopindie.com have to buy birthday gifts or want to treat themselves, ishopindie.com comes to mind and the site’s member companies reap the benefits.

If you’re new to the world of cross-promotion, you may be wondering where to start. How do I select a partner? How do I come up with a cross-promotion plan? What should I keep in mind when making these decisions? We’ll tackle the basics of these issues today, so you have a clearer understanding of how to get started.

Using the search tools on Brand Torrent, you’ll be able to look for companies that are interested in cross-promotion. The best partner for you is going to have a similar customer demographic, but not necessarily a similar product line. Think about your typical customer. How old are they? Are they men or women? What are their interests? What sort of household income and education are they likely to have? Once you’ve answered these questions about your own customers, you want to find a business with customers who fit a similar description. If you sell contemporary high-end jewelry and your average customer is female, style-conscious, 25-40 years old and middle to high-income, you want to connect with a partner whose customers also fit this description.

The next thing you’ll want to keep in mind when selecting a cross-promotion partner is a fair exchange. If you’re interested in trading promotional mail order inserts and you only ship 5 orders in an average day, you shouldn’t partner with a company that ships 50 orders in an average day. Make sure that you can match whatever exposure you’re hoping to get from your cross-promotion partner in return.

Once you’ve selected a cross-promotion partner, it’s a good idea to talk about what your cross-promotional activities will encompass. If you’re going to mention each other’s websites in your customer newsletters, agree to dates on which the newsletters will be going out. Discuss the actual copy that will appear in the newsletters. To keep a productive and positive working relationship with your cross-promotion partner, it’s important to chart a specific plan of action for your cross-promotion activities, and talk about your expectations.

The next thing to consider with your cross-promotion plans is tracking your success. You’ll want some way to measure the results you’re getting from this form of marketing. You may want to attach a coupon code to your cross-promotion efforts so that you’ll know which customers made purchases through your cross-promotion campaign. You may want to provide a special URL on your site for your cross-promotion audience so you’ll know how much traffic your campaign brought in. There are a variety of ways to track the success of your marketing efforts, so you’ll want to come up with something that works for your own situation.

The final thing to keep in mind about cross-promotion is that it’s like any other type of marketing; the goal is not just to get immediate conversions, it’s also to gain exposure for your brand. Just because you didn’t see an overnight jump in sales based on your cross-promotion efforts doesn’t mean the efforts were wasted. Getting your brand in front of your target audience is the way to begin building a relationship with your customer base. These relationship-building exercises will bring you more business in the long-run than any short-term oriented marketing campaign that focuses only on immediate increases in conversions.