Working with what you’d call a “preferred partner” is a great way to drastically increase your brand’s exposure for no cost. It’s a form of cross-promotion companies can engage in with a carefully selected partner or partners. An easy way to implement this type of partnership is through an exclusive link exchange. This means you and your partner agree to provide prominent placement on each other’s websites, promoting one another’s businesses.

This concept is similar to a link exchange. The difference is that while some companies have link exchange pages loaded with sites, a preferred partner link is more integrated into your overall site, and your partner does the same for you.

You’ll commonly see this kind of advertising on sites owned by companies with more than one website. For example, the Palmer Cash website gives prominent placement to American Hips, an underwear company owned by the t-shirt label. While it certainly makes sense to promote your own businesses this way, the same type of promotion can be used by companies who share a customer demographic, and sell non-competing products. For example, if you sell bicycles but do not sell helmets or bike jerseys, you could choose a preferred partner company that does sell these things. Your site navigation could include a link to your partner’s site encouraging customers to get bike accessories from your partner. Your partner, who sells accessories but not bikes, could provide you with a link incorporated into their site navigation. The benefit here is that you are both marketing to bike enthusiasts, and this cross-promotion activity makes it easier for you to share customers.

Two of the biggest considerations for selecting a preferred partner are:
1. Do you and your preferred partner have a similar audience? Do you both have customers interested in what the other is selling. The more similarly appealing your product lines are to a customer demographic, the better chance you have of this type of marketing working for you.

2. Do you have a similarly sized audience? A company getting 1000 website visitors each day should not choose a preferred partner getting 100 visitors daily. It’s important to form a relationship that’s going to be mutually and equally beneficial.

This type of marketing can be great, but tread with caution before committing to a long term partnership. When developing this type of a relationship with a partner consider a trial period before you commit to anything ongoing. We recommend you agree to exchange links for 30 days at first, and then evaluate the success of the match up before moving forward.

Some other ways preferred partners can promote each other:
- Print ads
- Email newsletters
- Sweepstakes
- Printed promotional materials
- Word of mouth (This works especially well for service based companies,For e because they frequently talk to their customers. For example, if you provide web design services but not marketing, partnering with an online marketer and mentioning each other to your clients is a great way to build your business.)

The concept of working with a cross-promotion partner still seems to be fairly below the radar with a lot of business owners. The small biz and marketing blogs I read usually talk about search marketing, SEO and social media. These are all good things to talk about too but I am always pleased to see cross-promotion getting some buzz too. Today Dosh Dosh posted about creating strategic alliances (AKA cross-promoting or co-branding). You can view the post here.

Today for cross-promotion inspiration I’d like to share Mesh-Box It’s a blog dedicated entirely to co-branding and cross-promotion examples. Although they pretty much just talk about partnerships between large companies there are plenty of ideas here for the small business owner to borrow.

The small business owner is strapped not only for cash but also for time. Running your small business often forces you to wear a lot of hats: sales person, customer service department,accountant, etc. It’s easy for marketing to take a back seat when it comes to your time. There are only so many hours in the day. The beauty of cross-promotion is not only that it saves you money and hooks you up with customers you might not reach otherwise, it also saves you time.

When you plan your cross-promotion activities with a partner think about all the steps involved with making the campaign a success for everyone involved. Maybe you’re co-sponsoring a sweepstakes with another company. While it’s fine for each of you to just tell your own customers about this promotion, you’ll both benefit a lot more if you and your partner make an effort to tell the whole world.

Now, telling the world is quite an undertaking so your first order of business is to decide exactly how you’re going to get the word out about your campaign. Are there bloggers who might write about this sweepstakes? Are there places you could advertise the sweepstakes, either in print or online? Can you use social media to spread the word about your sweepstakes (message boards, Myspace, StumbleUpon, etc)? Identify all the ways you can get your campaign exposed to potential customers and then make a list of who is doing what.

Maybe your partner has stellar banner design skills and can design ads to promote the sweepstakes. Maybe you’ve got in an with a popular blogger who might mention your campaign to her readers. Maybe you’ve just got a really good media list you regularly correspond with when you’ve got a promotion going on. The idea is to pool your resources, time and skills with another company to get your mutually beneficial campaign seen by your audience.

Whatever you and your marketing partner decide you’re bringing to the table make sure you clearly define roles and responsibilities and stick to them. Establish time lines for activities to take place. If you’ve promised to tell 100 bloggers about your promotion make sure you follow through and get it done by the date you promised to do it. When it comes to cross-promotion you and your partner or partners are counting on one another to ensure mutual success. Failure to deliver on promises you make hurts your campaign, your business, your partner(s) and your credibility — not to mention your karma.

It’s also important to make sure you and your partner or partners have evenly distributed the tasks involved with promoting your campaign. There’s no better excuse for slacking off than feeling like you’ve been given an unfair share of the work to do.

Lastly, make sure you and your cross-promotion partners check in when tasks are completed. Let each other know when that ad arrives at the magazine for press or that blog editor promises you a write up. Keeping each other on track means keeping your campaign on track and enjoying terrific results.

Ever notice how when you shop on a site like Amazon and you express interest in one book, Amazon suggests you buy a similar book along with it and offers you a price break for doing so? This “better together” type of promotion can be leveraged by two or more companies selling complementary products.

How it works:

1. Find a cross-promotion partner you want to work with. If you sell bicycles, partner up with a company that sells helmets or cycling jerseys. If you sell footwear, maybe you’d want to work with a company that sells handbags.

2. Provide your cross-promotion partner a coupon code for your business and have your partner provide one to you.

3. When your customers check out, offer them a coupon for your partner’s business and have your partner do the same for their customers.

As always, we recommend that you use a unique coupon code for each cross-promotion campaign so that you can track the success of your efforts. Even if you don’t see an immediate boost in sales from your cross-promotion efforts, this type of marketing still gets your company name in front of potential customers who may come to you in the future, coupon in hand or not.