What Is a Cross-Promotion & How to Find Cross-Promotion Partners?

I would say that for a business like Woodpecker to thrive in the internet era, it needs three things: a website that converts, testimonials from happy customers and a steady flow of targeted visitors. Out of the three, the most tricky to get is the last one.

You can improve website conversion rates by running A/B tests. You may encourage people to leave you testimonials with an email plan. But how to get a growing number of visitors who fit your target? In this post, I share one idea that can boost your website visits.

What is cross-promotion?

Cross-promotion is a form of a marketing partnership in which two (or more) companies promote one another or they do joint marketing activities that benefit them both.

To give you an example, let’s say you’re the owner of a small digital agency that specializes in creating landing pages. You can collaborate with a design tool like Canva and create a content piece, for example, a webinar on using Canva for building landing pages that stand out from the crowd.

Another example? Suppose you’re the owner of a platform that wants to grow by 15% by the end of the year. You need more users to do that. How to get them? Partner up with another platform and collaborate together. Reach their audience and get new users, interested in your platform.

You can get the same results with cross-promotion as those companies above. You may extend your reach, target new audiences, and get more leads. Let’s see how.

How to find partner companies for cross-promotion?

It’s all simple in theory, yet there are a lot of things to think about when looking for partner companies for cross-promotion. Let’s look at our blog.

On Woodpecker blog, we’re writing about generating sales & marketing opportunities by reaching the right people with emails and follow-ups. That’s a narrow niche. It targets teams that generate sales and marketing leads.

What companies can we reach out to in terms of partnerships? We can cross-promote with contact finding tools, other sales tools, and CRMs because our target audience probably uses those tools alongside Woodpecker.

What we don’t write about is, for example, auditing software, although our audience runs audits from time to time. Why? Because it’s neither in the sales nor is it in the marketing category. Therefore, we don’t collaborate with those tools.

How can you understand it? When you look for partners, answer those questions:

• Who do I want to attract with this activity?
• What do I want to achieve with that collaboration?
• What kind of value can I provide to the new audience?
• What kind of value can my partner provide to my audience?

Those are all important questions. Once you answer them, you’ll get a better picture of who you can get in touch with and how to persuade them to cross-promote with you.

Where to prospect for cross-promotion partner companies?

• social media listening tools (Brand 24, Agora Pulse)
• content analyzers (Ahrefs, Buzz Sumo, etc.)

As soon as you have a general idea of who you want to get in touch with, look for sites, blogs, social media spaces where you can find businesses that match your criteria using the tools above.

In my case, it would go like this.

Woodpecker supports knowledge-driven email outreach. That’s why I might partner up with a video course maker who teaches people to write emails. I would offer a discount for the viewers and promote their course in exchange. So I use Ahrefs to find a tool like that, which positions well in Google.

Another example is partnering up with a tool that can be used alongside Woodpecker. We have a discount for anyone who wants to use PieSync. I would use a social media listening tool to see what people are talking about.

I’m sure you can come up with a similar offer and you will find great cross-promotion partners via Google or social media. Get their email address and shoot them an email. Let’s see how.

How to reach out to potential cross-promotion partner companies?

The majority of cross-promotion offers that we get come via email. Most offers that come from us are sent via email too. You can also use email to get in touch with those you want to collaborate with. Email works great in that regard because (a) most brands use email for business relations and (b) you need to follow up to get what you want, and you can automate follow-up messages with the right software.

An email can be the first meaningful interaction that your potential cross-promotion partners have with your brand. You need to introduce yourself and propose value to the recipients. After all, we’re doing cross-promotion and that means that a partner should get something in return.

The opening email can sound like this:

Hi {{First_Name}},

I’ve followed your course about {{Snippet 1}}. You did a ton of great work, especially the way you handled {{Snippet 2}}. I would love to partner up with you on a future project, because my audience would really appreciate your level of expertise. Would you be open to that?

Or like this:

Hi {{First_Name}},

I’ve seen you’re going to speak on {{Conference}}. I’m going too and I’ll be speaking as well. I thought that we could help each other promote our appearences by doing a joint promotion before the event. Would you be open to that?

I recommend you write a series of follow-up emails, because people rarely respond to the first email. And in the follow-up message, you can go in-depth on what you have in mind. Follow-ups should bring value. For that, you need a cold emailing software like Woodpecker.

Read How my emails and follow-ups will be sent by Woodpecker? >>

Let’s find cross-promotion partnerships

Cross-promotion is a great way to reach new audiences, introduce our product or service to new targets, and test our business plan. Why not giving it a try? Or maybe you have already tried it? I would love to hear how it went, and whether you achieved your goals with it. Don’t hesitate to share it in the comments below.