Cross-Marketing: Popularity and Advantages

Our advertising agency WGG believes that in marketing, as in life, cooperation and mutual support are the key to growth and improvement, in this case, to business growth. In a highly competitive market, having an ally can greatly simplify the task: together we overcome difficulties faster and find original ideas. In the entrepreneurial world, this phenomenon is known as "cross-marketing".

Cross-marketing involves finding points of intersection between companies and establishing a partnership. It is a kind of symbiosis where firms create joint advertising campaigns, promotions, and events, and share overlapping audiences, thereby increasing sales of related products or services.

Let's start by identifying the goals that can be achieved by incorporating cross-marketing into your promotion strategy:

Increasing Sales
Naturally, you want your business to be profitable. This method of promotion ensures growth in product sales by reaching a new, interested, and solvent audience.

Enhancing Competitiveness
Joint efforts increase the chance of creating unique offers that help stand out among other market participants and strengthen competitive positions.

Attracting Audience
Even though segments are inherently similar, they are not identical. Collaboration with other brands allows for the expansion of the target group and the attraction of new customers who previously did not receive your marketing messages.

Communication through New Channels
You will now definitely get your message across, as previously inaccessible channels for contacting the target audience will become available. Cross-marketing opens up social networks, email newsletters, push notifications, and other channels at your partner's disposal. Typically, it makes sense to reach an external audience through these channels only by collaborating with another brand or project.

Increasing Loyalty
Your brand will gain more trust because when a company already has a strong image and reputation, a loyal audience is inclined to choose its partner. And if the partners also have a strong name, stable position, and authority—it's a perfect match. However, be careful, as a poor reputation of a project can also cast a shadow on you.

Creating Long-Term Relationships
Collaboration opens up prospects for further development of agreements. It's even better when the partner is time-tested, as this guarantees the stability and productivity of joint activities.

The process of finding new partners can be quite challenging, as not all companies have established and implemented this culture: not every company has a dedicated manager responsible for partnership mechanisms, and sending emails to general addresses is often ineffective, making it difficult to contact a representative. Consequently, the final selection of potential partners is much smaller than the initial pool.

When working with clients, we pay extra attention to the preparatory stage, as a significant part of success depends on it. We need to package the proposal as a complete product: highlight the benefits of the partnership, provide an individual plan, ensure and describe sustainable marketing methods—all of which is presented in an accompanying presentation.

The first step is to define goals and convert them into measurable terms to make it easier to assess the effectiveness of future work. Then, we check if the selected target audience fits and matches the audience of the potential partner, as this is not always a stable indicator. After that, we select a specific segment that the promotional activities will target.

Our task is to simplify the partner selection algorithm by using our established communications with external brands. Reaching new partners will be much easier since we already have a ready database of contacts. Additionally, our specialists will help develop effective strategies for joint marketing campaigns, considering the specifics of your business and the requirements of your target audience.

If a suitable candidate is found, the remaining steps are straightforward: secure the partnership, define areas of responsibility, assess risks, and approve the format of the advertising campaign. We also handle these aspects.

There are many types of cross-marketing, and like marketing itself, they regularly adapt to market realities and trends, leading to the emergence of new forms. However, among the well-established ones, we can highlight:

Bundles
Offering packages where the functionality of existing products or services is seamlessly combined. For the buyer, such a bundle becomes a profitable purchase, as the set is simply cheaper than buying the parts separately.

Sampling
Providing free samples of products to interest users in regular purchases. This establishes trust, as customers can independently, without pressure, evaluate the quality and decide whether the purchase is worthwhile.

Special Offers
Encouraging mutual purchases through discounts or gifts to the partner company's clients. This creates a joint customer base and stimulates further interaction between the brands.

Cross-Promotion
Placing advertising materials on each other's platforms. This gives participants a new channel, expanding the audience for interaction.

Social Media Collaborations
Similar to cross-promotion, but in this case, efforts are directed towards creating joint unique content rather than reposts. This often takes the form of giveaways, where sponsor products are offered as prizes.

Joint Event Marketing
Organizing joint online and offline events where the expertise of both companies is confirmed, product advantages are communicated, and the complementary nature of the organizations is demonstrated. This creates a positive perception among attendees.

Loyalty Programs
Creating a loyalty program where customers can receive bonuses or discounts from both companies.

Co-Branding
Temporarily creating a new brand that reflects the identity, values, and individuality of both participating companies. Such products provide customers with a unique experience and increase interest in the products.

It's hard to imagine how many mechanisms can be applied to a brand that seems not very standard for promotion. We are talking about Minisklad—a network of individual storage warehouses for private clients.

"In our experience, it's better to start collaboration with a new partner with simple and quickly implementable formats. This allows for a preliminary assessment of how interested the partner's audience is in your brand, and vice versa. Otherwise, you might spend resources and end up with a lot of negative feedback. And that does happen.

However, if you are confident in the success of the partnership integration, you can combine several formats at once or implement joint special projects—this way, you have a chance to immediately capture the interested audience."

Why do we love cross-marketing so much and recommend using it whenever possible? Here are some of the benefits:

• Access to new markets
• Saving resources and sharing costs
• Improving customer interaction
• Supporting new products or services
• Increasing advertising effectiveness
• Expanding the product range

The benefits should be mutual for both partners, and processes need to be structured so that everyone wins. Otherwise, it’s hard to call it a "partnership" if anyone feels shortchanged. In seeking a "win-win" situation, you can fully utilize and expand your own capabilities.

At first glance, cross-marketing may seem like a complex tool, as involving multiple parties entails certain risks: difficulties in coordination and differences in approaches, views, and interests. However, if these challenges are overcome through joint efforts, you will ultimately achieve promising partnerships capable of addressing fundamental marketing issues.

Don’t be afraid to introduce something new and untested into your business. By doing so, you will gain invaluable experience and open up new horizons. Cross-marketing can become an optimal tool for you, heralding a new stage of development for your business.