Cross Promote Your Peer Group
Most of us have experienced the power of cross-promotion when we buy something online. If you buy a new phone you will most likely get a recommendation to buy a screen-guard or a fancy protective cover. Browsing a book of a particular author or genre will most likely result in recommendations for similar books.
This is being powered by Artificial Intelligence and the recommendations are so finely tuned that a large percentage of customers who would have gone away with a single item in their cart are coaxed into buying one or two more items. Sometimes the recommendation come from complimentary categories and sometimes from an altogether different category that have in the past resulted in greater conversions.
At E-Movers, when a customer moves home we know that they will require new curtains and hence we always cross-promote our curtains’ business. We also know that people may want to fix their leather furniture, so we also steer them towards our Leather Doctor website. This is quite natural, but I want to suggest a similar cross-promotion activity for products and services of colleagues in your peer network.
I can think of five different ways in which we can cross-promote our peer network
- Website: On your website check-out page or your contact-us thank you page, you may want to redirect to a page that lists the logos of companies in your peer network. Add a little detail for each logo to evoke action.
- Email Footer: In your email footer, you may selectively position logos of your friends. Care has to be taken that it does not wean away your prospects, hence do this only once you have converted the lead into a customer with a confirmed sale.
- Event: Organize an event to invite customers from each of the company from your peer group and showcase the products and service of each member. A celebrity speaker would be a good attraction for customers, or a Suhoor event during Ramadan.
- Promotional Offers: Encourage customers to checkout services and products through a promotional offer such as a discount or free sample.
- Share Database: Share your customer email database with each other to directly approach your customers with relevant offers. You must strictly agree on single-use to ensure that customers are not spammed.
Try it out and see if this works for you in your peer group, and let me have your comments.
