I want to tell you guys a little story about cross-promotion. You may know what it is, but if you don’t, but I have a real-life experience teaching me the genius behind it!!

A few weeks ago, my family went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner….because who doesn’t love those waffle fries…and don’t get me started on the Chick-Fil-A sauce…am I right?

Oh sorry!! Focus, on cross-promotion, Nicole! 😉

Anyway, as I was saying, I while back my family and I went out to eat. And we ordered kids meals for the kids. The toy in the kid’s meal was not your average toy. It was a cute little tin and inside were the cutest little lunch notes to put in your child’s lunch boxes OR they can even put some in a friend’s lunch boxes! They were made of card stock and decorated all cutesy style. At the bottom of the stack of lunch notes was a $20 coupon for tinyprints! Genius, right? First Chik-Fil-A WOWS me with these adorable notes, then they give me a coupon to buy more cute stationery like those notes. Tinyprints is cross-promoting with Chick-Fil-A. This is truly amazing because I would never put fast food and stationery together, yet here we are.

What’s also important to note is the timing. We all know we’ll be hustling soon to buy Holiday Cards. So why not use that coupon to buy Halloween cards, Thanksgiving notes, Christmas cards, etc. I have no doubt that a TON (excuse me for the lack of data analysis) of Chick-Fil-A patrons will be utilizing those coupons, many of which probably would not have thought of buying Holiday cards from tinyprints. See how that works?

You may be thinking, what did Chick-Fil-A get out of the deal? Well, I’m pretty sure they got some deeply discounted lunch notes…ya know? And, tinyprints may be sending out their own Chick-Fil-A coupons to their customers.  Heck, maybe Chick-Fil-A is just trying to help another business out.  It happens!

So let’s put this in some perspective. Who can you partner with to help promote your business? For example, if you’re a fitness gym you could partner with a store that sells athletic wear. Maybe with a gym membership, they get a nice coupon to said athletic wear shop. And Vise Versa, with every purchase over X amount, the Athletic wear shop gives a coupon for a free day pass as the athletic gym?

Let’s take my business for example. As a commercial photographer, I could leave all my clients with a coupon to a local print company to use for their marketing materials. And likewise, the print company could throw in a coupon for my photography to all their small business clients.

This can be done with local and online businesses. The sky is the limit. Again, fast food has nothing in common with stationary, yet tiny prints and Chick-Fil-A hooked up.

So take a few minutes and brainstorm what other small business could you some cross-promotion work with? Then reach out to them and see what they say.

You know what I like to say…wonderful things happen when people work together!

Want to learn more marketing tips from the big brands…click HERE to find out what I learned from Fresca!!