If your company’s marketing efforts need a little kick in the pants, then it may be time to revisit who you’re marketing to in the first place, along with determining where additional clients can be added. If your client list needs a little tweaking, then, by all means, tweak away.
One of the successful ways to go about getting more oomph for your marketing buck is seeing where co-op marketing opportunities exist.
With co-op marketing, you band together with another business in order to promote both your brands and products. Essentially, you’re killing two birds with one stone.
Co-op Marketing Opportunities
If you’re not up on the opportunities co-op marketing can deliver for you, take this example – A wedding photographer can work with a number of other businesses he or she meets through just one ceremony, i.e. area jewelers, bakeries, card designers, limo services, caterers, florists and more.
For the wedding photographer to gain additional business, they can put their name out there to the other above-mentioned businesses and vice-versa. This can be done via word-of-mouth, advertising or providing links on each other’s Web sites.
At the end of the day, the wedding photographer could end up expanding his or her photo opportunities to shooting cake displays for the local bakery, food trays for the area caterer and floral designs for the neighborhood flower shop.
By working with other businesses that do not compete with you, you increase your ability to gather new clients and bring added exposure to your company. In a day and age when companies are struggling to make ends meet, co-op marketing is a great way to cut down on advertising and marketing expenses as businesses help each other out.
Among the advantages to such a marketing approach are:
Use Social Media
In the event you are considering co-op marketing, by all means, take the necessary steps to promote the initiative.
One of the best ways to go about this is by utilizing social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to name two. Should you take this route, be sure both you and the other business/businesses involved share and tweet necessary information to increase the opportunities to be seen and heard. Along with sites like Facebook and Twitter, consider using your blog to promote your business and your partner’s too.
The bottom line is spreading the message electronically so as many people as possible can come across it.
If you are worried that co-op marketing is going to involve too much time and hassle, rest easy.
In many cases, expenses can be avoided, with the biggest expense being the time needed to market each other. While nothing is free in life, this is essentially free marketing and advertising for your business; why would you not want it.
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