subject: To Help Promote Your New Small Business, Work with a Complementary Business [print this page] Of course as a small business you have competition, and you always need to keep a wary eye on them. But, what many small businesses fail to realize is that for every competitor there is out there there may also a potential ally.
These are businesses that are trying to target the same customer group you are, but with a different, perhaps complementary product, for example, you sell women's ready-to-wear, they sell womens shoes. You would be smart to identify these folks and explore cross-promotion possibilities with them, like:
You hold a joint fashion show, in which you feature your women's ready-to-wear and they feature their shoes and accessories.
You simply exchange mailing lists; you send a promotion to their customers, they send one to yours.
Maybe you simply include an insert about your respective products in each other's customer newsletters.
You have cross-links on your respective websites.
You mention one another in your social networking site or blog posts.
You run joint ads in the newspaper or on TV.
Don't do joint promotional projects with a complementary business to save money, rather spend the same amount you would have if you'd done it yourself, but instead be looking for a greater overall impact from your investment by combining it with theirs (i.e, the newspaper ad is bigger than it would have been for you alone).
What you are looking for is a synergistic effect in your promotions, in which 1 (you) plus 1 (your ally) equals 3 or even 4 in terms of exposure to potential new customers, yet with minimal cost to both.
To Help Promote Your New Small Business, Work with a Complementary Business
