MBA1004 How to Run a Successful Cross Promotion

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 NBA show. Because it's not always business as usual and you need to be on top of your game. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's episode you will learn how to run a successful cross promotion. I actually really love doing cross promotions. We've been doing cross promotions in our business for a few years now and it's great when you cross promote your business with another business. You're basically exchanging audiences. You're saying to the other business, hey, I would love to introduce your business, your product to my audience and you do the same with, with your audience. With my product, obviously. Now in the cross promotions I do we usually do these without any commissions, meaning the only exchange here is, you know, exposure to a new audience. How well we do in terms of sales is really not our concern. We're not really worried about, you know, splitting profits or anything like that. This is really kind of like a partnership or temporary partnership to help each other's brands and businesses. In today's episode, I want to share with you the strategies I use to make sure a cross promotion is successful. I'm actually doing one right now. I'm in the process of doing one right now and I'll kind of walk you through what we're doing so you have some practical example of how to pull one off yourself. Alright, let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is brought to you by Long Tail Pro, a step by step system to help you quickly discover thousands of profitable, easy to rank keywords for almost any niche. Visit longtailpro.commba and use coupon code MBA for a free trial and 30% off your subscription forever. Again, that's longtailpro.commba use code MBA Alright, Cross Promotions, we're not talking about any affiliate commission here or not talking about any kickbacks. Again, we're just exchanging exposure to each other's audiences. Now these cross promotions can be via email, like email campaigns where I'm sending an email out to my list about my partner's business or product and they're doing the same. It could be a combination of email along with a webinar. And this is my favorite kind of cross promotion because it's so effective and I'll tell you why in a bit. But just as a preview, you know, you're both on the webinar, so both parties see a familiar face on both webinars. You could do a cross promotion in a physical space, like an event where, like, you can give somebody a sponsorship spot at your live event and they do the same for their event. So there's a lot of opportunities here to do this properly. But let's start with golden rule number one. When it comes to cross promotion, it has to be a great fit for both audiences. So my product has to be a great fit for my partner's audience. It's not gonna work. It's just not gonna work. If we're gonna push something down their throats, that's just not something they need or want. Same thing goes with their product or service. If I'm gonna present it to my audience, it has to be a great fit. So fit is so important. It has to be kind of like this is a solution to a problem that my audience has that I can't solve because it's not my area of expertise or it's just not what my product does. The next rule that I feel like makes a huge advantage is it helps to have a relationship with the person that you're cross promoting with. You don't have to be best friends, but you have to have some sort of relationship. Knew each other beforehand, had some conversations on email or Skype, met each other at a conference. It makes a difference when you have some rapport. This is especially apparent when you do your webinars. If you do a webinar also, you're just going to promote somebody a little bit more personally and endorse them when you know who they are, when you can vouch for them. The same goes for you and your cross promoting partner. They're going to give it a little bit more of an oomph when they know who you are and really just like and trust you. All the cross promotions I've done have been with people that I've known for some time before. We've done kind of business with each other with this cross promotion. All except one. And it just didn't work out. It just fell flat because it just became a mechanical thing where they just sent out a bunch of emails. And really there was no backstory or way for me to approach my audience with how I got to know this business or product. It was just a big mistake on my part that I did a few years back. Learned my lesson, never did it again. Now the point of the cross promotion is to broaden your scope, to broaden your audience and allow you to be exposed to new people. So one of the things that you have to keep in mind, knowing that that's the purpose, is that your partner's job is to introduce you to their audience. But your job is to sell your products and services. You have to do the salesmanship, you have to actually close the deal. You have to build that relationship with those people, build their trust and make the sale. The same goes with you. Your job is to introduce your audience to their product. I'm going to take it a step further. And your job is also to put your partner in the best light, to introduce them, to show them or show your audience that this person is legit. You have to talk them up because it's going to be hard for them to talk themselves up. That's the whole point of the cross promotion, where you get somebody else to say, hey, this person knows what they're talking about when it comes to these areas. You got to check out their product. I endorse it, and this is why I'm introducing it to you. So keeping in mind your jobs and your roles when you're in front of each other's audiences. Now, organization. One of the best ways to organize a cross promotion is to have a shared doc. Whether you're using Google Docs or Dropbox or whatever it is, having a shared doc allows both of you to be on the same page. And on the doc you can organize things like the date of each other's promotion, when emails will be sent out, and the date of the webinar. If you're going to be doing a webinar, I should say the dates of the webinars because you, you're both to do a webinar, one for your audience and one for theirs. And this is exactly what I'm actually doing right now with the cross promotion I'm doing. Right now. We have a shared doc with our partner. I plug in all the information that they need, like the email copy itself. I say the email, but we're talking about all the emails that get sent out prior to the promotion. Now, the way we've set up our cross promotion is that these emails lead up to an invite to a webinar. So it invites them to a webinar. They register for the webinar. Now, once they register for my webinar, I have their name and email address on my list because they've registered to my webinar, right? And from there, I can take it over. I can then send them follow up emails about the promotion. Obviously I'll mention the promotion on the webinar workshop itself, all that kind of stuff, and obviously your partner will do the same. But the shared doc really keeps things really organized. You can make comments and notes and allows you to really do this properly. Now, having said all that, it's really important to plan this in advance so you have enough time to do all this work and prep and do all the invites well before the promotion. So, for example, the webinar I'll be running for my partner's audience is next week, but we've been planning this for two months and our Google Doc with all the information, all the email copy, all the dates, all that stuff has been completed for four weeks. We need that lead time so we can, you know, send the emails in advance. We sent emails about the webinar a week ago and reminders and I had to set up the webinar itself and all that stuff. So allow yourself enough time to do this properly. So when you're approaching somebody, you don't have to say, hey, let's do a cross promotional. How about next week? Give them, you know, eight weeks to really get ready. Also in that time, you and your partner can learn more about each other's products. Because if you are doing a webinar, which I really highly encourage you to do, and I'll explain why in a minute you could talk up each other's products on the webinar for the other person so I can talk about my partner's product and say, hey, I used this product and I found it so easy to get started. Let's take a look at the demo right now. And then, you know, my cross promotion partner can go ahead and do a demo. All right, let's get into that whole thing. I talked about a webinar. So the reason why I love doing webinars with cross promotions is because you get to have more of an intimate way to grow trust very quickly. Now remember, these are people that don't know anything about you yet. All they have received are a few emails from your cross promotion partner about you and about the webinar. Right? So you're going to be giving a workshop, teaching them something great, something that they can use, something that's related to your products and services. So having a webinar is great because you get to build rapport through giving them great content. They also get to have exposure and contact with somebody they know and like and trust already. Your partner, your cross promotion partner. They're a co host on this webinar. They can ask questions, they can get feedback, they can go back and forth with you live and get their answers quickly. They get to see your product through your demo, even if it's a short demo, five minute demo firsthand. And they can get exposure to a special offer that you can present for the webinar only. There's so much you can cover in an hour and you can quickly build that trust with a webinar. Now, what's brilliant is that your cross promotion partner really doesn't need to do much on the webinar. As a co host, they're going to do all the work when they're running the webinar for your audience. But when they're co hosting your webinar where you're giving all the information, doing the special offer for their audience, they're there just to introduce you. And they're really going to be talking just for a few minutes. They may have to answer a couple questions from their audience about how maybe their product integrates or works with your product. But really it's just going to be a fun time for them, really. Not much preparation they have to do. You're doing all the teaching, you're doing all the selling, and then when it's your turn to be the co host and they present to your audience, you return the favor, talk them up, have a good time, answer questions that relate to you, and again, not really a lot of prep that you need now. Shameless Plug. If you want to do cross promotions with webinars, we make it super simple with our software, Webinar Ninja. I purposely made this easy because I do this all the time and you know, I build the software also for my own needs. So when you create a webinar, you just add a co host and you just add their name and email address and then they get an email saying, hey, you've been invited to be a co host on this webinar. Click this link to accept to be a co host and that's it. The co host is set up. When it's time for the webinar, they just click the link in the email and they become a co host and they're in the studio with you. Creating a webinar takes literally 10 seconds. But enough about Webinar Ninja. I just want to let you know that there's an option to make this easy for you. I still got more tips when it comes to cross promotion. If you don't do a webinar, let's say, for example, you're doing a cross promotion via email. My personal advice is to get them to cross promote something free, just to get them on your email list first. And then once you have them on your email list, you can cultivate a relationship via email and then make them an offer. The initial conversion is the critical one. You need to get them on your list so you can build a relationship. This is why I love the webinar concept. Because a webinar is free. Registering for a webinar is free. It's high value, it's live training. But for some reason you don't want to do a webinar. Then you have to find something else that's free, like giving a free course. But it has to be valuable enough for them to say, I'm going to click this link, give my name and email address. Once they're on your list. Now it's your job to cultivate them to become a customer. Now after that initial stage or even after the webinar, you're going to have people that don't buy, that's fine, but they're on your email list. So it's your job to build a great sequence of emails to nurture that person, to find out what they need, how you can serve them and maybe the right product fit for them. You might have different products, you might have different levels. That's it. Your cross promotion partner has done their job. They've introduced you to their audience. Your job now is to make them a customer. Guys, I got more on today's topic. But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. We all know a business is only as strong as its people. And every hire matters. I know this firsthand building our team at the $100 MBA and webinar ninja. If you don't have the right talent, you're going to face problems. So don't settle for posting and hoping the right person will find your role and apply. Instead, use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more than the world's largest professional network. It's also a better way to find great talent. Think about it. How often do you check job boards? Most people pretty occasionally. But there's a place where people go daily to grow professionally and that's LinkedIn. 70% of the US workforce is already on LinkedIn and 22 million professionals view and apply to jobs on LinkedIn every week in every industry. Just ask any of the hundreds of thousands of businesses who've posted to LinkedIn jobs over the past year. They rate LinkedIn jobs 4, 40% higher than job boards at delivering quality candidates. And it makes complete sense. People that are professional, that care about their careers, that are serious about their life and work, are going to LinkedIn every day. And LinkedIn is super powerful. It considers skills, experience, location and more to match and promote your job to potential candidates. So the bottom line is if you're not using LinkedIn to hire the people you need, you're missing out. Go to LinkedIn.com MBA and get $50 credit towards your first job post. That's LinkedIn.com MBA for $50 credit today. Terms and conditions apply. Now, even though that this is a mutually beneficial kind of agreement with your cross promotion partner, you want to do everything you can to make sure that your cross promotion partner is happy with the experience. This is really important. You want to make sure that, that when you present them to your audience that it's a win for them. Whether it's a great experience on the webinar or more leads or more sales, you want to try your best to make it successful as possible. And one of the best things to do is just to ask your cross promotion partner, what is success to you? Is it a number of leads, a number of sales, whatever it is, have a target, have a goal, Say I know that you know, I'm not going to make any promises, but I would like to know what, what you're looking for because I'd like to strive for them. Why is this important? Because if you really knock it out of the park for them and they do really well with this cross promotion, they're going to love you, right? They're going to really want to work with you in the future for new products, new services, new businesses. And it's better for them to feel like they owe you one than the other way around. You see what I'm saying now? Obviously you're not doing it. Just say it's like a tit for tat or like you owe me one. But it's always good to over deliver. So people feel gratitude and want to reciprocate. I've done cross promotions where people were so happy with the result, they asked me, hey, is there anything I can do to make sure your promotion with my audience is better? Even though it was over, but they were willing to send a couple extra emails to their list reminding them of the offer we had on the webinar or during the promotion so it could pay dividends. To really try to go above and beyond. My last piece of advice is have fun with this. Not only because it's good to have fun. But when you have fun, it shows and it equals success. If I look at the cross promotions I've done in the past, the ones that I had the most fun with, the one that I had a lot of great laughs with, my cross promotion partner on the webinar and really got into it, really and enjoyed myself, those are the ones where they're most successful for both parties. People like fun. People like great energy, positive energy. And when that's happening, when they see that you're enjoying yourself, that is a level of confidence. That's the level of success they want to be a part of. And fun is great. You have a choice not to have fun or have fun. You might as well have fun. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Don't forget to leave us an itunes rating and review. Everybody who leaves us an itunes rating interview enters our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Every Friday we do a draw to see who's going to win a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This month we're giving away ezcourse. It's a 30 day course on how to build an online course yourself and sell it in the real world in only 30 days. It's a $500 course. You can check it out at EasyCourse Co or we give it away for free to somebody who's left us a rating and review on itunes. And once you leave a review, you enter the draw until you win. So make sure you tune in on Fridays as well to listen if you won the free ride. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the great advantages of cross promotions is just building relationships with other people in your marketplace, people that are doing the same thing you're doing, building a business, providing a product or service to an audience. And it's good to be connected. It's good to have people's back and they have yours. It's good to be top of mind because they are connected to other people and they can recommend your products and services to them. And also just to have friends in the industry. This is one of the hidden benefits that I absolutely enjoyed and loved in the process of doing all these cross promotions. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in the next episode tomorrow Q and A Wednesday, where we answer a question from the audience, from a listener just like you. Tomorrow's question is how do I close my business without upsetting my customers. Great question. We'll be answering it in tomorrow's episode. I'll check you then take care. Of.