When you are running a business, you certainly can’t rely on the same-old methods of expanding your reach and driving growth. Sometimes, you just need to add a bit of spark to it. Or, to put it differently, you have to use numerous different strategies and tactics to your advantage in order to make things happen for your company. This means that marketers and business owners have to constantly work towards improving their marketing games.
Relying on just one strategy and never making any changes or adding any innovative solutions to the mix is not a good idea. You have to be creative. You have to work harder. And, you have to use plenty of different strategies in order to grow.
Have you, for example, heard of something known as cross-category marketing? If that concept is completely new to you, taking the time to understand it could be the best thing to do. Or, better yet, this could become a part of your next marketing campaign, if you just understand how it works and how to do it the right way.
Learn a bit more about this concept: https://ceopedia.org/index.php/Cross_marketing
So, clearly, what we are going to focus on today is helping you understand the actual concept of cross-category marketing, defining it, explaining how it works, and then expanding a bit on why you should use it to your advantage. If the concept is completely new to you, reading on will shed some light on it. And, of course, you’ll get a clearer idea on how beneficial it can be for your specific business.
What Is Cross-Category Marketing?
Let us get started, then. And, with the most basic question of them all. What exactly is cross-category marketing in the first place? As you will see, it is a quite interesting idea that businesses can use in order to promote their products and services, and that can be rather advantageous in terms of attracting new clients and generally expanding the audience.
Also known as cross-industry marketing, or even co-branding, this is basically the process of collaboration between two different brands, with the aim of promoting each other to new audiences. Of course, the trick is in collaborating with brands that are selling different products in different categories and that are, therefore, not your competitors. The main goal here is to leverage each other’s customer bases, as well as brand strengths and marketing channels in order to attract new people, and drive business growth for both parties. Through this particular strategy, two different businesses will achieve mutual benefits.
How Does It Work?
So, the concept really wasn’t that difficult to understand, was it? And, now that you know what it entails, the idea of such collaboration probably makes perfect sense to you. Yet, you are still interested in learning more about why you should use it to your advantage, as well as how it all works in the first place. Before we get to the question of why you may want to use it, thus, let us cover the topic of how it actually works.
Basically, the first step in this process consists of identifying potential partners. That is, finding companies that could benefit from cooperating with you and that you could benefit from cooperating with, because the goal is in achieving mutual benefits. You may want to look for those firms the products and services of which complement your own. For instance, a fitness center could form a great partnership with a company selling healthy food.
Once you have identified your potential partners, you should approach them and make an agreement with one of them. After you figure out that you are on the same page and that you share mutual interests, you will make that agreement and start working towards achieving the goals. The first thing to do then is develop joint marketing campaigns, aimed at leveraging each other’s strengths and assets.
Naturally, you should also leverage each other’s channels, thus succeeding in both businesses reaching wider audiences. And, of course, you should consider offering joint promotions, discounts, as well as any kinds of special offers so as to incentivize the customers to take action. This specific step will lead to increasing engagement, as well as boosting sales.
Why Use Those Strategies to Your Advantage?
The above should have given you a clearer ideaon how all of this actually works. So, the only thing you want to do right now is figure out why using those cross category marketing strategies to your advantage is actually a good idea in the first place. That is the last step to help you decide if you want to invest your time, effort and money into a cross-industry cooperation with another brand, aiming at growing your businesses together.
First things first, this type of marketing is helpful because it allows you to reach new audiences. That is, the audiences that your brand may not have been exposed to so far. So, expanding your reach is one of the main reasons why you should think of investing in such collaboration.
Then, there is also the fact that you will drive brand awareness and increase your visibility. By leveraging the customer bases and the marketing channels of the brand you partner up with, you will increase your brand exposure and let more people know you exist. Similarly to the above, this particular effect of cross-category marketing can result in you gaining more customers, which is definitely one of your main goals.
Furthermore, by collaborating with other reputable brands, you can achieve the goal of building credibility and establishing yourself as a trusted and reliable brand on the specific market. If you’re aiming at positioning yourself as authority in a certain industry, using this strategy can be of great help, allowing you to build your reputation and instill trust in the audiences that you are reaching. That is, without a doubt, another great advantage and another important reason why you should invest in cross-category marketing.
