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Expanding Your Business in a Recession: Cross Marketing

Guest post by: Lonny Dunn

Article Overview: Networking is smart marketing in a recession because it is largely free. Cross Marketing tactics are particularly important, as synergies are exploited when we cross market. By multiplying Networking with Cross Marketing, we can develop marketing strategies that not only expand our business through a recession, but beyond.

Expanding Your Business in a Recession: Cross Marketing

Cross Marketing is Smart Marketing Crossmarketing during a recession is smart marketing. Economies of scale, low

cost marketing campaigns, high ROI, taking advantage of Social Media trends all spell

the way for any Entrepreneur to enjoy effective, efficient, results oriented connections.

Cross Marketing Within Your Network

We all have a natural network in our suppliers and venders. This chain of essential

parts want you to succeed. Your suppliers will love nothing more than for you to order

more products or services from them; they could not be more pleased if you became immensely

wealthy with their help and their referrals. It is absolutely essential to your network

building that you put them first on your list, and begin today, right now including them in

your network and cross marketing strategies. Your plan should include reaching out to each

one personally, explaining your overall Marketin Plan, and Network Building Plan, how it

effects them, what it means to their bottom line, and what it can mean in the future if

your suppliers and venders assist you in developing a Professional Network System.

Cross Marketing with your Family and Freinds

Now, I am not suggesting you get your mom to purchase the latest internet miracle.

I am suggesting however, that you give your family cards, fliers, blank sign up forms

and other materials and always have them handy, so they can sign up people for whatever it

is you sell or create. Your family and friends will help you if for no other reason, they will

see you are serious about your overall Marketing Plan, and Professional Networking Plan.

People DO want to be involved in sucessful ventures, and you want to be thinking of ways

to leverage the good will and enthusiasm of people who love you, and want you to succeed.

Involve past co workers, pastors, counselors, there are numerous lists I could provide for you to

brainstorm where your network should carry you. Neighborhood grocers, bulletin boards,

groups like HOAs, Social Groups like the Rotary Club, are all good sources for fliers,

sign up sheets and SMS list building. Blank SMS sign up sheets are essential to any

Cross Marketing Campaign, and you should have them handy all around you until they are

getting to be annoying. Then you probably don't have enough.

Cross Marketing to Your Clients and Customers

1. POS Upselling Webforms. Some people feel they need to develop a list of clients

and customers, and they should; but there are ways to cross market to clients at the

point of sale. One effective method is the merged field "one more purchase"

technique when the visitor fills out a webform. A pop up page appears and asks

"You were intrested in Free Article on How to Grow Your Business in A

Recsession. Would you also be interested in a Free Powerpoint Presentation on How to Grow Your

Professional Network?"

We implement this with all our client's business, and they are simply

amazed at the power of Cross Marketing even before the client has recieved their first free

eMail opt in! Moreover, this technique is done electronically, and the advantages are

tremendous. Remember the old addage, it costs ten times less to sell to someone

who is already in front of you than it does to go out and get a new customer.

2. Another, more personal technique that I use with busy CEOs, corporate attorneys, doctors,

and other very busy professionals is more hands on, and extremely effective. Maybe it is because

this is what I do...Maybe it is the way I take them into my confidence, by I have developed the

fine art of HELPING OTHERS, caring, and Text Tagged Article', 'Click', 'networking']);"> networking all into one easy sentemce that works about

100% of the time. "Do you Tweet? No? Well let me show you how..." That's it, I have a new

person in my network, I am planting seeds, I am teaching Text Tagged Article', 'Click', 'efficiency']);"> efficiency techniques, and I am

establishing myself as the expert all in a three word sentence. Feel free to take that

one to the bank, it works. Develop a conversation starter that works for you.

3. A unique direct marketing approach is Cross Marketing by Text and eMail. We have had

excellent results with eMail combined coincidentally with text optimizing results. Citing some

famous examples, the Obama/Oprah Rally was just one big sign up campaign, a cross marketing

bananza on steroids. The object of the event was not to be a staged, rehearsed political

rally, since not everyone could get in. But attendees testified to being asked no fewer

than five times in three hours to fill out a form with their eMail address and BEST TEXT

PHONE NUMBER and to authorize the parties to contact them in the future, which of course

Obama and Oprah did. Results were a yeild of 500% usable optin database from attendees

to sign up. Meaning people who did not attend signed up.

A corporate example of this technique was demonstrated by Alcoa.

In Regional Offices, where Text Message was sent the day of an appointment, and eMail the

day before, the Alcoa offices experienced 64% higher appointment "sit" and show rates.

Each Office generated over 250,000 dollars on increased revenue during the cross

marketing campaign. No additional time was spent to market to more clients or expand

the numbers, the increase in ratios came from what the Regional Offices were already

doing! Use Text and eMail in tandem increase ROI today.

4. Cross Marketing synergies exist in Social Media, and indeed, some marketers would argue

that Social Media is the bedrock, the essence and purest example of Cross Marketing.

Learning how these synergies interract is not so simple, and that is why Entrepreneurs

need to be familiar with the Big 3, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter personally before

implementing any Social Media Marketing Campaign, writing a Marketing Plan, or

implementing a Cross Marketing Strategy. A typical use of driving traffic using

social media would be to Tweet:Send YourClient toFacebookto Gettheir Free Video and

look for other cool Freebies. ( TinyURL )

5. The one thing any busy entrepeneur should do is register their business name

free on Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter, before the competitor or copycats do that

very thing. Do not be annoyed if your first choice is not avaialbe, just get

registered, and soon your efforts will clearly prove the difference between

the original and copycat.

After becoming familiar with the Big Three, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, it

becomes evident there are many Text Tagged Article', 'Click', 'efficiency']);"> efficiency tools available. For instance, when

you Tweet, you can have the Tweets broadcast over your LinkedIn Network, and vice

versa. You can also use one to feed the other, many people use Twitter to reach

a huge audience, and invite them become friends on FaceBook. I personally do

not market that much on Facebook, but have clients who are more comfortable there,

and it is evident.

6. One particularly newer, popular idea is to Cross Market by creating Social

Media specific landing pages. This identifies the visitor with the larger brand, IE

when the end user visits from Twitter, they land on a page that has the Twitter Logo,

they imprint automatically with the larger identifier, and research has already

proven that there is a better overall end user experience. Click through and response

rates are higher when specific Landing Pages are created in cross marketing campaings,

even though the ultimate goal may be to encourage the end user toward one particular

social media site, along the way they identify with each site's brand.

7. Another particularly important cross marketing strategy that just makes good

sense is to implement "Text" only or "Plain Text" versions of your eMail or landing

pages that link the end user to mobile phone capable ready text versions. 38% of

us read our eMail by Text Tagged Article', 'Click', 'Mobile']);"> Mobile Phone, and about the same number of telephone subscribers

in the United States have web enabled phones. We lose by default to the competitor who

provides a simple, free cross marketing strategy, benefits the consumer, and make

the extra effort to cater to the mobile end users. Look for my other article here

on Even Carmicheal on how anyone can implement inexpensive mobile strategies.

Nobody wants to lose business by default. Establishing solid, effective,

efficient marketing strategies is indeed smart marketing during a recession. The

benefits do outweigh the costs. Generally there are step saving measures, high

ROI, good will, CRM and branding benefits from Cross Marketing which go beyond

what we can do individually or in person; and beyond the transaction itself.

Using Cross Marketing Strategies to build your Professional Network cross markets

the network members as well, driving a viral effect for those involved.

I have seen networks start, thrive for a time, fizzle out without Text Tagged Article', 'Click', 'efficiency']);"> efficiency standards,

and sour the Entrepeneur on building networks.Nothing can be more dangerous in

a recession. With reduced work loads, recievables down in many professions, and

no ready access to credit, consumers are wary of expensive trips to professionals

offices, let alone investments in risky "ideas".

In order to develop an army of daily, regular, consistent referral generating professionals, the Entrepreneur

must be ready to construct, implement and suceed at both Professional Networking

and Cross Marketing in order to achieve her/his goals.

The companion article about writing a Marketing Proposal (Plan) is available on this site.

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  Small Business Marketing: 8 Cross-Selling Tips to Increase Your Sales
  Escape Recession with Online Marketing - An Easy Way Out
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  Is the Recession Really a State of Mind?
  Why Cross-linking Your Website is a Great Idea
  Immunizing Your Business Against Recession By Using Marketing Tools

Article Tags: Cross Marketing, Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Productivity, Recession Tactis



Related Forum Posts
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="jacksonp":8b8rg2nw][quote="terriz":8b8rg2nw] re: Cross Linking, how do you define that? I thought linking to other pages on your website (that are related) was a good thing...maybe that's not what you meant.[/quote:8b8rg2nw] So my friend,Cross Linking is simply means the process of linking between two sites,Whether or not they are owned by the same person, cross linking is the process on which the Internet is built.It allows users to reference sites with content similar to that which they are already viewing, and may be of further interest to them.[/quote:8b8rg2nw] Thanks for clarifying!
Re: Fill in the blank: The best decision I ever made with my bus - Focusing on my Internet Marketing Business
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="jacksonp":1y3g8bot]that is quite true.We all should avoid these kind of techniques.I am here sharing few more points which we should take in mind..As an experienced person of SEO I want to share here some facts which should be avoided by us.I hope that these will help some of the newcomers a lot.. Choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page Using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users Using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages Stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags Writing description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page Multiple domains Multiple identical sites Cross Linking[/quote:1y3g8bot] re: Cross Linking, how do you define that? I thought linking to other pages on your website (that are related) was a good thing...maybe that's not what you meant.


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