Abridged with the author’s permission from a two-part post on B2Bbloggers and Velocity B2B Marketing Blog.
Cross-promotion is simply the art of using one goodie to sell another. Amazon is a pro at it but we B2B marketers are nowhere near as good at is as we should be. Done right, cross-promotion is the low-cost, low-effort way to drive downloads and other types of conversions.
1) Don’t let cross-promotion inhibit primary promotion
It’s always tempting to cram a whole bunch of stuff on every email, landing page and newsletter. It feels like it increases your chances of getting someone interested and earning that download. But in reality, you’re decreasing your chances by cluttering up your stories and diverting people from your offer.
A landing page should lead people to one desired action. Stick to that and cross-promote at other points in the funnel, such as:
2) Use auto-responders
Automated emails that are triggered by an online action are great places to cross-promote.
When people download your latest eBook, remind them in your Thank You email about another great piece of content that they might like.
3) Use your web Thank You page
Same idea but on the web page that you deliver when someone has done something desirable—like signing up for your e-newsletter or requesting a demo: ‘Thanks for that. Did you know about our cool fridge-magnet infographic?’
4) Don’t forget outbound email
Every month or quarter, send out a mail to different segments of your database (you are segmenting aren’t you?) to say, “Hi. Since you attended our webinar, we’ve produced this video on exactly the kind of thing I think you’d be into…”
5) Get personal
We’re all so in love with marketing automation that we sometimes forget the power of the personal note. A simple three-line text email that feels personal can dramatically out-perform that sexy HTML number.
6) Use your email footers
You’ve got lots of people throughout your company sending out lots of emails. I’m always surprised how many companies waste this opportunity or simply use it to broadcast a general message.
Email footers can be as targeted as any other kind of communication and one great use is to cross-promote your back catalog. Different departments can get different promotional footers that reflect their audiences.
7) Do a Round-Up blog post
We all forget how perishable our posts really are. Once they’re in the Archive folder, they rarely see the light of day. Every quarter or so, do a blog post that gives readers a guide to your entire back catalog of content or the pieces you produced since the last round-up.
8 ) Exploit your web forms
Most forms need to be focused on one desired action (see Tip 1). But others are fine for cross-promoting content that is relevant to the form’s purpose.
So a simple tick-box at the bottom saying, “Please also send me the Nine Rules of Rope-Making” can’t hurt, can it?
9) Go back and revise your web copy!
I am always amazed how infrequently this is practiced: You publish a great new eBook on The Future of Left-Handed Security Software and you promote the hell out of it. But you never go back to the nine web pages on your site that talk all about Security Software and Left-Handedness and revise them to cross-promote the new content.
10) End your webinars with a commercial
Webinars attract your most engaged prospects. And the end of a webinar is where the really committed can be found. Over 90% of webinars end with a single URL. You should end each webinar with a quick summary of the great pieces of content waiting for your audience to download.
11) Cross-promote within your new content.
The best place of all to cross-promote content is inside your latest content. We end every new eBook or white paper with a Resources section that cross-promotes our other goodies and any other resources we feel are relevant.
Doug Kessler is creative director of Velocity, a B2B technology marketing agency.
