
What happens, when sellers become friends and not competitors !!
Competition is a word very famous and scary among sellers !! In this era of information, literacy and availability of easy finance Its not difficult to start a business and Its very likely you are not alone or doing it first, there are many of them already exist and you being the late mover, spend a significant amount of time and energy to get your part of share in the market.
But wait, is this the only way of relationship we can have with a fellow seller ? Lets watch the 2 videos below.
What did you just see? Lets talk about the first video and the success story behind this. When android 4.4 launched, Google announced that version of the android will be named as kitkat . I don’t know how but they came up with this strange idea of having a strategic alliance with Nestle but the beautiful minds behind the strategy proved to be right when 50 million KitKat bars in 19 countries sold with prominent Android branding and offered buyers the chance to win a Nexus 7 tablet and Google Play gift cards.
In the second video you saw how the LG promoting Ariel matic for its front load and top load machines.
By now you would have got a clue on what I am trying to say here. Yes, competition is not the only way of relationship, they can also be friends by forming strategic alliances / cross promotion / cross marketing etc. Now lets get dipper into the topic.
Ideas and examples :
“Together we can !! As said by a great leader Mr Pranab Pani”
Joint advertisement :

Its been decades that the McDonald has included coca cola in its menu. The brand equity certainly grows where the customer of both coca cola and McDonald get attracted. Around 13% of the total revenue of McD comes from only Coca cola.
Joint contest :

Brands may come together to conduct contests which lead to
Customer touch points :

Cross Marketing involves usage of customer touch points. The customer interacts with a brand at various level and at various times. These customer touch points are used to promote partner brands as well. This is a sms I got after swiping my HDFC debit card at a CCD.
Online — Offline :

Here is a beautiful example of online to offline promotion strategy. Where you get Rs 20 cashback on purchase of Rs 20 snickers.

Web Portal :
Here is a web portal cross promotion when I got this notification to book a house in airbnb at the the checkout page of indeed.in
Inhouse promotion :

a cross promotion between Max retail and book my show !!
There are many other ways where an alliance can be formed like Print joint promotional messages on your receipts , Offering a reduced price to the customers, Hang signs or posters promoting one another on your walls , Hand out your partner’s business cards to interested customers, Mention each other’s benefits when you speak at local events or are interviewed by the media, Drop one another’s flyers in shopping bags, mailboxes, or on vehicle windows, Pool mailing lists and send out a joint promotional emails or postcard and the list goes on !!
and there is big benefits for all the parties and surely a WIN WIN situation. You’ll see an ROI quickly. In fact, using cross promotion can be faster than using only SEO, which can take several months to pick up steam. Cross promotion marketing is typically done on a pro bono basis. That’s great if you’ve got a limited marketing budget to work with.
If you managed to cross promote with a legitimate and established brand, you’ll get a boost in reputation that will convert into sales.
Can the strategy be fused with futuristic technology :
I was invited to a business event when I received the kit bag containing a pen, a notebook, a tee-shirt and an envelop, I opened the envelop and found a leaflet of a life insurance scheme applicable for married persons . Now I being a single guy it was no useful for me. You can see here a random cross promotion is happening which is less likely to be effective. I wish there should be a way to understand the participants age brackets and predict if they would be married and then given this to them had a big chance of converting it to sales.
As we all know now a lot of innovation happening in the technology front in the consumer space, few of them are working to make the customer experience even smoother, with virtual reality a customer can get the experience of a mall sitting at home . With predictive analysis now the bots can predict when your grocery is going to over or when you should refill the engine oil of your car. And its getting more smarter day by day, now the machine can understand your emotions and suggest you music, food, places to visit as per your mood. With this the cross promotion should also be innovative. understand the user more closely and help them find the right thing at the right time can bring the seller success.
Can the small shops or individual sellers be part of the cross promotion journey ?
Certainly yes, cross promotion is a strategy that can be formed by any kind of seller but I must say innovation in understanding the customer behavior is the key. And if this is done rightly, this can address the huge need of the unorganized Indian retail sector which stands at $700 billion today.
Things to be taken care while choosing your partner:
The most basic things to choose your partners are, they should be psychographically , demographically same and should be non competing. your partner brand should be credible and have a good amount of customer base. And most importantly the terms and conditions of the alliances should be legally signed.
Please tell me in the comments what you think about this marketing strategy ?
