What if there were a strategy that let you double, maybe even triple, the reach and potential impact of your marketing — without increasing your budget?
You’d gobble it up like a warm chocolate chip cookie, right? Especially in this economy.
Well, here’s the strategy you might want to consider: Collaborate.
Identify a product or service that’s complementary to yours. Then, develop a synergistic offering. You might be surprised at how even a modest attempt at co-marketing can shatter the status quo in your product category and disrupt entrenched brand preferences and buying patterns.
Here’s a short, sweet example:
I’m on a quest to find the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe. You’ll find me regularly fiddling with the formula on the back of the chip bag. A smidgen of extra flour this batch. A little less brown sugar next. Softer butter. Firmer. A fresh box of baking soda. Always looking for an edge, a tweak, that will produce a plumper, chewier version of the cookie classic.
So, imagine my excitement recently when, while buying flour, I noticed on the bag a recipe for Ultimate Double Chocolate Chip Cookies. A recipe that calls for vegetable shortening (an ingredient I’ve never used) instead of butter! Within seconds, I had the recommended shortening brand in my shopping cart. Once I got home and started baking, I found the very same recipe inside the shortening package.
Huh. Twenty years of unwavering buying behavior. Two decades trying to coax fresh results out of the very same recipe and ingredients. Overturned in an instant because two marketers got together and decided there might be untapped opportunity in joining forces.
Got a co-marketing success story in your business? If not, could it be for lack of trying? I’d welcome hearing about collaboration successes, especially what you’ve learned it takes to cook up a win-win.
Crumbs: Try Ultimate Double Chocolate Chip Cookies for yourself.
Touch Point City 