Even the most time-pressed business owner can attract more customers with less effort through the right cross-promotional marketing. Why? Because when you join forces with other credible people who also reach your market you can reach your customers more efficiently, credibly, and memorably with the right offers and services.

Cross promotion is about expanding the marketing reach of your product. It’s a broad term that can mean advertising across different mediums or even cooperating with other companies to showcase each other’s goods and services.

Here’s an example. You’re shopping for new computer on a website from a company that sells business models. An ad appears for the latest antivirus software. This kind of cooperation between the companies selling the computers and the software is called cross promotion.

Cross-promotion has the potential for a big marketing payoff because partners can successfully expand through each other's customer base. They can gain a credible introduction to their customers more effectively than with the traditional "solo" methods of networking, advertising, or public relations. Cross-promotion is also a great way to cut marketing costs by sharing between partners.

Finding the right kind of company to partner with is a critical step.  One of the first things you need to keep in mind is that you’re not just going to be selling each other’s products, you will be sharing reputations as well. People who see your products and the other companies being advertised together assume you’re both credible.

The strategies that you can use can bounce between online marketing and print, television or radio media. First things first. You’ll need to find the best tools to use. After you’ve put together a partnership, using analytics will help you to find out which medium is best and which times/dates to post content. Google analytics is a good starting point.

Special offers and discounts work well. If you’re using social media, you’ll want to post regularly on a partnering website. These special offers should emphasize any complementary features.

Email marketing is another tool that has good return on investment. This is an excellent way to promote your latest blog post or social media tweet via a newsletter.

Small businesses that want to have a physical presence can share booths at local tradeshows. You can even set up a small display in your partner’s brick-and-mortar store. You could consider sharing a space like Starbucks who leased some spaces in Target stores.

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. What’s more, 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.

Get in the habit of doing business promotion for you and your partner businesses wherever you go and you'll be surprised how word-of-mouth builds.

If you are skilled at taking video (or know someone who is) you can create video promotions for your products or services with your partners and post them on YouTube.

Have a contest, with the prizes contributed by your partners. For the next contest, roles change, and you contribute your product or service as a prize for a partner's contest.

Having a referral program in place will give you and your partners more incentive to cross-promote each other's products and services. A referral fee or discounts on merchandise or services are ways you can show your appreciation to your partners for sending business your way.

The AirRentalz platform is designed to allow hosts to partner with other businesses to cross promote each other. It could be as simple as teaming up with your local coffee shop, restaurant or day spa and promoting their services or products.

Keeping your property on the top of people minds is a key marketing challenge for you to increase your bookings. Rather than having people search for you within one of the many OTA, you need to be on top of their mind when it comes time to book their next accommodation.