Many entrepreneurs own or are involved in multiple businesses at the same time. When involvements are in more than one business, there are numerous possibilities to grow all the businesses simultaneously. A lot of entrepreneurs, myself alike, market their ventures together. For example, I cross market my businesses in the same area, to drive customers from business A to business B. With online ventures, you can partner up your businesses so you can make the most out of traffic on all sites. If you try to get the most out of each customer, chances are that a customer that originally went to one of your locations or websites, will end up visiting two or more of your other ventures.
There are pros & cons to cross promoting your businesses:
The pros seem to outweigh the cons in my mind, but it truly depends on the situation. The maximum benefit you can get out of your cross promotion is cost effectiveness. When you market on the business you already have with one business, you aren't spending more promotion dollars to get that customer to buy more from you. You can essentially "swap" customers within your businesses and double up on revenue while spending the same in promotions.
Another good thing about cross promoting deals with reputation. When you are known to give great customer service and care with one business and people know you are behind another business, they will most likely look to that business when they wanted to buy something related to that industry. Your reputation can help you out big, when you are building new business or expanding your customer base.
If you partner up your businesses, when you are looking to sell, it may be easier to bring in the maximum dollars for your empire because the buyer will be getting multiple income streams. It might be easier to put a bigger price tag on the sale, but you have to realize if your ventures are partnered up and you want to sell only one, it might be difficult to spin off that business when people know it is a sister brand.
The big downside of promoting your businesses with relation to one and other is when something goes bad, it takes down all partnered businesses. If one of your businesses hurts its reputation or something goes wrong in the public eye, they will probably abandon all of your ventures that are partnered up with that one. People have a tendency to "boycott" sister brands so if people know that all the businesses are partnered up, they will stop using all services at once. This could destroy an entrepreneurs empire quicker than it was built, so this is one big thing to watch out for.
In conclusion, I truly believe that cross promotions are beneficial to an entrepreneur on many levels, but sometimes it is best to keep things apart. Only each business owner can decide whether or not it is best to link up their ventures.
What are your thoughts on cross promoting your businesses and brand partnerships?
