How would you like to have five or ten local businesses or professionals passing out your report, brochure, or other propaganda to every one of their customers or clients?
Okay, here’s what you do:
- Make a list of categories. What type of business or professional has customers or clients in your target market?
- Make a list of candidates. Go online and find websites of businesses and professionals in those categories in your market. Put a star next to the names of those who have a newsletter, blog, mailing list, or social media followers.
- Contact each candidate and tell them you have a proposal that could be to your mutual benefit. Basically, you’re going to hand out their literature to your clients and prospects and they’ll do the same for you.
- Create a handout. This could be anything with your name and contact information on it–a brochure, report, coupon, gift certificate, free consultation offer, or anything else. Have them do the same.
Print the handout. Create a pdf version, too, for email lists and website visitors. On your handout, add a different code for each cross-promotion partner, so you can see which ones are sending you the most business.
Now, all you have to do is pass out each other’s literature. When your supply gets low, notify your partner so they can provide you with more, and of course, you want them to do the same.
Okay, that’s the idea. Simple, isn’t it? But very effective.
You may have to contact ten or twenty candidates to find a few who understand the power of this idea, but you only need a few. Why? Because a cross-promotion carries with it the implied endorsement of the cross-promotion partner (so make sure you choose good quality businesses and qualified professionals). A handful of partners passing out your information to hundreds of people every day could bring you more business than you can handle.
Marketing for lawyers doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. Cross-promotions allows you to leverage the lists of other professionals and businesses, bringing targeted traffic to your website and hot prospects to your phone.
For more ways to get traffic and clients by leveraging OPL (other people’s lists), get this.
How to get free content for your blog
First, don’t assume you need to spend hours writing your posts. As I’ve written before, a post can be a few paragraphs that take just a few minutes to write. It can be as simple as taking something you read online and adding your comments. Tell why you agree, or disagree, link to another post that provides a different viewpoint or additional information, or share a story from your practice that illustrates the points in the article.
For longer posts, you have several alternatives:
One of the best ways to get original content for your blog is through guest posts. Someone else writes the post in return for a byline and link to their blog.
The benefits to you are
The benefits to the guest blogger are
Now, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If guest posts are a good way to get exposure and traffic, why not offer to do some guest posting yourself? Find blogs that write for your target market and offer to do a guest post. Here are 21 tips for landing guest posts.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of guest posts is that they allow both parties to make a new connection. This can lead to referrals, introductions, advice, interviews, endorsements, networking and cross marketing opportunities.
Start looking for blogs that reach your target market. Invite them to write a guest post for your blog or offer to do the same for theirs.