By Kelsey Jones
Fusion marketing isn’t a new idea— Entrepreneur magazine published an article about it in 2006 and countless businesses do it without realizing its proper name. Fusion marketing is the act of referring your customers to other local (or national works too, especially online) businesses. They, in turn, do the same for you.
There are countless examples of these types of business partnerships in the real world. For instance, a person drops off their dog at the groomers and picks up a coupon on the counter for $10 off their next visit to the salon next door. This can also happen online—after a customer checks out on an e-commerce site of a banner printing company, they are taken to an offer page for 50% new business cards from a business card printing company.
In order for most fusion marketing partnerships to be successful, they usually must be one of two things–
- Be local businesses that are nearby one another, or;
- Be businesses that have related or overlapping services
While fusion marketing business partnerships that don’t follow either of these guidelines can occasionally be successful, making sure that one business already has something in common with the other will create a higher chance of successful referrals, since the customer will most likely have an interest in both.
Besides the obvious chance that an existing customer of one business would have an interest in another related (or nearby) business, the fact that fusion marketing can increase exposure for both businesses to audiences who may have not found or patronized both businesses on their own is the key concept.
This post was sponsored by Brosix, a business instant messaging program that offers private instant messaging networks to businesses.
Image found via stock.xchng.
Kelsey Jones
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