The best way to leverage your time and marketing dollars is to enter into a cooperative marketing venture with other businesses. If your customers are your most valuable asset, then you can see the potential if another business makes its customers available to you. Many people don’t realize that cooperative marketing has been around for quite some time. However, recently it has become more popular due to the high cost of going it alone. This article presents the concepts, processes and ideas that will allow you to effectively leverage your marketing dollars. If you have resolved to market more effectively then seek another business to partner with so that they will risk their time, money, relationships and expertise to assist in your marketing activity. In such a partnership, the businesses can share information, infrastructure, revenue or even ownership depending on the details of their cooperative marketing agreement. Each business spends time, money, and resources developing a relationship with its customers who then have the confidence and willingness to respond to any offers made thru that company. A cooperative program leverages your time and advertising dollars by sharing them with a marketing partner; while allowing you to access the results of their marketing efforts at little or no additional cost to your business. Cooperative Marketing can be in the form of an endorsement, or cross selling of goods, or even an integrated joint venture. These arrangements can be as simple as letting another company use your customer base and then taking a percentage of their resulting sales. Or you can arrange with the partner company to make their customers available to you and then pay them a percentage on each sale. Another approach is to pass referrals with your partner, by linking web sites, point of sales displays, or joint promotions without compensation on resulting sales.