(Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Co-Marketing

(Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Co-Marketing

How to create meaningful marketing partnerships

What is Co-Marketing?

Co-marketing is fresh. It’s effective. It’s when two or more related brands work together on a campaign or promotion to create awareness about a shared offer. This isn’t to be confused with co-branding, which means using different companies’ branding on one single product. Co-marketing can be anything from sponsored events, product placement, or a shared ad campaign.

Why Co-Market?

If you’re blanching at the thought of sharing your precious (and hard-earned) client base with another brand, don’t. Co-marketing is a highly-effective, tried-and-tested marketing technique that’s (probably) older than you are.

1. It’s Cost-Effective

Depending on how you do it, you could either be reaching the same number of people for half the marketing budget, or you could double your reach without paying more. This is because you’re splitting your costs with your co-marketing partner. Other benefits include:  

• Splitting marketing costs
• Growing your audience size without additional costs
• Improving your sales without depleting your marketing budget

2. It Grows Your Audience

Instead of losing clients to competition, you’ll be gaining clients that are already interested in something related to your service or product. With co-marketing, you can:

• Reach your partner’s target audience as well as your own
• Gain followers and customers by growing your audience
• Be more relevant to your audience by offering a joint service or product (more value for money)

3. It’s Efficient as Hell

By splitting the work between two or more businesses, you’ll get more done through less work. Co-marketing (when done right) can:  

• Have a better SEO impact
• Improve your sales and revenue  
• Can leverage the position and reputation of the other brand to your advantage

Things to ask before co-marketing

Many hands make light work – unless those hands have no idea what they’re doing, in which case a simple job could turn into a confusing and frustrating nightmare. Your co-marketing partner should act like another skilled and helpful set of hands, so choose them wisely. Before agreeing to co-market with another brand, ask yourself the following questions:  

• Does this business have a client base similar to mine?
• Will they be difficult to work with?
• Is this a reputable and trustworthy business?
• Will the leads and exposure I get from our partnership be worth the time, money and effort?
• Can they contribute skills or knowledge that I don’t have?
• Do we have similar co-marketing strategies and goals in mind? If not, can we compromise?

How to Co-Market Effectively

Ok, you’ve got a fantastic co-marketing partner and a clear outcome in mind for your partnership. Now what? Four fairly popular ways to co-market your business are:

Affiliation

Simply put, affiliation marketing involves paying a publisher to advertise and promote your product or services. By collaborating with a publisher, you both profit. Your sales increase thanks to the promotion of your product, and the publisher earns a commission from each lead or sale you make. This can be done by using banner ads, promotional pages, hyperlinks and more. There are different ways that you can use affiliate marketing in your business:

• In-house
• means that you’re responsible for finding a reliable and appropriate affiliate yourself. This is the more affordable option, but it takes time and is not always successful.
• Networks or Third-Parties
• third-party service provider puts you into contact with a suitable affiliate after you explain your brand’s needs, budget and goals. While it’s not free, it does save you a significant amount of time.

Shared Content Marketing

You might a content marketer without knowing it. Content marketing involves using engaging and high-quality content to attract new customers. Where does this amazing content come from? It comes from skilled writers, designers and creatives. You can collaborate with other businesses through either co-creation or sharing links. Both businesses work together to create one specific content marketing piece (like a newsletter, product release, blog post, market research, etc.).

Partnered Products

This can either be done by creating an all-new product or service or re-branding an existing one to reflect your co-marketing project. You and your partner(s) need to do in-depth market research to determine which product or service would perform best and give the greatest return of investment. Partnered projects could involve anything from white label solutions, product mergers or slapping on a “powered by” on your product packaging. Good examples of joint projects are the Johnny Walker “White Walker”, or Cadbury “Oreo” chocolate bars.

Conclusion

Regardless of how you choose to co-market, make sure that the content that you share is engaging and of high-quality. With the right partner, there’s no stopping your co-market endeavours from succeeding. If you have any questions about co-marketing, reach out to us!