Have you ever heard of union making strength? Digital marketing, too. A recent strategy called co-marketing deserves your attention. As the name already suggests, it is the creation of a campaign together with another company, which has the target audience similar to yours.
The central idea of shared marketing is to join forces to create content that reaches the same audience. A tactic that serves to save on material development, produce rich content, increase the brand awareness and generate leads for both companies.
In HubSpot’s definition, “Co-marketing is when two companies collaborate in promotional efforts for a joint offer. In a joint marketing partnership, both companies promote a part of the content or product and share the results of this promotion. By leveraging a partner’s relationship and reach, joint marketing campaigns are designed to provide more leads, reach and awareness, with less work.”
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When you think about it, co-marketing makes perfect sense. Two companies combine their resources, skills, ideas and reach to create a powerful campaign that reaches a much wider audience than each one could achieve alone.
Co-marketing can manifest in many different ways: a blog post, a survey, a campaign with landing page and email making, Instagram story sharing, a webinar or even an online event (lives).
To better explain how this strategy works in practice, the online sales platform Hotmart used as an example a successful case:
“McDonald’s is a restaurant network worldwide known for its fast snacks. In addition to burgers, they also invest in other types of food, such as ice cream.
Despite all this success, aiming to reach an even bigger audience and who like different desserts than just a common ice cream, McDonald’s started partnering with chocolate makers.
Today, among the various flavors of McFlurry (a McDonald’s dessert you can buy anywhere in the world), you can find an option with M&M’s, another well-known brand in your niche.
What do these two companies have in common?
Both belong to the food niche and have dessert options for your audience. This means that people who consume the products of both brands are looking for similar products: something sweet to taste after a meal.
Then, in a co-marketing strategy, McDonald’s and M&M’s joined together to create a unique dessert that would reach both audiences and that would further increase the disclosure and profits of both brands.”
The main point to be taken into consideration is that a well-planned and executed partnership brings many benefits. However, some care is needed before making any decision.
Follow the article to better understand the benefits and also help you structure a co-marketing of results.
The benefits of co-marketing
– Be more economical by joining resources such as marketing budgets and talents.
– Share audiences of similar people who are already qualified as potential customers.
– Create and foster a positive long-term relationship between brands, while they help each other.
– Enchanting customers with free things, gifts and joint brand products.
Always ask: What do you get out of it?
A good marketing campaign together benefits all those involved: you, your partner and the customer.
Co-marketing is difficult to argue if the benefits are unilateral. The conclusion of the agreement should make sense from a commercial point of view for both parties. Don't just think about what you get out of it.
The benefits should not only be two-way, but also proportional – that is, one part should not reap a great reward while the other just gets the remains.
The exchange could be anything related to:
Enjoy the reputation of another brand and at the same time give them exposure to more potential customers.
Share the captured emails from a campaign that you two contribute resources to run.
By participating in blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, or email lists of each other.
Expose your partner's brand before your audience in exchange for staying in front of him for a while.
Put samples of your product in the hands of qualified customers in exchange for enchanting customers of another company with free products.
How to choose your partner for co-marketing?
Deciding with which brand to collaborate will be crucial to the success of your co-marketing action. Ideally, the brand will be in the same sector or in a sector similar to yours, but it will not be one of your competitors.
You've probably identified some brands you want to work with, but before you approach them, consider the following:
– Do you have the same target audience?
– Will he have similar goals to yours? (they may not be exactly the same, but think if the goals of each party will be achieved)
– How much effort are you willing to put into the campaign and what do you expect from it?
– Will the end result be worth the effort?
– What experience can each of you bring to the campaign?
– Does the partner's brand have a good reputation?
– Is it easy to work with your team?
Before you go straight to a partnership proposal, it's a good idea to get to know the company employees first. Find and follow them on social media ( LinkedIn is an easy way to find the right contacts, as well as many people putting the company's name on their Facebook biographies) and building a relationship with them.
This is not only a good warm-up for a direct email, but it should also give an idea if they are the kind of person you would like to work with.
How to implement co-marketing
The important thing is to have a structured step by step and in complete alignment with the expectations you have for your company, where it wants to go and the level of billing you want to achieve.
To achieve success and not risk setting up strategies without basis, it is necessary to be prepared and attentive to situations that may get lost along the way and generate more damage than profit. Therefore, take up three important steps:
1. Determine Your Goals
Before proceeding with any co-marketing relationship, you need to clearly determine and define your goals and primarily plan actions. Have a meeting with your marketing team, or people who know your brand better, and determine what you want to get from the partnership.
- Is there a new product you want to launch?
- Your goal is generate leads So you can launch for a bigger audience?
- You want to campaign on social media?
- Do you want to redesign or reinvent your brand in any way?
Once you discover these specific characteristics of your goals, it will be easier for you to develop a plan because you will be able to communicate them effectively to your partner.
2. Choose a suitable partner
Your choice should not be random but rather based on a careful analysis of aspects relevant to your business. The biggest chance of co-marketing working is to choose a partner who is attuned to your proposal.
Without this, all other steps may fail due to lack of compatibility and tuning with the added partner. Take into account important aspects to join a market referenced name.
In addition, products or services must find similarities and if possible complementary to those you offer in your company to strengthen the interest and the idea of need for acquisition and use.
Attention: If the target audience is not the same, do not even start considering a co-marketing partnership. All you and your partner are gonna get is to spend money without visualizing the real possibilities of return.
Your future partner's knowledge of the business, the market and the effectiveness of products and services raises the chances of a good partnership. This is because, if the content that it already produces has considerable appeal and audience in the market, just improve with the new strategies, including your company.
Do not partner with business that is in direct competition. The strategies will probably not work, because each one will be interested in attracting, retaining and loyalty to their leads, which would be difficult even for those who are about to become a customer.
3. Set a budget
Before starting collaboration efforts with another brand, you need to consider your finances and how much you can invest in a joint campaign. At the first meeting with your partner, you are likely to be questioned (if the company is familiar with co-marketing) what your budget is for the dedicated strategy you are about to make with it.
You need to have at least one approximate idea of how you can add up your spending efforts, or at least what your maximum budget is.
Conclusion
Co-marketing can be an excellent strategy for the end-of-year holiday period in order to promote your brand, increase your leads and cut costs. After determining your goals and budget, you can search and find a partner who wants to collaborate with you.
As long as you have clarity about expectations and responsibilities, you can be sure that this will be a mutually beneficial business relationship.
