What Is Co-Marketing? A Guide to Co-Branding Marketing Campaigns
As marketers, we are always looking for new ways to get more bang for our buck. Co-marketing allows you to do just that — the process involves two or more companies working together to reap the benefits of their combined efforts.
We've compiled the co-marketing tips and tricks below to help you create a successful co-marketing campaign and relationship, from start to finish.
Click here to download a detailed guide and free templates for getting started with co-marketing.
What is co-marketing?
Co-marketing can be beneficial for any brand that wants to broaden their audience, increase brand awareness, and offer a new type of content to their audience. It's the process of growing two or more businesses at the same time by working together to share expertise with, and offer value for, their audiences.
Partner companies typically collaborate on promotional efforts for a co-branded offer. In a co-marketing partnership, both companies promote a piece of content or product, and share the results of that promotion.
By levering the relationship and reach of a partner, co-marketing campaigns are designed to deliver more leads, buzz, and awareness, with less work.
Co-Marketing vs. Co-Branding
You've probably heard the terms co-marketing and co-branding thrown around quite a bit — but what's the difference? Is there one?
Turns out, they’re actually pretty similar.
While co-branding refers to a partnership in which two companies combine their products or expertise to create an even more valuable product or offer (Think: Doritos Locos Tacos), co-marketing takes things a step further.
Co-marketing campaigns provide teams with an opportunity to work together to promote a shared offer — such as a co-branded product or piece of content. In a co-marketing partnership, both companies promote that offer, and share the results of that promotion with each other.
More on how this process works next.
How does co-marketing work?
The most common way to co-market is for two companies that have similar audiences to work together on a piece of content or campaign, and promote it to both audiences.
This content (e.g. ebook, webinar, template, etc.) typically sits behind a lead generation form to capture contact information. The goal is for both partners to share the downloads from the offer, thus getting twice the leads that they normally would.
But that's not the only way to carry out a co-marketing campaign. Straying from the approach above, two partners might agree to host an event together and split the costs. Or, on a smaller scale, partners could agree to a series of guest blog posts on each other’s sites.
The most important thing when deciding to do co-marketing with a certain partner, is to make sure the purpose and goal of the project is similar for both parties. If one partner wants leads, but another is looking for ticket sales to their annual event, you'll be hard-pressed to find a project that satisfies both needs.
One aspect of virtually every co-marketing campaign you'll need is a shared landing page.
Co-Marketing Shared Landing Page
Both your content and landing page should be co-branded — and it should be obvious. This entails using both partner's logos in the header, and mentioning both partners throughout the content.
Since you will likely be sharing the offer's downloads with your partner, you will need to consult with your legal team about the proper disclaimer to include at the bottom of the form.
For example, our offer with Google simply states that we are authorized to share their information with the specific partner after a user downloads the ebook.
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To keep things organized within your marketing automation tool, we also suggest that you come up with a unique code for naming these co-branded pages to differentiate them from your existing ones. Not to mention, this will make it easy to locate them via internal search.
Next, you may be wondering how you should go about determining which businesses would be good partners for your business. Let's review the answer to that question next.
How to Find the Right Co-Marketing Partners to Work With
In any co-marketing relationship, you want to make sure there is mutual benefit to working together. Check out tips in determining if a partner is a good fit here.
You can also ask yourself the following questions:
- Do they have a similar type of audience that my company has and wants to grow? If not, the value I would get out of promoting our content to their audience may not be worth it.
- How many new leads am I going to get from this partnership? Is it large enough to be worth my time? Only you can decide what is worth it.
- Do they have some expertise that I don’t have? Let’s say my audience is dying to know more about how to optimize for local SEO, but my knowledge base is limited to general SEO knowledge. Maybe I partner with an expert on local SEO.
- Does their brand and name have a good reputation? Don’t partner with people who will bring down your credibility.
- Are the people you are working with enjoyable to work with? Sure, co-marketing is a job, but it should still be enjoyable. Look for partners that you actually look forward to working with.
How to Plan a Co-Marketing Agreement
You've found a partner to work with — that's great! But, what's the next step?
1. Come up with an idea to pitch.
Once you determine you'd like to work with a partner, it's time to come up with an idea to pitch. When approaching this step, do your homework first. Learn what you can about the company and their audience, tailor your ideas to what would be appealing to them, and show them the value you're going to provide.
Odds are, if you are the one pitching the idea, you are the small fish and they are the big fish. In other words, it'd be easy for them to say no in this scenario. To combat this, go the extra mile to show them that they'd be crazy not to work with you.
If you are on the other end of the pitch, remain open to ideas. Even if the person pitching you isn’t a pro, don’t disregard the opportunity immediately. If it's a totally unrealistic partnership, be honest with them. And if the idea sounds interesting but it's just not a great time for you to take on the project, consider adding them to a backlog of potential partners you'd want to work with in the future.
2. Make your goals clear.
If you want leads, make sure your partner knows that. Make sure they also want leads, too. If your goals are misaligned, neither of you will get value you had hoped and planned for out of the relationship.
3. Agree on the content you'll share and promote.
Next, agree on the type of content you'll share and promote among your audience. This includes the topic and theme of the content. Decide on a topic that is going to be mutually beneficial and appeal to both audiences.
4. Determine your timeline.
Set a timeline for your co-marketing campaign. This way, everyone is on the same page and gets their portion of the work done on time.
Pro Tip: For a larger project, like an ebook or webinar, double the amount of time it takes your team to write a campaign on your own. This will allow for time for approvals and feedback among your team members and your partner's team members.
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