Co-marketing

Looking for new ways to grow your business? 

Let me introduce co-marketing.

Co-marketing is two or more businesses working together to:

• Get new audiences
• Build brand awareness

So, in this article, we will learn all about co-marketing like creating successful co-marketing campaigns and relationships.

Let’s dive right in.

What is co-marketing?

Co-marketing helps brands:

• Broaden their audience
• Increase brand awareness
• Offer a new type of content to their audience

Co-marketing involves working together to grow two or more businesses at the same time.

This is done by:

• Sharing expertise and value to audiences
• Collaborating to promotion co-branded offers

In this type of partnership, both businesses:

• Share the results of promoting content or products
• Leverage each other’s relationship and reach

And the results include:

• More leads
• More buzz
• More awareness
• Less work

The Difference between Co-Marketing and Co-Branding

If you’ve heard of co-marketing and co-branding, that’s because they are similar.

Co-branding is a partnership of two businesses combining products or expertise to create a better product or offer.

But co-marketing campaigns work together with businesses to promote a shared offer like:

• Co-branded products
• Content

And both businesses promote the offer and share the results with each other.

How co-marketing works

Usually two businesses with similar audiences, work together to create content then promote it to both their audiences.

A few examples of this content includes:

• Ebook
• Webinar
• Template

Which can be downloaded after inputting contact information on a lead generation form.

Both partners share the downloads, resulting in two times more leads than normal.

But it’s not the only way:

• Partners can host an event and split the costs
• Partners can publish guest blog posts on each other’s websites

When doing co-marketing, just make sure your project goals match with your partners.

For example, a partnership won’t work if one wants leads and the other wants event ticket sales.

Co-Marketing Landing Page

Remember to co-brand both your content and landing pages.

To do this:

• Use both partner’s logos in the header
• Mention both partners in the content

Note: Get legal advice on disclaimers for the offer’s download forms you share with partners.

This just confirms to users you have authorisation to share their information with your partner after they download the content.

Also, uniquely naming co-branded pages so they:

• Stand out from existing content
• Are easy to find in internal searches

Find the Right Co-Marketing Partners

Make sure your co-marketing relationship is mutually beneficial by doing the following:

• Make sure you both have similar types of audiences that you want to grow
• Make sure the number of new leads you get from the partnership, is worth your time
• Make sure your partner has expertise you don’t and your audience wants
• Make sure their brand has a good reputation and doesn’t hurt your credibility
• Makes sure working with your partner is enjoyable and you look forward to it

Co-Marketing Agreement

After you’ve found a partner to work with, do the following:

Ideas to pitch

When coming up with ideas to pitch, do your homework first.

Do this by:

• Learning about the company and its audience
• Tailor ideas to what appeals to them
• Show them the value you can provide

Make sure to always give extra so whoever you’re pitching to can’t turn you down.

Also if you’re receiving pitches, be open to ideas and be honest.

Also if ideas sound interesting but you don’t have time, backlog partners to work with in the future.

Clear goals

Make your goals clear to your partner.

For example, if you want leads, make sure they want leads too.

If both your goals aren’t the same, you wont get value from the relationship.

Content to share and promote

Next, make decisions with your partner on:

• The type of content to share and promote with your audience
• The topic and theme of the content

Remember to make sure these decisions benefit both audiences.

Timeline

For your co-marketing campaign it’s important to set a timeline or a schedule.

Doing so makes sure both parties are on the same page and get their work done on time.

Remember to give enough time for both you and your partner’s team members to complete your project work, including:

• Approvals
• Feedback

Skills

Make sure to assign tasks and work based on you and your partner’s skillset.

Doing so helps streamlining the process and making it much more efficient.

Formal co-marketing partnership agreement

It’s important to make your co-marketing partnership official with a formal agreement.

For example, with a legal document or a non-legal document of good faith, you’re covered if:

• Anything goes wrong
• Miscommunications arise

In this type of agreement, details to include are:

• Topic
• Timeline
• Goals
• Content and assets ownership
• Where content will be hosted and shared
• Agreement for lead-sharing
• Promotion timeframe
• Promotion plan
• Report plan

Co-Marketing Content Types

The type of co-marketing content you can offer for your project includes:

Ebook

An ebook is easy to split up the work.

For example, one does the design and the other writes the content.

Blog Post

Co-creating a blog post is a low effort co-marketing project.

Also make sure to write a guest post for each other’s blogs.

Webinar

With webinars it’s easy to find an expert who will talk for an hour on their topic of expertise.

Also, it’s good for educational materials and you will easily find a co-host.

Note: Users can sign up to attend via your landing page and when the webinar is finished, visitors can download the recording.

Video

Create a video with your partner to spread your message and promote both brands.

Examples of platforms where you can promote your videos include Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Twitter Chat

A Twitter chat is a virtual event where people discuss topics.

Use this to show your expertise, whilst inviting and interacting with both target audiences.

Note: You can also promote your Chat on Twitter to widen your reach.

Online and Offline Events

You can host events online or in person.

For example, hosting an event with your partner, with both companies sharing branding and marketing.

You can also host a live Q&A.

For example, your business employee interviewing a team member from your partner’s business.

Note: Those signing up to live events could also be invited to live virtual events, further discussing topics from the live events.

Implementing your Co-Marketing Campaign

When it comes to starting your co-marketing campaign with your partner, do the following:

Outline

After picking your topic and type of co-marketing you want to do, outline your plan on a shared Google Doc.

Doing so allows you, your team and your partner’s team to edit and add details on the Doc.

Remember to give both teams about a week to finalise all plans.

Content creation

Next, start the content creation process.

You can have one partner doing the writing and the other the design.

Or each partner writes and designs half of the content and then puts it together.

Just make sure to check for consistency when bringing both parts together.

Then when the first draft is done, send it to the partner for feedback or approval.

Remember to give a week between writing and feedback due date.

Finalise content

When it comes to finalising the content, start creating content promotion assets like:

• The shared landing page
• Emails
• Social media images
• Infographics
• Blog posts

Remember working with a partner to create content takes longer but this will help save time.

Content promotion

Set a launch date with the partner to start the email, social campaigns and blog promotion.

Then two or three weeks before the launch date, decide on promotional tactics and timeframe.

The following are examples of content promotion ideas on different marketing channels:

Blog Posts

Blog posts help drive traffic to your co-marketing content and offers.

Share your co-marketing blog content on emails to subscribers, social accounts and other places you’ve agreed to reach target audiences.

Social Media

Content promotion on social media brings awareness to your co-marketing campaign and visitors to your website and content.

When sharing your business’s content, tag your co-marketing partner and have them do the same.

This helps you both benefit from each other’s audience’s using cross-promotion, who can view and interact with the content.

Email

Email can reach a lot of people at once, use it to encourage people to attend your co-marketing webinar or event or download your content.

Your email message should clearly show yours and your partner brand, so recipients see the two companies involved.

Remember to create unique tracking URLs to track your partner’s promotions efforts versus your own.

So you know which leads came from where.

Analysis

Now look back to see if your efforts were successful.

Think of the following before deciding to work with the partner again:

• Did you hit your goal?
• If not, why and what happened?
• Did you fail or the partner?

Next, check if the leads generated are high-quality leads compared to what you normally generate with individual content and campaigns.

Think about the following:

• Lead-to-customer conversion rate
• What your sales team think about the leads

And finally, consider the following:

• If the partnership was successful
• Did your partner think the relationship was helpful
• How it was to work with your partner
• Did you make high-quality content that you couldn’t without your partner
• When working with this partner, what worked well and what didn’t

Follow-up

Communicate with your partner during the co-marketing campaign and after.

Maybe there is an opportunity to work together again in the future.

But even if you don’t, remember to keep a positive brand image and stay professional.

For example, if the campaign’s landing page was on your website, send the leads generated to your partner at the end.

Note: The easiest way is to download the CSV leads file from your database.

Conclusion

Both you and partners can benefit from co-marketing in many ways.

Just remember to experiment with:

• Different campaigns types
• Different partners

Doing so helps you figure out what works best for:

• Your audience
• Your business

Now it’s over to you.

If you have tried co-marketing, tell me

• How did your experience go?
• What do you look for in a partner?
• And the types of campaigns you found most successful?

Let me know in the comment section below.