If you want your business to thrive and flourish amidst the cut-throat competition today, you need to come with new marketing strategies matching the constantly changing customer preferences.
A good marketing strategy is all about targeting the right audience who can enjoy the prime benefits of your products/services through the most appropriate medium and in the most preferred way.
There are many emerging digital marketing trends these days, right from social media marketing, blog marketing, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, Chatbots, and so on. Moreover, with advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Augmented Reality (AR), digital marketing has taken a whole new transformation.
No, that doesn’t mean you need to invest a wholesome amount of money and opt for sophisticated technologies to enhance your marketing strategies. Ultimately, our marketing motive is to take our products/services in front of our target audience in more engaging and more meaningful ways.
Often brands compete with each other to promote their products/services to audiences. But what about collaborating with another brand that shares the same values with your brand? That way, both the brands can reach a new market that they didn’t explore before.
Yes, brands need to swallow their pride and partner with the appropriate brands to run co-marketing campaigns. Co-marketing enables brands to create meaningful collaborations that provide value to their audience while boosting sales for both brands.
So, now we are here with a handy guide that illustrates the fundamentals of co-marketing, its benefits, why your brand should do it, and how to do it?
What is Co-Marketing?
Co-marketing or partnership marketing refers to the process of collaborating two brands to run a promotional campaign as a team. Relevant brands involved in co-marketing can expose both brands to a new set of audiences, driving awareness, leads, and revenue.
Though co-marketing is nothing new and has existed from earlier days, it is gaining popularity in recent times. Let’s simplify co-marketing with an example for your better understanding.
For instance, consider an airline company and a car rental services company. They both can collaborate and deliver better offers for travelers. Often a passenger will need a car upon landing in a new city. Thus, both airlines and car rental services can run co-marketing campaigns, attracting travelers with valuable deals.
Why Should Brands Leverage Co-Marketing?
Co-marketing is one such marketing strategy that can bring significant benefits to both entities. Let us see why brands should be involved in co-marketing. Plus, let's explore the list of advantages brands can enjoy with co-marketing.
1) Targeting a Wider Audience
Co-marketing allows your brand to reach a whole set of new audiences to which you would not have accessed otherwise. Simultaneously, your partner brand can access your audiences. Thus, both brands can widen their target market and audiences, increasing their brand visibility dramatically.
As audiences are familiar with one of the brands already, they trust the other brand as well. Thus, your brand gains loyal customers and a trustworthy community instantly.
Co-marketing also enables brands to have long-term partnerships, allowing them to share the risks and come with effective marketing strategies.
2) Efficient Analysis of Marketing Campaigns
Both organizations can analyze and compare the audiences who responded well and those who didn’t. Thus, they can come with better marketing campaigns laser-targeting their audiences.
Furthermore, you have many free business tools that you can leverage to check the response of your marketing campaigns. Thus, with those valuable insights, you can derive better marketing campaigns.
More business minds mean more ideas. Yes, your partner may come up with a fresh perspective that can enhance your marketing strategies. You can also suggest your plans based on your experiences. Whatever you choose, co-marketing can do wonders for both brands if they travel towards similar goals.
3) Target the Right Customers at the Right Time
When you partner with a relevant brand that complements your products/services, it enables you with marketing opportunities to target customers at the perfect time. For instance, when you book a flight, you can notice car rental ads popping up on your screen.
Often, people who land in a new place will not have their own vehicles and, they tend to hire cars. Thus, car rentals team up with airlines and indulge in co-marketing campaigns. They cross-promote their services across relevant platforms, attracting customers with valuable offers.
Hence, co-marketing does not benefit the involved brands alone but also the customers. Yes, in this case, a customer can book both airline and car together and plan their trip hassle-free.
4) Cost-Effectiveness
When you indulge in co-marketing with another brand, you can share all of your marketing campaigns costs. That way, both brands can cut the maximum costs involved with marketing or advertisements. That, in turn, helps with a high return on investment(ROI) for both brands. Moreover, more than money, you can share resources, ideas and help each other mutually.
5) Build Your Brand Identity
Co-marketing allows smaller brands to partner with well-known, popular brands. Thus, the smaller brand can establish its brand identity by associating itself with a bigger brand.
Plus, it also helps the popular brands to target more specific audiences that they might not be able to target alone. Either way, it benefits both brands regardless of their size or popularity.
How to Create a Co-Marketing Strategy?
Now, you know the benefits your brand can enjoy with co-marketing campaigns. So, how to create a rigid co-marketing strategy that can yield better results for both brands?
Here are some best practices that you can follow with your co-marketing strategy:
1) Set Mutual Objectives
Both entities should be clear about their goals before engaging in co-marketing campaigns rigorously. What do you want to achieve out of this co-marketing campaign? Question yourself and identify your goals.
When you discuss and be clear with your goals earlier, the better you can complement each other, working towards the same objective. Plus, you can team up and derive better marketing strategies to accomplish those goals.
2) Create Co-Branded Content
Content is the king that rules any marketing strategy. Even if your brand and your partner brand have excellent content, it will not work out if it is not relevant to your new co-marketing campaign.
So, you need to come up with brand new content that can add value to your customers. You can brainstorm content ideas together and make sure it is ideal and suitable for both market segments. Plus, always make sure the content aligns with both of your objectives and KPIs.
3) Set Your Timeframe
You can set your timeframe for your co-marketing campaigns. It enables everyone involved in the campaign to be on the same page, aiding to complete tasks on time.
Both brands can decide on content publishing dates that suit both audiences. For example, your brand may have a specific time of the year that comes with increased sales.
To give you a clearer picture, people tend to buy party supplies during Christmas and air conditioners during summer. Likewise, if your products show the increased engagement at a specific time, you can publish your content accordingly.
4) Weigh Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Your brand may be good at some things, while your partner brand may be good at some things. Discuss those things with your partner and figure out how to implement both of your strengths in constructing an effective co-marketing strategy.
For instance, you can allot tasks as per both of your strengths. If your team has excellent video content creators, you can utilize them for creating video campaigns, whereas if your partner has good writers in their team, they can come up with blog marketing.
5) Sign Up for a Co-Marketing Agreement
Words may not work as intended, and hence both parties need to sign a co-marketing agreement. Also, it will help both brands understand the protocols from the beginning and avoid any miscommunication.
Your co-marketing agreement should include factors like:
- ♦ Your brand objectives
- ♦ Topics you want to cover
- ♦ Timeframe
- ♦ Promotional plans
- ♦ Reporting plans
- ♦ Content and asset ownership
- ♦ Where to share or host your content?
Moreover, after listing all of them out, you will get a clear roadmap ahead of you to proceed with your co-marketing campaigns.
Wrapping Up
Partnering with a brand that matches your vision enables endless opportunities to reach a whole new set of audiences and grow your target market. It is all about constructing a rigid co-marketing campaign; that provides value for your audiences and facilitates both brand’s growth.
We have witnessed many brands successful in their co-marketing campaigns, increasing their brand visibility and boosting sales. For instance, Intel partnered with PC manufacturers and came up with the term Intel Inside. We all know Intel Inside is there everywhere now in the computer hardware world.
Knowing the immense benefits of co-marketing, now you can do it for your brand too. Hopefully, this blog will act as a handy guide that you can refer to for understanding and executing co-marketing strategies quickly. However, many business owners often get intimidated by the evolving digital marketing terms and methodologies.
No worries. At Cypherox Technologies, we have our digital marketing experts who are up to date with the newest digital marketing trends. You can rely on them for constructing reliable digital marketing strategies and SEO that bring favorable results for your brand. Reach us for availing of our digital marketing and SEO services.
