If you want to scale Marketing, forming strategic co-branding partnerships could be one way to go about it. It is budget-friendly and also lets you reach out to a new audience. As you might be well-aware, the biggest challenge that any marketer can face is finding prospects.
Unless and until you are a famous multi-million dollar corporation, you WILL have to convince prospects to buy. Also, young businesses may not have the budgets to spend on media, paid ads and PR.
Sometimes, even high budgets fail to give you the visibility you need for your brand. This need coupled with limited budgets has given rise to this unique solution and is embraced by startups and corporations alike. And, the best thing about this is it’s a pretty effective way to scale your marketing.
Some of the most successful co branding partnerships, the world has ever seen are BMW-Louis Vuitton, Uber-Spotify, Apple Pay-Mastercard etc.
Louis-Vuitton created a 4 piece set of luxury luggage to fit into the BMW i8. That's a good case of co-branding partnership where both the brands cater to their customers' needs in a stylish way.
Be wary though, a collaboration can only be successful when you complement each other’s needs. You need to choose a partner company whose audience will be interested in your product and vice-versa.
You need to have shared interests and goals, if you both want to scale marketing to generate leads.
Such partnerships may or may not have monetary considerations but it should let you tap into each other’s customer base.
How to Set Up a Successful Marketing Collaboration to Scale Your Marketing?
While it sounds easy, you need follow these steps to have a successful marketing collaboration:
1. Chalk Down a Strategy
Your marketing will only be effective when you have a sound marketing strategy in place. You should have a clear idea of your goals. Accordingly you can craft a marketing campaign to reach out to this new audience.
Figure out if you just want to reach more people or reach a certain section of people. Moreover, having a clear goal in mind will help you choose your partner company.
2. Think Like They Think
The success of your marketing collaboration depends mostly on your audience. Hence, when you are choosing a brand with whom you can collaborate, put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
What brands do they like? Which brands do they buy the most from? Which brand can complement yours? You need to identify these brands and see which collaboration might be the most beneficial to meet your goals.
3. Stay True to YOUR Brand
Choosing a brand to collaborate with is not hard. But finding a brand that reflects the same ideals as yours might be. Of course you can collaborate with brands that do not have the same brand values as yours.
But that collaboration might not be as effective as you might want it to be. A good collaboration is like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together. The very essence of the two brands will drive you forward.
4. Money Doesn’t Matter
While there is always a scope for paid collaborations, it’s best not to do so. Building collaborations based on mutual benefit is much more meaningful and effective.
Never fall into the trap of thinking that you have nothing to offer. No one is too small and you always have an offering for your brand partners. The trick lies in identifying what you can offer them in return.
5. Focus on the Collaboration
If you want your marketing collaboration to work, you need to focus on it. You need to nurture it, just like you would nurture a lead. You need to care for it and invest time to create a strong, long-lasting relationship.
The first thing about a successful collaboration is that you should be open and honest. Agree on your joint goals and assist each other to achieve them. Unless and until both participants are successful, you cannot have a successful collaboration.
Be flexible if you want to scale marketing this way. You must have a central idea and work on it. This idea needs to reflect your partner's needs as well. See how well you can use this idea to get more prospects.
Bottom Line
Building collaborations to scale marketing is not easy. More difficulty lies in choosing the partner who is a perfect fit and agreeing to metrics to track success of the co-branding campaigns.
Perhaps, the answer may lie in the right use of technology which tracks visits and conversions on the brands' web properties and integrate the results into a single dashboard.