Partnering with another organization to launch a program or service together is an incredible opportunity to not only drive new sales for your business but to also create new opportunities for sharing your content and leveraging the partnership to create more marketing content.
What can brand partnerships do for your business? A strategic partnership can lend itself to creating enhanced value, spreading the word about your offerings to a different audience, and enhancing value to your partner’s target demographic.
What’s the Value of Partnering?
Partnerships help businesses to leverage complementary strengths and customer bases. Marketing partnerships have evolved over time and are great ways to help build brand recognition, address gaps that your customer might have, and ultimately, are another tool to increase sales through sharing unique offers.
How do you identify a potential partner? Here are some things to consider:
- Look for a non-competitor. At a minimum, your partner shouldn’t directly compete with your product or service. Ideally, they will compliment you or add value where you don’t.
- Know your business needs. Prior to getting into the execution of content partnership, it helps to understand what your needs are and what’s driving the partnership. Are you trying to attract a new audience, drive sales, increase brand awareness? Seeking out partners who can help you meet your needs is just as important.
- Audience. Everyone preaches that knowing their audience is key, but this is even truer when it comes to partners promoting joint content. Different customer segments respond differently to different forms of content and social media.
Social Media Cross-Promotion
Regardless of the size of your business, you can leverage social media to help get a return on a marketing investment. Here are some reasons why partnerships can help with your social media marketing content:
- Tapping into a partners’ social audience will enhance your message. You might have a comprehensive social media marketing plan in place, but aligning with a partner can increase the chance of your message reaching new audiences. Having a partner that will share or cross-post on their social channels gives your communications the boost they just might need!
- Have partners donate prizes or giveaways. Contests and giveaways are great ways to increase engagement on social media. Running promotions with prizes or services allow marketing teams to get creative with offers, while prominently featuring a partner’s products and capabilities.
Examples of Co-marketing Content You Can Create
While it’s important to make sure that your partner is on board for a particular campaign before you promote it; some examples of content that you can collaborate on include:
Joint research. Data is incredibly powerful content to create. If you collaborate on research-driven content, it can often result in more shares on social media and helps tell your story in a fact-based way that shows the value your customers can experience.
Webinars. A webinar is an easy way to scale your co-marketing efforts. If both partners have someone on the team that is great at creating and delivering a presentation, you are halfway there. Creating some promotional assets and distributing a notice to a targeted list of customers will set you well on your way. You’ll want to make sure the subject matter experts practice the presentation a couple of times before, to work out the dynamic between the individuals.
eBooks. If part of your campaign is to ultimately drive leads for your company, an eBook is a great source of delivering value while creating qualified leads. Typically, those who download your eBook are committed to spending some time learning about what you are offering. If you can, try testing a couple of examples to figure out an easily consumable length of eBook that your customers will engage with.
Marketing teams continue to evaluate new ways to get their products and services in front of their various audiences. Partnerships present an incredible opportunity to create a strategic alliance with other companies that will help you create new content, or simply enhance your current content. Partnerships are great for offering new content ideas, but more importantly, offer a chance to have your content reach audiences you haven’t before. 
