Co-Marketing: What It Is, Advantages, and How to Do It in Practice
Being in marketing means constantly reinventing yourself and seeking new strategies. That’s what we’re going to talk about in this article, another tactic for you to boost your results: co-marketing.
This strategy is nothing more than the collaboration between two companies to achieve a greater benefit.
Let’s understand more about co-marketing, its advantages, and how to implement it.
Keep reading!
What is Co-Marketing?
As the name suggests, co-marketing is shared marketing.
In other words, it’s the collaboration between two companies that have a similar target audience and ideas, aligning their efforts to promote a new product or content.
The result of this collaboration is a larger audience reached and the sharing of results between both institutions.
The goal of co-marketing is to increase the number of people reached, generate more authority in the market, boost awareness about your business, and achieve more results through the ideas of both companies.
Differences Between Co-Marketing and Co-Branding
It’s common to confuse co-marketing and co-branding due to their similarities, but they have different purposes. Let’s explore the characteristics of each:
- Co-Branding – a partnership between two companies that combine their products to offer something even more valuable (something new). They leverage the best of each other.
- Co-Marketing – a partnership between two companies that work together to promote a shared offer, such as a product or content. The results of this promotion are shared between them. It’s a broader concept. Example: Lego Land amusement park, Volvo, and Lego.
Thus, co-branding is a method within co-marketing.
Advantages of Co-Marketing
Now that you understand the concepts and how this strategy works, let’s move on to the benefits that co-marketing can bring to your business.
Increased Reach
If your content production and campaigns already yield results, imagine the numbers you could achieve with the help of a partner.
By combining your strategy with another company, you will have a larger audience to reach – a new audience to capture attention.
Lower Costs
Let’s remember that the work here is divided between two parties, so all the costs of creating content or tools will be shared equally.
Market Recognition
By partnering with other companies, you are joining efforts with businesses that have a certain market presence, meaning the recognition will be greater.
In addition to reaching a larger audience, people will see this joint work as a reinforcement of authority.
How to Make a Successful Co-Marketing Campaign
For your co-marketing strategy to be successful, you need to go through some points: let’s discuss them.
Choose the ideal partner
There won’t be co-marketing without a partner, right?
To find a good company for this partnership, follow these criteria:
- Is it a market reference?
- Does it have a product or service complementary to yours?
- Does it have the same target audience?
- Does it have knowledge to contribute to the project?
- Does it already produce content for a considerable audience?
If all the answers are positive, you can consider it a good option.
Plan carefully
To avoid disappointments or problems along the way, plan everything in advance, make as many alignments as necessary.
Pay attention to some points:
- What will be the project’s objectives?
- What topic will be addressed and what material will be produced?
- What are the deadlines?
- Who will be responsible for tasks X, Y and Z?
Don’t forget to maintain well-aligned communication to avoid misunderstandings and, consequently, problems.
Distribute tasks well
Map out each company’s specialty to then distribute tasks that will be better executed by each one.
By dividing tasks well, you increase the quality of the material and reduce production time.t
Evaluate the results
Evaluating the results is as important as planning your steps carefully.
Monitor the established metrics to analyze if you have met the objectives and if co-marketing has yielded good results.
Remember that today’s results will be learning for future partnerships.
What can be produced in a co-marketing action?
Co-marketing can generate various complete, informative, and unique content pieces. Let’s explore the possible content formats for this strategy.
E-books
E-books are great materials for partnerships because while one company handles the content, the other takes care of the design and vice versa.
Moreover, you combine the knowledge of both parties for effective promotion, lead generation, and also increase authority on a particular subject.
Whitepapers
Whitepapers are a middle ground between blog posts and e-books.
The difference is that they are slightly shorter than an e-book and more specific than a blog post.
If you want something easier and quicker to produce, invest in this format.
Webinars
Webinars are the ideal format for co-marketing because they don’t require as much planning time or manpower for production.
This dynamic model involves one (or more) experts speaking for a period about their specialty.
Videos
Videos can be explored in various areas such as tutorials, interviews, product reviews, among others.
Because they offer dynamic content, videos tend to attract and hold the user’s attention more easily. Produce videos together or promote them on each other’s channels.
Twitter Chats
Twitter Chats are virtual events where people gather to discuss a common topic.
This way, you showcase your expertise and invite audiences from both companies. Additionally, you can promote your Chat to further expand your reach.
Events
Event marketing for partnerships is something that has mixed opinions because, although it’s more interactive, costs and difficulties can be drawbacks.
However, online events are also an alternative for you and your partner to unite your audiences and share your brands and knowledge.
Tools
Creating a tool together yields quick, lasting, and cost-effective results.
It doesn’t have to be something elaborate that requires a lot of investment and time. Think of tools that help the target audience of both companies in their daily lives, such as a spreadsheet or even a specific document.
So yeah, that’s what co-marketing is all about. Did we make it clear enough? I sure hope so.
We talked about lead generation through the article as one of the objectives of co-marketing.
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