The Case For Co-Marketing

Two heads are better than one when solving marketing problems for clients.  

Are you having trouble expanding your market reach to new customers? Are you trying to break into an entirely new market with a different product or service without luck?

The case for co-marketing–joint marketing efforts between two companies to promote individual products along similar paths–has never been stronger. If two companies with high end-user trust levels combine their messaging around a common cause or initiative, that trust becomes additive in effect among users. This encourages better sales and ROI on marketing spend for each.

The benefits of co-marketing

Co-marketing gives you a great opportunity to begin relationships with other companies and brands while rallying around a common cause. These  connections could create  long-term relationships that could yield other opportunities.

Also, co-signing with another company (co-marketing) gives you access to their customers, which boosts your brand’s reach. You have access to their customers and access to the same markets as your co-company.

With co-marketing, your company can enables your company to maintain more of your marketing capacity because you can split a campaign with your co-company. This also improves your company’s exposure and ROI if the project succeeds.You also might be able to use another company’s unique resources and technology to accomplish a marketing or organizational objective.

More leads, more buzz, more ROI, less work

A common form of co-marketing is two companies with similar values and products working together on a blog post or white paper  and promote it to both their audiences. They often split the advertising budget.

Co-marketing steps to take

Think about co-marketing on content pieces first: webinars, blog posts, infographics or videos, as well as other online/offline events. These often don’t take as much effort as  full marketing campaigns but still yield ROI for your brand.

Take IMPACT for example. The company  partnered with two clients–Force Management and Newport Board Group–on co-marketing for blog posts. This partnership let these clients expand their potential customer reach, while providing valuable content to readers.

At a higher level, you can co-market with another brand on full campaigns that include design work, copy, targeted email programs, PPC ad development and management ou also can team up with other companies on shared landing pages for a common purpose.

Questions to ask before co-marketing

1. Does your potential partner’s audience fit your target profile? What’s the value proposition for each audience?  Will this new partnership delivern new leads, reach, or exposure to different markets? Is this project/opportunity worth it for your company and your current partners? If so, when will you see results?
2. Does this company have a unique value, tool, or expertise you don’t have? If your audience is dying to learn how to build successful email marketing programs, you should probably partner with Shift Paradigm.
3. Will the partnership improve your brand perception? 

Conclusion

If you want to reach new potential markets and audiences and improve your lead generation, think about making your next campaign a dual effort! For more information on co-marketing or other lead generation techniques, talk to Shift Paradigm.