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15 Best Practices To Ensure A Successful Partner Marketing Initiative
Partnering with another business in a related vertical to collaborate on your marketing efforts is a potentially lucrative strategy that can help you gain new customers. By sharing costs and leveraging insights into the needs, desires and pain points that are relevant to each other’s audience, your outreach to connect with new prospects becomes both more economical and effective. When executed well, your partnership can supplement the work of your in-house or agency marketing team and help you grow your audience and your business. Without an effective plan, though, it could become a frustrating and ultimately futile experience. Here, members of Forbes Agency Council each share one best practice to ensure your efforts result in a powerful success for both brands. 1. Do Your Homework On Potential Partners Before partnering with anyone, do your homework! It’s like dating: Ask questions, get to know who this potential partner is, ask about prior experiences and then see if you can do a trial period. Networking, partnering and taking risks is how companies grow and succeed, but it is key to always be smart about your decisions and know when to not partner up. – Zack Teperman, ZTPR 2. Ensure Your Combined Skills Deliver More Value The success of a powerful partnership always starts with aligned goals and values. It’s not about simply liking a brand or having overlapping customers, but rather whether the partnership would have a meaningful impact. In other words, do your combined skills make you stronger together in delivering value to customers? From there, you can then pick the right projects to partner on. – Sue Manber, Publicis Health 3. Set Goals And Make Ownership Decisions As A Team Clear communication is always the key to a successful partner marketing campaign. Set your goals in writing as a team, establish an approach and decide who owns what when it comes to execution. The clearer the goals, roles and expectations, the higher the likelihood of finding success. – Corbett Drummey, Popular Pays 4. Partner With Complementary Brands On Product Collaborations Direct-to-consumer and e-commerce companies can extend their reach by identifying complementary brands to partner with on product collaborations. Partners benefit when they both bring a healthy audience to the relationship and have a plan to build excitement around the product. To build excitement, create limited-release collaborations and give your customers an opportunity to buy something unique. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai 5. Determine Business Objectives Up Front If you share the same audience, then partnerships can be a great way to extend your reach. Determine business objectives up front to ensure mutual success. Hold regular status calls and work from one project plan to stay on track during the planning and execution phases. To be a true partner, it helps if everyone contributes similarly and meets their deadlines. – Gina Michnowicz, The Craftsman Agency 6. Set The Tone For A Healthy Working Relationship During Onboarding Best practices for partner marketing depend on which phase of the process you are in. I believe teams can set themselves up for success during the onboarding phase by identifying who is responsible for what and deciding on the best methods of communication between teams to set the tone of a healthy working relationship to deal with conflict if and when it arises. – Jonathan Hanson, Unconquered 7. Ensure The Mutual Audience Can See Both Brands’ Benefits Partnerships can be incredibly successful, provided that the mutual audience is able to see the benefits provided by both brands. This means that the brands not only need to attract a similar audience, but also ensure a similar reach and visibility for both partners to see the most effective return. – David Harrison, EVINS 8. Create An Efficient Communication Channel Make sure both partners stay involved by creating an efficient communication channel. Schedule regular meetings where you provide each other with updates. For it to be a success, it is crucial to ensure that you are sharing relevant data, such as sales, to measure the performance KPIs of the partnership. – Jonas Muthoni, Deviate Agency 9. Ensure Full Data Transparency Data transparency is key to partner marketing success. Data must be shared between partners to understand the impact that each brand’s efforts have on the other’s success. An updated customer relationship management system and an integrated measurement strategy are vital to understanding the full user journey across all brand touch points, from first exposure to final purchase. – Donna Robinson, Collective Measures 10. Try Co-Producing A Webinar Together This can work out really well if your and your partner’s services or offerings complement each other. For example, if they are marketing gurus and you are unsurpassable in sales, you can co-host an extremely valuable learning experience for both audiences. And if you co-promote it through your respective channels, you’ll reach twice as many people. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS 11. Make Sure There Is Alignment Between The Brands For successful partner marketing, there needs to be an alignment between the brands from the start. If the two companies in question have very little in common and very little that they can offer audiences together, then it will be ultimately futile. A good example of this working is the partnership between Adidas and Peloton, two sports brands that can offer both of their audiences something they want. – Lisa Montenegro, Digital Marketing Experts – DMX 12. Test The Waters Before Jumping Into A Partnership It’s vital that you test the waters before you jump into a full-on partnership. We first try to do a simple content swap. We note how responsive they are, if they actually follow through and so on. Then, if that’s a positive experience, we’ll start working on something much larger: a webinar, a co-branded funnel or a referral sequence, for example. This ensures that neither brand’s time is wasted if it doesn’t come to fruition. – Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH 13. Create An In-Depth Partnership Calendar In addition to having a solid plan, there should be a clear line in the sand as to where one team’s initiatives end and the other team’s begin. Yes, you’re partnering together, but you don’t want to make more work for each other or step on toes. Create an in-depth partnership calendar that outlines who is doing what and when. Having a solid plan to help reduce friction can be invaluable. – Bernard May, National Positions 14. Plan To Give More Value Than The Other Partner Marketers typically approach these things worried that the deal will be uneven. If you’re concerned that the other partner will get more out of the deal or invest less—so they “win” and you lose—who cares? Set your own goals, but also try to give more than you take. Everything will go more smoothly, and that is a win in and of itself. – Michael Parise, DENT Agency LLC 15. Develop An Agreement At The Partnership’s Inception To ensure a successful partner marketing campaign, both parties should be present at the inception meeting and agree on the goals and key outcomes for the campaign. If an agreement to ensure success hasn’t been determined from the beginning, it will be hard to cross the finish line successfully. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC
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How Brands Can Partner Up To Gain More Customers This Holiday Season
When two or more brands partner up in a special collaboration, the results can help them boost awareness of their products or services in new markets and potentially gain new customers. In the upcoming holiday season, brands that combine their marketing efforts can get their offerings in front of more consumers, capture the attention of those who are in the shopping spirit and drive business and increase fourth-quarter revenues. To create the most effective co-branding strategy, brands must be able to lean on the strength of each other’s names and reputations, and ensuring this synergy requires careful planning and strategic thinking. Here, 12 members of Forbes Agency Council offer expert advice on how two brands can launch a symbiotic marketing partnership that will leave their companies in the black after the holiday shopping rush. 1. Start By Defining The Offering What can two brands bring to the marketplace together? Does it make sense for the offering to be a cooperative initiative? Who would the ideal audience be? What retail or online channel would be ideal? And finally, will the offering be exciting enough to increase traffic in a retail store or online? Then, branding, planning and execution will dictate the success. – Peter Belbita, Noble House Media 2. Seek To Inspire Discovery And Joy Find a partner that inspires discovery and unexpected joy for your customers. Coming out of the pandemic, people are vacillating between uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty stemming from a new sense of vulnerability and the idea of what is possible tomorrow, which could be different and better. As a result, they will be seeking to explore with familiar guardrails. – Cheryl Policastro, TPN 3. Pool Funds Into A Collective Budget I once organized a holiday campaign for ten jewelers located in one mall. Each store contributed an equal percentage toward the total collective budget. The ads promoted the mall as the destination for holiday jewelry gifts, and each of the jewelers’ store names, showrooms and products were featured in the creative. Pooling their funds together created a more widespread campaign and significantly boosted sales. – Chelsey Pendock, Innovision Advertising 4. Bring Something Alluring To Consumers When partnering up, one key question needs to be answered: What will the consumer get out of it? Partnerships between brands need to bring something alluring to consumers that will incentivize them to engage and shop with the partners. A unique product line or service is a great way to do this. – Lisa Montenegro, Digital Marketing Experts – DMX 5. Find The Right Collaboration Find a company with the same audience as yours. If you’re a children’s clothing boutique, you could partner up with a toy store on an exclusive offer: “Buy a shirt, get a toy.” If you’re in a niche, find someone else in a niche. If you sell CBD products, partner with a pet shop to offer customers who buy CBD for their pets a discount on CBD for the owners, and vice versa. – Danny Star, Website Depot 6. Use Customer Insights To Inform The Strategy Think about what your customers need and determine who to pair up with to create a “more complete” solution. Sometimes the best partners are not the obvious ones. Brainstorm around the customer experience journey and see what comes of it. You might be surprised by what you realize when you think about things from different angles. – Fran Biderman-Gross, Advantages 7. Avoid Loop Giveaways On Social Media Some studies have found loop giveaways to be ineffective at growing an engaged audience. Instead, reach out to a couple (three max) of like-minded brands that have similar audience demographics to create a unique product or experience. Make the partnership small and limited, incentivizing your customers to take advantage of the limited opportunity. – Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR 8. Team Up To Give Back To A Cause With the holiday season comes increased generosity, and this provides your brand with an opportunity to team up with another company to give back to a cause—think about your local food pantry, an “angel tree” project or a homeless shelter—and mobilize customers to join in spreading the goodwill. This has the potential to introduce your brand to new customers and earn their trust in the process. – Sara Steever, Paulsen 9. Increase Value With Bundled Products Providing customers with increased value by bundling products and offering them at reasonable prices is something that can bring in more customers this holiday season. By strategically partnering with the right brands and products, companies have the ability to acquire new customers at a much lower cost. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC 10. Make A Statement About Your Shared Core Beliefs Making a statement about what your brand stands for and supporting that with cause marketing is proving to be quite effective with consumers. Identify a brand that shares that same core belief and join forces in bringing that message to consumers. – Lori Paikin, NaviStone® 11. Target Another Brand’s Complementary Service Target a partner brand that features a complementary service your brand doesn’t currently offer but which would benefit the consumer. Approach the other brand with your idea and form a strategic partnership that’s ready to launch for the holiday season. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC 12. Partner With Your Competitors Partner with your competitors this holiday season to create one-of-a-kind collaborations. If you’re a vaping brand, pair your brand’s hardware with a competitor’s accessories. Fostering connections with competitors isn’t a bad thing, and customers will respect you for recognizing other brands’ strengths. – Evan Nison, NisonCo
