Partner Marketing: The Basics

All you need to know about partner marketing!

Partner marketing is a mutual collaboration of two brands. The two brands work together to promote each other’s products or services. Most of the time, these two businesses are similar enough to attract the same customers. Yet they are different enough to bring new customers to each other. In this way, both partners can improve their value propositions. Brands can meet various marketing goals by opting for partner marketing. These goals include enhanced brand exposure, credibility, lead generation, sales, and business growth. 

The Elephant in The Room: How to Begin?

List of Objectives

Before you set out on the journey, create a list of your objectives. What goals do you aim to achieve within a certain amount of time? A smart marketing partner might help you reach your growth goals faster. This happens by adding a high-revenue product in a short amount of time. You also can keep your overhead costs the same. This will help your business succeed in the long run.

Find the Perfect Match

For partner marketing to work, businesses must work together with similar goals. This means staying away from direct competitors. Two businesses that work together shouldn’t try to get the same market share. It’s essential to avoid partnerships between companies with little in common. This should be avoided at any cost. In this case, it’s less likely that customers of one company would also be interested in the product of the other.

Have a Deep Discussion With Your Partner (The business one)

Partner marketing, like all relationships, takes work. It’s important to talk with a possible marketing partner about the goals of both brands. It benefits the business relationship. Talk about each company’s good points, bad points, and needs. See where one person’s weaknesses match the strengths of the other and vice versa. Give ideas for how the two companies can help each other. Most importantly, continue talking once you’ve made the partnership official. Collect information about each joint marketing effort to determine how successful it was. After this, set the direction of the partnership based on that.

Transparency 

Above all, think about how you and your partners can both benefit.  Get feedback from people who aren’t involved in the situation. This helps ensure that both sides’ benefits are real, not just dreams. Look over the lists and reach out to the companies that would benefit most from working with you. And most importantly, be honest with your partners and make sure they are truthful as well. Look for communication, reporting, and documentation. They should be honest about everything they do on your company’s behalf.

We know how to begin but now let us dive into the types of partner Marketing

Types of Partner Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

It works well for publishers. The Publishers often include links to the websites of their brand partners. When a customer purchases after clicking on a link provided by a brand, the publisher is entitled to receive payment.

Distribution Partnerships

The products of one company are bundled with those of another company and distributed by the first company. When the first firm agrees to cross-promote the products of the second company, the second company will provide discounts. Demonstrations conducted inside retail stores are a frequent form of a distribution partnership. 

Loyalty Partnership

It is another type of partner marketing. One company’s loyalty program provides members with coupons for the other company’s goods. Cashback, redeemable points, special offers, or gift cards are common rewards. The promoted brand sees an uptick in sales, and loyalty program participation rises.

Licensing

When one company sells the use of its products and brand image to another, the transaction is called brand licensing. The seller will specify which aspects of the brand the buyer can use. In exchange, the buyer will benefit from the marketing power and reputation associated with the original brand.

Product Placement

In this type of partnership, one brand talks about another through its media content.This is often done when a TV show or movie uses a brand’s physical products, but it can also happen in conferences, white papers, and case studies. For example,  Influencer marketing is another type of product placement that is becoming popular. Social media influencers can use the number of people who follow them to recommend a brand or product to a wider audience. They can also use the market power of that brand to grow their following.

Benefits of Partner Marketing

Even though the market is competitive, that doesn’t mean brands need to compete ruthlessly. It enables the brands to work together with other businesses. Especially those who are like their own. This way, both businesses can benefit from the reach and resources of the other.

Here are a few ways that marketing strategies based on partnerships can help brands in any industry.

Marketing Power

Partner marketing means that companies no longer have to limit themselves. Not by their own marketing budgets or the number of people they employ. Each joint effort requires money and marketing from both groups. The joint efforts of the companies help to boost the marketing power. Moreover, it becomes easier for them to have a successful run. 

Mutual Promotion

Both companies essentially back each other’s brand. The outcome is comparable to that of referral programs. As marketers consider these programs to be one promising source of quality leads. Partnership marketing communicates a brand’s belief in the other company’s products and vice versa.

Appealing to High Potential Audience

Building an audience from scratch is fraught with challenges. Many of those challenges can be avoided if you engage in partner marketing. The perfect business partner for a brand already has a connection with the consumers they are trying to reach. With the help of that relationship, the company can rapidly build a degree of trust. They can also promote user engagement that would be impossible to achieve with cold marketing.

Helps to Cut Through The Noise

We get so much advertising, notifications, and Tik Tok videos these days that many people don’t even notice ads anymore. Ad blockers are being used more and more, even on phones. Brands have to either spend more money on paid ads that don’t bring in as many customers or find other ways to reach potential customers. Partner marketing plans that work well are usually very creative. People still like to hear from brands they know and trust. If you can form a marketing partnership with a brand with the right audience, you can cut through the noise.

Adds Value 

Making your audience available to a partner isn’t just about reaching their audience. When you choose the right partners, you add value to your existing audience. Let’s say, for example, that you sell products to digital nomads. You decide to team up with an innovative Tech brand and send an email to your audience to tell them about it. Introducing them to a partner who can solve their unique problems in new and creative ways is a real value-add. This will make people more loyal to your brand in the long run.

Risks of Partner Marketing

There are a few risks of partner marketing. It is a given that there are always some bad sides to a business strategy, and here is the bad side of partner marketing.

Conflict of Interest

There is a possibility of conflict when it comes to interest. Sometimes, some action benefits the partnership but could be bad for an individual organization. These are situations where a layer of conflict might hurt the partnership. In this case, being flexible is essential. 

Challenges of Implementation

It takes work to embark on the journey of partner marketing. There are plenty of tasks that need proper administration. Tasks such as tracking, evaluation, reporting, and additional management duties. Coming up as a collaborative venture entails these challenges. It is one of the risks that both parties need to be mindful of. 

Coming on The Same Page

Partner marketing gets risky once you are not the one controlling the strategies. There is a partner whose opinions and disagreements will be upfront. A decision or some action needs to be taken while considering the stake of the other partner. This problem often creates a rift between the marketing partners. 

The Magic Unfolds 

There are many ways partner marketing can assist in expanding your company. Sometimes collaborations are solely to produce content and cross-promoting it. Furthermore, partner marketing is not something you carry out in a vacuum. You still need to develop new material, improve your SEO, and promote a referral scheme. Partner marketing is a powerful way to raise brand recognition. As it also brings in new clients. These are some of the basics. If you have not thought about partner marketing, now is the time. Everything looks difficult at the start, but nothing remains tough if you keep on going.

Featured Image: Boostability


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