Partnership Marketing Strategy
Partnership marketing is an effective way for two or more businesses to combine forces and reach a broader audience. These campaigns allow a business to collaborate with a complementary business with a similar target market for mutual benefits. However, partnering on a marketing initiative will only work if the goals and visions are aligned.
However, for many business owners, coming up with an apt marketing strategy can be challenging. There are many points to ponder over. Moreover, considering that marketing tactics are ever-evolving, there are plenty of options to choose from and a lot more yet to learn. Therefore, valuing strategic collaborations above all else, one can consider partnership marketing as a form of brand partnership that gives a business a competitive edge when attempting to reach a new group of audience.
When speaking about strategies, it is necessary to ask the right questions that would favour the brand. This is important for both marketing agencies in India and around the world. Let’s look at a few tips that might help:
*Link Offerings: It has been seen that businesses like to develop collaborations with like-minded, non-competing brands. This is because they share similar target audiences and want to enter new markets. Through strategic marketing, brands can show these audiences that they can’t have one offer without the other. This can be achieved by presenting partnerships in a way that enhances each brand and brings new meaning to owning a product or using a service.
*Seek Partners to Help Deliver Solutions: A very important step is to identify partners that can help brands deliver easy-to-implement solutions. An end-to-end approach makes the buying decision easier for the target customer.
*Get Aligned on Goals: For any partnership marketing campaign, it’s crucial to ensure that both sides are aligned on goals and desired outcomes. When only half of the partnership is eager about the end result, it’s an indication that there was a miscommunication along the way. Hence, it is advised that setting expectations and maintaining check-ins throughout the campaign are imperative to the success of a long-term partnership.
*Look for Partners in a Parallel Cluster: Since partnership marketing is a form of leveraged marketing where brands try to unlock a new audience, it is important to make sure that brands don’t already have access to that audience. It needs a new audience in a parallel cluster. Hence, finding partners who are different enough is needed to give the leveraged exposure to a big enough chunk of new potential customers.
*Take Advantage of Collective Data: In a marketing space, data collection is mandatory. It helps to ensure that the campaign is designed to target the same audience. The benefit of partnership marketing is to take advantage of one another’s databases and share that collective data. However, it’s crucial that the audience and end goal is mapped out in advance and that each company is on the same page about the desired campaign outcome.
*Focus on the Purpose: Often companies are inclined towards finding partnerships that complement their own products instead of the purpose. However, successful partnerships don’t have to follow that model as long as it is aligned with the purpose of both parties.
*Be Transparent and Play to your Strengths: As with any relationship, transparency and recognizing and playing to each other’s strengths are building blocks for success. Both parties can bring their own unique value propositions, which together can enrich and elevate the purposes for which the partnership was formed to achieve.
*Provide Something Valuable for the Audience: Teaming up with a partner to provide the target audience with something valuable, such as an educational webinar or podcast that answers a question or solves a problem. Joining forces with a partner can offer diversified experts to cover a range of topics, engage and educate the audience and create some great buzz organically.
*Engage the Right Technology Platform: Partnerships are an attractive scalable alternative to primary marketing channels, presuming they are supported by technology automation. Engaging the right technology platform will eliminate the manual nature of partnership marketing campaigns, giving marketers more time to focus on program strategy.
*Ensure a Mutual Benefit: A successful marketing partnership requires that both partners receive roughly the same level of benefit. If one partner receives a much greater benefit than the other, the partnership will fall apart or never materialize in the first place.
*Maintain Clear and Concise Communication: The one thing that can help leverage the power of partnerships during marketing campaigns is to create channels of clear and concise communication. When both partners are on the same page regarding working styles, creative vision and execution of KPI-driven behaviours, the campaign’s success is inevitable.
