How do marketing partnerships work?
Your first marketing hire is often a later priority for startup founders and business owners (more on that here). This can be the key to understanding your audience better, and help you create a steady flow for gaining new customers and keeping them.
But other levers can start before bringing on this role. Many new startups overlook marketing partnerships in their initial marketing efforts and go-to-market strategies. However, these partnerships can help gain initial traction and build brand awareness. Here, we'll explore marketing partnerships, their key benefits, and how you can start building them for your small business.
What are Marketing Partnerships?
A marketing partnership is a collaborative relationship between your business and another non-competitive, complementary brand with a similar target audience. A mutually beneficial arrangement exists where you work together to achieve your marketing objectives.
The Benefits of Marketing Partnerships:
Diversify Marketing Channels: Partnerships allow you to expand beyond your existing channels and tap into new audiences.
Reach Your Target Audience: Partner with brands that already have your ideal customers, ensuring a more qualified lead pipeline.
Higher Conversion Rates: Since the audience is more targeted, partnership leads tend to convert better.
Cost-Effective Marketing: Leveraging partnerships can be much more cost-efficient than paid advertising alone.
Mutually Beneficial: Both partners benefit from the expanded reach and shared audiences.
When to Start Building Partnerships
The best time to start marketing partnerships is now. Like SEO, content marketing, and other ‘organic’ growth levers, it takes time to build relationships and see results. Starting early allows you to diversify acquisition channels and create an organic marketing mix. (Even pre-launch, there can be opportunities for partnerships to amplify your go-to-market launch).
Identify Your Goals:
This can seem obvious but is often the most overlooked (and tricky). Different types of partnerships have different goals and results. Beginning with your specific goals is important for instance - don’t just say “more revenue.” Be more specific about what you want to achieve. You can and often will have multiple goals and test different partnership types and tactics.
Driving traffic/app installs/account creations
Lead generation/new sign-ups
Grow product/service trials
Grow purchases/subscribers
Identify Your Audience:
Next, you need to define who your target consumers are or might be. This is important for choosing partners and types of partnerships. You can think of several characteristics and test them. Some audience parameters to consider:
What life stage are they in, and what other products/services would be relevant to them?
If location-bound, where do they live? What is unique about that region as it relates to how they’d access related services/products?
What demographic markers are relevant to your buyer personas? (i.e., gender, parental status, profession, etc.)
Is there a particular event or trigger that needs to happen to become your target consumer?
Types of Marketing Partnerships:
Influencer Marketing Partnerships: These are content creators who share your message on social media platforms for a fee. They can also create content for you to use on your brand platforms.
Loyalty Partnerships: A program that gives your customers rewards when they choose your product or service.
Affiliate Partnerships: A brand, content creator, or other group shares direct links to your product or service. They earn a set commission on the sales they generate.
Brand Partnerships: Businesses work together in service of brand building. These collaborations help with goals like awareness and reaching more people.
Content/Commerce Partnerships: This involves selling products and services alongside content. Either the partner hosts the product or provides the content.
Strategic Partnerships: A more holistic partner who can elevate multiple business objectives – not limited to one channel or metric.
Partnership Tactics to Consider:
Joint Product/Service Offerings
Social Media Cross-Promotion
Content Sharing/Guest Blogging
Exclusive Discounts & Offers
Co-hosted events (Virtual or In-Person)
Opportunity to think creatively and out of the box based on your business and who you're looking to partner with
How to Get Started:
Create a prospecting list of potential complementary partner brands.
Brainstorm partnership ideas – rigid co-marketing activations or fluid relationship-building.
Begin outreach and relationship-building.
From prospect to launch, the process can take 1-12+ months depending on partnership complexity.
The path to a successful marketing partnership begins with knowing your audience's needs. Then, find brands that can help you meet those needs. With creativity and commitment, these partnerships can become a key driver of your startup's growth.
