What is co-marketing?

Too often in business there’s an us-against-them mentality – especially for small businesses and those in highly competitive industries. But working with other companies may actually enable you to draw in bigger crowds and increase your bottom line. This is often called co-marketing.

Essentially, it's a joint marketing effort between two or more businesses for the benefit of all parties. It’s not just a way to reduce your marketing spend – it also allows you to draw on the experience of another organisation, get your brand in front of their customer base and offer shared value.

By collaborating on a marketing campaign, both businesses can leverage each other’s strengths and deploy a strategy that may have better odds of delivering viable leads, generating greater awareness and costing less overall.

How do co-marketing activities work?

It’s important to note the difference between co-marketing and co-branding. Whereas the latter involves two or more businesses developing and promoting a single product together, co-marketing instead draws on the visibility of both companies in order to generate more interest in them.

In short, co-marketing products or services belong to each business individually – there is no merging of the two into one as with co-branding.

Some helpful co-marketing examples and ideas

With COVID-19 forcing many businesses into online-only sales, co-marketing activities can be an efficient way for you to expand your reach, dip into new markets and make the most of your marketing budget.

Co-marketing campaigns that made big waves include:

  • Volvo and LEGO: It’s not the most obvious partnership, but this co-marketing effort worked wonders when promoting the LEGOLAND theme park. LEGO was able to bolster its brand by encouraging driver safety and awareness, while Volvo was able to tap into the family-friendly market that LEGO knows so well.
  • Spotify and Starbucks: In this unique co-marketing venture, Spotify gave all Starbucks employees a free Spotify Premium subscription and in return, they created dedicated playlists (available via the Starbucks Mobile app). Spotify users could then earn ‘Stars as Currency’ for listening and upgrading to Premium, which helped Spotify bolster its subscription model.
  • HBO and Bumble: Verging into the territory of co-branding but still very firmly marketing together, dating app Bumble partnered with television giant HBO for a series of movie screenings called the ‘Stay Home to the Movies’ campaign. Bumble benefited by differentiating itself from other dating apps and encouraging real-life interactions, while HBO was able to penetrate a younger audience typically reserved for Netflix and Amazon Prime.

IS CO-MARKETING RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

While the examples above are all from big brands, it’s just as accessible to small businesses. However, you need to do your due diligence and forge the right partnerships. Here are some important considerations:

  • Target market: There should be some level of crossover between your own target market and your co-marketing partner’s. If not, you may end up trying to attract an audience that simply isn’t interested in your offering.
  • Brand personality: Do both businesses’ personas mesh? Will the co-marketing campaign run smoothly or could there be competing ideas?
  • Reach and presence: With co-marketing, you’re investing in the value of another business, so they should already have a decent market reach. Partnering with a brand-new startup, for example, may not be the wisest decision.
  • Plan together: Successful co-marketing campaigns get buy-in from everyone. Work together, build out your goals and share the marketing workload.

Co-marketing has the potential to expose your business to a whole new range of opportunities, and with research and creativity, it might just be the tool you need to make your business stand out from the crowd.