Have you heard of co-marketing?
Have you ever set up an event or campaign to test the potential of this marketing method?
Let’s take a look at an example of what co-marketing can do for you.
Definition of co-marketing
For those who don’t know what it is, here’s what co-marketing is all about: Co-marketing consists of forming an alliance with another company that complements your own, in order to co-promote your products or services.
The aim is to take advantage of the audience usually reached by your partner brand, and vice-versa.
Promotion can take the form of customer sharing, mail shots, etc.
It can also take the form of advertising on social networks, for example.
In short, with co-marketing, you can develop your brand awareness, expand your target audience, and increase your sales, by working with another brand to promote your company and your products or services.
Generally speaking, a co-marketing campaign is limited in time, for example by targeting a particular event.
The classic example is that of the little toy gifts offered in cereal packets at the time of the release of a children’s film, but that’s just one example among many.
Whatever your sector of activity, you can give your business a major boost by choosing the right partners.
Co-marketing and co-advertising
As you can see, co-marketing is a collaboration between two or more brands.
But this collaboration takes place within a strategic framework.
Often, it involves an advertising campaign.
In this case, co-marketing can be considered co-advertising.
Examples of co-marketing strategies
The webinar
If you have a small budget, a webinar is already a simple and effective co-marketing lever.
If you’re the guest expert on another platform, you can reach new prospects.
If you’re the guest, you can still benefit greatly from the event, by showing your regular customers that you’re doing your utmost to offer them high added value.
It’s an excellent way of building customer loyalty, while encouraging them to tell others about you.
And if you have a bigger marketing budget, you can organize a longer or more memorable event than a simple webinar. 
Product launch
Let’s take another example.
A laundry detergent brand might work with a washing machine brand to launch a new product.
The washing machine brand will promote the detergent proposed by its collaborator in one of its advertisements, for example.
It can also provide the laundry brand with mailings, or promote the brand to its customer network via social networks, for example.
The laundry brand can do the same to promote the washing machine brand.
Not to be confused with
There are other forms of collaboration, not to be confused with co-marketing.
Trade-marketing
A partnership between a brand and a distributor is called trade-marketing, not co-marketing.
Co-branding
A partnership involving the co-creation of an article or product is known as co-branding.
Co-branding is often confused with co-marketing, as it involves the merging of two brands.
The difference is that co-branding gives rise to a new joint product and brand.
This is the case, for example, when an ice-cream brand works with a chocolate brand to produce a new product such as a frozen chocolate bar.
What’s the point of co-marketing?
Greater profitability
By co-marketing, you’ll be working and collaborating with another brand.
If you choose to promote via advertising campaigns, you’ll need to spend less on promotion.
So you can expect a higher return.
Acquisition of new customers
Collaboration means sharing information, strategies and customers.
In particular, it enables you to reach a wider and different audience than the one you initially had.
Having access to the other brand’s customer base allows you to generate new leads and, hopefully, more profits.
Surprise effect
Another point that makes co-marketing a functional strategy is its ability to surprise.
By working with another brand, you can promote your products from a fresh angle.
And if this collaboration turns out to be a pleasant surprise for customers, it can generate buzz by encouraging mass sharing. 
The different forms of co-marketing
Co-marketing can take a number of forms, such as sharing mailings, sharing customers on social networks, developing brand awareness through various forms of advertising, and so on.
These forms are grouped around two different systems:
- functional co-marketing, and
- symbolic co-marketing.
Functional co-marketing
Functional co-marketing is generally used to promote a new or little-known brand through a well-known brand.
Symbolic co-marketing
Symbolic co-marketing concerns the collaboration of two famous brands who exchange and share strategies to reach a wider customer base.
Preparing a co-marketing campaign
Before adopting one of these two forms of co-marketing, you and your partner need to analyze the feasibility of the project.
To do this, you need to ask yourself a few questions beforehand.
- What will be the added value of this campaign?
- What about the competition between the two of you?
- Are the target customers identical?
- What impact will this have on the image of the respective brands?
- Are there common benefits or just individual ones?
You should aim for a logical partnership, not one with a brand that’s completely different from your own.
Co-marketing strategies
Co-marketing adopts a variety of strategies to increase visibility, win more customers and promote your business.
Storytelling
The first strategy is storytelling.
Nowadays, users and consumers prefer to listen to a story rather than a basic advertisement.
Storytelling is therefore exploited by brands as part of their advertising campaigns.
That’s why it’s part of co-marketing strategies.
In this sense, if you partner with another brand, for example, the latter can tell your story or your journey to raise your profile, to advertise you.
Storytelling can take the form of a video, a blog, etc.
Your partner can also invite you to present you to their audience at a conference, for example.
Note that this system also works the other way around.
You can talk about your partner.
What you gain is added value.
In addition to your regular customers, by inviting your partner, you also invite his customers.
Emailing
After this strategy, you can try emailing.
You’ll send a promotional e-mail to your customer contacts to promote your partner’s product or service.
For example, you can send emails to your customers to talk about your partner and your experience with his product.
Your partner can do the same for you.
Social networking
Then there’s community sharing, especially on social networks.
This type of network is widely used in advertising marketing.
By creating a buzz, you can reach a vast customer base in record time.
By working with another brand, it can share with you, its followers and its community on social networks. 
In return, you can do the same for your partner.
As a result, you both gain more notoriety, more publicity and more potential customers.
Shared advertising
Finally, there’s co-marketing.
As a reminder, co-marketing is a system designed to bring two brands together for advertising purposes.
It involves carrying out a promotional advertising campaign that one of the two brands would not have been able to do on its own.
This campaign makes it possible to disseminate an image, an idea or a product to a wider public, at a lower cost.
Joint advertising is therefore one of the main strategies of co-marketing.
How does it work?
Take Ikea and Dreamworks, for example.
These two brands launched a promotional advertisement in 2015.
The campaign was a short film that shared a common belief.
The idea both wanted to convey was that they wanted to give everyone access to entertainment.
Both Ikea and Dreamworks were happy with the idea.
By advertising together, the two brands will limit the cost of the campaign, reach a wider common audience and promote their products together.
To conclude on co-marketing
Co-marketing is an excellent way to gain visibility very quickly.
But be careful: you’ll need to find a partner with whom the potential synergies are obvious!
Need advice on developing your online business? As an e-commerce consultant for over 10 years, I invite you to get in touch with me to discuss your web project.
