Partnership marketing is a great way to find and engage new customers in your target audience. But what exactly does it mean?
Essentially it’s about creating a mutually beneficial relationship between two brands. Typically it will be between brands that share the same target audience and similar distribution channels. It allows brands to work together to drive brand awareness, broaden their reach and increase revenues.
One brand may pay the other brand creating a “Host and partner” type relationship or there will be a trade-off to create a totally symbiotic relationship.
Types of partnership marketing
Inserts
Options include brand collateral within a partners distribution, hosting partner collateral in your brand’s distribution or a swap of collateral where both partners host. Say for example if you were a brand selling houseplant delivery subscriptions, your audience would be the same profile as a brand selling gourmet vegan meal subscriptions. A partnership could be agreed where your marketing communications were packaged in their meal delivery boxes, and vice versa their communications could appear in your plant delivery boxes.
Value add
Partnerships don’t need to take the form of tangible inserts. Data can be traded and still be fully GDPR compliant, as well as POS opportunities, referral codes etc.
Samples
Everyone loves a freebie! You can go beyond a printed piece of collateral and give your potential new customers a little taste of your brand and product.
What makes a good partnership?
The most obvious thing is having a shared target audience. It’s not just about demographics, it’s about buying habits, lifestyle, income, interests etc. Secondly, at least one of the partners needs an engaged user base for a channel. Subscription products are ideal for partnerships as these are monthly packages that customers are actively looking for and opening, but it may be that they have an actively engaged email database, or popular POS spaces.
How does it work with PSE?
While the type of partnership and arrangement can take many different forms, the approach for making them a success follows these general steps:
1. Understand your goals:
Ascertaining what you want to achieve and planning how best to reach this target by aligning your brand with the right partner
2. Campaign planning
Putting the wheels in motion with our expert planning team to maximise ROI
3. Outreach & brokering
PSE liaise with potential partners inside and outside of our network and facilitate the right campaign for both parties
4. Delivery & reporting
Ensuring the campaign is delivered to spec and reporting on performance to generate insight and learnings
Interested in joining forces with brands like HelloFresh, Viovet and Charles Tyrwhitt?
You can view our current partnership programmes here or if you want something bespoke you can contact us here to discuss your partnership options.
