6 Steps to Co-branded Marketing Success STEPS FOR EFFECTIVELY MARKETING YOUR CO-BRANDING INITIATIVE

Benefits of a co-branding partnership

u  Immediately increase your audience size and reach

u  Increase brand awareness

u  Drive brand recognition

u  Increase sales

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6 Steps to Co-branded Marketing Success

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Negotiate marketing terms with your partner

u  What is your company open to?

u  Where does your company draw the line?

u  What “extras” can you think of?

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

4

Describe your product or service

u  What does the combined product look like?

u  Is it a new product, offer or service?

u  Is it an existing product that’s getting a facelift?

u  Is anything getting co-branded?

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

5

Identify strategic opportunities for the partnership

u  Where can you capitalize on brand and audience enhancement?

u  Where is there potential for increased email/blog/newsletter lists, etc.?

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

6

Tentative structure for your discussions

u  Bring up timelines for launch and production needs – these can remain fluid at this step, but it’s always good to start off with a tentative structure to revolve your discussions around.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Your audience vs. your partner’s

u  Identify: Your Audience

u  Identify: Partner’s Audience

u  Your partner will have unique insights into their audience and the type of messaging and delivery channels they respond to best.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

Does your partner’s audience align with your own? If not, identify how they are different.

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Determine your target audience

u  Once you and your partner have clearly outlined your respective audiences, determine who is your intended audience. All marketing messaging will need to be geared towards these specific recipients.

u  Put all of this into consideration when you determine how you want to approach a new, heterogeneous audience.

u  You might even want to consider having multiple audience segments, which will allow you to send more customized, targeted messaging.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

9

Marketing channels

u  When determining your marketing outlets, take advantage of unique channels that your partner uses, and work with your partner to get their messages out through your own channels.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Your outlets can take the form of:

u  Co-branded, single subject newsletter blasts

u  Social media mentions, re-posts and announcements

u  Co-authored press releases

u  Unique events or specialized marketing initiatives

u  General company news distribution and press releases

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

11

Establish your goals

u  Establishing a partnership’s marketing goals is unique from determining a marketing department’s or even a marketing project’s goals. Here it becomes more tricky as you have not one, but two or more distinct companies to consider, and specific goals and metrics may differ from company to company.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

What is important to each company? What are each company’s typical metrics?

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Metrics

u  Once you’ve identified your co-branding goals, find a good set of metrics that help you to gain an understanding of the progress of your marketing initiatives.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

13

Set your calendar of activities

u  Start your partnership by setting up your to-do list.

u  At the very least, write a list of the activities that need to be accomplished up to and during your marketing launch.

u  Outline what you are going to do and what you aim to achieve.

u  Provide an overview of the messaging that applies to each applicable step.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Set responsibilities

u  It is also very important to outline who is responsible for each activity. Doing this allows you to measure the progress and performance of your team.

u  It simultaneously allows you to assess your resources.

u  Do you have the manpower you need?

u  Do you need to hire?

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Launch your campaign

u  All of your hard work is about to pay off!

u  While the campaign is running, check in periodically to make sure everything is going as planned.

u  Make changes in real time as needed.

It’s time to measure

u  The last step – you’re almost there! Now it’s time to go back to your goals.

u  As you review the goals you initially set out to accomplish, ask yourself this: u  Have they been met?

u  Exceeded?

u  And, most importantly, why?

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Conclusion

u  Hopefully this guide has given you a practical guideline to getting your partnership off the ground. Every partnership is different, and certainly many of these steps will be customized to bring the most value to you and your partnership.

Setup Determine

Your Audience

Marketing Outlets Identify Goals Marketing

Launch Measurement

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Find out more about Powerlinx

Streamline your partnership planning process on Powerlinx

u  Get a pre-qualified list of partners that suit your business’ needs.

u  See your business compatibility with your dynamic PowerScore.

u  Organize business relationships in Spaces.

u  Skip the back-and-forth conversations and discover detailed information on your partner’s profile.

u  Try it free: www.powerlinx.com

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