Navigating Cross-Promotions and Co-Branding Initiatives for Brand Visibility
Competitive markets impede advertising efforts. Regardless of your business niche, you’re bound to come across other brands that offer the same products and services. It’s harder to stand out since customers have more options nowadays.
Instead of wasting resources on aggressive ads that yield no results, consider co-branding and running cross-promotions. They’ll help expand your target market. You and your partner brands could tap into each others’ customer base for a broader reach of qualified prospects.
That said, cross-promotions also come with some challenges. To ensure effective collaboration, you must choose the correct partners, execute on-brand campaigns, and convey branding goals. Cover photo by Windows.
What Is the Role of Cross-Promotions and Co-Branding in Advertising
Let’s define co-branding and cross-promotion before diving into their proper execution. Although both strategies require cooperative efforts, they fundamentally involve different degrees of collaboration. These terms aren’t interchangeable. You and your marketing team should identify which tactic to follow before vetting prospective partner brands.
Co-Branding
Co-branding is a collaborative strategy wherein brands develop a joint product or service. The goal is to form new offers from existing elements. Partners can convey the right message and reach the ideal audience by leveraging their strengths, aesthetic identifiers, and unique selling points.
Just note that co-branding doesn’t always lead to new customers. If you want consumers to support your collaboration, it must address an overlapping need between your and your partner’s markets. Don’t just slap your logos on random products.
To ensure you’re on the right track, take inspiration from these three examples of co-branding:
Apple Watch Nike+
Apple and Nike developed the Apple Watch Nike+. They revamped the Apple Watch Series 2 with extra features made for runners, like water resistance, a brighter display, and exclusive Siri commands. It’s a new, limited-edition product that targets a specific buyer persona.
McDonald’s Travis Scott Meal
McDonald’s often partners with famous personalities, in this case, Travis Scott, to create exclusive meal combinations. Think of them as Happy Meals for adults. They usually come with a specific food combo, plus limited edition toys, plushies, and shirts, among other goodies.
My Starbucks Rewards x Spotify
Starbucks and Spotify made an in-app feature that rewards users for listening to curated playlists, which vary per location. It benefits not just Spotify and Starbucks but also their featured artists. They usually pick lesser-known indie musicians.
Cross-Promotions
Cross-promotions also involve joint marketing, but unlike cross-branding, they solely focus on promoting each others’ existing products and services. There’s no need to create new offers. The fundamental goal is to expand brand reach by having partners advertise you to their loyal customer base.
One issue with cross-promotions is they tend to come across as spam. Consumers will shrug off sales-y ads that offer no value or unique selling point. Although you don’t have to develop new offers, you should still incentivize prospects properly.
Inspiring Cross-Promos that Worked Well
Here are some cross-promotions that produced results for other companies:
Cable TV Bundles and Packages
One of the ways cable TV providers survive is by partnering with streaming services. They sell popular streaming app subscriptions as a bundle with their monthly cable plans. It’s a decent strategy to stay relevant despite the rise of streaming services.
Tip: You can imitate this tactic on a smaller scale by creating an affiliate or referral program. Reward third parties every time they successfully direct a qualified prospect, buyer, or member to your brand.
Uber and Spotify Alliance
Uber and Spotify partnered for a more customized ride-hailing experience. Spotify Premium users can control the music during their Uber trips through the app—they won’t need to ask the driver’s permission anymore. It’s a win-win partnership for both brands. Spotify gets to promote its paid subscription service, while Uber gains an edge over its competitors.
Photo: Dan Gold / danielcgold.com
McDisney Partnership
McDonald’s and Disney have been running cross-promotions since the 1980s. Disney lets McDonald’s set up hundreds of food stalls and kiosks at their Disneyland theme parks worldwide, while McDonald’s promotes Disney movies through Happy Meals. It’s a long-term partnership that has generated billions.
Best Practices for Effective Cross-Promotions and Co-Branding
For collaborative efforts to work, you and your partner brand need carefully crafted campaigns that highlight your strengths and target the same market. Running cross-promotions and co-branding tactics unprepared paradoxically hurts branding. Familiarize yourself with these best practices to minimize the risks of working with an ill-suited partner.
Collaborate With Industry-Relevant Partners
Select partners with the same target market as you, but their products and services should complement your core offers, not replace them. Take Coca-Cola and Lays as an example. Although they target the same demographics, their ideal buyer persona can accommodate both products.
Tip: Don’t worry if your prospective partners are slow to respond. Send polite follow-up emails that will nudge them into replying without appearing aggressive.
Set Quantified Goals and Metrics
To ensure that you and your business partners are on the same page, define your social media marketing goals right from the get-go. Track quantified metrics that objectively define your campaign performance. Otherwise, basing your assessments on subjective, unstable factors like buyer sentiment, branding, and impressions might bring up misunderstandings.
Align Your Brand Message and Vision
Both you and your partner should maintain a consistent brand identity throughout your co-branding or cross-promotion partnership. The idea is to complement the others’ products and services, not outperform them.
Corey Donovan, the president of Alta Technologies, advises business owners to prevent branding differences by carefully vetting partners beforehand. He says, “Don’t blindly accept the first offer that comes your way. Ideally, your brand partner should share the same vision and mission; otherwise, you’ll have trouble deciding what direction to take your campaigns.”
Keep an Open Mind to New Tactics
Stop dismissing tactics that you barely understand. Cross-promotions and co-branding are excellent opportunities to explore new marketing strategies.
We encourage business partners to try niche campaigns, like email signature ads or promotional QR codes. Yes, taking on new marketing styles is risky. However, sharing these risks with an experienced business partner significantly improves your potential ROAS.
Boost Brand Visibility Through Collaborations
Choosing the right partner is half the job of co-branding. You need a brand that shares your long-term vision, tracks the same performance metrics, and targets your ideal buyer persona. Overall, your goals should align. You’ll have trouble executing any form of cross-promotion if you and your partner are butting heads constantly.
Also, minimize your ad spend during your first few campaigns. Finding the right partner brand requires trial and error—you’ll tank your ROAS if you keep exceeding your ad spend limit. We suggest editing media assets yourself first. You could invest in FilterGrade’s Lightroom presets for professional-looking videos and images without hiring another in-house creative.
