Everything you need to know about Partnership Marketing
Tags: Partnerships, Affiliate Marketing, Partnership Marketing

This article provides an in-depth guide on everything you need to know about Partnership Marketing — one of the fastest-growing marketing techniques of the 21st century.

Partnership Marketing is now widely recognised as a highly effective, and engaging growth marketing technique for all businesses. Businesses all agree that collaboration leads to growth and innovation. Spotify, Paypal, Airbnb and American Express are all getting in on the act and taking advantage of the multiple Partnership Marketing techniques available.

This guide explains what Partnership Marketing is, and describes the many types including a whole load of examples, as well as how to take advantage of each of them for your business.

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Intro: What this article will cover

We’ll explore…

What is Partnership Marketing?

What are the 10 types of Partnership Marketing?

There are actually 3 core types!

Examples of Partnership Marketing

Difference between Affiliate Marketing and Partnership Marketing

Why is Partnership Marketing so lucrative yet for some brands so difficult?

Chapter 1: What is Partnership Marketing and what are the different types?

Partnership Marketing is widely recognised as one of the fastest-growing marketing techniques of the twenty-first century, and businesses now understand that collaboration leads to growth and innovation. This guide explains what partnership marketing is, and describes all of the types including a whole load of examples.

What is Partnership Marketing?

Partnership Marketing has in the past been described as Joint Marketing, Co-Marketing or Brand Partnerships, but we are now seeing ‘Partnership Marketing’ as the globally recognised term.

Partnership Marketing has seen many definitions in recent years, but in its clearest form it should be described as:

“W here a brand has the ideal product or service to compliment another brand; utilising their target audiences to achieve their marketing objectives via partner campaigns.”

10 Types of Partnership Marketing

Below are the 10 types of Partnership Marketing — in no particular order. They cover almost every type of marketing partnerships that exist, but it should be said this is an ever-evolving practice. As technologies emerge we are seeing new types of partnerships appear every single year.

1. Online Affiliation

A performance marketing technique where an online advertiser pays a commission to a publisher website for traffic or sales it sends across. Popular brands such as Amazon or ASOS run affiliate programmes that encourage publisher sites to promote their goods in return for a share of the sale value. Brands can work in this arrangement via agencies, networks or directly with publishers to promote their products.

2. Distribution Channels

Where one brand agrees to spread another brand’s products or services via their own distribution network. The main brand agrees to provide its distribution channels for the partner brand via its supplier and sales streams in order to promote them.

3. Sharing-Store-Space

Where one, often retail, brand agrees to share part of their store with another brand. The aim of doing this is to improve the overall experience for browsing customers, as well as product reach and distribution. Examples include, cinemas hosting coffee shops, or clothing stores hosting make-up stands.

4. Joint Content

Where both brands produce new and ultimately engaging content. The aim is to attract the attention of a mutual audience, improve SEO and enhance a brand’s ranking and keyword distribution. Partnerships are often created in the form of joint content swaps or joint viral campaigns.

5. Joint Products & Integrations

When two brands agree to create a new product or alter an existing one in order to provide a unique or new product for the customer.

The joint product can be a completely new product or an emergence of an existing one. Integration partnerships, API integrations, and white-labelling all become important elements of joint product partnerships.

6. Discounts & Loyalty

Where brands add value via loyalty schemes, discounts, offers and special giveaways of their goods or services for their most trusted customers. Offer Pages make up a key part of loyalty, as secondary brands are listed to give something back to loyal customers.

7. Licensing Schemes

Licensing is when a highly recognisable brand sells its name for use on merchandise. Brands such as Apple or Disney are big in this space. The image or brand is utilised to enhance the product offering. This partnership often comes at quite a cost to the secondary partner, but comes with high reward.

8. Online and Offline Product Placements

Often utilised by a recognisable global brand such as Coca Cola or Pepsi. They place their product or service within media such as television, film or music videos. The placement is made so the brand is subtly placed in a scene or storyline.

There has recently been an emergence of online product placements, commonly found in the form of online video, influencers and onsite sponsorships.

9. Non-profit and Charitable

When a brand partners with a charity or non-for-profit organisation. Major brands work with these causes to improve their brand reputation and public opinion.

You will often see major sporting brands featuring charities on their jerseys. Or large corporations tying in their good-cause partnerships with charity events.

10. Sponsorships

One of the most common and oldest forms of Partnership Marketing. This is where a brand aligns its brand name with a particular event. Sporting events are where this is most commonly found, but also sponsoring TV shows, events, and conferences. Placing your logo on a sporting jersey or running a short ad before a TV show, are all types of this.

There are actually only 3 Core Types

There are many guides answering the big question; what is partnership marketing? Many describe the 10 types mentioned above, but we can take this a step further. If you think about it the 10 types can be broken down further into 3 core types; Integrations, Reward and Awareness.

As we go through each of the 3 core types, you will see how each of the 10 types fit into one of these categories…

Loyalty, Affiliation and Content are all types of Reward Partnership.

Distribution, Licencing, Shared Stores and Joint Products can all be described as Integration Partnerships.

Sponsorship, Product Placement, and Charitable partnerships are all versions of Awareness, where one brand aims to improve its brand recognition.

1. Integration Partnerships

What are Integration Partnerships?

An Integrated Partnership takes all the elements of the traditional partnership model but taking it a step further where a primary brand will include the secondary’s product into their own.

What is the aim of an Integration Partnership?

The aim of integrating another product into your own is to provide additional value to the customer. Above all, you’re taking the benefits of their product and adding it to your own. You’re including their USP to complement what you already offer.

Genius & Spotify — Integration Partnership

What are the main types of Integration Partnership?

Joint Products iFraming or Widgets API Integrations White-labelling

Why run Integration Partnerships?

Promote a product that you don’t already offer

Monetisation or commission

Brand Leveraging

As a reward or discount

To upsell your products

To attract their customers ahead of competitors

2. Reward Partnerships

What are Reward Partnerships?

Reward Partnerships are where one brand provides a discounted offer to their service for the other brand to promote. For the primary brand they benefit from new customer acquisition, for the secondary they achieve revenue via commissions.

What is the aim of a Reward Partnership?

Reward Partnerships are one of the purest forms of partnerships. Taking another brand and promoting it on your site was taken from the affiliate/advertising model, but now has far closer links to partnerships — where primary brands offer special places for brand rewards such as promotional pages. While secondary brands look to offer exclusive offers to acquire their specific customers.

What are the main types of Reward Partnership?

Discount Additional Value Promotions Loyalty Schemes

Why run Reward Partnerships?

Upsell

Earn commission

Additional value to customers

Loyalty to increase customer LTV

Brand Association

3. Awareness Partnerships

What are Awareness Partnerships?

Awareness Partnerships involve one brand promoting another for the primary brand to achieve brand recognition. Brands partaking in these types of partnerships are essentially involved in sponsorships, joint events and product placements.

What is the aim of an Awareness Partnership?

These partnerships are for brands aiming to raise brand awareness via association with the right partner brand. Many of us are familiar with these techniques, whether it be partnering with a brand at a joint event, using an influencer or sponsoring a charity.

Emirates sponsoring the Arsenal FC stadium

What are the main types of Awareness Partnership?

Sponsorships

Product Placements

Influencers

Events

Why run Awareness Partnerships?

Brand awareness

Brand association

Charitable causes

Improved brand perception

Remember there are cross-overs between types

Can a Charitable partnership also be a Reward partnership? Can content also be considered an Awareness partnership?

It’s important to mention, partnership types are always fluid. In other words, there is huge cross-over between types. There is not always one fixed model to describe a particular type. Partnerships can be as unique as the brands involved and can be more than one at any one time.

Chapter 2: Examples of Partnership Marketing

Brand Partnerships, Partnership Marketing or Co-marketing — whichever you choose to call it, is proving to be one of the most popular emerging marketing methods over the last few years to achieve long-term growth. We have seen the emergence of some of the world’s most known brands exploring this space. Here are some key examples of these:

Exclusive offering from E.ON and Tesco

E.ON is one Europe’s largest energy service providers. Based in Germany they operate in over 30 countries to over 33 million customers.

Tesco is a British multinational supermarket chain. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by profits and second-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues. It has stores across Europe and Asia.

The E.ON and Tesco partnership is an excellent example of a Loyalty campaign offering UK customers the exclusive option to exchange Tesco Clubcard vouchers to pay their E.ON energy bills.

Here a whole host of campaign elements were agreed upon, from featuring the offer in E.ON newsletters, exposure onsite and within direct mail, as well as the agreed communication strategy, tone of voice, use of Tesco branding, and decisions on customer segments and offer terms.

Travel at a discount with the Virgin Trains and Festival No6

Virgin Trains as a brand aim to portray efficiency and comfort while aiming to bring back the elegance of train travel.

Festival N°6 is an annual art and music festival held at Portmeirion, Wales. The festival presents a wide range of music genres including folk, house and dance. Their headliners include acts like Grace Jones and Belle & Sebastian.

Here Virgin Trains have partnered with the popular festival to become their exclusive travel partner, offering attendees advanced tickets at 25% discount.

This partnership promotes Virgin to all festival-goers as the transportation of choice to the difficult to reach location. By doing so they stand out ahead of their competitor operators. They also portray themselves as both trendy and highly innovative.

For Festival N°6 it provides expansive customer reach via Virgin’s communication emails, competitions, and exclusive online PR content.

Marks & Spencer and BP share a store

In 2005 BP signed an agreement with Marks & Spencer to improve the overall service station experience and increase the purchase offering to consumers.

For BP it leverages the upper-class M&S Food brand image, adding value, setting them apart from competitor service stations. This is such a successful partnership that is now found in over 120 locations nationwide.

Metro highlight eHarmony in newsletter exposure

The Metro is the most popular free newspaper in the U.K. with over 2 million readers, mostly distributed for commuters on the transport network.

eHarmony is one of the strongest online dating brands to have emerged in the market, focusing on compatibility and exact matches.

eHarmony collaborated with Metro to provide a dedicated promotion where readers receive a special discount by using the provided PromoCode. Here Metro offered their newsletter as an asset.

They helped to sell in the partnership by highlighting the number of relevant consumers it would be visible to, and eHarmony reciprocated by creating the exclusive offering just for Metro users.

Chapter 3: What’s the difference between Affiliate Marketing and Partnership Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the 10 types of partnership marketing, but there is often confusion between the two, and what actually makes it one of the partnership types, even though it’s also a stand-alone marketing channel in its own right. Let's now discuss the fundamental differences between the two types of marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Good-old Wikipedia Definition:

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

Refined Definition:

Affiliate Marketing is a performance marketing technique where websites, otherwise known as publishers, will promote your product or service in return for a monetary reward.

What is Partnership Marketing?

As mentioned previously in this guide, the best definition is as follows:

Where a brand has the ideal product or service to complement another brand; utilising their target audiences to achieve their marketing objectives via partner campaigns.

What are the fundamental differences?

1. Affiliate marketing focuses on CPA (cost per acquisition) and an advertiser to publisher relationship, while Partnerships should always try to be reciprocal and mutual – to elaborate on this, affiliate marketing often involves an advertiser paying a publisher for every referred customer and sale they send to them. This is known as a CPA, and although other commission methods are possible, this essentially describes the relationship between advertiser and publisher. The advertiser is looking for customers from the publisher's user/reader base.

A partnership on the other hand should always try to be more than that. It focuses on not just a one-way distinction, but a mutual relationship where both can benefit. As described previously, Affiliate marketing can also be a type of partnership marketing because at the end of the day there is a benefit for both, except that for the advertiser it’s often monetary.

The main purpose of partnerships though is to take affiliate marketing a step further than monetary, and to provide more than simply a tracking link and the passing of CPA.

2. Partnerships are often brand to brand, while affiliate marketing is content site to brand site relationship – this continues on the above point, as affiliate marketing focuses on an advertiser to publisher relationship, while partnerships are both advertiser-advertiser, as well as advertiser-publisher.

The advertiser is normally a brand that sells something or provides a service. While the publisher tends to be one that publishers an advert, often in a form of content, comparison table or cashback placing. Partnerships on the other hand tend to focus on a brand to brand relationships. This could in some ways be described as an advertiser to advertiser relationship.

Partnerships involve like-minded brands promoting each other to their databases. It’s therefore a mutual relationship, where funds aren’t always necessary to exchange between both parties. It can be a free promotion if the other brand is offering equal exposure in return.

3. Partnerships include integrations and more specialist scenarios like using products. While affiliation focuses on passing customers from one site to the next. Affiliation is about passing customers from one user/reader base, often one with tens of thousands of users such as a comparison site, to an advertiser brand to purchase their products.

While Partnerships are more specialist — it’s more about integrating a brand’s product within your own to truly benefit the customer — to provide ease or convenience to them.

An example of this is a bank that doesn’t offer insurance products, nor has the capacity or experience to build an insurance offering, but they know there’s an appetite from their customers for one. So, they reach out and partner with a like-minded insurance company and either white label their product or keep the branding and expose it to their base. As you can see this type of partnership takes affiliation a step further than just a monetary relationship or affiliate link.

Comparing the benefits of each

Whether one type of marketing is right over the other is completely dependant on the company, its objectives and experience in each area. Partnership Marketing might benefit one brand, while Affiliate Marketing may not.

There is a strong argument though that Partnership Marketing includes so many elements of Affiliate Marketing, that it essentially encompasses it. Others say they are very distinct and both can be run by a company with positive effects.

Affiliate Marketing can bring an abundance of customers, some brands reporting 20% of their overall sales coming from this channel alone. Sites like cashback and comparison tables attract customers who are very much in-market. Publishers such as Moneysavingexpert claim to have 15 million subscribers to their newsletter – even at a click-through rate of 1% and a conversion rate of 1% that’s 1,500 customers in one hit for an advertiser. The opposing view though is that these customers are often lower value than those from other channels. Reason being, cashback sites like Topcashback and Quidco, attract customers looking for deals. Deal-hunters, can be a big problem and give the affiliate industry a bad name. This is why some retail brands opt to not work with certain affiliate sites as they do not want to incentivise such behaviour and would rather the loyalty of customers coming from more other channels.

While Partnerships work with like-minded brands who have similar target audiences. So the audiences might not necessarily be in-market, which is a downside to partnership marketing, but they are more likely to be relevant customers and therefore loyal ones. They also give you that reach that might have otherwise been untapped. Partnerships also allow you to provide products and services you may not have had otherwise, therefore expanding your offering, reach, brand and your revenue.

Overall both types are meant to achieve your goals. And the benefits are dependant on what you want to achieve.

Chapter 4: Why is Partnership Marketing so lucrative yet for some brands so difficult?

Partnership Marketing is a lucrative channel for most brands. It has been swept under the marketing rug and doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. But in recent years, it’s slowly coming to the forefront, mainly thanks to the rise of digital tech and social media. The rise of Fintech, Proptech and Martech mean that integrated partnerships, where one brand plugs into another, is becoming more and more popular through the advancement of API’s. And co-branded campaigns are now far easier to create and advertise across the net.

One of the finest examples of this is where TripAdvisor partnered with Deliveroo and OpenTable by integrating their services into the TripAdvisor app. Another example being, StarlingBank and Moneybox teaming up to provide the money-rounding service all within the Starling platform. And lastly, Easyjet and Booking.com combining so you can book hotels directly through the Easyjet website.

Some brands though have found the process of partnering extremely difficult and struggled to replicate the above successes. So why is this? Here are 6 main reasons and how to mitigate them:

1. Businesses should not get confused between ‘Partnerships’ and ‘Partnership Marketing’ – at the same time don’t get confused with these and buying media/advertising.

Everyone wants to use the buzzword ‘partnership’ to describe their activity. I’ve seen bus-dev managers who send blanket messages on LinkedIn describing themselves as partnership managers, where in actual fact they are just trying to sell a tech/Saas platform. At the same time, Partnership Marketing is meant to be a long-term coming-together of two brands, whether it’s integrations, interesting sponsorships, innovative attractions, a series of marketing campaigns, or utilising another brand as a reward mechanism. Plain and simple, it’s not one brand buying advertising space on another brand’s site or purchasing a payment or Saas system to help you with operations.

Here are some examples of what it should be – how it’s not bus-dev nor media buying:

Chip & Emma – Integration Partnership

Lastminute & HomeAway – Reward Mechanism Partnership

Airbnb & Le Louvre – Unique Reward and Branding Partnership

2. Do not be a short-termist — many brands believe Partnership Marketing doesn’t work because they are too short-termist in their outlook. Businesses drive home the idea of Partnership Marketing and reaching out to other brands to speed up acquisition growth, but the reality is that not only do these agreements take months, if not years, to formulate, they are also a long-term growth technique and shouldn’t be seen as a one-off hit.

Don’t get me wrong, a partnership campaign can take a few weeks to organise if you’re lucky but it shouldn’t be seen as a one off newsletter or marketing stunt. To really see the benefits you need to ensure that long-term commitment is made from both sides and you’re both under the same pretence of time-frame and objectives.

Let’s also mention the work that goes into partnerships, the processes in place is not about one off exposure – it includes finding your counterpart, discussing how to work together, commission negotiations, technical discussions, contracts, creative production and campaign analysis – all to consider.

3. Everyone needs to be on-board – this isn’t a one-man channel. Companies wishing to partake in Partnership Marketing will hire an individual to arrange and run such campaigns. But it’s not only about them, the entire company needs to have partnerships at the forefront of their strategy and priorities for it to be a success.

If not, what normally happens is that the marketing individual will onboard a huge brand name partner but the product team and engineers who might be required for the integration tell you they don’t have capacity for another 6 months, or that there are other product developments which are more important.

So the lesson here is, partnerships needs to be backed by the board and bought-into by the entire cross-functioning team.

4. GDPR can be a bit of a problem — many brands lost a lot of email leads when GDPR was introduced. It meant asking customers whether they wanted to be opted in for marketing, and many said no. From then on, we’ve had to ask customers if they are ok if we target them with third-party offers, and many also say no.

This poses a slight problem with Partnership Marketing. This led to brands not being 100% open about their customer base by sharing inflated figures to secure a deal.

My solution to this would be not to cover up, but be truthful how many customers are opted in, outline that your T&C’s make it clear to customers whether they are opting in for third-party offers, meaning you’re more likely to have a much more engaged customer base who actively wants to know about partners of yours.

5. Finding a Partnership Marketing counter part is not easy — back to the earlier point, that we’re seeing bus-dev managers call themselves ‘partnership managers’ and some brands are sp keen to run partnerships but not actually hire someone dedicated for the role.

This means it’s not very easy to locate the individual who can make the Partnership Marketing decisions — which for anyone in this role makes the process 10 times harder.

So, my recommended techniques are to message someone at the company you’re trying to target with ‘Can you introduce me to the person responsible for your partnerships?’. Either that or try to locate your counterpart with ‘partnerships’ in their title on LinkedIn to enquire about a partnership. These are two simple approaches that do work.

6. Lastly just accept that some brands just aren’t right for partnership marketing — I’ve worked with a lot of brands that love the idea of this channel, understand the cost savings, efficiencies, brand exposure and PR benefits it brings, but when they come to run it, it simply doesn’t work or they struggle to forge any long-lasting relationships.

The most common reason is their customer base. Some brands have highly engaged, loyal customers. Others have discreet customers who like their services but prefer to not be active. This leads to upselling and rewarding them becoming difficult. That means promoting or getting other brands to promote you, just simply won’t work.

Others find they simply aren’t well known enough yet for other brands to promote you. They want a name that their customers know, they want a product that can be trusted, or they want you to have a certain sized customer base. To these brands I say, there are other angles — try a monetary kick-back, try offering to pay for the integration or ask for a test campaign that’s initially much smaller in approach.

Partnership marketing is both lucrative and a challenge, but by understanding these 6 main reasons, brands can overcome the difficulties to succeed in this ever-growing marketing channel.

Thank you for reading this article & I hope you found it useful!

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Disclaimer

The author takes no responsibility for any misuse of information contained in this article. All information has been taken from actual events and imagery or screenshots from free sources. If any owner or brand wishes to have any information removed, they may get in touch. He is not responsible for any copyright infringement as this is used purely for educational purposes and is happy to edit if required.