4 Tips For Building a Brand Partnership (+ Examples)

The business environment can be tough and extremely competitive. Many startups and businesses will eventually collapse along the way. Some will end up being acquired by others due to a lack of profitability.

This implies that brands have to adopt various strategies to survive and compete favorably. One such strategy is entering into brand partnerships or co-branding.

In this post, we explain what a brand partnership is and the different types of brand partnerships. We’ll also discuss how to secure a brand partnership and give examples of successful brand partnerships.

What is a Brand Partnership?

A brand partnership is an alliance between two or more businesses or organizations. This is usually for the purpose of leveraging their human and material resources in order to achieve their various business objectives and common goals (e.g., increased customer base, website traffic, leads, sales conversions, etc.).

Unlike acquisitions, where ownership and control change, brand partnerships allow involved parties to still retain ownership and control over their affairs.

Types of Brand Partnerships

Brand partnerships are often based on the nature of the interaction and the concepts involved. Some of them include:

Influencer Partnerships

Influencer marketing has been gaining popularity in recent years thanks to several benefits. An influencer is someone who has a large internet (especially social media) following. They are capable of influencing the purchase decisions of their followers due to their authoritativeness and credibility. It is this large following, authority, and credibility that make companies enter into partnerships with influencers. The idea is to leverage influencers’ social proof and, hence, convert their many followers into leads and customers.

Affiliation Partnerships

In an affiliate partnership or marketing campaign, a company collaborates with another to publish and promote the latter’s products/services online. For their efforts, the publisher is rewarded with a commission that may depend on variables such as the number of clicks, leads, and revenue generated for the client. Affiliate partnerships are a very popular online marketing concept that has helped several marketers earn high incomes across diverse niches/industries.

Sponsorship Partnerships

This type of partnership often has to do with a brand providing financial support for one or more brands for purposes that may include increased awareness, financial gains, and greater control of the sponsored brand in the case of start-ups and companies seeking external funding.

For instance, celebrities often enter into sponsorship partnerships with big brands looking to promote their products and services. Another good example is in the sports industry, where sporting events, teams, and sports personalities indulge in sponsorship partnerships with top brands.

Loyalty Partnerships

Loyalty programs are avenues used by many companies to reward customers with incentives and lead magnets for taking some desired action, e.g., continuously purchasing a product or clicking a call to action to sign up for emails and newsletters, among others. Conceptually, loyalty programs are usually based on the accumulation of points and then rewards that may include discounts, free products, special events, etc.

Charity Partnerships

Supporting charitable causes can attract significant goodwill and patronage from businesses. This is the major reason why several brands get involved in charity partnerships. Funding charitable events or hosting a charity event in your business premises can fetch you more positive feedback and brand awareness than many marketing campaigns while helping to lessen the financial burden of charity organizations.

Content Partnerships

A content partnership occurs when brands agree to work together to create content such as blog posts, landing pages, videos, podcasts, vlogs, and infographics. In addition to their other uses of these content mediums, adding links to them when possible is an SEO best practice that can make the partnering brands more visible on the internet, meaning an increased likelihood for more traffic, leads, conversions, and website ROI.

Content partnerships are a great way to exchange knowledge and ideas, explore new content-creation strategies, and polish brand voice.

Distribution Partnerships

Distribution partnerships involve the integration and marketing of a brand’s products and/or services with those of its partner. Some brands may even engage in cross-marketing both sets of products/services to their respective target audiences. In-store coupons, mobile coupons, magazine coupons, email vouchers, and QR codes can be used in this form of brand partnership.

One benefit of a distribution partnership is that customers loyal to one of the partner brands may develop more trust in the other brand if they see products from both companies together.

Product Placement Partnerships

You may often have seen quick ads appear during the half-time of soccer matches or TV programs such as movies/shows and shows, as well as on YouTube videos. These are examples of product placement partnerships. The aim is to leverage these popular events (e.g., the FIFA Senior Word Cup tournament) and reach the huge audiences they attract in order to enhance their lead generation and sales conversion efforts. These ads can be placed directly or subtly.

Joint Product Partnerships

In a joint product partnership, two or more companies collaborate to make a new product (or modify an existing one). You may have often seen the phrase “powered by” on the internet. The phrase can refer to a kind of joint partnership whereby one company utilizes the proprietary technology of another to create a product or service.

Another form of joint product partnership is a product merger. In this case, different companies formally come together to create products and/or services.

Licensing Partnerships

When a brand enters into an agreement with another to use any of its intellectual property (e.g., logos) for marketing purposes, such a collaboration can be referred to as a licensing partnership.

Though this arrangement may seem to favor only the company being licensed, this is not necessarily the case. For example, it can be an opportunity for the licensing company to access the market or customer base of the brand it is licensing.

How to Secure a Brand Partnership

Securing brand partnerships may not be the most difficult task in the world, especially for a company that is not struggling as such. But that does not mean it is very easy to land your dream partnership. The following tips will help:

1. Identify Your Partnership Goals

Goal setting is important in business and other aspects of life since it acts as a compass that guides your other actions. In other words, when you set goals, you’ll know exactly how to work toward achieving them.

Moreover, setting goals allows you to measure performance from time to time in order to see the extent to which you are achieving them or not. So what goals do you intend to achieve by partnering with another brand?

2. Research Potential Partners

Knowledge is power. Before venturing into any kind of brand partnership, it is essential that you conduct in-depth research about the brands you have in mind. You’ll want to visit their brand websites and also collect non-internet information to determine which of them ticks all your boxes (or best approximates what you have in mind).

Be sure to concentrate on brands whose products and/or services complement yours and whose customer personas can be beneficial to your business.

3. Establish A Good Relationship

After setting your goals and identifying a likely partner through research, it is time to reach out and see if you can build a working relationship with them. It is important to make a good impression at this early stage in order not to jeopardize the chances of your potential partner saying yes to your proposal. This is even more important if it appears that you need the partnership more than them.

Discuss patiently and ensure that every angle of the partnership (including possible challenges) is critically analyzed and a consensus is arrived at.

4. Prepare a Partnership Proposal

If the outcome of your initial contact with the other party is satisfactory to both you and them, then it is time to formalize the arrangement by creating a partnership proposal. This is where your lawyer can play a crucial role. The proposal should include information such as partnership objectives, ways of achieving them, performance metrics, and how they’ll be measured, among other legally binding terms and conditions.

Brand Partnership Best Practices

Though mostly informal and hence non-legally binding, best practices help ensure that companies discharge their duties creditably to the benefit of their customers and society at large. Abiding by these practices is beneficial because it can provide positive feedback that can give you an edge over your rivals.

The following are some brand partnership best practices:

• Have clearly defined roles
• Work hard to achieve objectives and common goals
• Be transparent and accountable
• Comply with all legal provisions in the contract
• Have dispute-resolution mechanisms
• Prioritize customer satisfaction
• Monitor and measure performance
• Maintain industry standards
• Comply with relevant state regulations
• Practice corporate social responsibility

Examples of Effective Brand Partnerships

Because of their variety of benefits, brand partnerships are popular in the US and beyond. Many of the biggest brands in the world have either previously been involved in or are currently involved in at least one or several partnerships.

Here are a few examples:

Spotify and Uber

In a 2014 brand partnership campaign tagged “Soundtrack for Your Ride,” automobile transport service provider Uber teamed up with music-streaming Spotify to provide commuters with musical pleasure. While waiting for an Uber ride, passengers are prompted to link up with Spotify. Then they choose what music to hear as they commute.

The Uber-Spotify partnership is a good example of an effective brand partnership between two dissimilar but complementary services that share a common goal of attracting more users. It is an ideal partnership because it maximizes the experience of music lovers by giving them the freedom to enjoy tunes of their choice on the go. Competitors who can’t come up with a similar strategy are likely to lose some customers to Uber and Spotify.

Amazon and American Express

Popular e-commerce company Amazon partnered with American Express to create a co-branded credit card in the “Amazon Business American Express Card” brand partnership campaign in 2018. Amazon aims to use the partnership to improve the way small businesses sell on their platform.

The partnership is timely and effective because it has helped people use the card to purchase goods and services, in addition to providing improved data insights on their purchasing activity. American Express and Amazon have a common goal of promoting the growth of small businesses in the US. This effort seeks to help actualize that goal.

Airbnb and Flipboard

Popular room-sharing service Airbnb formed a partnership tagged “Experiences” with the news brand Flipboard in 2017. Like a social media feed, Flipboard compiles news and trending items that people have shared on social networks and lets you quickly “flip” through it. The partnership provides Airbnb guests with relevant lifestyle content according to their interests.

The partnership has since developed further to include a new initiative, “Trips.” This lets Airbnb guests select hosts who share their interests and then schedule activities with those hosts while in motion. This collaboration is an example of the power of businesses to optimize their engagement with consumers by providing them with relevant, personalized content that encourages them to patronize their products and services.

Keurig and The Rolling Stones

Keurig and legendary rock group, The Rolling Stones partnered to create a limited-edition custom coffee machine with the Rolling Stones logo and colors. The exclusive collection became available on Tuesday, June 6, and is a collaboration fans will certainly love. This combination of rock n’ roll and delicious caffeinated beverages features a bundle of custom-designed Keurig supplies with the Rolling Stones logo and colors inspired by the band’s popular song “Start Me Up.”

The partnership has the potential to be successful for both brands. It is an effective way of targeting Rolling Stones fans and coffee consumers. Additionally, the limited-edition advertising created the necessary urgency that increases the likelihood of people making instant purchases. Plus, these products make the preparation of delicious, iced coffee from the comfort of your home stress-free while giving music lovers some collectibles.

How to Measure the Success of a Brand Partnership

Monitoring and measuring performance is one of the most important functions in business. Without monitoring and measurement, it will be difficult to constantly have a comprehensive picture of progress or lack thereof. Some brand partnership success KPIs are discussed below.

Sales Performance

Here are some frequently used sales measures:

• Partner-sourced sales performance can be measured by tracking:
  • The number of new leads sourced from that partner
  • The number of opportunities that went into the pipeline through those leads
  • The number of sales conversions from those opportunities
• Partner-influenced sales performance can be measured by tracking:
  • The number of opportunities influenced by the partner
  • The resulting number of sales conversions due to that partner’s influence
• Number of active deals – All the partner’s active deals at any particular time.
• Number of active leads – All the partner’s active leads at any particular time.
• Close ratio – The ratio of registered leads to closed/won deals.
• Time to first sale – How long it takes a partner to record their first sale after onboarding.
• Average/range deal size – Measurement of the average and range of a deal closed by your partner.
• Average sales cycle length – How long a typical sales cycle with your partner takes.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) – How much it costs a partner to acquire customers.
• Year-over-year (YoY) growth – Compares a company’s recent financial performance with its numbers for the same month in the previous year.

Joint Customer Success

A joint product partnership was mentioned earlier. Joint customer success is a metric that reflects the common customer base of the partners using the joint product or solution. The nature of this combined offering is dependent on the type of business both partners are involved in.

The KPIs for this common customer base will vary according to the nature of the joint product. They will more often than not include:

• The number of customers the partners share in common (known as customer overlap)
• The average NPS score for those using the joint product
• The renewal rate of your common customers
• The number of times a partner helps the other upsell/cross-sell

This KPI category is particularly relevant for tech partnerships.

Partner Engagement

Engagement is critical for partnerships. The more engaged a partner is, the greater their probability of continuing in the partnership. Below are some of the metrics that can be deployed to measure partner engagement. They may vary depending on the nature of the partnership.

• Number of trained or certified team members: What number of workers from your partner’s company have passed through your partner’s training or certification programs?
• Rate of participation in partner events: What is the rate of attendance of your partner’s team at relevant partner events hosted by your organization?
• Portal sign-in frequency: What is the frequency of partner team member sign-ins to your partner’s website?

Wrapping Up

Building a brand partnership is a business practice ideal for all kinds of businesses – struggling, stable, and successful. But to build an effective brand partnership requires careful planning. Include goal identification and meticulous research of potential partners, among other tips discussed in this article.