Better together: celebrating unique B2B partnerships

25.5.23

No business is an island - especially not in B2B.

Very few B2B organisations would survive without a network of collaborators, strategic alliances and supply chain partnerships. These successful relationships are one of your business’ strengths, but many organisations are missing a trick by failing to share them with their target market.

Strategic partner marketing is a growth area in the B2B space. Whether celebrating distribution channels, resellers or new collaborative products and services, many organisations recognise that combining their marketing efforts offers a range of mutual benefits, including:

Key considerations for partnership campaigns

Delivering a successful and cohesive partner marketing campaign requires considerable communication and understanding. Before embarking on a partner campaign, there are some critical areas to establish:

1. Find your partnership story

Why did your partnership come about? The most effective B2B partnership campaigns have an engaging origin story like a pressing challenge or shared customer pain point. From here, you can use your marketing to illustrate how, together, you were able to successfully solve the problem before explaining how it brings benefits to both sets of customers.

2. Consistency is key

Alongside getting your stories straight, your brand values and messaging must be aligned, too. It’s vital both organisations are clear and consistent about what they want to mutually achieve, how they’ll work together to achieve it and how the relationship will evolve from there. Clear aims will keep your marketing on track and ensure every piece of content is used strategically to further your partnership goals.

3. Keep messaging simple

Cobranding can be complex. Ensure that both teams start out on the same page and have a thorough understanding of each other’s brand guidelines, target audience, preferred content and tone of voice. This might mean creating shared brand visuals and examining each other’s house style to prevent clashes over things like logo placement.

Throughout the partner campaign, both parties will need to stick closely to these agreed rules to avoid overcomplicated or off-brand content. Simplicity is key to ensuring consistency and continuity across both organisations’ marketing teams.

4. Recognise your combined strength

At the heart of your joint marketing efforts there must be a clear message: how your partnership benefits customers. Outline what each organisation brings to the table and how your different experiences, solutions and services complement each other and add value for your target audience.

5. Understand your new audience

Partner marketing campaigns should expand each brand’s audience by offering access to each other’s customers and followers. Carefully consider which sector of your partner’s audience you want to reach and devise a clear strategy to target them. If possible, consult your partner for support – they should know their audience well.

6. Integrate your campaigns

To generate the most value, be strategic and plan the marketing materials you’ll jointly create and share. There’s a wealth of potential for collaborative thought leadership - think guest expert articles / blog posts, video interviews, joint webinars, co-hosted events, even combined whitepapers and case studies.

Celebrate your partnerships

The benefits are clear but there’s a lot to consider before setting out on a partner marketing journey. An expert steer can help. We have plenty of experience creating content marketing that celebrates our clients’ valuable partnerships and strategic alliances – helping them to illustrate to their customers the value of their partnerships while attracting new audiences in the process.

If you’d like to find out more about our strategic partner marketing strategies and what we could do for your organisation, please get in contact.