Collaboration Marketing: what is it?

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What Is Collaboration Marketing?

Cross marketing is joint marketing with other companies. It is used to expand the audience and attract new customers. Let's look at what cross-marketing is and how it will benefit your company.

What is cross-marketing and how is it different from cross-channel marketing?

There are two similar terms: cross-marketing and cross-channel marketing. They may be used in the same marketing strategy, but they are different types of marketing.

In cross-marketing, a company promotes its products or services with other companies to attract common customers. These can be companies from different industries or from the same industry, the main thing is that they have a common target audience. For example, like Tinkoff and Burger King.

This is what a Tinkoff card with Burger King design looks like

Cross-channel marketing uses different tools to achieve goals: television and contextual advertising, targeting, email and SMS mailings, SMM, etc. Let's say a bank has started a campaign to promote a credit card. He can simultaneously launch a video on television, make a newsletter for regular customers, launch a target, and talk about the card on his social networks. In this way, the bank will simultaneously receive additional contacts with current clients and reach a new audience.

Although these two types of marketing have their own characteristics, they can be used in the same strategy to enhance the effectiveness of promotion.

Cross-channel marketing will increase the number of tools for cross-marketing: brands will not only demonstrate collaboration with each other, but also tell people about it in different advertising channels.

Cross marketing as a type of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the areas of marketing. Its peculiarity is that brands collaborate with other companies to promote their products or services. And cross marketing is one of the most common types of affiliate marketing. Let's take a closer look at these types.

  • Affiliate marketing . A partner company allows its affiliates (partners) to sell their product or service on their resources, for example through a website. For every sale made through an affiliate, the company pays the affiliate a commission. For example, Tinkoff Bank sells cars from the Chinese manufacturer Haval on its website.
  • Example of a product page on the Tinkoff website with Haval partner cars
  • Cross marketing , or cross-marketing (cross-marketing) - cooperation of brands for mutual advertising of their goods and services. For example, they may conduct joint marketing campaigns or give special offers and discounts on each other's products or services. Cross marketing is broader than affiliate marketing, and sometimes they overlap. For example, a brand that sells a partner’s products can launch joint advertising with it. This will be a cross-marketing technique with the ultimate goal of helping with affiliate collaborations.
  • Pyaterochka advertising banner: Pepsi and Lay's promotional line from the Black Star brand
  • Co-branding , or joint branding (co-branding). This is the creation or promotion of joint products or services. The benefit of co-branding is that brands can mutually expand their audience and improve their reputation through association with another reputable brand. An example of co-branding is BMW and Louis Vuitton. Although the connection between cars and a clothing brand is not obvious at first glance, the collaboration was successful because the companies had the same target audience and values: high quality and premium.
  • BMW car and special Louis Vuitton collection for advertising collaboration
  • Sponsorship (marketing sponsorship). In this type of marketing, a company may become a sponsor of another company, event, or product. For example, a sporting goods manufacturer might sponsor a sports team or event to increase its visibility and promote its products. Thus, Adidas was the official sponsor of the 2012 Olympic Games in London and Now 2024 in Paris and 2028 in Los Angeles..
  • In the Olympic Games 2012 The Albert ball from Adidas is the official football match ball .

How to build a cross-marketing strategy: algorithm

To implement any type of marketing, you need to draw up a strategy in advance and strictly adhere to it. Cross marketing is no exception. To implement cross-marketing and create a plan, follow these steps.

  • Determine the goal for your company in advance - this must be done before collaborating with a partner. Think about what result you want to get: increased sales of a specific product, increased awareness, or something else. Launching a cross-marketing campaign without a clear goal is dangerous: subsequently it will be difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of spending and plan activities within the framework of cross-marketing, because, for example, increasing brand awareness requires longer work and holding several events, and not just a one-time advertising launch.
  • Determine who your target audience is and, based on it, select potential partners. You need to consider companies with a similar audience, but which will not compete with you. It makes no sense for two car manufacturers in the same price segment to launch a cross-promotion, because they are direct competitors.
  • Think about what kind of joint cross-marketing activities you could conduct. It is important that this is interesting to both your clients and your partner’s audience. For example, a pottery studio might partner with an interior design studio to create earthenware home decor and show you how to style it in your interior.
  • Show your partners what the benefits of working with you are. This will make it easier to agree on working together. If you collaborate with a famous media personality - an actor or musician - you can offer to use her in joint advertising.
  • Formulate the goals of the campaign together with your partner, draw up a detailed work plan and record agreements. You need to agree on these points with your partners in advance, and think through all the little details. For example, will separate co-branded landing pages be created for ad clicks, what budget will each company spend on its part, and what resources will it provide? Will the partner use an in-house marketing team or use the services of an agency? Make sure that all agreements are clearly formulated and everyone knows exactly their area of responsibilities.
  • Evaluate the results of your collaboration and draw conclusions to work even better in the future. Use performance metrics to analyze your campaign results.

Assessing the effectiveness of cross-marketing

The performance indicators of any marketing activity always depend on the goals. We'll give you the most common examples, but they may be different for your campaign.

  • Increased sales. You can directly estimate the number of new applications, if the advertising format and analytics allow it, or compare the sales volume during the campaign period with previous periods. The second method is used if there are no separate landing pages, unique promotional codes, flyers, and it is impossible to determine the exact number of applications from a cross-promotion.
  • Campaign expenses. Estimate the costs of running a cross-marketing campaign. Compare them to target results and other marketing activities.
  • Dynamics of brand awareness, increase in mentions and audience reaction. Typically, brand awareness is assessed using surveys. An easier way is to check the increase in brand mentions on the Internet: social networks, media, by queries in search engines. You can compare the number of positive and negative mentions and their dynamics during the campaign. The best way to do this is automatically using Brand Analytics, IQBuzz and YouScan programs. These programs automatically collect and analyze all mentions on the Internet.

What are the most common mistakes in cross-marketing?

  1. Partners are competitive For example, a hotel and amusement park with a limited number of rooms. On the one hand, it is obvious that the comfort of hotel conditions is obviously higher. On the other hand, if there is a large list of entertainment and there are no strict restrictions on comfort, the client can opt for a bed without conditions.
  2. Wrong choice of partner. This happens when the target audiences of brands do not overlap at all or overlap too much and the audience eventually goes to a more well-known partner. This can happen if companies have a wide assortment line and there are intersections on other products, in addition to those that have fallen into cross-marketing. It is also possible for the reputation to deteriorate due to the poor image of the partner brand.
  3. Incorrect work with the target audience. If the products or services promoted through cross-marketing do not match the interests and needs of the target audience, the campaign will be ineffective. This will happen if, for example, two brands create an advertising campaign for young people, but choose a format for distributing content that is unpopular with this target audience and choose the wrong media person.
  4. Blurry goals. The selection of specific tools and budget allocation depend on the final goal. If it is not clear what exactly you want to get from a campaign - joint advertising with a call to purchase or a bright and memorable collaboration - it will be difficult to choose the best format.
  5. Lack of creativity. In most cases, something unusual is expected from joint brand campaigns. A creative approach helps to attract the attention of the target audience and be remembered by them through vivid impressions. If a campaign doesn't stand out in anything special, the audience will pay less attention to it and forget it faster.
  6. Mistakes in budget planning. The budget needs to be planned at the stage of fixing agreements before starting any work. It must be realistic and you cannot go beyond it.
Among the main items requiring accounting:
  1. Costs of prizes/gifts/cash prize fund.
  2. Remuneration of employees (from office to BTL personnel).
  3. Costs of promotional materials (printed, electronic, any kind).
  4. Transport/logistics costs.
  5. Identity costs.
  6. Other costs depending on the type of promotion.

The most common and fatal mistake of Pakistani marketing is the lack of calculation when planning a campaign and when assessing its results. No statistics, numbers, calculations? Consider that you have simply wasted your budget, because this action will not give you objective data about whether it is worth using the tools implemented in the project in the future.

Pros of cross marketing

Compared to other types of marketing, cross-marketing has its own unique advantages. They are due to the fact that it is based on affiliate promotion. Let's take a closer look at these advantages.

  1. joint marketing allows you to get feedback on products and learn more about your target audience;
  2. Saving on advertising. Since companies use joint advertising channels and platforms, they share advertising costs during cross-marketing campaigns. This allows you to save money while maintaining the effectiveness of your advertising campaign.
  3. Access to someone else's audience.
  4. Expanding the audience. Cross marketing allows companies to find new customers who are interested in their products or services. If a cosmetics company runs a joint advertising campaign with a chain of cosmetics stores, it can attract new customers who have not previously purchased its products but went to that store.
  5. Creating an offer that is interesting to the client and represents a benefit for him.
  6. Increasing sales by increasing the size of the average check
  7. Brand development. When working together, companies mutually strengthen each other's image, provided that the partners are at approximately the same level: both produce a quality product and have a good reputation. Strengthening the brand further increases the company's competitiveness in the market.
  8. it creates a more engaged community around the company, which strengthens the brand identity;
  9. Improving relationships with partners. With cross-marketing, brands collaborate with other brands, which means they establish closer relationships with partners. In the future, partnerships develop - and not only in the marketing sphere: companies can exchange management experience and show how some corporate processes are built.
  10. promotes customer loyalty, which attracts new customers;
  11. reduces the risk of failure in launching new products and services by expanding the capabilities of those features that have found the greatest acceptance among consumers.
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