💬 I believe a big opportunity initiative that more brands need to explore/do more of, are co-branded campaigns and distribution marketing strategies with complementary brands.
It's now a key strategy area I suggest to brands due to channels (especially paid acquisition) becoming more competitive and more challenging in terms of audience cut-through/attention.
And if you're trying to brainstorm what you could do with a complementary brand you may know of, well these tactics I share below can help with ideas for your context.
💬 If you've got a store/brand that you can collaborate with, maybe share this checklist with them and brainstorm together specific campaign ideas to help each other with growth - there are certainly some low-hanging fruit opportunities and experiments worth exploring. :)
A great way to get maximum exposure/reach for particular campaigns you really want to push for new audiences are co-branded campaigns - whether it be seasonal or for a certain mission.
Setting up these types of partnerships do take work, but the payoff for complementary brands via respective email lists can really help cross-pollinate and get eyeballs in front of respective customers.
Doing co-partner social UGC competition ads can really catapult new followers and help with impressions/reach and engagement - and ultimately, help with sales.
I've seen many brands, including some that I advise, do this as a strategy and it can work really well, especially if they take off.
Now executing this initiative is a lot more pricey/time-consuming, but can work really well when done right, especially if combined with FOMO-based triggers like "limited time/limited edition" messaging.
Similar to what I've touched on above with the seasonal/special campaigns checklist point, you can always do cross-promotion via emails which aren't "special". It could be co-branded bundle offers for lower-sale periods, where you need to find a way to prompt users to purchase when it's not normal peak sales season.
It's a nice tactic to consider for bumping up sales and creating momentum for bigger sales periods.
A lower-cost strategy is to create helpful marketing assets that you can promote on respective sites/databases lists to push certain messaging and products.
When doing co-partner collabs, it's always good to look at it with the lens of taking an omni-channel approach to maximise reach/exposure.
Whenever running events (online/offline), focusing on engagement between the two brands is key, so thinking about competitions, contests, and other type giveaways will certainly get good cut-through.
Ideally, some sort of email capture as a min. CTA is certainly a key goal to measure ROI.
If the brand you're looking to partner with has a rewards/loyalty program, there's a good opportunity to share exposure for top customers to unlock perks/rewards for your respective brands.
It's the sort of initiative you see that the top brands do - like Airline memberships, etc.
Why I like this tactic a lot is that you're helping promote good-quality respective customer bases.
In relation to the other point I made about competitions, such as social UGC, doing "collabs" (like the Instagram feature for feed posts) can help with increasing eyeballs. It doesn't have to be related to a new product per se, but consider sharing posts on similar missions, particular causes both your brands care about, or perhaps some sort of Q&A.
Another low-hanging tactic related to value-add content is doing collabs between two brands for promoting thought leaders (which make sense for both brand's and their audiences).
This is somewhat related to the likes of loyalty programs, where you want to help each other get exposure to good-quality audiences (who have the propensity to spend on similar/complementary items).
Well, it's totally worth running exclusive invite-only events for top customer cohorts, and/or, creating an offline/online community with these types of audiences. Lots of potential opportunities can come from it, from content creation, new customer pathways, and more.
Now this won't be applicable for all reading this, but if you know of a brand with ambitions to grow overseas and there's overlap in certain locations you both want to expand to, co-launching/GTM in a new location together could work well if there's good alignment in missions and strategy for new geo-markets.
It takes a lot of resourcing/investment to get cut-through in new markets in general - so the question to ask yourself (and the founder/marketers of the brand you could work with) - is there a good way to potentially help each other's brands grow and get exposure together, rather than doing initiatives separately?
There are numerous things you could do together as part of an omni-channel strategic approach - including the likes of running co-branded launch events, pop-up stores, special promotions through digital media, and lots more.
