Co-Marketing With A Partner Business

Co-marketing works when two businesses sell different things to the same buyer. An architect and a builder, an accounting firm and a financial planner, a building product supplier and the installers who fit its products. Each one already has the other's ideal client in its audience.

Done well, each side gets introduced to buyers who already trust the partner. Done badly, it ends as a logo swap that nobody follows up.

Pick the partner by the buyer

The test is simple. Does the partner's best client look like your best client, and do you sell to that client at a different point in the same project?

A partner chasing the same budget as you is a poor fit. A partner who works before or after you on the same job is a good one, because a joint piece of marketing shows the buyer how the whole project fits together.

Formats that work

Start with one piece of work rather than a programme:

• A joint guide that answers a question both businesses hear every week.
• A short webinar or breakfast session with one speaker from each side.
• A project case study where both firms are credited for their part.
• Collab posts on Instagram, which appear on both profiles and reach both followings.

The case study is often the strongest of these. It is proof for both businesses at once, and the reader sees two names working on one real job.

Lists are not shared

Under the Spam Act 2003 you can only send marketing email to people who have consented to receive it, and consent given to one business does not pass to another. Swapping email lists is off the table.

Each business sends to its own list instead. When a joint piece collects new sign-ups, the form says plainly that both businesses will be in touch, so the consent covers both from the start.

Agree the rules first

Write one page before anything goes live. It covers who owns which leads, how an enquiry that suits the partner gets passed across, who pays for what, who approves the content, and how each business uses the other's name and logo.

Then agree what success looks like: joint sign-ups, enquiries from the partner's audience, and work won from them. Track all three in both CRMs with a source tag that names the partnership.

Keep it even

A partnership fades when one side does all the work or gets all the leads. Take turns hosting, writing the first draft and sending to your list first.

Review it after the first piece. If both sides got enquiries they would not have had otherwise, plan the next one. If not, find out why before trying a bigger format.

Where it sits in the plan

Co-marketing is a slow channel, measured over quarters rather than weeks. It earns its place when the partner's audience is hard to reach with ads, which is often true of senior buyers in specialist industries.

The return builds over time. A partner who has sent you good work once becomes a referral source, and a joint case study keeps selling for both businesses long after the campaign that produced it.