Marketing Partnerships

LECTURE OUTLINE• What is a partnership?

• Why partnerships?

• Types of partnerships

• Good partnerships, bad partnerships

• Implementing partnerships

• Measuring the impact of partnerships

• Partnership choices at different stages of the PLC

WHY PARTNERSHIPS?

• Greater reach and awareness

• Add credibility to messaging

• Gain broader distribution

• Improve ROI on marketing spend

• $$$ Synergies $$$

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS• Brand: co-branding, joint product development

• Sponsorship: events, causes, research

• Channel: traditional channel, cross-selling, promotions

• Content: collateral, earned & paid media

• Platform: technology, hardware infrastructure, software APIs, social media

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS: BRAND

• Typically the most visible type of partnership

• Both brands benefit from increased awareness and cross-segment appeal

• May involve joint product development (especially common with food producers: this is called an ingredient partnership)

• Celebrities are brands too!

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS: SPONSORSHIP

Benefits of sponsorships:

• extensive reach

• improved customer sentiment

Types of sponsorships:

• events (sporting, media, and more)

• cause (e.g. non-profit)

• research (hackathons, grants, commissioned studies)

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS: CHANNEL

• Paid: pay up-front fee to gain access to distribution

• Revenue share: pay out % of sales to distribution partner (affiliate marketing, reseller partners)

• Cross-selling: referral incentives, cross-promotional activities

• Free: often occurs based on a symbiotic relationship between partners (i.e. sales increase when both products/services are offered in tandem, or your product solves a pain point for your distribution partner)

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS: CONTENT

• Content partnerships can be mutually beneficial to companies

• Party contributing the content benefits from broader audience, while recipient gets quality content

• Vogue/Flipboard partnership gave Vogue access to 100 million users vs. Vogue’s 3.3 million social media followers

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS: PLATFORM

What is a platform?

• A platform is any underlying tech infrastructure that a third party can build on for a different use case

• Social media platforms, software APIs, iOS or Android app stores

How do you take advantage of a platform?

• Building on a high-growth platform increases odds of capturing some of that growth (e.g. Zynga – took advantage of growth in Facebook platform to draw FB users to casual games)

SOMETIMES…ALL OF THE ABOVE

Amazon Web Services Partner Programs include:

• Co-branding

• Channel sales agreements

• Content marketing opportunities: downstream collateral and upstream content creation

• Platform growth and stickiness

IMPLEMENTING PARTNERSHIPS

Key considerations when implementing partnerships:

• Set clear objectives and expectations (what is this expected to do for your organization?)

• Clearly define your target customer and understand the audience/customer base your partner is delivering (is it the right fit?)

• Define key metrics to be measured during and post-campaign

• Educate your partner (core brand values, sales collateral, etc.)

• Evaluate partnership value to each party and quantify where possible

GOOD PARTNERSHIP!• Coherent partnership between

two well-known food brands

• Takes advantage of major brand recognition of both parties to encourage trial and crossover between brands

• Resulted in over 1 million blizzards sold – new limited edition blizzard record for Dairy Queen

BAD PARTNERSHIP!

• Unclear overlap or synergy between Blackberry brand image and Alicia Keys brand image

• Lacked credibility – especially once Alicia Keys tweeted ‘sent from my iPhone’

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF PARTNERSHIPS

What’s your goal?

• Awareness

• Lead generation

• Change in customer sentiment

• Conversion rate

• More efficient marketing $ spend

IMPACT BY FUNNEL STAGEQuestions to ask:

• In which stage should we be seeing the benefit of this partnership?

• Is this the right type of partnership for our marketing goals?

• Branding partnerships might generate more awareness…

• …while channel partnerships may generate more purchases

METRICS FOR MEASUREMENTMoving from the top to bottom of the funnel…

• Media views

• Brand awareness surveys

• Partnership awareness surveys

• Social media engagement

• Change in customer sentiment (favorability, propensity to purchase, NPS)

• Inbound leads

• Sales to new customers (or trials)

• Sales to current customer (or repeat purchases)

WHERE DOES IT ALL FIT?

• Different types of partnerships are more feasible (and valuable) at different stages of the product life cycle

• Successful implementation of partnership programs depends on company size, growth, and brand equity

PARTNERSHIPS AND THE PLC: LAUNCH STAGE

• Developer APIs let you “partner” without a negotiated agreement and can create distribution opportunities (e.g. Zynga)

• Do free work: creating content for a recognized brand expands reach at low (cash) cost

• If your product/service is a non-core feature to a larger company’s product/service, take advantage of channel opportunities

Source: Greylock VC

PARTNERSHIPS AND THE PLC: GROWTH STAGE

• Partnership choices are dependent on a company’s segmentation and targeting choices

• Is the goal to broaden audience, or increase wallet share?

• Niche products may lend themselves well to hyper-local, focused event sponsorships…

• …while mass-market products and services may be better served by co-branding

PARTNERSHIPS AND THE PLC: MATURE STAGE

• At maturity, goals begin to shift from market share growth to improvements in CLV

• Increasing loyalty/repeat purchase rate is crucial – pursue partnerships that improve customer experience

• Alternately, partner to expand or improve product/service options available to your customer…

• …or to bring in new segments based on a content partner’s audience (Purina ad resulted in 57.8% brand lift!)

PARTNERSHIPS AND THE PLC: DECLINING STAGE

• What can you do to monetize a declining business through partnerships?

• Pursue licensing deals to generate income from brand goodwill without incremental marketing spend (harvesting strategy)

• Reallocate marketing $ to brand-building, growth-stage products

CONCLUSION• Partnerships can be a cost-effective way to reach,

influence, and distribute to customers beyond your own brand’s audience

• No partnerships for the sake of partnerships! Define quantifiable goals and metrics to track during and after campaigns.

• Determine what type of partnership is best for your company’s stage of the PLC