co-marketing

Look for tools your customers already use that solve a different problem for the same buyer persona. Check integration ecosystems, Crossbeam or Reveal for account overlap, customer surveys, G2 category neighbors, and sponsors of the same podcasts or newsletters.

Score each partner 1-5 on audience fit, audience size, brand alignment, engagement quality, reciprocity potential, and ease of execution. Weight criteria by your current goal and start with a low-effort format like a co-authored blog post to test the relationship.

Campaigns fall into four groups: content partnerships (co-authored posts, joint ebooks, research reports), webinars and events, product and integration marketing (better-together pages, bundles, joint case studies), and community or social collaborations like newsletter swaps and giveaways.

Common approaches are each partner keeping their own registrations, sharing all leads between both parties, or splitting by audience source. Document the arrangement in advance in a co-marketing agreement covering responsibilities, timeline, promotion, and metrics sharing.

Co-marketing is partner-to-partner marketing where two companies run joint campaigns for shared audiences. Referral programs are customer-driven word-of-mouth where existing customers refer new ones, which is handled by a separate referrals skill.

Choose integrations first when the problem is retention and expansion, since 83% of enterprise buyers cite integrations as a purchase-decision factor. Co-marketing fits better when you have content but lack reach, starting with permissionless assets and newsletter swaps.