Getting Started with

Co-Marketing
A comprehensive guide from HubSpot
Table of Contents
Introduction
• What is co-marketing?
Chapter 1
Establishing your co-marketing goals
Chapter 2
Sourcing and selecting a partner
• 8 ways to discover new co-marketing
partners
• Selecting the right brands to work with
• How to find the right contacts
Chapter 3
Reaching out to a potential partner
• Email outreach templates
• The introductory call
• Writing your co-marketing agreement
Chapter 4
Co-marketing campaign ideas
• 8 creative co-marketing ideas
Chapter 5
Making collaboration timely and
transparent
• How to split up work
• Tools for collaboration
Chapter 6
Launching the campaign
• How to promote a campaign
• Sharing the rewards (+ lead sharing
template)
• Evaluating the partnership
Final Thoughts
Introduction
Ultimately, marketing is about getting the word out about your brand and finding new
people each month who will buy your products, use your services, or become affiliated
with your organization. But what do you do when you feel you have exhausted your own
audience with content or reached everyone who’s heard about your brand? What if you
need an extra boost to propel your lead generation engine to the next level?

Co-marketing will allow you to break into new audiences. By working together on a project,
two separate brands can generate new leads, buzz, awareness, or even new customers.
Tapping into a partner’s network, email lists, social media following, and search authority
will bring an entirely new crowd to your content.

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What is co-marketing?
Co-marketing is a partnership between two or more companies in which the companies
collaborate on a marketing campaign or other project, promote the campaign to their
separate audiences, and then share the benefits of that campaign.

It’s clear that co-marketing is a powerful marketing tool that can potentially let you
generate twice the results with half the effort. But whenever you’re working with teams
at other companies, it’s crucial to stay organized. Careful planning ensures that content
creation runs smoothly, promotion runs on time, and each company involved holds up its
end of the bargain.

Within this kit, you’ll find a step-by-step guide to running a co-marketing campaign that
will take you through the entire process, from establishing your own goals to finding the
right partner to executing the campaign and reaping the rewards.

You’ll also find a number of templates that you can use to kickstart your organizational
efforts, coordinate content creation and promotion, and share the fruits of your labor.

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 Chapter 1

Establishing Your
Co-Marketing Goals
Chapter 1

What do you want to get out of the

co-marketing partnership?

In order to know what kind of co-marketing campaign is going to be most valuable, we

need to begin with your team’s fundamental goal.

Here are a few potential goals:

• Grow brand awareness within a completely new audience that’s likely to be interested
in your product or service
• Generate leads to pass off to your sales team
• Become associated with brand names or bigger players in your space
• Partner with a brand that’s willing to create all content (and lighten your content
creation load) in exchange for social, email, or other promotion of the content it creates

Your goal for the partnership will dictate:

• The types of partners you could potentially work with
• The format of the co-created campaign

Finally, as with any goal you set, try to attach a number, time frame, and business purpose
to it. You can use our SMART Marketing Goal Template to walk through the process of
setting a clear, achievable goal that ties directly to your greatest areas of business need.

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When we consider a few of the goals listed above and make them SMART and co-
marketing-specific, we might say:

• “I’d like to generate 400 net new leads for my sales team by partnering with a non-
competitive company in our space.”
• “I’d like to reach a new social audience by partnering on an Instagram story swap
where we place our branding in the other brand’s Instagram story, and that story is seen
by 5,000 people.”
• “By co-hosting a smaller event with a local company, I want to drive 100 new ticket
sales to our annual event a few months later.”

With your goals on hand, it’s time to start looking for the right partner to suit your needs.

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 Chapter 2

Sourcing and
Selecting a Partner
Chapter 2

Eight Ways to Discover New

Co-Marketing Partners

When you’re creating an initial list of co-marketing partners, dream big. You’ll whittle down
the pool later, but for now, don’t be highly critical of what brands you add to your list. This
is simply a brainstorming exercise to help you widen your network and grow the group of
brands with which you’re familiar.

Take the following steps to expand your list of potential partners.

1. Make a list of brands you admire.

2. Google ‘top companies’ in your space. Consider adjacent spaces, too.
3. Ask your colleagues which brands they admire. Consider companies where they’ve
previously worked.
4. Search LinkedIn for companies in your area or industry.
5. Create a wishlist of co-marketing partners that anyone at your company can add to
(one tab of the co-marketing tracking template in this kit specifically serves this purpose).
6. Listen to entrepreneurship-focused podcasts or read startup news and blogs.
7. Scroll through industry-specific corners of Reddit and Quora. Peruse forums you
know of in your industry to source company names.
8. Search Twitter for industry hashtags and look for companies that are posting
interesting content using that hashtag. If you’re looking for partners with a big reach, you
can use follower count as a metric to narrow your focus.

Make sure that you always have a place to write down ideas for co-marketing partners. You
never know when inspiration will strike, when you’ll encounter a new company, or when a
colleague will suggest a partner.

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Selecting the Right Brands to
Work With

Co-marketing partners should always...

Have an audience similar to your company’s

How to Assess This:

• Head to the company website’s About Us page to learn more about who its product or
service is for. To whom is the page speaking?
• Think about your buyer persona and who your current contact database is comprised
of. Is there significant overlap between your audience and what you expect the other
company’s persona is?

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Produce high-quality content and/or host high-quality events
already

How to Assess This:

• Scroll through the potential partner’s website, blog, and any other resources you can
find on their website. Vet its attention to detail -- do you see any typos or distracting
design issues? How is your on-site experience?
• Peruse the brand’s social media followings.
• Go to any local events the company is hosting. This is not only a fantastic way to see
how the team engages with its audience and executes on a project, but also a great
opportunity to meet the individuals with whom you’d potentially be working.

Not be directly competitive with your product

How to Assess This:

• It should be clear from a potential partner’s product or services page whether or not its
product directly competes with yours.
• Although a direct competitor will likely share the same target audience, it doesn’t
make sense to hand leads over to or promote someone who could take business away
from your company.

Have strong email, social media, and website reach, backed

by data

How to Assess This:

• Subscribe to the company’s email list. Are the emails visually pleasing? Is the content
compelling enough to make you click through?
• Explore its social channels. Does it actively maintain at least two? Are there new posts
regularly, and do those posts see a significant number of likes, comments, and shares?

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 • Use a free tool like similarweb.com to look at how many monthly visits the partner’s
site gets.
• If you heard about the company through a connection, don’t be afraid to ask.

Have a good brand reputation

How to Assess This:

• Google the brand’s name and click on “News” at the top of the results page. It’s always
worth confirming that the company hasn’t been involved in any fishy news stories --
there are plenty of brands to partner with, and the new leads aren’t worth the potential
negative connotation that could sting your brand image.
• Float the company name around your team. If anyone has heard anything noteworthy,
they’ll let you know.

Once you’ve whittled down your list, it’s time to begin sourcing contacts at each company.

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How to Find the Right Contacts

There are a number of ways to find the right contacts at the companies with which you
want to explore partnerships.

• Ask colleagues. To increase your response rate, ask your colleagues if they have any
contacts at the companies you’re looking to partner with. (Warm outreach always helps!)
Even if the contact isn’t the person you’d be working with, they can point you in the right
direction. (Use the email templates included in this kit to speed up the outreach process
later.)
• Search LinkedIn for people with “marketing” in their title at that company. If it’s a large
company, search for more specific keywords like “partner marketing” or “co-marketing.”
• Visit their blog or download a recent piece of content they’ve produced and look for
an author’s name. Then, search that name on LinkedIn to see if the person still works at
the company and if their title indicates they could be involved in co-marketing.

If you’re not sure you’ve found the right person, be honest in your outreach. Include a
line that says, “I’m hoping to connect with the person who runs [insert company name]’s
co-marketing efforts. Please let me know if I’ve reached out to the wrong contact -- my
apologies if so. I’d appreciate any connection you could make!”

You can move into the outreach phase when you’ve sourced a contact.

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 Chapter 3

Reaching Out to a
Potential Partner
You’ve got a name and an email address for someone who works for a company you’d
love to work with. Now what?

To speed up the process, we’ve created email templates for cold outreach, warm outreach,
and following up on previous opportunities and calls.

Click the button below to access

four email outreach templates.

Inside:
• Initial Cold Outreach Email Template

Access Now • Initial Warm Outreach Email Template

• Revisiting an Opportunity Months Later
• Post-Introductory Call Email

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If you do choose to craft your own email, make sure it includes the following:

• A personalized greeting: Address the contact by name. It will show that you’ve done
your research.
• A reference to a recent marketing campaign the brand has run: Demonstrate your
genuine interest in working with the team by sourcing an example you admire.
• A specific idea for a campaign you could run together: Instead of simply asking to
“team up for a co-marketing campaign,” specify a format and topic. While these are likely
to change, it’s helpful to paint a picture of what’s possible.
• A question or light request: A personalized greeting: Address the contact by name. It
will show that you’ve done your research.
• A reference to a recent marketing campaign the brand has run: Demonstrate your
genuine interest in working with the team by sourcing an example you admire.
• A specific idea for a campaign you could run together: Instead of simply asking to
“team up for a co-marketing campaign,” specify a format and topic. While these are likely
to change, it’s helpful to paint a picture of what’s possible.

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The Introductory Call

After making the initial connection, schedule a half-hour call to get to know each other
before agreeing to do a campaign. This will give you the chance to determine whether a
co-marketing partnership makes sense and how a working relationship might look.

Before you pick up the phone, learn what you can about the company and its audience
and tailor your campaign ideas to make them appealing to the potential partner. Be
prepared to show the other team the value you can drive.

There’s no need to have a decision made on what type of content you want to produce.
However, having a clear preliminary vision can sharpen your pitch, especially if you’re the
smaller fish in the relationship.

Make sure to ask about the size of the company’s email list and how its open and
clickthrough rates look (if those metrics are relevant to the type of campaign you’ll be
running).

If the other company has run co-marketing campaigns before, ask how many leads it
routinely generates. To avoid inflated estimates, ask for two numbers:

1. The number of leads they can comfortably generate with every campaign they run.
2. The number of leads they’ve generated with their most successful campaign to date.

Ask yourself a few behaviorally-focused questions, too:

• Do they seem excited about the campaign and come with great questions?
• Are you aligned on goals?
• Does the conversation flow well?
• Does the other team run similar campaigns and know how to promote content?

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Writing Your Co-Marketing
Agreement

Loop in a legal partner on both sides to help write your co-marketing agreement. Your
legal teams will be the ultimate source of truth on what needs to be included in any
partnership contract.

Some things you may wish to include in the agreement could be:

• The goals each partner will commit to: this will vary based on the type of co-marketing
campaign you run. For an event, this may be, “Each partner will commit to selling 100
tickets.” For an ebook, each partner might commit to driving 500 form submissions.
• Promotional timelines for you and your partner
• Your GDPR policy
• Your lead sharing policy, if applicable
• The rights to the content post-promotion period
• Any other intellectual property clauses your legal team might suggest

Again, consulting with your legal team is the most secure path for ensuring you have
everything you need when it comes to creating contracts. Just remember that it’s always
best to have numbers, timelines, and content creation responsibilities outlined on paper
before getting started on the campaign.

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 Chapter 4

Co-Marketing
Campaign Ideas
Chapter 4

Eight Creative Co-Marketing Ideas,

and How to Choose One

When it comes to selecting a format for your co-marketing campaign, there’s limitless
room for creativity. Most types of content marketing or social media marketing will work
in a co-marketing context; it’s just important to be cognizant of resource and coordination
constraints. For example, on a tight budget, it may be more realistic to co-produce a
webinar or ebook than to co-host an event.

Additionally, if you’re producing a piece of content together, consider the steps involved
in editing that content. For example, if you’re filming a video together and aren’t located
in the same city, it would be expensive to travel again to re-film clips. On the other hand,
if you’re co-writing an ebook, you’ll be able to easily edit a partner’s copy after the first
iteration with a tool like Google Docs.

Here are eight ideas for creative co-marketing campaigns to inspire your own efforts.

Co-hosted events

Although events are often time- and resource-intensive, the payoff of a well-executed
event can be huge. Events show off your human side, allow you to make real connections
with your audience (and potential customers), and solidify a brand image in your
attendees’ minds. Co-hosting means you’ll be able to split the (often hefty) cost of event
space, food, and décor.

Ebook

Collaborating on an ebook on a topic of interest to your overlapping audience is one of

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the simplest but also one of the most effective ways to generate leads. This approach also
produces clear-cut results: a list of leads that you can easily segment by the partner that
drove form submissions. Collaborating on ebook copy and design is also easy with tools
like Google Drive and Canva.

Think outside the box with co-

marketing. Combining two brands’
resources opens new possibilities.
Blog post swap

While your partner’s product or service shouldn’t compete with yours, you may find that
the needs and interests of your audience are similar. This shared context makes each of
you qualified to guest blog for one another, as you both have experience addressing the
needs of that audience.

Pro tip: Include a link back to your own website in the blog post you write for them to
increase your search engine authority.

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Instagram Story features

If your audience tends to be more engaged on social, try an Instagram Story swap. This
type of swap gives you an opportunity to be featured on your partner’s Instagram Story, in
exchange for a feature on yours. This works best for brands with similarly-sized audiences
and similar levels of Instagram engagement.

Templates

It’s increasingly difficult to capture attention with long blurbs of written content -- people
would rather access quick hits and actionable resources that will help them get started
immediately. Consider partnering up to create templates useful for both audiences.

Webinar

A webinar on topics of shared interest can be a useful way to introduce a new audience
of people (your co-marketing partner’s audience) to your brand in a friendly, human
way. Registration and lead sharing are simple with a webinar, making the impact of the
campaign more tangible than an ungated co-marketing campaign.

Microsite

If you have the web development resources, think about the possibility of creating a site
with collected tools, resources, and inspiration around a topic of mutual interest to your
audience.

Collaborative product lines

If you sell a physical product, consider co-creating a version of your product with a partner.
The partner will be happy to promote a product featuring its branding, and it can give you
exposure to an entirely new audience that’s interested in your product’s space. Check out
this article for more co-branding ideas.

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 Chapter 5

Making
Collaboration Timely
and Transparent
Chapter 5

How to Split Up Work

Any marketing campaign requires careful planning and coordination among people
involved, but adding an external partner adds another layer of complexity.

When you’re working with a co-marketing partner, especially if you haven’t worked
with them previously, it’s essential to have a clear plan in place and to keep the lines of
communication open.

If you’re creating something that has both visual and written components (for example,
an ebook or a series of scripted videos), it can be helpful to have one partner take
on the written component and one take on the visual portion of the work. This allows
for consistent tone throughout the piece, and it means that the design will follow a
standardized pattern. It also allows partners to lean into their strengths -- if one partner’s
product or service is more design-oriented, consider having them take on the visual
aspects of the project.

To set thorough expectations, put together a project plan that includes specific
descriptions of any deliverables and the deadlines for each deliverable. You can work
through this timeline on a call or have one partner draft an outline and send it to the other
for comments and final approval.

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Crucially, don’t forget to include the details of promotional asset creation in the plan you
create. For example, if you decide to run paid ads, who will craft the ad creative? If the offer
involves a landing page, as most do, on which partner’s site will the page live? Solidify
these details ahead of time to avoid miscommunication and missed deadlines later.

Even once the project plan is in place, it’s important to stay in communication and give
the other party insight into the status of the content creation as well as any roadblocks
that pop up. Because an external partnership relies so heavily on trust, make sure to reply
promptly to communications, even if that means simply letting the other team know that
you’ll be getting back to them with an answer in a few more hours.

We also recommend leveraging some of the tools below to make collaboration seamless.

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Tools for Collaboration

There are a number of free and paid tools available that can help you reduce email back-
and-forth. Our head of co-marketing at HubSpot uses these tools to make her campaign
planning and execution run smoothly.

When you’re collaborating on copy… When you’re giving feedback on videos…

We recommend Google Drive. Once Wistia, a video hosting platform, allows

one partner is done drafting, the other
partner can add comments inline and
make suggestions directly on the text.
Multiple collaborators can work together,
eliminating the need to bounce an offline
document around over email and risk
circulating several versions at once.
viewers to link their comments on a given
video to an exact time. This makes it easy
to give feedback on exact moments in a
video and for the producer to receive and
incorporate that feedback.

A shared folder on Google Drive is

also useful as a central repository for
files, including the project timeline, the
contract, copy documents, images, and a
lead sharing spreadsheet, if applicable.

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When you’re crafting ad creative or
infographics…
Canva is a free and incredibly user-
friendly tool for creating graphics of
any kind, and it’s the perfect tool for co-
marketing because multiple people can
access and edit the same design. This
collaboration feature removes the need
for time-consuming back-and-forth. You’ll
reduce friction in the design process and
emerge with beautiful graphics.
When several people split the work and
the assignments need to be clear-cut…
We recommend Trello. Trello enables
you to see all project to-dos laid out
in an intuitive way. You’ll be able to
set deadlines and assign tasks, which
ensures both partners are on the same
page about who’s responsible for what.
It also integrates with a number of
other systems, making file uploads and
communication seamless.
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 Chapter 6

Launching the
Campaign
Chapter 6

How to Promote a Campaign

Any of the techniques you’d use for a non-co-marketing campaign can apply to co-
marketing campaigns as well as long as you have a solid plan for coordination in place.

Both brands should consider promotion on a variety of channels, including, but not limited
to:
• Social media
• Email lists
• Blogs
• Paid advertising

If you’re looking for ideas for ways to promote your content, check out our free Guide to
Content Promotion.

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Sharing the Rewards

You’ve executed a thorough campaign, and now it’s time to reap the rewards. The purpose
of some co-marketing campaigns may be to generate buzz and awareness. If you’re
collecting leads, though, you’ll need a centralized place to store those leads.

Included in this kit is a lead sharing template. Feel free to adapt the template as you see fit
-- for example, if you’re collecting more fields of information than just name and email --
and add or delete tabs to account for the amount of partners you’re working with.

Click the button below to access a

lead sharing template.

Inside:
Access Now • Partner lead generation tracker
• Tabs for each partner’s submissions

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Evaluating the Partnership

Once you’ve run your campaign and finished promotional efforts, it’s worth making note of
how the co-marketing partnership went overall while the experience is fresh in your mind.

Below are several questions to consider as you evaluate the partnership. You can track this
in the ‘Notes’ column of partner tracking spreadsheet we’ve provided in this kit.

How was the process of working with this partner?

• Were all assets created on time?
• Was there any significant confusion over who was responsible for what?
• Was it easy to find time to talk with the partner?
• Did the partner respond promptly to email communication?

Did the campaign achieve its goals?

• Did each partner hit its lead generation/page view/invitee goal?
• Was it easy or difficult for each partner to hit its goals?
• Does the amount of effort you put into this campaign make sense given the results of
the campaign? In other words, was there sufficient return on investment?

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Final Thoughts
Co-marketing requires significant planning and coordination, but by splitting up the work
and doubling the audience, it’s possible to see huge growth. Using the planning templates
in this kit and the collaboration tools we’ve recommended, you’ll be well on your way to
ideating and launching a co-marketing campaign.

If you’d like to access more helpful guides and templates for marketing, sales, and
customer service, head to HubSpot’s Resource Library.

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