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Brand partnerships drive customer engagement, buyer loyalty, and insane growth in 2024. Working with the best partners can expose your business to new buyer segments and a wider reach of targeted customers.
Businesses love brand partnerships because it’s a better-performing growth channel than paid search. Partnerships generate around 28% of revenue, while paid search generates 18%.
A study by Hinge Marketing also confirms that high-growth businesses are three times more likely to have brand partnerships.
So, how do you secure brand partnerships with the right businesses in 2024?
And how can you ensure these partnerships will achieve your revenue goals?
We’ll get you on track with an ultimate guide on brand partnerships.
You’ll find out how to build profitable brand partnerships, why brand partnerships matter, and the top partnership examples.
Ready?
Here we go!
A brand partnership is when two or more brands form an agreement to collaborate and achieve specific goals. These goals include optimizing brand reach, customer engagement, customer loyalty, and PR. Businesses also create partnerships to raise awareness about aspects they’re passionate about or extend their brands to new customer segments.
The right brand partnerships can help your business drive higher revenue and growth while building your credibility and market share. However, without a strategic approach, your partnership can do more harm than good. Let’s look at the components that make a successful brand partnership next!
Summary: What is a Brand Partnership?
A brand partnership is an agreement between two or more brands to collaborate. Brands form partnerships to achieve specific goals like increased customer engagement and loyalty, wider reach, improved credibility or to tap into new customer segments.
Source: Creatitive
Brand partnerships must have similar values and objectives to work. While these components don’t have to be the same, they must have similarities. You and your chosen partner must both want to offer affordable alternatives, drive awareness about concepts you’re passionate about, etc.
It works the same way for your objectives. When partnering with a business with similar goals, it’s easier to understand the purpose of your partnership and what both brands hope to achieve. Profitable partners are also more likely to work with businesses that share their values and objectives.
Be realistic about the values and objectives you and your potential partners share because these factors act as the core of your partnership.
Businesses must have similar or complementary resources for successful brand partnerships. You must be willing to share these resources to drive results.
Perhaps your partner has an extensive database, and you have established networks on social platforms suited to your campaign. Or maybe your partner has valuable industry connections to drive credibility while you have a successful influencer marketing campaign.
List and compare your and your partner’s resources to evaluate and determine which are relevant to your partnership and how you can balance what each party brings to the table.
By no means should you want to hold your cards close to your chest. Sharing your resources doesn’t mean you’ve compromised them. Instead, when working with the right partner makes your partnership easier to start and grow.
You can’t partner with brands that offer the same services/products because these are your competitors. However, you and your partner must have related or complementary services/products. Where your products/services lack your partner must have the products/services to solve this problem and vice versa.
A successful brand partnership aims to add value to each other’s buyers. Your products/services must complement one another so buyers understand why they need to support your campaign.
Determine why and how your audience will find value in your partnership and how the products/services you offer within this partnership go beyond your typical offerings.
It’s vital for you and your partner to share similar target buyers. If your partner can’t connect with your audience and vice versa, your partnership won’t work. Although brand partnerships help businesses reach a wider audience, you and your partner’s buyers must share similar audience demographics and values.
This is tricky to evaluate because you need extensive data on your partner’s audience. You must understand the demographics of these buyers, which social channels they use, and their buying trends. Only with such in-depth information can you establish a brand partnership that benefits both parties.
Think about all the factors of a successful brand partnership we looked explored. They undoubtedly require trust and credibility to work. Both businesses must trust each other and be 100% transparent. If your partner requests specific data, you must share it. And if you want to know something about your campaign or potential partners, they must provide this information.
Don’t give partners a reason to doubt your transparency and honesty. A great way to avoid distrust is to iron out all the small details in the partnership agreement. Ask as many questions as you need to, and ensure your partnership starts on a good note.
Businesses need to have credibility for successful brand partnerships. You should have a positive offline and online reputation to attract top-tier partners. However, if this isn’t the case and you want to turn your reputation around, you may have to settle with lesser-known partners.
Summary: What Makes a Brand Partnership Successful?
We glanced over this while exploring target audience relevance for successful brand partnerships. One of the most attractive features of a brand partnership is wider reach. Almost 60% of businesses use partnerships to tap into new markers.
You and your partner can expose your brands to much more targeted buyers while having the opportunity to find new customer segments. Perhaps you didn’t know specific buyers would be interested in your products, and your partnership can reveal this.
The bigger your partner’s audience and following are, the wider your reach. Because of this, startups and small businesses may prefer partnering with more established companies. And more established brands might want to work with “smaller fish” for objectives like increased audience engagement or to expand their brand to new customers.
With partnerships comes the opportunity for new marketing perspectives. With digital marketing rapidly evolving, it’s hard for many businesses to stay ahead of marketing trends and adopt new processes. Fortunately, your partner may have the know-how and resources to introduce new marketing tactics that you didn’t know would work or couldn’t do alone.
Your partner can also help you understand your audience in new ways. Because you’re bringing in a whole business of new minds and fresh perspectives, you’re bound to find new marketing approaches and consumer insights.
When brands work together, it exposes both parties to new knowledge about their markets and customers. You’ll never know everything about your target buyers, competitors, and marketplace, and your partner can introduce new knowledge and concepts.
This advantage is fantastic for startups and small businesses with little experience. But of course, established brands can also benefit as they may be too wrapped up in the bigger picture to gain insights on smaller aspects.
Authority and credibility drive 81% of consumer purchasing decisions, making them imperative for successful businesses. Partnering with a brand with an established and trusted presence can boost your authority and credibility. You can kind of look at this like social proof. If customers notice a more established and trusted brand is working with and endorsing your business, they have more reason to trust your products.
It may be challenging for brands without credibility or authority to find profitable partners.
Source: Venngage
Ultimately, the point of a partnership is to increase revenue. You and your partner wouldn’t be prepared to invest so much time, effort, manpower, and resources otherwise. However, increased revenue isn’t guaranteed from brand partnerships and relies on the right partner and marketing approach. Without using the components of a successful partnership we discussed, you’ll find it much harder to maximize your revenue.
At the start of your partnership, determine revenue goals so it’s easier to track your success after your campaign. Be realistic about your target revenue and how you plan to achieve it.
Summary: Top 5 Brand Partnership Benefits
If you know anything about Alexander Wang and H&M, you’ll know how different these two brands are on the surface. H&M is much more commercial and targets middle-income, young adult shoppers wanting to keep up with the latest fashion trends.
Alexander Wang, on the other hand, is a luxury fashion powerhouse with groundbreaking fashion designs meant for the top-earners. A product costing $300 at Alexander Wang would cost about a tenth at H&M.
This partnership works because both brands have a lot of target audience relevance. H&M and Alexander Wang shoppers are fashion addicts on the hunt for items others are yet to own. In response, H&M and Alexander Wang partnered up to create a signature fashion line inspired by both brands.
H&M would gain from this partnership through increased exposure and notoriety. And Alexander Wang also benefited from this campaign as the high-end fashion brand wanted to expose their fashion to a new generation of buyers that are potential customers.
This is one of the most widely spoken about and beloved brand partnerships. In 2015, Kanye West decided to team up with Adidas and launch an elite range of footwear – Yeezy’s.
The Collab began with one product and rapidly grew to offer an extensive range of sneakers and slides meant for fashion freaks, young adults, and those with a lot of excess income (or who prefer snazzy sneakers over groceries).
Seven years later, Yeezy’s are still very much in fashion. And how and why this partnership worked so well is clear.
Kayne West is a world-famous rap artist, producer, entrepreneur, designer, and personality with a huge dedicated fan base. Adidas is, and has been, a top choice for sneakerheads and sports lovers worldwide.
With such a powerful combination of authority, credibility, and millions of fans, the Kanye and Adidas partnership was set for success from the start.
Ever wanted to listen to your favorite music while riding Uber? The Uber and Spotify partnership made this possible!
Uber and Spotify are two completely different brands. Spotify is a music platform, while Uber provides lift services with maximum ease and convenience. Yet, despite their differences, Spotify and Uber developed this partnership because they shared the same objective – to add value to their buyers and optimize the brand experience.
Thanks to this partnership, Uber users can connect their Spotify accounts. Once they’ve gotten their Uber, users can listen to their favorite songs and playlists throughout their ride.
Not only does this boost brand experience, but it gives Spotify and Uber users more reason to stick to these brands. Rather than Spotify users opting for one of Uber’s competitors, they may find it better to use Uber because they can enjoy the music they love.
Bonne Belle is a cosmetics company popular for its range of flavored lip balms called “lip smackers”, launched in 1973. What made this lip balm range special is it was the world’s first collection of flavored lip balms!
The lip balm range started with basic flavors like green apple, lemon, and strawberry. But in 1975, Bonne Belle decided to team up with Dr. Pepper, a classic American cooldrink brand.
So, why did this partnership work? Because clearly, these two brands are not the same AT ALL!
Like many other brand partnership examples, it goes back to audience relevance. Both Dr. Pepper and Bonne Belle’s buyers are teens. And which teenage girl wouldn’t love a Dr. Pepper-flavored lip balm?
They strengthened the connection between their brands through catchy slogans like, “It’s the super shiny lip gloss with lip-smacking flavor… just like the world’s most original soft drink.”
Both GoPro and Red Bull have ventured beyond their initial offerings. GoPro doesn’t just sell cameras anymore, and Red Bull isn’t just a world-famous energy drink. Forming a connection between these businesses, they have evolved into lifestyle brands encouraging buyers to be adventurous, extreme, fearless, and push the limits beyond imagination.
GoPro and Red Bull also share overlapping audiences. Red Bull has been a longstanding sponsor for countless sports events and campaigns, while GoPro specializes in equipment to help adventurers and sports lovers capture their passions from their eyes.
From this partnership, GoPro could access hundreds of global sports events worldwide. And Red Bull could use GoPro’s action-packed content to boost its campaign’s awareness and content marketing efforts.
Both brands proved how crucial transparency is for partnership marketing as they shared content rights and distributed the content on both brands’ networks. These networks include RedBull.com, RedBull TV, and The GoPro Channel.
Summary: Best 5 Brand Partnership Examples and What You can Learn
Brand partnerships are a strategic method for wider reach, increased authority and credibility, knowledge sharing, new marketing perspectives, and increased revenue. Successful brand partnerships rely on transparency and honesty, shared values and objectives, shared resources, and target audience relevance. Learn from the best examples of brand partnerships to build a partnership that drives insane revenue and growth in 2024.
A brand partnership is an agreement between two businesses to work together toward similar goals. Brands partner with other businesses to reach more targeted buyers, increase credibility and authority and access new marketing perspectives. Read this article for the best brand partnership examples and why brand partnerships matter. The benefits of brand partnerships include wider reach, increased credibility and authority, new marketing perspectives, knowledge sharing and revenue optimization. Read our article for more on the benefits of brand partnerships and the best brand partnerships examples in 2024. The best examples of brand partnerships include Kanye West and Adidas, Uber and Spotify, GoPro and RedBull and Alexander Wang and H&M. This article covers the top brand partnership examples and key takeaways in 2024, and why brand partnerships matter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a brand partnership?
What are the benefits of brand partnerships?
What are the best examples of brand partnerships?
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