What if you could increase brand awareness, generate more revenue, and build customer loyalty? What if you could expand your reach and gather huge lists of net-new prospects that you know are in your target market? And what if, upon gathering those lists, you could market to those prospects again and again via high-converting channels like email and SMS? 

You can accomplish all this and more through the magic of co-branding. 

Co-branding has been around for generations. It’s a way for companies of all sizes to seize a more significant part of the market share without assuming the normal degree of risk that comes with a marketing campaign. 

Excited yet? Let’s dig in and take a closer look at how brand partnerships can help you take your marketing campaigns to the next level.

What is co-branding?

While co-branding is traced back to the 1950s, many marketers are still unfamiliar with the term. A co-branded partnership, (also called a brand partnership), is a strategic marketing collaboration between multiple brands. While any number of brands can participate in a brand partnership, it normally consists of no less than two brands.

The benefits of cooperative branding

Brand collaborations have many benefits--some of them extreme. First, there’s the brand awareness piece. Co-branding partners enjoy the brand awareness that comes with exposure to another established brand’s audience.

Think about all the time you’ve spent building and qualifying your existing audience. Imagine if you could snap your fingers and get access to an audience of similar size and quality, essentially doubling your prospect pool. Finally, imagine knowing that the new portion of your audience is interested in your product based on their proclivity for your brand partner. 

That, in a nutshell, is the magic of co-branding. Let’s look at some other top benefits of cooperative branding.

Massive scale compared to traditional paid ads.

If you limit yourself to traditional channels, it’s difficult to find new customers at a reasonable cost with a sizable scale. When you find them, they’re generally very expensive on a per lead basis, and difficult to gather in large volumes.  

Co-branding allows you to increase your reach, getting in front of giant-sized audiences by connecting with the other brand’s market. When you work together, and bypass large scale ad networks, you gain access to any consumer in your partner’s audience who chooses to opt-into your campaign.  That reach, through co-branded campaigns, is typically of much larger scale than you’d achieve on a per consumer basis through paid ads. 

Split the cost while limiting the risk

Co-branding is cost-effective. Sometimes, co-branding can mean splitting the cost of a campaign with a brand or multiple brands. Other times, each brand pays their way. 

Either way, you can count on paying less to reach the same amount of qualified prospects than you would spending far more in traditional marketing channels. At the same time, the “risk” that your new co-branded campaign doesn’t yield high return is split between you and your brand partners. 

Co-branding examples

Let’s check out some examples of the most successful co-branding partnerships.

Co-branding example #1: GoPro and Red Bull

GoPro and Red Bull have one of the most successful brand partnerships on the books. The two might sell different products, but both companies are adventurous lifestyle brands. That makes them a natural fit for a cooperative branding campaign.

GoPro and Red Bull have worked on several co-branded campaigns together, but the Stratos campaign stands out as the gold star of co-branding. For the campaign, Felix Baumgartner attempted to set the record for the highest parachute jump. Red Bull sponsored the event, and Baumgartner was outfitted with GoPro cameras to capture it. It was groundbreaking and exciting, and it generated attention for both brands. 

The result? GoPro got to show off its high-res action cameras, and Red Bull got to further establish itself as the preferred drink of high-octane athletes. 

Co-branding example #2: Cineplex and The Weather Network

The collaboration between Cineplex and The Weather Network is another excellent example of co-branding. Cineplex is one of the biggest movie theater chains in North America. What, you ask, does that have to do with The Weather Network?

The two might not share much in common, but they managed to create a popular co-branded contest that people still talk about today.

The campaign was called #WeatherOrNot, and it consisted of a lightning rod and a 20-foot bag of unpopped popcorn. People voted on whether lightning would strike and pop the popcorn. All the winners received free popcorn. The Weather Network was a huge winner, too. It might not have walked away with popcorn, but it made the weather a hot topic for all ages.

Co-branding made easy with FindKeep.Love

When you look at the huge co-branded campaigns from Red Bull and Cineplex, you probably think that co-branding isn’t accessible to you. Red Bull might not knock on your door anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a profitable partnership. It’s easy to do when you use FindKeep.Love.

FindKeep.Love simplifies and amplifies the co-branded campaign by leveraging what’s called a co-branded sweepstakes. Here’s how it works: 

FindKeep.Love’s co-branded sweepstakes is a full-service sweepstakes that does all the work for you. We not only help your brand reach a wider audience by partnering with quality brands like yours (we work over 7k+ consumer brands); we make every aspect of the giveaway process smooth and utterly painless. 

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell: 

Step 1: Get partnered

We use our abundance of best-in-class consumer brands to partner you with like-minded co-sponsors. Similar to leveraging a PR agency for top news placement, you get access to our large portfolio of Brand Managers, CMOs, and CEOs, all at top consumer brands. 

Step 2: Compliance 

We provide turnkey compliance set-up to make it easier for all brands to partner in a cohesive way while complying with US sweepstakes laws. We also handle all technical implications, and make sure brands can launch their giveaways easily and quickly.

Step 3:  Live giveaway mediation

Once live, we closely mediate the giveaway to make sure all brands contribute as equally as possible. 

Step 4: Traffic & sales 

On the user-side, giveaway entrants are taken through an immersive flow in which they have the opportunity to genuinely learn about your brand. 

This includes watching a commercial, taking a quiz, and ultimately opting-in via email and SMS. Then users are taken through a welcome flow that re-introduces them to your brand and drives traffic to your site.

Step 5: Conversion rate optimization

All brands receive comprehensive coaching to make sure their marketers understand the most optimized strategies to convert prospects to new paying customers.

Start a co-branded sweepstakes today

At FindKeep.Love, we’re not simply setting you up with a powerful brand partnership. We take on all of the legwork of a co-branded campaign for you, and set you up to drive sales through high-ROI channels like email and SMS. 

What’s more? You own the audience you generate through our co-branded giveaways. That means you can market to those contacts again and again--for life--without paying a premium in remarketing dollars on Instagram and Facebook. 

Are you ready to acquire more customers and drive sales? Get partnered with a powerful brand like yours and start reaping the benefits of co-branding.