Tips for Creating a Co-Op Marketing Strategy: Key Elements to Keep in Mind

A cooperative marketing program can provide organizations with numerous benefits when carefully planned to accomplish specific goals. The collaboration creates an opportunity for the organizations to grow their brands, increase sales and launch products simultaneously — all while gaining strength from each other’s reputations and the traction they have already established with their respective audiences.

Cooperative marketing strategies can be based on a partnership between two or more brands, or it can be a cooperative arrangement between a primary brand and its franchisees, dealers, distributors or local branches. The entities that are involved share costs, resources and ideas with the goal of gaining mutual benefits. 

To achieve these benefits, strategizing ahead of time is an important first step. The program typically relies on several key elements that ensure alignment and measurable results for all entities involved. Because ongoing communication is essential, the parties should work together to create a formal document that outlines these key factors to help ensure a seamless and successful partnership. 

For any co-op marketing relationships, each partner should agree to basic rules and goals, as well as on how to create and measure success. Following is a more detailed outline regarding factors to implement and keep in mind before, during and after cooperative marketing campaigns.

Co-op Marketing Strategies for Separate Organizations

1. Collaborate to ensure the plan satisfies everyone’s needs and abilities.

Before beginning the partnership, make sure that you are partnering with an organization that simply makes sense. You should share a similar target audience while offering different yet complementary products or services.

Once that due diligence and high-level conceptual plan is completed, all who are involved should set clear goals and define shared objectives upfront, such as to increase sales, drive local awareness or promote a new product.

Outline KPIs, such as leads generated, sales lift or impressions, as well as the automation and analytical tools you will use to measure them. To avoid confusion that may stem from differing data, it’s important to agree upon specific platforms and not deviate from using them for data measurement and reporting. 

Align incentives so both parties are motivated to execute effectively, and ensure that each party gains mutual value.

2. Identify who will coordinate efforts and fill various roles.

Structure is going to be key in your co-op marketing efforts. All who are involved should collaborate to ensure the plan satisfies everyone’s needs and leverages their abilities.

These are just a few of the many factors that should be considered:

• Will a third-party marketing agency be involved? If so, which one?
• Will you need direct mail? If so, which company will you use?
• If you’re handling it in-house, who will be the designer? Data analyst? Finance manager? Writer? Project manager?

In addition to identifying who will step into key roles, you should define the tools that will help automate and manage the process for creative marketing tasks.

With so many factors, it will also be important to plan for the unexpected with a troubleshooting, emergency contact and emergency response guide. For instance, who do you call if your e-commerce solution stops functioning? How do you stop an erroneous brochure from being printed? What happens if one of the parties involved in the co-op marketing program has a social media crisis? Anything can happen, so make sure you’re prepared and that others involved in your program are privy to this guide as well.

3. Implement a process for managing the respective brand guidelines.

Create or share a brand book for each partnering organization, as clear creative guidelines and templates will ensure brand consistency as well as address any compliance requirements. 

This guide should include information about and/or access to logos, artwork and messaging, as well as guidelines for photography and the creation of new content.

4. Determine your budget and cost allocations.

Set up a digital platform to track success and manage the marketing spend. You should determine your preliminary budget and cost allocations at the onset but revisit it throughout your campaign to ensure you are spending your dollars wisely. 

Include a flexible funding and reimbursement structure, and establish transparent rules for co-op fund allocation, such as basing them on a percentage of sales, a fixed amount or tiered incentives. Make the reimbursement process simple and accessible, with clear documentation requirements and support.

Discuss your paid advertising efforts, and detail how you will split the cost of these ads as well as events, influencer partnerships or other marketing efforts.

Each organization should discuss internally how they will pay for the efforts. Will you spend the same amount of money you had originally budgeted for marketing and consider the co-op marketing effort as an additional line item, or will your co-op dollars come from your existing marketing budget?

5. Decide which communication channels will be included in the plan based on the budget and the target audience.

Will you leverage email marketing? Social media marketing? Distributed marketing processes? Search engine optimization? Direct mail? Paid advertising? Event marketing opportunities? 

Determine which channels you will use during your campaign based on your budget, audience and goals, and revisit these decisions as you start to see results.

Cross-promote your efforts through each organization’s existing platforms, and pool resources for public relations efforts, giveaways or sponsorships. For example, you could set up a referral system where customers of one business get a discount at the other.

6. Regularly assess your progress

Regularly assess your overall progress, return on investment, use of various marketing channels, conversion rates and ability to reach the right audiences. Use this data to refine your strategy as needed to optimize spend and enhance each partner’s ROI.

Tips for Down-Channel Cooperative Partnerships

1. Identify the needs of down-channel partners.

Ensure both the overarching/parent company and its franchisees, distributors and/or retailers will benefit from the co-op marketing initiative. For instance, is a multinational corporation hoping to increase its presence in local communities, or is a franchisee hoping to reach new audiences? Most certainly, every partner is hoping to boost profits and conversions, but reasonable KPIs should be set so that the ROI and effectiveness of marketing strategies can be measured as the campaign progresses.

2. Define a process for budget allocation. 

Develop a cost-sharing structure or decide how to align your spending based on the potential for success. Consider setting up a tiered contribution model based on franchise size and/or revenue.

Negotiate bulk ad buys — including those on TV, radio, online or in print — and pass on savings to franchisees. Include a flexible funding and reimbursement structure, and offer options (e.g., pre-approved vendors, turn-key campaigns) to reduce friction for partners.

3. Establish clear guidelines.

Parent companies should establish brand guidelines or share existing guidelines with their down-channel partners. These guidelines can vary widely based on the industry, but may include:

• Brand logos and artwork
• Key messaging such as value statements and mission statements
• The organization’s social media standards and templates
• Image/photography recommendations and requirements

One of the greatest benefits of cooperative marketing is that a down-channel partner can gain attention by personalizing communications to reach local audiences. Therefore, the brand book and cooperative marketing guidelines should detail what a down-channel partner can or cannot do when customizing marketing materials. For example, they may have permission to change the size of the parent company’s logo but not any of the colors, or they may be able to tweak text on one area of a website but not on another area.

4. Roll out the strategy based on comprehensive communication, goal setting and planning.

Just like co-op marketing between separate organizations, structure is going to be key in your efforts. The plan should satisfy the needs of all partners, including the parent company. Identify external partners you will use to assist you with your marketing efforts, list any digital platforms you will employ in your campaign and identify who will coordinate efforts and fill various roles, as noted above.

5. Find a provider to create a digital storefront that partners can access.

For a down-channel partnership involving distributed marketing, you will most likely need a vendor for your e-commerce platform, warehousing and fulfillment. Ensure that your franchisees know which platforms to use to order and distribute these materials, and make sure they follow your brand’s standards.

If your down-channel cooperative marketing partnership requires the use of an e-commerce site but you do not have one, research digital storefront development companies that can create one for you. At Phoenix Innovate, for example, our proprietary CenterPoint platforms can be customized for each client’s needs, and solutions are integrated directly with our printing, warehousing and fulfillment capabilities. In most cases, all a franchisee or parent company would have to do is place a standard order online or a custom order with one of our representatives, and the rest would be handled for them.

Provide marketing assets and templates to any parties that will need to use them, and ensure that the people who need access to digital storefronts have it.

Throughout your campaign, remember to manage and report co-op spend, and create a co-op bank based on the budget plan.

6. Communicate launch and incentivize participation.

Celebrate wins and share best practices across partners to build momentum. If the franchisees/partners are not already involved, offer rebates or discounts to get them to participate. For example, run best-performing franchise awards programs for friendly competition and to boost their dedication and utilization of the program.

You should also provide education and onboarding so that those involved understand the goals of the program, know the KPIs, understand key metrics and can use the digital storefront effectively and properly. Maintain regular communications and offer support for execution, such as through the marketing portal, via a help desk or by one-on-one contact with account managers.

7. Regularly assess your progress.

We’ve mentioned it a few times, but it’s worth repeating. Regardless of which type of co-op marketing program you’re involved in, collaborating to track progress via a predetermined digital CRM or analytics platform is essential. Without it, you’re left with trial by error, never really knowing what’s working and what isn’t.

Use these metrics for key insights about your strategies, including which marketing platforms are working best, what content incites your audience to take action, which advertising strategies lead to the highest ROI and which products or services your audience wants the most.

Track performance at both the local and overall program level, and share the data during quarterly meetings with all key stakeholders. Use these facts as well as insights from stakeholders to reevaluate and modify strategies and goals as needed, and continue following this cycle. Over time, you are likely to see your ROI increase, especially when you eliminate methods that don’t work and focus on those that do.

Phoenix Innovate has provided numerous direct and digital marketing solutions for cooperative partnerships. Our strategic solutions and innovative technologies, including our proprietary CenterPoint digital storefront platform, create positive opportunities for businesses in a variety of industries. 

For more information about tailored co-op marketing solutions for automotive businesses, OEMs, schools, nonprofit groups and other organizations, email us through our website or call us today.

See our case studies to learn more about how these collaborations can result in transformative and sustainable solutions for your organizations.