Partnerships and alliances are important for any business. Established companies have long used this strategy to build their brand and expand their business.

Partnership marketing is also a powerful way to represent your company to your customers or target audience. When customers see two strong brands forming an alliance, it builds a sense of confidence in their mind and ensures their loyalty.

Here are other reasons why partnership marketing is a win-win strategy.

Power of collaboration

Businesses sometimes fail simply because they have the capacity to perform some tasks but not certain others. Partnership marketing helps solve this problem, as one partner can complement the other, thus ensuring that customers are happy. Benefits of brand partnerships include allowing companies to enter new markets, gain competitive advantages in their traditional markets and build a more robust distribution network.

 A good example of a successful strategic partnership is Subway’s collaboration with Sony PlayStation to launch the latter’s game, Uncharted 3. By giving exclusive online access to their customers through the Subway Taste for Adventure promotion, Subway was able to strengthen its digital presence, while PlayStation was able to gather feedback and use it to fine-tune the game before its official release, thereby promising users an enhanced product.

Deriving value from brand partnerships

Companies join forces for mutual marketing and sales objectives, usually within a specific sector. This does not mean that they lose their corporate identities; instead, they can continue to market and sell outside the partnership while leveraging the benefits of the partnership.

Some possible activities that partnership marketing could entail are:

• Creating content for blogs and websites.
• Developing product discounts or freebies for campaigns.
• Combining services, talents and assets to create new products and services.
• Referring prospects whenever possible.
• Granting access to each other’s databases.

With valuable contact management solutions, the last of these is a quick and easy process.

Partnership marketing can be a powerful tool for SMBs looking to expand their horizons. In the end, success may not solely depend on one’s own strengths, but could be the result of one's ability to rub shoulders with another equally strong brand.