Tips For Preparing Your Brand for Partnership

Entering the partnership marketing space can seem overwhelming at first. Before deciding what brands you’d like to work with, it’s important to assess your brand’s goals for entering the partnership space. Knowing what you want to accomplish and making sure your staff is ready to proceed will make the process smoother for everyone involved.

Regatta has identified 5 key questions to consider internally before beginning your brand partnership journey.

1. What assets does your brand have?

When it comes to working with another brand you must consider what things you can offer as part of a partnership. Assets can range in size and scale. These are items that you possess organically such as retail store space, email database, social media platforms, catalogs and more. Identifying what assets you have to offer is the first step in planning an equitable trade.

2. What are your partnership goals?

Your brand has its own unique goals, objectives and KPIs you want to strategically achieve. Determining these targets you want to focus on will help you hone in on activation ideas.

3. What does your timeline look like?

Getting a plan together often involves conversations between team members on both sides. Depending on what you plan to accomplish, these discussions can take time and planning in order to get all team members on the same page. You should identify what your timeline looks like- including when you would like to start your project, and what lead times are needed to accomplish a task.

4. What team members and decision-makers should be involved in the conversation?

In order to be adequately prepared for partnerships, you must determine what team members will need to be involved on specific assignments. Do you have a social media team that handles posts? Is there a creative department that will need to make artwork? Will these team members need to bring in any other departments for final approval? Once you determine who should be involved you will want to consider the best way to communicate with each team.

5. Are there any brands or verticals on your “no-fly” list?

When working with another brand, you are opening up your visibility to another audience. Making sure you are attracting the right kinds of customers, brand aficionados and companies that align with your brand’s values will be crucial to finding success.

For example, if your brand is very focused on conscious business practice, it wouldn’t make sense to work with a company that isn’t mindful of their ecological footprint, would it? You would want to make sure the brands you are working with are like-minded in their sustainability efforts.

Determining which values are uncompromisable will help you narrow down your partnership efforts, and ultimately align the right brands with yours.

Regatta has been in the business of helping brands with planning, pitching and managing partnerships for over 20 years. Interested in getting your brand involved in partnership marketing? Contact us.