Co-marketing in healthcare can help your brand expand its audience and win new, brand-loyal followers who are likely to convert into paying customers.
Healthcare distributors that partner with other brands in their field also can take advantage of new resources, expertise, and ideas. All of this adds up to more creative, impactful, and far-reaching marketing campaigns.
Benefits of Co-Marketing
A well-executed co-marketing effort will be greater than the sum of its parts in the truest sense of the saying: A collaborative campaign between two brands is often more compelling than a single-brand campaign, as each partner adds unique assets to the equation.
If you need proof of the value of co-marketing, look at some of the world’s biggest brands:
- GoPro and Red Bull co-branded for the Stratos campaign.
- Pottery Barn and Sherwin-Williams joined forces for the “Color Your Room” campaign.
- BMW and Louis Vuitton teamed up for “The Art of Travel” campaign.
These companies have the funds and expertise to run entirely effective marketing campaigns solo. So why team up? They recognize the immense value of co-marketing.
Here are some of the benefits:
Save Money
Marketing campaigns cost money. Some initiatives, like email marketing or organic search engine optimization marketing, can be reasonably cost-efficient. However, other initiatives like paid search marketing and pay-per-click advertising can require five-figure budgets.
When you co-market in conjunction with another brand, you tend to split the costs of the campaign. This allows both sides to save, resulting in a greater return on investment.
Reach a Wider Audience of Brand-Loyal Consumers
If you’ve been in the healthcare business for some time, you probably already have a built-in audience – loyal consumers and followers form a network of connections that you’ve nurtured for years. Finding new leads to convert is often a challenge, however, especially in the competitive healthcare market.
When you co-market with another brand, you gain automatic exposure to their built-in following of customers. Of course, they gain exposure to your built-in following, too – quid pro quo.
Not only do you gain automatic exposure, that exposure is also more likely to result in conversions. Why? The people who follow your co-marketing partner presumably already trust that brand. They are thus even more likely to trust your company. You’re no longer a stranger. You’re a friend of a friend.
Target the Right Customers at the Right Time
Partnering with other brands also opens up unique opportunities to reach customers at a point in the sales funnel when they are more likely to convert.
The most obvious example can be seen when you book a vacation. As soon as you buy a flight, you get offers for hotels and car rentals. These brands are demonstrating co-marketing common sense. They are creating a one-stop shop to maximize your spending when you’re already in a buying session.
How might this scenario look in the healthcare setting?
Say you work for a medical devices company selling blood glucose monitors for diabetics. You partner with healthcare providers in the diabetes space, promoting a campaign that raises awareness about symptoms of diabetes and the importance of diagnosing and managing the illness.
The campaign will drive potential diabetics to seek testing from HCPs, bringing them business. Those diagnosed with diabetes will then already have your brand name in mind and know where to turn when they need blood glucose monitors to manage their illness.
Tips for Co-Marketing in Healthcare
Ready to implement co-marketing in healthcare? Follow these steps.
Choose the Right Partner
The value of co-marketing partnerships depends mainly on who you partner with. Choosing well-respected and well-recognized brands can enhance your brand identity. Conversely, aligning yourself with brands that have a bad reputation can harm your image. Reputation management is critical.
You also want your partnership to make sense. As a healthcare distributor, it won’t look good to partner with a tobacco brand. Now, that’s a pretty egregious example – but you get the point. Your partnership needs to be logical. You shouldn’t just pick a partner because they have a big name. The aim is to align services and products that support each other.
Set Shared Goals and Develop Your Strategy Accordingly
Both partners need to benefit from your co-marketing campaign. Define individual goals and share them to make sure your agendas are aligned. You can then develop mutual goals. With your aspirations set, you can craft your time-specific marketing strategy, including key milestones, deliverables, and metrics you will use to track progress.
Create a Co-Marketing Agreement
If you’ve determined that your mutual goals are aligned, go ahead and hammer out a formal co-marketing agreement. This will help to avoid miscommunication as your collaboration progresses.
Your agreement should cover goals, timelines, topics, promotional plans, and reporting initiatives. If you are creating co-branded content, where will each party share it? How often do they need to share it? What evidence do they need to provide to the other party that they’ve shared it? Finally, make sure to define ownership of content and assets that result from your collaboration.
Tap into Each Party’s Strengths and Weaknesses
Co-marketing campaigns are created collaboratively. Working with an external brand to craft compelling healthcare marketing strategies and content can reinvigorate your in-house marketing. Such collaboration allows you to tap into novel resources and expertise and develop new ideas.
Before you start creating your campaign, take stock of each party’s strengths and weaknesses. Maybe your healthcare marketing team is hitting it out of the park in social media marketing but falling short on blogging. If your partner has a high-traffic blog, that’s great. Once you know each side’s strengths and weaknesses, you can better divide up tasks for maximum effectiveness.
Craft Compelling Co-Marketing Content
Finally, you can get to the fun part of co-marketing in healthcare: creating actual campaigns. You and your partner should craft new content together. Brainstorm collaboratively and select the ideas you like best to carry forward. Mapping the customer journey can help ensure alignment of concepts and goals as you develop joint content marketing in healthcare.
Boost Your Co-Marketing Impact with Share Moving Media
Trust Share Moving Media to support your co-marketing in healthcare. We are a full-service media company, crafting everything from ebooks to white papers and podcasts. We can help you and your marketing partners prepare compelling content that engages and converts audiences to increase healthcare sales.
Contact us for help with your healthcare marketing.
