Sarah Adam

Internal communication is so important. Our team acts as an internal advocate for our partners, making sure to keep a healthy balance between the company needs and the partners needs. This is an ongoing challenge and depending on the project, is sometimes easier than others. We make sure to involve all the relevant POCs per project and maintain full transparency and healthy lines of communications all around. When needed, we allow direct communication too.

We do this organically, via Linkedin mostly and other social media channels where relevant. When we have trouble getting responses, we try to get introductions via mutual contacts that we already have a positive relationship with. We find that to be really effective.

We do this by defining clear KPIs before each collaboration or campaign. For example, if our goals are brand awareness, we look at KPIs like impressions and engagement. If our goals are user acquisition, we track that too. We make sure to be clear and transparent with our partners as to what our goals and KPIs are and how we plan to measure this.

The best co-marketing we have done has been across social media, leveraging joint influencers/creators, with a strong focus on short-form content.

When it comes to Partner Marketing, we focus on brand partnerships as per our brand goals and KPIs. Choosing the right partner is critical and depends very much on the brief. As for team collaboration, it usually involves different functions within our marketing team.

A good partner marketer is one that is able to understand the partner, can easily step into their shoes, understand their needs and wants. Once they can do that, they can find the right balance between the brand's needs and the partners needs. Such a marketer is also a people person, someone who is good at creating and nurturing relationships and a good communicator.

There are many differences. Partner Marketing is a collaboration between two companies, two businesses or brands. Influencer Marketing is between the brand and an individual. Partner Marketing can sometimes be based on an exchange of resources or deliverables, not necessarily money. Influencer Marketing is transactional by nature. The brand pays the Influencer to create content and distribute it to their audience. Having said that, Influencer Marketing is very similar in the sense that the relationship and trust is the foundation of the partnership.