Partnership marketing can work for all businesses. The only reason more companies don’t use it is that people only know of a few partnership marketing methods. And when those methods don’t seem like a good fit for them, they discount the idea altogether.

So, here are some partnership marketing examples. See how many ideas you can use for your business.

In some ways, no other marketing method competes with partnership marketing. Nothing else creates as significant results as suddenly and as consistently.

If you average two clients a month, having a calendar full of client work can seem unrealistic. But partnership marketing often makes that happen.

Or if you’re used to selling a few products every month, selling hundreds of them in a few days can seem unrealistic. But it happens all the time.

So, here are examples of some more common partnership marketing methods.

This is part 5 of the “How to get traffic and high-quality leads efficiently—3 most consistent methods for 99% of companies” series.

Part 1: Traffic is a vanity metric—here’s what pros track instead

Part 2: How to be smart about advertising and make a consistent profit

Part 3: How to choose the right advertising methods for your business

Part 4: How to write a guest post that attracts leads

Part 5: Partnership marketing methods—examples for all businesses

1. Content sharing

Content sharing is the lightest and simplest of all partnership marketing methods. If you get someone to share your content on social media, that’s partnership marketing. They promoted you to their audience—even if it was just a tweet.

At the other end of the spectrum, content sharing can get time consuming and complex. If you speak at another company’s event, that’s content sharing, too.

Content sharing can mean many things:

• Social media promotion: If someone with a big audience shares your content on social media, it can lead to sales. However, the impact tends to be minimal—even if they have a huge audience. But in some situations, social media promotion can be effective. You should consider it if your target customers actively follow certain people on social media. Just remember that pressing the “follow” or “like” button doesn’t mean they follow the person actively.
• Guest blogging: Guest blogging is typically the most efficient form of content sharing. You can reach big audiences without spending much time on it. I covered guest blogging as a method for generating leads in the previous part of this series.
• Contributing articles to magazines: Think of it as old-school guest blogging. If your target customers read specific magazines, writing for those can be efficient. The most common options are industry-specific and association magazines.
• Speaking at events: It’s rarely listed as partnership marketing or content sharing. But it is both. You provide content, and they get it in front of their audience.

Often people expect you to share their content if they share yours. I avoid those kinds of deals. If your content isn’t worth sharing for them (without also getting you to promote their content), something’s wrong. I have nothing against cross-promotion (in many forms). It’s just better to make content worth sharing.

2. Affiliate marketing (+ other similar joint ventures)

For many people, affiliate marketing is the most obvious type of partnership marketing. And that’s why they think partnership marketing doesn’t fit their business. Affiliate marketing might not seem to fit in with what they do.

But almost every business can use some types of affiliate marketing. It’s lazy to think they categorically won’t work for you.

Here are a few types of affiliate marketing you can consider:

• Affiliate marketing (automated): You can have a small army of affiliates promoting your products and services. And whenever they generate a sale, they get a commission. For example, if you sell a blogging-related software, it’s worth creating an automated affiliate program. This works the other way around, too. You can promote other company’s offers as an affiliate to generate extra revenue.
• Affiliate marketing (not automated): Let’s say you sell consulting services to large companies. You could have other consulting companies refer people to you. They’d make money, even when their own services don’t solve their clients’ problems. And you’d get clients. I’d be surprised if this kind of partnership marketing couldn’t work for you.
• Online launches: This is a form of affiliate marketing. The difference is a clear time window. And the offer is only available until the launch ends. Online launches are a complex (and useful-enough) form of partnership marketing. I’ll go into more detail in a separate article at some point (get notified if/when that happens). But simply put, you get a bunch of affiliates to promote you at the same time—for at least two weeks—and it all leads to a special offer at the end of the launch.
• Affiliate up-sells: When someone buys something from a partner, they can offer something from you as an up-sell. It’s a comically simple way to increase their revenue. You can up-sell affiliate offers to your customers, too. You should prioritize your own up-sell offers. But if you have none, an affiliate offer is the next best thing.
• Affiliate down-sells: This isn’t a new idea. But it almost never comes up in marketing conversations. If someone doesn’t buy your offer and you don’t have a down-sell of your own, why not use an affiliate offer? For example, if someone doesn’t afford your products, you can refer them to a cheaper store. You can turn many “no’s” into “I’ll-look-into-it’s.” And you can create partnerships where others down-sell your things, too.

Joint venture promotions

There are countless types of joint venture promotions. You can categorize many of them as distribution (see below). But I think of them as affiliate marketing.

Joint ventures often refer to webinars. The affiliate promotes the webinar and someone else does the presentation.

Online joint venture (webinar) promotions have a bad reputation because so many webinars are worthless—they’re 90-minute sales pitches. And often even the promotions are sales-y and not trustworthy. For example, it seems people have plenty of “close friends” to promote. Every other joint venture promotion email starts with “My close friend so-and-so is doing a free training on…” There’s a good chance they’ve met for the first time a month earlier. And that meeting was about doing the joint venture promotion. (As a side note, I tend to specify how I know someone. For example, I might mention I’ve known them for years or that they’re my client.)

But joint venture promotions can be both effective for you and valuable for the audience. These are perhaps the most common types of partnership marketing (online and offline):

• Webinar promotion: As mentioned above, webinars have a bad reputation. But if you do a genuinely valuable webinar training, and neither you nor your partner gets sales-y or lies, there’s no problem. The results surprise you; many people have grown their business from scratch to six or seven-figure revenues in a year or two with webinar promotions. You need an effective webinar. But that’s worth another article (click here to hear when I publish it).
• Speaking (and selling) at events: If you’re good at selling from stage, you can make a lot of sales by talking at events. This works much like webinar promotions. There are just several speakers (partners). You also might need to pay them a flat fee for the spot (plus commissions from sales).

3. Distribution as partnership marketing

Distribution partnerships can mean many things. But let’s narrow down the list to partnership marketing. And let’s also remove affiliate marketing options. Then we’re only left with one notable option: retailers (and other resellers).

If you manufacture products, you likely already work with stores. You’ve also likely considered other distribution channels. For example, if you manufacture furniture, interior designers could sell your products to their clients.

But if you sell services, resellers aren’t such an obvious option. Most of the relevant options are affiliate partnerships. The only noteworthy exception is licensing. It can be tricky to set up. But it can also be extremely profitable. It’s worth considering if you think it could fit your business.

4. Co-creating marketing

Marketing together with another company can be simple. But it can also lead to surprising problems if both sides aren’t clear on what they need to do and what to expect.

There are many forms of marketing partnerships. But only one isn’t covered by the other types of partnership marketing:

Pay some—get some… ad space:

Sharing ad space is rarely worth doing unless the minimum costs of the advertising method are high. It can make sense with, for example, TV or movie ads.

That said, there are simpler online versions of sharing ad space.

The most common option is an online event. You interview a bunch of people, and those interviews are the bulk of the event. They can be live or recorded. Either way, you hope the interviewees promote the event. They “pay” (with promotion) to get some exposure.

As a side note on events: I like taking part in them. However, I decline every invitation that includes a requirement to promote it. Most of the invitations start with “[The organizer] loves your work and hopes you’d share your knowledge at [event].” And they end with “We require all speakers to have a list of at least 10,000 people and send at least two emails about the event.” I understand the business model. I just rather don’t take part if they value my list size more than my knowledge. If I’m not required to promote the event, I’m likely to tell people on my list about it, anyway.

Here’s a much less common option. Set up a page where you offer a PDF (or something else), so people would give you their email address. Get a few partners to make their own offers on the page, too. They all cover some of the ad costs. Together they might cover the ad costs completely, but you still get the exposure. (If you randomize the offers’ order on the page, everyone gets equal exposure.)

5. Co-creating offers

Co-creating offers can be simple partnership marketing. At the shallow end of the pool, it doesn’t take much effort. But if the collaboration gets significant, risks get bigger.

Regardless of what you sell, consider this type of partnership marketing. If you find the right option, it can be very efficient and consistent marketing for you.

Here are a few ways to co-create offers:

• Do an interview for another company’s offer: They interview you and bundle it as a bonus into something they sell. The buyers get it as a part of the bundle. You can also require them to join your email list to get the bonus. This is common online, but there’s no reason you couldn’t do this offline. As long as the interview is relevant for the buyers and you share valuable information in it, both you and the partner company win. You get the exposure (and potentially the leads) and they can make their offer more valuable.
• Offer a bonus for another company’s offer: Same idea as with the interview bonus (above). When people buy a product or service from your partner, they get your bonus. It can be a digital file (e.g., PDF or video), a personal service, or anything in between.
• Create/deliver a part of another company’s offer: Let’s say the offer is an online training product. You could create one of the “modules.” If your expertise complements theirs, the training becomes better (and more complete) thanks to your module. Or if the offer is a service, and you sell a related software, including your software into their offer could make it easier to sell.
• Create an offer with a partner: For example, you might see a Leica lense on a Panasonic camera. If your product fits in with something else, combining them could create a better product. The same works with complementary services. Put them together, and you have a new offer.

This is part 5 of the “How to get traffic and high-quality leads efficiently—3 most consistent methods for 99% of companies” series.

Part 1: Traffic is a vanity metric—here’s what pros track instead

Part 2: How to be smart about advertising and make a consistent profit

Part 3: How to choose the right advertising methods for your business

Part 4: How to write a guest post that attracts leads

Part 5: Partnership marketing methods—examples for all businesses