Marketing Partnerships: How to Extend Your Reach With Content Collaboration

Do you create great content other businesses might find interesting?

Have you considered collaborating with other brands?

To learn how to create marketing partnerships with content, I interview Andrew Davis.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships. He's also a popular speaker.

Andrew explores the why and how of marketing partnerships with content.

You'll discover the importance of creating marketing partnerships, as well as how to find the best partners and the keys to a successful collaboration.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Marketing Partnerships
What led Andrew to write a book on marketing partnerships

Andrew studied TV and film at Boston University, and got a job right out of school producing two public affairs programs. From there he freelanced as a producer for programs, such as the Today Show and Weekend Today. After the first dot-com boom, Andrew followed the path of some of his friends into the marketing world.

While working at startups, Andrew realized that if you created great content, like television producers did, you actually would inspire people to buy stuff. He figured if he could apply those principles in the marketing world, he could really be successful.

He then partnered with James Cosco, a journalist, who also went to BU. They started an agency called Tippingpoint Labs, and grew it until 2012, when Andrew sold his share in the business and wrote Brandscaping. Andrew has since been traveling the world, speaking and helping people find the right kinds of partnerships and rethink marketing.

Listen to the show to hear about Andrew's background as a producer, and how the skills he developed prepared him for work in marketing.

The meaning of brandscaping

Andrew says that brandscaping is leveraging the audiences of others for the benefit of both partners.

In the digital age everybody has an audience, whether it's on social media or through email. If you partner with other brands and create valuable content that they would want to proactively send to their audience, then there is no need to buy access to the media.

Listen to the show to find out how our podcast is a brandscape.

The benefits of partnering

Andrew explains that there are three simple benefits to partnering: it's better, faster and cheaper.

It's better. As marketers, we can create better content if we're willing to partner with others who know the audience perhaps even better than we do.
It's faster. Most content marketing is a slow-grow strategy. But brands that partner with other brands see much more rapid success with the content they create.
It's cheaper. It's much less expensive to share with other audiences than it is to advertise.

If you're nervous about partnering with a brand, Andrew suggests you find a person who is a known talent and who already has access to your audience.

Listen to the show to discover how to partner with talent.

Examples of content collaborations

Andrew shares examples of some great marketing partnerships.

When Converse (the athletic shoe company) was trying to rebuild their brand, their CMO Geoff Cottrill realized they got the most traction when celebrities wore their shoes and they ended up in a magazine. Since it was too expensive to buy access to celebs, Geoff figured they should look for the next big thing. So he partnered with Guitar Center, because they have access to wanna-be musicians.

They built a studio in Brooklyn,