The Impact of Co-Branding Your Website
Posted on May 17th, 2008
Top marketer Jonathan Schreiber recently wrote an article listing the 5 Top Reasons to Co-Brand Your Website. Check out MarketingProfs for more information. The reasons are as follows:
1) An improved focus on customer wants and needs
All marketing strategies should have a customer-oriented focus. But because co-branding involves the launching of a new product, it adds extra incentive for a true evaluation of a customer’s current and latent needs and wants.
2) Improves the ability to communicate a product or service to a target customer
The point of developing a brand is to communicate a core value to the target customer. Through co-branding these values can be extended and reinforced to communicate a new product to the consumer. One solid example of such a relationship is the Toys ‘R’ Us/Amazon co-branded commerce site.
3) Better differentiates your products and services
Because co-branding involves the development of a wholly new product, it allows for differentiation from one’s competition as well as from the parent products involved in the partnership. CNNSI.com is a dramatic example of this effect.
4) Leverages assets and core competencies
Internet co-brands that leverage their core competencies dramatically increase their chances for success in the Internet realm. In the case of Microsoft and NBC, two companies from genuinely different backgrounds came together to create a powerful Internet co-brand.
5) Improves revenues and image
An Internet co-brand can generate revenues or build each of the partners’ brand images. One such example is eBay’s Disney Auction site.
In 1999, Disney’s Go Network tried to launch its own online auction site that failed miserably in just four months. Its problems were immense. It didn’t have the site traffic. It didn’t deliver on the Go Network’s core competencies. And it didn’t offer a differentiated user-experience.
BOTTOM LINE
By effectively harnessing the power of two brands, a company can simultaneously focus on the customer, deliver new revenues and create potent new products in areas as diverse as news, sports and entertainment events, e-tailing, vertical portals, and the melding of "brick-and-mortar" relationships.
Co-branding doesn’t guarantee product category leadership. And it doesn’t mean immediate success. But what is important to realize is that co-branding can be as powerful a force on the Web as it is in the offline world - if it’s done right.
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