• The core idea of this marketing strategy is to focus on collaboration or partnership over promotion. 
• This strategy focuses on building strong & mutually beneficial partnerships. 

The “Help Your Allies to Help You” marketing strategy goes beyond competition and revolves around building solid partnerships with complementary businesses. It flips the traditional marketing where brands compete and try to foster a win-win situation where both provide value and promote each other.

The core of this strategy rests upon Collaboration over promotion. Instead of simply asking for promotions from the partner, the approach focuses on supporting them and creating a scenario where both grow in a symbiotic relationship. Remember, the success of this strategy depends on finding the right allies and innovative ways to help your allies. 

Tapping into the right partners increases audience engagement and reach. Association with the right partners enhances credibility, and by leveraging partners’ resources and audience, marketers can witness cost-effective marketing and improved lead generation. It can also lead to strong brand relationships and build trust, which can be beneficial in the long run. 

How Collaboration Between Red Bull & GoPro is the Prime Example of a “Help Your Allies to Help You” Marketing Strategy? 

Red Bull and GoPro present themselves with extreme sports and adrenaline rush and target specific audience segments. Their Collaboration is an excellent example of successfully incorporating the “Help Your Allies to Help You” marketing strategy, where both partners benefit from each other.

Red Bull’s Benefits

Red Bull is well known worldwide for its association with extreme sports and pushing the boundaries. The strategic partnership with GoPro for record-breaking skydiving intelligently allowed the brand to solidify its image. The death-defying stunt successfully gained significant media attention and placed Red Bull at the forefront of the action. 

This record-breaking skydive directly appealed to Red Bull’s audience of thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. GoPro’s association allowed them to capture the event, taking the Red Bull brand directly in front of this valuable demographic. Eventually, it increased the fan following and brand loyalty. 

GoPro’s Benefits

GoPro’s Collaboration with RedBull’s skydiving provided a prominent platform to showcase their camera capabilities in extreme real-world situations. The high-quality footage captured by the GoPro camera intelligently captured the intensity and showcased the danger of jumping, clarifying the camera’s durability and image stabilization capabilities. 

This partnership resulted in significantly higher media exposure for GoPro. GoPro filmed all the thrilling footage of the skydive, which allowed them to reach a broader audience, generate interest in the camera’s capabilities, and potentially boost sales. 

The Win-Win Scenario & Key Takeaways from the Collaboration

The Red Bull & GoPro partnership is a classic example of mutualistic marketing, where both partners gained immense exposure. Red Bull successfully leveraged GoPro’s camera technology and amplified the extent of its brand image. In comparison, GoPro successfully used Red Bull’s extreme events to demonstrate the camera’s prowess and gain wider brand recognition.

The result is a testament to the “Help Your Allies to Help You” marketing strategy, as both parties benefited from the association. It opened the gates for each to reach their target audience and achieve their marketing objectives and goals. Undoubtedly, it is a win-win scenario for both. 

This association focused on allied strengths. Red Bull recognized GoPro’s strength in capturing extreme action, while the camera brand capitalized on Red Bull’s ability to generate buzz-worthy events. Interestingly, both parties here target similar audiences—young and adventurous individuals. The partnership ensured its message reached the target audience. 

What is the “Help Your Allies to Help You” Marketing Strategy? 

It must be understood that the “Help Your Allies to Help You” marketing strategy strategically focuses on building a strong, mutually beneficial partnership capable of expanding reach and achieving marketing objectives. It’s about creating a win-win scenario where you support your partner’s marketing efforts, and, in turn, they promote your brand to their audience.

Core Principle: Reciprocity & Collaboration

The key idea of this marketing strategy is to move beyond asking your allies to promote you while providing them with value and support in their marketing efforts, in turn building a sense of community, partnership, and trust. This strategy encourages them to be more involved and invested in your success, leading to more efficient and long-lasting Collaboration. 

Identify Your Allies

The first and most important aspect is identifying your allies. Businesses should look for companies that offer products or services that complement theirs but do not compete with them directly. For example, a fitness center or gym can partner with a healthy meal delivery or diet partner. 

Brands could focus on partnering with industry bloggers, social media influencers, or publications with relevant audiences. Channel partners could be resellers, distributors, or other companies that sell your product or service, which can be valuable to allies. Remember, identifying the right ally can be a make-or-break decision. 

How to Help Your Allies

After choosing the right allies comes the ways to help them. It can be done by co-creating valuable content, similar to how Red Bull and GoPro co-created the famous skydive. Brands can work together on developing blog posts, infographics, webinars and related pieces of content that address the target audience’s needs and showcase the expertise of both parties. 

Cross-promotion can also be a great option. In this model, a brand promotes a partner’s content through its marketing channels, such as its website, social media platforms, etc., and the partner does the same. This allows the promotion to reach a wider audience. Both partners could also conduct joint giveaways and contests that require participants to follow both partners’ social media accounts or visit both websites, facilitating increased traffic. 

Brands can also work towards providing marketing tools and resources to the partner. Equipping them with marketing materials like product brochures, social media content, templates, or email marketing copy that promotes both businesses. It can significantly benefit both parties and increase traffic and revenue. 

Multiple Benefits of This Marketing Strategy

This marketing strategy provides multiple benefits, such as increased reach earned by tapping into a partner’s existing audience and expanding brand awareness. Partners can gain credibility by associating themselves with a respected partner. Moreover, leveraging your partner’s resources and audience can amplify the marketing efforts without a significant budget increase. 

This strategy can significantly improve lead generation opportunities, as partners can generate qualified leads through promotions. Eventually, this marketing strategy can help build stronger brand relationships, helping to build trust and reciprocity in mutually beneficial relationships. 

Pros and Cons of “Help Your Allies to Help You” Marketing Strategy

Like any other marketing strategy, this “Help Your Allies to Help You” strategy comes with its pros and cons, as discussed below. 

Pros

It leads to increased reach and brand awareness, and partners have already established audiences that a brand can tap on to significantly expand their reach. It enhances credibility by associating with well-respected partners’ strengths, brand image, and level of trust. It is a relatively cost-effective strategy as it leverages the partner’s resources and audience to amplify the message’s reach without significant cost.

Collaboration also facilitates improved lead generation. Both partners can generate qualified leads through cross-promotion and bring potential customers. Collaboration also facilitates the possibility of co-creating fresh content formats and perspectives. Backlinks from partners’ websites can significantly boost SEO capabilities, improving the ranking. 

Cons

Finding the proper ally with a relevant audience and a strong reputation in the market is a daunting task that requires considerable time and effort. Building and maintaining this partnership requires efforts, ongoing communication, Collaboration, significant content creation, and marketing each other.

The success of this marketing strategy hinges on how the partner executes it and their audience engagement, which cannot be controlled entirely. Ensuring that the marketing goals of both parties are aligned can be challenging and requires clear communication. Also, parenting with brands that do not align with your brand image can significantly backfire and confuse the target audience. 
In conclusion, the “Help Your Allies to Help You” marketing strategy is a powerful tool providing multiple benefits for both parties. It can increase brand awareness, reach, and engagement, enhance brand credibility, and is a relatively cost-effective marketing strategy. It can amplify marketing efforts and help both parties achieve their objectives.