What is co-marketing?
Co-marketing is a collaborative marketing effort between a vendor and a partner — running joint campaigns, events, webinars, and content — to generate awareness and leads that benefit both parties. It pools audiences, budgets, and credibility to create demand neither would generate as efficiently alone.
What it means
In co-marketing, two organizations combine their marketing resources around a shared goal. This can mean co-branded content, joint webinars, shared event booths, bundled offers, or coordinated campaigns to each other's audiences. In the channel, co-marketing is often funded by the vendor's MDF or co-op budget and executed by the partner to the partner's local market. At scale, co-marketing across many partners is powered by through-channel marketing automation (TCMA), which keeps campaigns on-brand and easy for partners to deploy.
Why it matters
Co-marketing extends reach into audiences a vendor cannot easily access on its own — a partner's regional customer base, an ISV's user community, or an alliance partner's enterprise accounts. It shares cost and risk, lends third-party credibility, and produces leads that flow to both parties. For vendors with large partner networks, co-marketing is one of the highest-leverage ways to generate partner-sourced pipeline — but only if partners are given turnkey, on-brand assets, since most partners lack dedicated marketing teams.
How it works / example
A software vendor and a reseller agree to co-host a webinar. The vendor supplies the content, speaker, and a co-branded landing page; the partner promotes it to its customer list; MDF covers the ad spend. Registrations and leads are shared and attributed to both. Multiply this across hundreds of partners and manual coordination breaks down — which is why vendors use TCMA. xAmplify lets partners launch co-branded email, social, event, and content campaigns from a shared library while the vendor tracks leads and pipeline generated by each co-marketing effort.
Related terms
Co-marketing is powered at scale by TCMA (through-channel marketing automation), funded by MDF and co-op funds, and measured through partner attribution and partner-sourced revenue. It complements co-selling (joint sales execution) and is a core part of partner enablement and PRM programs.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between co-marketing and co-branding?
Co-branding is putting two brands on the same asset or product. Co-marketing is the broader joint effort — campaigns, events, and content — that may use co-branded assets but is about jointly generating demand and leads, not just shared branding.
How is co-marketing funded in the channel?
It is frequently funded by the vendor through market development funds (MDF) or co-op funds, which reimburse partners for approved joint marketing activities. This lets partners run vendor-aligned campaigns they could not otherwise afford.