B2B co-marketing on social media: How to build momentum beyond the joint webinar
Two tech companies team up for a campaign. They build an ebook, host a joint webinar, email their respective contact lists, and run a quick lead swap when it's over.
Then, both teams pack up and move on to the next project.
It's a standard play, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Webinars and gated resources have their place, especially when buyers are weighing complex software options. But relying entirely on sporadic, one-off events can leave big gaps in your marketing strategy.
B2B buyers don't restrict their research to a scheduled 45-minute slide deck. They talk with peers, follow practitioners, consume short-form media, and evaluate tools across multiple channels. If you and your partner only show up together once a quarter, you could miss opportunities to reach buyers throughout their research process.
This is where social co-marketing comes in. By sharing useful insights, common technical hurdles, and practical examples across both networks, you can stay visible between major launches without filling feeds with empty corporate announcements.
TL;DR
The problem: Relying solely on one-off webinars and co-branded ebooks leaves huge visibility gaps during the buyer's research cycle.
The solution: Use ongoing social co-marketing on platforms like LinkedIn to maintain consistent visibility between major product launches.
How to do it: Focus on shared technical problems over partnership announcements, involve subject matter experts (engineers, PMs), repurpose single discussions into multi-week campaigns, and track account-level engagement and pipeline feedback rather than just vanity metrics.
Why your distribution strategy matters: The drip effect
Basic social media campaigns rely heavily on corporate channels, but the real key to distribution is your network of people.
Research from LinkedIn's B2B Institute on the Drip Effect explores the cumulative impact of employees regularly sharing insights and perspectives across their professional networks.
According to LinkedIn data cited in the article, content shared by individuals receives roughly twice the engagement of company page content, while employees collectively have five to ten times more connections than their company pages have followers.
The research offers a useful takeaway for partner marketers: involving experts from both companies in social promotion can extend your content's reach beyond corporate pages.
Here's how that approach could change campaign execution:
One-off campaign | Ongoing social co-marketing |
Promote a joint webinar for two weeks across corporate accounts | Distribute through individuals: Have partner and internal experts share ongoing insights directly to their personal feeds |
Publish a single co-branded ebook | Turn core insights into short videos, post breakdowns, and practical workflows for team members to use |
Focus mainly on total registrations | Track individual-level engagement, referral traffic, and sales team feedback over time |
3 Practical approaches to social co-marketing
Many co-marketing initiatives run into trouble because teams pick a promotional format before deciding what they actually want to say.
Instead of defaulting to a carousel or video because it's popular, start with what buyers struggle with.
1. Package shared expertise into useful content
Focus on the specific questions buyers ask when evaluating both tools together. Where do implementation projects get stuck? What workflow gaps do customers struggle to solve?
LinkedIn carousels: Map out a step-by-step solution to a common operational problem.
Short-form videos: Have a technical expert or solutions engineer explain how a specific integration works in practice.
Visual workflows: Share architecture diagrams, product walkthroughs, or customer-approved examples highlighting both platforms working together.
A post showing how two systems exchange data to eliminate manual work gives prospects something useful. A graphic announcing that two brands are "thrilled to partner" doesn't.
2. Put subject matter experts out front
Your corporate page shouldn't carry the whole campaign. Engineers, product managers, and customer success leaders can bring practical expertise that makes the content more useful.
A product manager can walk through the technical side of an integration, while a customer success manager discusses how clients handle change management during rollout.
Bring them together for a short interview, a co-authored post, or a quick video conversation.
3. Coordinate content without copying each other
Co-marketing doesn't require both brands to publish identical captions and images on the exact same morning.
Giving each partner a different angle can help you reach audiences with more relevant content rather than repeating the same message twice.
One brand might focus on the operational problem, while the other breaks down the technical execution.
Encourage team members on both sides to join relevant conversations, answer questions, and discuss real-world challenges when they have useful expertise to share.
The Pinch perspective: Don't just announce the partnership. Explain the solution.
A common problem with partner marketing content is that companies celebrate the agreement itself and forget to explain why the buyer should care.
Everyone has seen these posts:
"We're thrilled to announce our new strategic partnership with Company X!"
But that tells a buyer very little.
Does the integration eliminate manual data entry? Does it speed up a process? Or does it remove a persistent technical headache?
Before hitting publish on a joint post, run it through four checks:
Target audience: Are you writing for a specific role or team dealing with this issue?
Clear value: Have you explained what these two tools actually achieve together?
Concrete proof: Can you show a screenshot, workflow diagram, or verified metric?
Substance check: If you swapped out both logos for two competitors, would the post still say the exact same thing? If so, refine it.
How to execute a social co-marketing campaign in 4 steps
You don't necessarily need a huge budget or dozens of assets to get started. You need a clear objective, a shared problem, and a realistic plan.
Step 1: Align on the audience and objective
Agree on target industries, buyer roles, and account lists before touching a design tool.
Determine what success looks like. Are you introducing a new integration, supporting active pipeline opportunities, or educating existing customers on additional features?
Step 2: Repurpose a single in-depth discussion
Avoid duplicating work by recording a 30-minute conversation between technical leads from both companies.
Discuss a shared customer problem, how it affects daily operations, and how the two solutions work together to address it.
Depending on the discussion, you might create:
A multi-slide carousel breaking down the core problem.
Short video clips highlighting technical takeaways.
Individual LinkedIn posts from both speakers sharing their perspectives.
A detailed article covering the technical considerations.
Agree on technical reviews, content approvals, and publishing responsibilities before production begins.
Step 3: Map out a staggered publishing schedule
Spread content across a few weeks rather than publishing every asset on day one.
Here's an example of how two technology partners could organize their content:
Timeline | Partner A | Partner B |
Week 1 | Post a carousel introducing the core problem | Publish a video covering a different aspect of the solution |
Week 2 | Share a practical implementation tip | Share a customer-approved workflow example or answer a technical FAQ |
Ongoing | Answer questions with useful insights | Add technical context and join relevant discussions |
This is an illustrative schedule, not a proven formula. Adjust the timing and formats based on your audience, campaign goals, and available resources.
Step 4: Track meaningful metrics
Impressions and likes can tell you how much visibility your content is getting, but they don't tell the whole story.
Look closer at who's engaging and whether the content is helping support your marketing and sales goals:
Account match: Are you reaching people from target accounts and relevant buying roles? Use available audience and account data where possible.
Qualitative feedback: Are prospects asking detailed questions in comments or direct messages?
Sales input: Do account reps report that prospects referenced the joint content during sales conversations?
Referral activity: Are tracked UTM links driving traffic to product documentation or integration landing pages?
Remember that engagement doesn't automatically equal pipeline influence. An account interacting with a post before entering your pipeline doesn't prove the post contributed to the opportunity.
Combining social engagement, referral data, and documented sales feedback can give you a more useful picture of how the campaign is performing.
5 Avoidable co-marketing mistakes
Duplicating posts: Publishing identical graphics and text across both brand pages misses an opportunity to offer different perspectives.
Prioritizing format over substance: A polished video or carousel won't save a weak message.
Scripting generic employee engagement: Template comments like "Great partnership!" add little value to a discussion.
Relying on vanity metrics: High view counts are less useful if you're not reaching the audience the campaign was designed for.
Stopping after week one: Keep sharing useful insights when there's more to say. A campaign doesn't have to end when the main asset goes live.
Frequently asked questions
What is B2B co-marketing on social media?
B2B co-marketing on social media involves two or more companies collaborating to produce and distribute content across their social channels. This can include joint posts, expert discussions, short videos, carousels, and customer stories designed to help shared audiences understand common business challenges and potential solutions.
Is LinkedIn the best channel for B2B partner campaigns?
LinkedIn is often a practical channel for reaching business decision-makers, but it shouldn't be the default for every audience. Technical buyers and specialized roles may also participate in online forums, industry communities, and video platforms. Focus your efforts on the channels where your specific buyers are active.
How does social co-marketing differ from a joint webinar?
A webinar is a scheduled event. Social co-marketing can involve ongoing content and conversations across multiple weeks or months. Social content can generate interest before an event, reinforce key points afterward, or address technical questions that didn't fit into the main presentation.
How should partners divide campaign responsibilities?
Assign ownership for copy, asset design, technical validation, approvals, publishing, and measurement before starting production. The workload doesn't need to be split equally, but both sides should contribute relevant expertise and agree on realistic approval timelines.
How do you measure financial ROI on social co-marketing?
To calculate financial ROI, compare campaign costs against attributable revenue using a clearly defined attribution method. Engagement, referral traffic, and pipeline influence can offer additional context, but they don't establish financial ROI on their own.
For campaigns focused on awareness or supporting future opportunities, it may also be useful to report leading indicators separately from financial results.
Keep the momentum going
Webinars and ebooks remain useful marketing tools, but they shouldn't mark the beginning and end of a partnership strategy.
By turning joint expertise into practical content for buyers, tech partners can create more opportunities on social media to reach their shared audiences between major campaigns.
Give prospects useful information, let technical experts share what they know, and focus on showing buyers what the partnership can actually help them accomplish. Because at the end of the day, buyers don't care that you partnered; they care about what you can solve together.
