Strategy
Co-marketing vs. partner-led growth: which works best for fintech?
Both involve working with other companies to reach buyers. They are not the same thing, and for a fintech selling to banks the difference decides whether you get a webinar audience or a seat at the table.
The short answer
Co-marketing borrows an audience for a campaign: a joint webinar, report or post, shared between two companies. It's fast and good for awareness. Partner-led growth borrows trust for a relationship: partners become an ongoing route to your buyers, through introductions, co-hosted rooms and shared stages. It's slower to start and it compounds.
For fintechs selling to banks and other licensed buyers, partner-led growth usually does more for pipeline, because those buyers need trust before they need information. The strongest setup uses both: partner-led rooms create the relationships and the material, and co-marketing carries it to everyone who wasn't there.
Side by side
| Co-marketing | Partner-led growth | |
|---|---|---|
| What you borrow | An audience | Trust and relationships |
| Typical assets | Joint webinar, report, guide, social posts, newsletter swap | Co-hosted breakfasts and dinners, build days on shared APIs, introductions, shared stages, integrations |
| Time horizon | A campaign: weeks | A relationship: quarters, and it compounds |
| What the partner gives | Distribution to its list or followers | Its name on the invitation, its people in the room, its introductions |
| What the buyer experiences | Content from two brands | An invitation from someone they already trust |
| Best metric | Reach, registrations, downloads | Named accounts covered, committee depth, meetings booked |
| Main risk | Leads that never become conversations | Unclear roles or credit that sours the relationship |
When co-marketing fits
Co-marketing is the right tool when the job is to get known, quickly, by people who are easy to reach online. It works well when:
- You're educating a new category and need many people to understand a problem, not a few people to trust you.
- The sale is relatively simple, with one or two decision-makers.
- A partner has a large, relevant audience and wants content more than a deeper collaboration.
- You need something to show in weeks, not quarters.
What co-marketing rarely does on its own is move a bank deal. A tier-1 bank's buying committee doesn't sign because two vendors ran a webinar together.
When partner-led growth fits
Partner-led growth fits when trust is the bottleneck, which describes most fintechs selling to licensed institutions:
- The buying committee is large. Six to ten people across leadership, finance, product, engineering, compliance and procurement. A partner who already works with the bank knows several of them.
- The buyer doesn't take cold meetings. In the Nordics especially, bank buyers expect a warm introduction.
- You're entering a new market. A local co-host lends you a network you'd otherwise spend a year building. That's what a Stockholm breakfast did for Cardboard, a Norwegian company without a Swedish network, seated next to Gilion and Fairlo.
- Your product gets better with other products. If your value depends on integrations, APIs or embedded distribution, the partners you'd integrate with are also your best route to buyers.
The step-by-step version is in how Nordic fintech companies can build a partner-led go-to-market strategy.
Using both in one loop
The most effective setup we've found treats co-marketing as the amplifier for partner-led work. The loop looks like this:
- Publish a point of view on LinkedIn and in a newsletter, so the right people know what you think.
- Co-host a room with partners: a breakfast, a dinner or a build day around a question your buyers care about. This is the partner-led part, and the unlock.
- Let everyone involved share it. Partners, speakers, jurors and attendees tag each other and post about something they were part of. This is the co-marketing part.
- Turn what happened into thought leadership for the people who weren't in the room.
- Collect it in your newsletter, then repeat with the next room.
The Embedded Finance Build Day worked this way. The room was partner-led: Open Payments and Zwapgrid provided the APIs, and Danske Bank, Worldline and Froda sent mentors and jurors. The distribution was co-marketing: five partners, the jury and every team that built something posted about it, 19 to 25 posts in all. Together they reached 376 people at 142 organisations, with SEK 0 spent on ads.
Choosing partners for each
For co-marketing, look for
- An audience that overlaps with your buyers
- Content they're willing to co-create and promote
- A brand that doesn't overshadow yours
- Clear terms for who gets the leads
For partner-led growth, look for
- Existing relationships with your target accounts
- No competition with you, now or soon
- Credibility with your buyers in that market
- Willingness to invite people under their own name
- Something real they get from it: feedback, visibility, access
Pitfalls
- Co-marketing that turns into a sponsorship. If one side is paying for the other's audience, it's an ad buy with extra steps. Call it what it is, or restructure it.
- Unequal credit. Partners worry about being invisible, and sometimes they're right to. Agree the brand order on every invitation, post and slide in writing before you start.
- Measuring partner-led work with campaign metrics. Impressions undervalue a room where five of your target accounts sat at one table. Count named accounts and meetings instead.
- Expecting partner-led results from one event. The compounding comes from doing it again with the same accounts.
A quick way to decide
Answer three questions:
- Can your buyer be reached with content alone? If yes, start with co-marketing.
- Does the deal need more than three people to agree? If yes, you need partner-led work to reach the committee.
- Would your buyer take a meeting from you today? If not, you need someone they trust to make the introduction. That's partner-led growth.
Most fintechs selling to banks answer no, yes and no. Build the partner-led room first, and use co-marketing to make sure everyone hears about it.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between co-marketing and partner-led growth?
Co-marketing is two companies sharing the cost and audience of a marketing campaign, such as a joint webinar, report or post. Partner-led growth makes partners an ongoing route to buyers, through introductions, co-hosted rooms, shared stages and integrations. Co-marketing borrows an audience for a campaign; partner-led growth borrows trust for a relationship.
Which works better for fintech companies selling to banks?
Usually partner-led growth. Bank deals involve large buying committees and high trust requirements, and bank buyers rarely respond to campaigns from vendors they don't know. A partner they already work with can open the door. Co-marketing is most useful as an amplifier: it distributes what the partner-led work creates.
When is co-marketing the right choice?
When the goal is awareness or category education, the buyer is easy to reach online, the sale is relatively simple, or you need results in weeks rather than quarters. It also suits partners with a large, relevant audience who want content rather than a deeper collaboration.
Can you combine co-marketing and partner-led growth?
Yes, and it works best that way. A partner-led room, such as a co-hosted breakfast or build day, creates relationships and material; co-marketing, with every partner and participant posting and sharing, carries that material to the people who weren't there. The Embedded Finance Build Day reached 142 organisations this way with no ad spend.