If you’ve decided to offer the competitive perk of fast, digital payments to your workforce, you likely already know why you’re doing it. You know it can make a huge difference for workers by improving their cash flow. You know it can help streamline your payment processes by allowing you to pay your entire workforce—W-2 and 1099 workers alike—from one unified platform. And you know it can help build loyalty to your company by incentivizing your team with a perk they actually want. 

But…now what? Even if you know why you’re choosing fast, flexible payments, you likely will want help with how to market this solution to your workforce in order to promote adoption. That’s where co-marketing comes in.

We interviewed Branch’s own B2C Growth Marketing Director, Kati Gruber, about best practices for communicating the rollout of a new payments offering or benefit, and the importance of ongoing co-marketing in boosting adoption and engagement.

Meet Co-Marketing: The Special Sauce of Any Good Payments Partnership

Any payments platform worth their salt should have a co-marketing strategy to help you effectively communicate your new payments offering. But what exactly is co-marketing?

“Co-marketing refers to collaborating with our clients to bring the benefits of our solution across to their workforce,” says Gruber. “We team up with you to ensure we’re preparing the right materials for the right channels to reach your current workforce—and even help attract new talent..”

Co-marketing can help establish trust with your workforce by highlighting the value of a new solution—and helping them get started as quickly as possible. Plus, it takes the burden off your shoulders of having to know how and when to communicate the benefits of your new offering most effectively—so you can focus more on your core business.

4 Co-Marketing Best Practices for Your New Payments Offering

The right payments partner will not only offer co-marketing to you to help ensure adoption and engagement, but also help you follow these best practices too.

1. Rely on Industry Knowledge

You may be adept at communicating changes to internal policies or rolling out standard workforce benefits, but the world of payments comes with its own set of rules and regulations; and those take time to learn. 

“There are so many nuances and regulations to consider in the world of payments,” says Gruber. “You have to communicate things in certain ways given the need to be compliant with regulators.”

Your payments provider should offer co-marketing support to help you communicate the ins and outs of financial regulations and other details in an easily digestible way. You should be able to rely on their industry knowledge and oversight to help ensure all materials are compliant and still easy to understand.

2. Focus on a Multi-Channel Approach

It’s not enough to send out a single announcement email upon launching a new payments solution. You have to consider co-marketing as an ongoing effort, and one that should be multi-channel in order to break through the noise and reach your workforce about this change.

“We typically have a discovery session to learn about what channels you’re using today to communicate with workers so we can give you the ideal copy and content to plug into these channels,” says Gruber. “You know your workforce best, so we’re trying to tap into the communication channels you know you’ll be able to reach them.”

Everything from break room posters and brochures to email scripts, text messaging scripts, and more—co-marketing can (and should!) be able to create those custom assets for you to make your life easier.

3. Leverage Your New Offering as a Recruitment Tool 

Yes, you want to get the word out about your new financial benefit to your existing workforce. But it also pays to consider how you’ll market this to prospective new hires.

Marketing your payments offering from the beginning is crucial, since it’s clear that workers are demanding fast, flexible payments. (75% of workers across industries want to get paid every day, and 80% of gig workers say they would choose one platform over another if it could pay them instantly and without fees.)

“We not only try to reach existing workers, but include the value props of faster pay in recruiting materials, new hire materials, and onboarding materials,” says Gruber. “This really helps differentiate you from similar companies in your industry so you can attract the best talent.”

Marketing your perk to prospective employees will get them excited about the hiring process and prepare them to hit the ground running when they can get onboarded and paid.

In a recent case study with staffing firm Quality Clinicians, their VP of Operations echoed this sentiment, saying “a lot of people who go on to work for us bring up same-day pay when they start; they mention that they signed up for it and start asking about it right away.”

4. Consider Co-Marketing an Ongoing Effort

Similar to the fact that co-marketing should be multi-channel, it also needs to be continuous. Regularly sending communications across your channels about the solution’s capabilities, new feature enhancements, and more will serve as a helpful reminder to workers who may have missed the last two or three communications—and can help nudge people who haven’t onboarded yet.

“It’s important to have ongoing communication to your various audiences to reinforce the benefits of your new offering,” says Gruber. “People often need at least seven marketing touch points with a brand before they’re ready to act.”

Your payments provider should be able to offer the ongoing co-marketing support that’s needed to ensure your workforce understands the benefits of your new solution and is eager to use it. 

Partnering with a Payments Provider for Co-Marketing Magic

If all of this sounds overwhelming, rest assured—that’s why people like Kati at Branch are here to help.

“We do the heavy lifting of all of this for you,” says Gruber. “We’re creating all of the assets for you, providing you with email scripts, text messaging scripts, poster layouts, and more. It’s really about opening up your channels and plugging in the communications that you need. We even provide best practices for timing for drip campaigns and when to send reminders, etc.”

When it comes to the successful rollout of your payments offering, consider how your provider’s co-marketing resources can help. You already know the power of fast, flexible payments—now it’s time to ensure your workforce does, too.

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