The Rise of Co-Owned Audiences

Why smart brands are trading reach, not paying for it.

Author

Beth Chapman
March 05, 2025

Meta and Google have had brands in a chokehold for years. Every time you think you’ve cracked performance marketing, the rules change - CAC climbs, algorithms shift, tracking gets murkier, and suddenly, what worked last month is barely breaking even.

For a long time, brands accepted this as the cost of doing business.

You paid to play.

You funnelled a chunk of your revenue straight back into Meta, hoping to acquire customers faster than the platform taxed you for it. But that model is crumbling.

Some of the savviest brands are no longer treating Meta as their main growth engine. Instead, they’re building with other people’s audiences (BOPA) - swapping attention, sharing distribution, and growing their reach without throwing more cash into the ad machine.

At Leaf Envy, we realised early on that performance marketing alone wouldn’t get us where we wanted to go. We needed brand, we needed community, and we needed partnerships that gave us exposure to the right customers, for free.

This is how we did it and how you can do the same.

When Meta stopped working, we started swapping

When I launched Leaf Envy in 2019, paid social was a goldmine. You could throw £1,000 into Facebook Ads and expect a decent return (those were the days of 6-10x ROI!!), even with a fairly basic setup. But as costs increased, we saw the writing on the wall. If we kept relying on paid ads, we’d never build a business with real staying power.

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One of the things I’m most proud of to this day is that we built a multi-million-pound business where 80% of our traffic was organic or direct. To put that into perspective, most investors consider 60% paid, 40% organic to be best-in-class.

Instead of chasing scale through ads, we turned to partnerships. Not just any partnerships, though - we focused on brands that had the exact audience we wanted but weren’t competing with us. Instead of handing them cash, we offered them something more valuable: access to our audience in return.

We started small. An email swap here, a product collaboration there. Then we doubled down as we saw the impact.

We swapped audiences through newsletters, running joint promotions where we’d feature another brand in our emails, and they’d feature us in theirs. It was a simple, effective way to reach thousands of potential new customers, with zero ad spend.

We did product sample swaps - placing our products inside another brand’s orders, while they did the same for us. Customers loved it. They were already engaged, already in a buying mindset, and suddenly, they were introduced to a new brand they’d likely trust because of where they found it.

We ran pop-ups and physical events with like-minded brands, pooling our audiences and creating shared experiences that gave us direct access to new customers in real life.

We also launched product collaborations with esteemed brands like Soho Home (furniture) and Edge of Ember (jewellery). This wasn’t just about cross-promotion. It was about embedding Leaf Envy into the right communities, in ways that felt organic and meaningful.

Soho Home x Leaf Envy Product Collaboration

Co-branded content: the smartest way to borrow credibility

​A common misconception among brands is the belief that successful partnerships require a vast audience. In reality, strategic co-branded content can introduce your business to thousands, or even millions, of the right people, all without necessitating a massive following.​

However, two critical elements are essential:

  1. A strong brand foundation: Your brand should have a clear identity and value proposition that resonates with your target audience.​

  2. A dedicated marketing professional: An individual who can meticulously plan and execute these collaborations, ensuring alignment with your brand's goals and values.​

At our peak, we were launching one thoughtful brand collaboration per month, occasionally even two. Each initiative was a comprehensive, multi-channel campaign - encompassing email, social, sample swaps and SEO content. These brand collaborations were typically mapped out over the year with a monthly content theme or pillar. This holistic approach ensured maximum engagement and reach, effectively amplifying our brand's visibility and appeal.

How to scale with influencers - without paying for every post

At Leaf Envy, we knew that UGC and influencer content were crucial. But we also knew we couldn’t afford to hand out £1,000 per post to every creator with a half-decent following.

Instead, we focused on value.

Rather than just sending out free plants and hoping for the best, we started a content series called The Foliage Flip - full plant styling makeovers worth over £500.

It was super well received by influencers and in exchange for the transformation and gifted product, our social team would film the transformation in action and get some fantastic lifestyle content!

The deal was that we’d get our own video content, but the influencer would create and post their own too.

Influencers were far more willing to create beautiful content when they were given a high-value experience instead of a single product. They posted about it more authentically, they engaged with the brand on a deeper level, and most importantly, their audience responded.

We also took a structured approach to building out a micro-influencer programme.

Instead of working with influencers on a one-off basis, we reached out to ten content creators where we loved their aesthetic and offered them an ongoing brand ambassador partnership. We formalised the relationship, ensuring consistency, and paid between £150-£300 per video to keep the collaboration structured yet affordable.

The result? A steady pipeline of influencer content that didn’t break the bank. More importantly, it was real. Instead of throwing money at influencers who barely cared, we built relationships with creators who genuinely loved the brand.

This is where so many brands get it wrong. They treat influencers as an extension of their paid marketing, when in reality, the most powerful partnerships come from real alignment, not just a transaction.

The brands that win aren’t spending more - they’re partnering better

Audience swaps, brand collaborations, strategic influencer relationships - these are the new growth levers for brands that don’t want to be at the mercy of Meta forever.

The smartest founders and marketers aren’t thinking, How much more can I spend on paid? They’re asking:

How can I trade value, collaborate, and build long-term audience equity?

So before you launch another campaign to fight against rising CAC, ask yourself:

  • What other brands already have the audience I want?

  • How can I create a mutually beneficial swap that costs us nothing?

  • Where can I integrate into existing communities instead of forcing my way in with paid media?

The future belongs to brands that build with people, not just for them. The sooner you start, the less you’ll have to rely on paid.

Your move

What’s one audience swap or brand collaboration you could action this week? Hit reply and let me know - I’d love to hear what you’re working on.

If you found this useful, share it with a founder or marketeer who needs to hear it.

P.S.

​I've spent years helping brands expand their reach through strategic partnerships. If any of the above hit a note and you're interested in exploring how we can collaborate, let's schedule a call!

I'd love to discuss how we can work together.

  • Connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • Check out my Fractional CMO service here.

  • Got questions or a topic you’d love me to cover?
    Email me at [email protected]

Disclaimer: I share advice from my own experience. Every business is unique, so tailor these ideas to fit your needs.