Partner Marketing - Key Strategies

• Pardot
• Marketo
• Salesforce
• Marketing Cloud
• HubSpot

5 Key Strategies For Partner Marketing Success

The truth is that Marketing Technology (MarTech) partnerships are seldom successful. Partnerships may start off with good intentions, but most of the time they result in one-sided relationships. Partner Marketing is necessary for success in the tech industry, but how do you navigate these relationships?    If you’re a tech vendor, what do your channel partners need to get off the ground? A simple referral fee doesn’t motivate enough agencies to send business your way. Let’s discuss four strategies you can do to bolster your partner’s go-to-market strategy and improve your business:

1. Align Your Business Plans With Your Partners
2. Enable Your Partners With Marketing Campaigns
3. Dedicate Channel Marketing Managers
4. Offer Market Development Funds (MDF)
5. Leverage a Partner Marketing Platform  

 

1. Align Your Business Plans With Your Partners

  Your partners need to build a successful business upon your solution. Channel marketing strategies produce better results when partner and vendor plans are aligned. At its core, a business plan is fundamentally an action-oriented framework. Plans can be executed more effectively only if they are truly mutually beneficial.    Business plan alignment allows you to:  

• Keep everyone’s focus on the same common goal: revenue
• Align your marketing and sales operations with your partners
• Go-To-Market together
• Keep yourself mutually-accountable

Outline Mutually Achievable Goals

When building business plans for your partners, it’s important to lay out achievable targets that allow you to measure success fairly and appropriately. A great business plan for partners is one that is accurate and keeps both vendor and partner mutually accountable.   The targets should be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timed) and must describe ‘how,’ not just the ‘what’. Think of a good partner business plan as a guide that, if followed properly, can lead to buried treasure.  

2. Enable Your Partners With Marketing Campaigns

Joint marketing initiatives: Road shows, webinars or joint whitepapers with successful end-clients can boost results for all parties involved. Tackling generated leads together uncovers mutual opportunities and creates many benefits for the end-client.   Web Syndication: Pushing content out via web syndication enables partners by expanding their reach and improving their ability to generate leads. Developing a broad spectrum of content types can help them build stronger, more concrete campaigns and enable them to hone in on their messaging.     White Label Content: Many tech companies have not fully developed their internal marketing capabilities, so being able to leverage white label marketing campaigns is a huge advantage. An effective white label campaign is one that provides your partners with content and materials that they can use to build their marketing strategies, promote content, and fortify their business plans.   

3. Dedicate Channel Marketing Managers

Assign people who love your partner and care for the success of your partners. Partners need a go-to person who can help them:   

• Navigate the vendor enterprise
• Bring together the right people for campaigns 
• Discover joint opportunities for overlapping clients

Help Partners Differentiate themselves in your ecosystem

Some partners might have specific capabilities and focus on a specific geographical area, and some might be low cost. Encourage the Channel Marketing Manager to drive better results and improve relationships by fostering communication between partner and vendor, ultimately increasing your Partner Satisfaction Score.   Your channel manager can act as a liaison to make sure partner requirements and needs are being met. #ProTip: Incorporate partner differentiation in business plan alignment and mutual marketing campaigns

4. Offer Market Development Funds (MDF)

Market development funds (MDF) are funds that vendors make available to their partners to incentivize them to develop and enhance their business, marketing efforts and programs. 

Help Your Partners Access MDF

A fundamental aspect of a successful marketing and channel partnership is ensuring that you have guidelines and strategies in place. These help your partners develop action plans that meet the requirements for MDF qualification.    A channel marketing partnership works well if partners meet well defined targets and know that they can access the resources they need that will help them do so. Learn how Macro can help you and your partners succeed.  

5. Leverage a Partner Marketing Platform

Partner marketing platform have multiple benefits for your partner marketing strategy. As the leading channel marketing management platform, enables you to manage your channels and offers a variety of features to enhance your partner marketing strategy and capabilities.   With ZINFI, you can execute campaigns as well as manage and generate content for partners. If you’re curious about how to get started, read about our ZINFI Concierge Services.  

Can Your Partner Marketing Strategy Improve? Let's Work Together 

We hope that with these tips, your firm will be more prepared to help its partners execute channel marketing strategies efficiently and effectively. With dedicated Partner Marketing experts on hand, there’s no better time to see what Macro can do to help your channel partners reach their targets.    Whether you’re working with an existing platform or are new to channel marketing and looking to set up, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us today to learn more.