Technology vendors worldwide use partners to reach end customers; no single vendor has the resources to handle every customer interaction in-house. Channel partner marketing is vital in getting the most from these relationships.
Effective partner marketing, in essence, ensures that partners understand the vendor’s value – both to them and their end customers – and that customer value is effectively conveyed to the market. Partner marketing increases partner engagement with the vendor’s brand, builds mindshare, produces leads, and, eventually, drives sales.
Recent global events and advancements in business technology have prompted a reconsideration of many conventional in-person channel partners’ marketing activities, such as trade shows, conferences, vendor-specific events, seminars, and hospitality opportunities. This has seen digital marketing come to the fore, as reflected by the growing focus among CMOs of big brand companies on ensuring they offer customers the best possible digital marketing experience.
This makes it more essential than ever for vendors to understand which channel partners can drive their digital marketing campaigns forward and effectively convert digital leads into sales. We’ve already seen how large technology companies like Microsoft have increased their focus on ensuring that their partner marketing assists partners in differentiating their offers to customers in this changing digital world.
To-partner and through-partner marketing – what’s the difference?
Of the four types of partner marketing, the two main types – to-partner and through-partner marketing – have distinct but complementary roles. Each requires a unique strategy from the vendor, involving various resources and marketing activities.
To-partner marketing aims to assist partners in understanding why they should work with the vendor. It addresses the query, “What’s in it for me?” Partners must comprehend what differentiates vendors from the competition, which may also be working with said partner. The goal is to find common ground. Then, to win and maintain, channel partner mindshare. The partner is vested in driving sales of the vendor’s product. Mindshare for modern partner ecosystems is about the presence (regularity of contact), training, incentives, and ease of business. Mutual Interest occurs first because mindshare is impossible without it. Typical to-partner marketing targets all personas within the account. It provides value propositions, customer and product insights, training, and promotions through activities that might include email, newsletters, e-books, white papers, and social media.
It is important to perform the right type and level of to-partner marketing at each stage of the partner lifecycle. If material is not personalized and partners are not well nurtured throughout all stages, they may be turned off or feel disengaged and neglected.
Once the appropriate potential partners have demonstrated commitment or signed up, it is equally essential for vendors to ensure that their to-partner marketing matches each partner’s needs along the partner marketing journey rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, which is unlikely to succeed. Understanding all the brands competing for mindshare is key to matching to-partner marketing propositions to needs.
Through-partner marketing entails providing partners with the tools, resources, and support they require to carry vendor brand and product messaging to market on their own. The aim is to make life as easy as possible for the partner. Typical through-partner activities might include providing access to a library of easily customizable content, event support, delivery tools, and pre-packaged demand-generation execution plays.
Vendor support should be available to channel partners at all stages of the customer acquisition process: vendors can provide targeted partner enablement programs that help promote through-partner marketing success. This might involve helping to target and identify end-customer targets, help with content to generate leads, and presales support to design solutions and close sales. Vendors might involve a partner marketing agency to help deliver such enablement programs.
The other types of partner marketing discussed are ‘with-partner’ and ‘for-partner’ marketing.
In general, with-partner marketing refers to joint marketing programs typically undertaken by vendors in collaboration with their largest partners, where a specific customer value is provided through their combined goods and services.
For-partner marketing is simply marketing done by a vendor to create customer interest and leads, followed up by partners.
How is partner marketing funded?
The manner in which partner marketing is financed varies greatly and impacts both the type and size of partners that vendors can attract, as well as the kinds of activity that those partners are willing or able to undertake.
In essence, there are three main funding models for partner marketing:
- Marketing development funds (MDF) – This is a pre-allocated ‘pot’ of money used by the vendor to fund the development of a market serviced by its channel partners. Before any payment is made, each MDF marketing partner must submit and receive vendor approval for a costed marketing plan.
- Contra-revenue funds – Established partners typically accrue these as a percentage of their revenue. Partners must submit an evidence-based request for approval before the funds are paid.
- Co-operative funds are most often used for shared-cost marketing initiatives, usually defined by the vendor.
Allocation of funds for traditional MDF marketing is increasingly difficult, and how it is spent is under more scrutiny than ever before. Meanwhile, the potentially limitless contra-revenue rebate tied to partner sales is often left unspent as companies are unsure what this funding can be used for to be compliant with financial regulations.
Ongoing worldwide health and economic concerns have highlighted some of the basic issues with traditional funding models. Many top technology vendors have recognized the challenge and taken special precautions to assist their channel partners in weathering the storm.
As partner marketing becomes more digital, vendors must be able to adapt and make it simpler for the right partners to access appropriate funding. To maximize the value of their marketing spend, vendors must address funding models in tandem with true insight into partners’ digital marketing and growth capabilities.
What are the key elements of a successful partner marketing program?
While some best practices for partner marketing exist, no two vendors or channel partners are the same. This means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to partner marketing. Each partner’s place in the vendor’s channel marketing journey will determine each program’s objectives and elements.
This is why any channel partner marketing effort should begin with assessing each partner in the vendor’s network’s digital marketing capability and brand engagement. The next stage is to use ‘partner lens’ analysis to identify and group partners so that suitable marketing support and digital marketing activities can be targeted to them.
Based on the results of this analysis, vendors can use a set of partner management blueprints to work most effectively with each category of partners and maximize campaign success. These allow vendors to plan and execute campaigns that provide partners with the precise content, tools, and degree of support they require to succeed – directly or in collaboration with a third-party provider of packaged or concierge services.
The goal is for vendors to develop the right relationships with the right channel partners based on strategic fit, degree of involvement, and specific strengths.
Any channel marketing program must strike the right balance between encouraging partners to use automation platforms and tools, such as channel marketing portals, and engaging in real human interaction where required, even as nearly every interaction between vendor, partner, and end-customer is increasingly virtual.
Learn more about targeted partner marketing campaign execution: download our free white paper ‘Building the right relationships with the right channel partners: a targeted approach to through-partner campaign execution.’
How do vendors ensure they are working with the right partners in the right ways?
As business interactions of all kinds become digital, a key challenge for vendors is ensuring they have the right partners on board to generate and convert leads in a more virtualized buyer journey. Vendors require a method to discover and engage the best digital marketing partners.
One way vendors can do this is through capability targeting. Tools are now available that will identify the real digital marketing capabilities of every channel partner in a vendor’s channel network and how involved partners are with the vendor’s brand based on the latest data analytics technologies.
Using this data, vendors can engage the right partners in the right activities, provide tailored support and funding where necessary, and ultimately deliver better results from their digital marketing spend.
Dell Technologies is one technology vendor that has used our Intelligent IndexTM to identify each of its channel partners’ digital marketing capacity and brand engagement. This has aided Dell in engaging the appropriate partners in the appropriate tasks. The business can now provide targeted support by understanding its addressable market and how to precisely target and deliver MDF funds to the partners who will truly accelerate revenue growth.
How is partner marketing success measured?
There are a huge number of potential metrics that can be applied to gauge the success of partner marketing programs. To mention a few, vendors have been known to track the number of partners engaged, the number of deals registered, the revenue produced by partners, and partner satisfaction.
These are all excellent numbers, but they all provide a historical perspective on performance.
Marketing capability analysis differs in that it provides a true measure of partners’ true digital marketing capabilities and interaction with the vendor’s brand. Such predictive analytics have proven to be a strong predictor of future success for several technology vendors’ partner marketing programs time and time again.
Last Updated on January 17, 2024
