The Forgotten Partner Market Strategy

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to another issue of the Partnership Pocketbook, your bi-weekly dose of partnership related content.

I hope everyone reading this is doing well, despite the still rough market conditions that we are continuing to experience.

A sign of positivity for everyone reading this…partnerships remain a niche, in-demand skill.

So many companies that I am speaking with at the moment are thinking through partnerships as part of their go to market strategy, and they need help.

If you are an experienced partner manager, there is work out there for you!

There are not a lot of experienced partnership people in the world, so you therefore possess something very valuable.

If you are looking for a role, you've got this.

My interesting conversation of the week comes from a chat I had with Stefano Tacconi, Founder of a startup out of Barcelona called Workfully.

We had a chat about partnerships, and he mentioned that he wanted to change their entire GTM strategy to one that was “ecosystem first”.

I have to admit, hearing this brought a big smile to my face! 😁

Super cool right?

A founder that is already thinking about partnerships as the main go to market strategy for their business.

The movement is real people, and we are all part of it.

Unless you have been hidden under a rock, chances are you have probably heard about ChatGPT.

For those that have not heard about it, it is a chatbot that uses AI to answer questions.

It's pretty cool.

Anyway, my partnership in the wild this week comes from the partnership that has been established between Microsoft and ChatGPT.

Microsoft's Bing browser will now have AI capabilities and be billed as “Your copilot for the web”.

The partnership is a great one, as it’s Microsoft's direct challenger to Google as the premier search browser.

It makes sense for Microsoft, because it gives them a product that augments their search functionality and, for ChatGPT, results in mass distribution. Win win.

Personally I am so excited to see how this pans out. You can sign up for their waitlist here.

Now let's dive into this week's newsletter.

This week we are going to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, partnership marketing.

As many of you may know, when done well, partnership marketing can supercharge your partnership program and drive massive amounts of value.

Unfortunately, a lot of partnership programs focus only on “through partner” marketing, which is all focused on the end customer.

These activities include things like webinars, shared blog posts etc.

All with a focus on net new revenue for your partner program.

This is obviously important as partner teams are quota carrying, however there is another activity that can drive comparable value, and that is to-partner marketing.

To-partner marketing is focused on promotion of your software or service directly to the customer facing teams of your partner.

If you partner with another company, chances are you are not the only partners.

Which means the customer facing teams of your partner are inundated with lunch and learns, new tools to position with their customers, and new partners to learn about.

It can be A LOT...

In order to break through this noise and ensure you remain top of mind with your partners, you should develop a robust to-partner marketing strategy.

The central underpinning of a good to-partner marketing strategy involve is outlined for you below:

1. Lead with messaging that is all about them 🥰
2. Be creative 🎨
3. Create scalable activities that are run regularly 📅
   

When marketing to-partners, make sure that the messaging you are leading with is not just feature first content that’s primarily focused on people selling more of your product.

Instead, lead with content which is all about your partner i.e. how your software and solution can help them land more deals, or increase adoption of their product.

The customer facing teams of your partner DON’T CARE about your tool, I hate to break it to you! But what they do care about is selling more deals or renewing more accounts.

Tie your messaging to things they care about.

A few strategies that you can try today for to-partner marketing include:

✔️Setting up a monthly email campaign, detailing product updates, promotions that you are running and additional important information

✔️Running quarterly partner webinars where you do a similar types of updates

✔️Lunch and learns

✔️Partner days, where you invite the sales team out to your headquarters

Remember, marketing to-partners is just as important as marketing through-partners.

Take time and effort to create a to-partner marketing motion, or get forgotten about!

It's that simple.

That's all for this week!

Comments or topics are always welcome -shoot me an email 📧

Cheers,

Ben