Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing Strategy: Tactics, Tools & Templates

Paid acquisition continues to become more expensive and most buyers rely more on a recommendation from a known company or person with whom they have been in contact before than on another ad. That is the real reason partner marketing continues to appear on marketing leaders’ lists from year to year. You’re borrowing reach and trust from someone who already has it with your target audience, rather than paying a platform for it.

Remember, a good partner marketing strategy is not about getting partners on board. It’s about choosing the right few, providing them with the resources they need to be successful and measuring the outcomes of the relationship against actual pipeline achievements or goodwill. This guide will take you through how partner marketing works in practice, the various types of partners and how to create a program from the ground up and the biggest pitfalls that are killing most partnerships with no one even knowing.

The Truth behind Partner Marketing

To break it down, partner marketing can simply be two businesses or a business and creator collaborating to promote each other’s products, as their audiences overlap but the products themselves do not. One side gets in front of an audience it didn’t have to build from scratch. The other gets the same. They both shared expenses and labor in the task of reaching new people.

Its appearance varies with the individuals involved. In B2B, it is typically a software firm supplying resellers, consultants, or complementary vendors who also sell to the same buyer. In B2C, it is more commonly a brand aligning itself with another brand or with a creator with a huge and trusted audience for a campaign, a product, or an ongoing loyalty association.

People often go awry when they think of partner marketing as one tactic. It isn’t. It is actually a mixture of several different strategies and choosing an incorrect one for your circumstance is the reason that a partnership often fails to yield anything.

Partner Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, and Channel Marketing are NOT the same thing

These terms are used interchangeably, and that’s one reason that so many partner programs get constructed with the incorrect expectations. It’s important to have the specifics down.

Affiliate marketing is performance-based. Typically, an individual, publisher, or niche site promotes your product using a tracked link and only earns a commission if they convert. There’s little or no relationship; it’s more a transaction than a partnership. When it comes to the affiliate portion of your mix, it may be beneficial to take time to see what others in your niche are doing before you determine your own commission levels and offers. We’ve delved deeper into conducting that type of competitor analysis for an affiliate program on its own.

Channel marketing, also known as channel partner marketing, is when another company resells, integrates, or bundles your product; or when a managed service provider (MSP) sells your software with their own consulting services; or when a distributor stocks your software with hardware products. Relationship is deeper, typically contractual, with training, margin/commission, and shared accountability for sale.

All of the above are part of what is called partner marketing and co-branded campaigns, sponsorships, and technology integrations, where there is no commission or direct sale are all covered as well. What they all have in common is the fact that it is not about money changing hands, but about two organisations bringing together reach, credibility or capability to deliver something neither organisation could do just as efficiently on its own.

It’s important to know which one you are actually building, as each will have a different scoreboard. The conversion rate and payout economics are the lifeline or deathline of an affiliate program. The success or failure of a channel program hinges on the enablement of partners and the registration of deals. Reach and quality of leads are the lifeline of a co-marketing campaign. Scramble these up and you get the wrong measurement altogether and then you wonder why the numbers aren’t working out.

The key types of Partner Marketing Strategy

With terminology straightened out, here’s what the real-life models look like.

Co-marketing and co-branding. Both brands co-create something together, a campaign, sometimes a physical product and both put their name on it. From co-writing a guide through to a complete co-branded product line. It’s just that one brand reaches another brand’s audience and vice versa, while the production cost is partitioned.

Channel and reseller partnerships. Your product is sold by a partner to his own client base, typically as part of a packaged solution. This is typical in software, where the consulting firm or MSP is the one that customers are dealing with, and you’re dealing with the product.

Referral and affiliate schemes. A partner refers you a customer and receives a flat fee, percentage, or points for the referral. The barrier to entry is low and it’s typically the first partner move a young company makes—but the loyalty is not as strong as it could be. Partners will push the highest-paying product, unless the product is truly worthy of the push.

Technology and integration partnerships. Two products come together: an app in a marketplace, integration of native products or a co-built feature to provide added value to the customers when using the 2 products. This is particularly true in SaaS, where a connection with a popular platform can turn into an acquisition channel all by itself, as prospective customers actively hunt for apps that will connect with the platform they already operate.
Collaborate on events and webinars. Two brands co-sponsor something educational and share costs, promotion and leads. That is most effective where overlap exists, but it’s not a security vendor sharing a show with a compliance consultant, for instance.

Sponsorships. One brand pays another for visibility on an event, content or activity. The least collaborative of the group, it’s closer to advertising than partnership, but that’s fine if it’s a continuous effort rather than one-off.
All of these do not exclude each other. Most mature partner marketing programs operate 2 or 3 of them simultaneously that target different types of partners.

What Makes These Partnerships Actually Work

There is a pattern in partnership relationships that should be studied, not just admired from afar, and that pattern is the gold standard partnerships mentioned.

HubSpot and Chatfuel released a joint guide about chatbots, which was more than just content for content’s sake, it was two distinct companies whose customer bases were asking the same question from different perspectives: marketing automation and chatbot building. No one could come back with a more likely answer. That’s a pretty good litmus test for a co-marketing partner: does the other company help to complete the answer that your audience is already seeking, or does it simply help to amplify the message that you’ve already been pushing?

Spotify and Starbucks’ partnership was based on a similar concept with a different mechanism. The Spotify Premium memberships obtained from the Starbucks app gave users loyalty stars and Starbucks staff and loyalty members helped create the playlists in-store via the partnership. Instead of being bolted on to something that was unrelated, it was about the in-store experience and their rewards program that it plugged into, which Starbucks customers already appreciated.

From a content perspective, both Red Bull and GoPro are interested in the same reasoning. Red Bull wanted extreme-sports footage that was authentic, and GoPro wanted to prove its cameras could take it. There was no need for either of them to be making something they didn’t already do, it was just a matter of making it more visible to each other’s respective audiences.

It was a pure image transfer with Adidas and Gucci’s co-branded capsule collection. The fact that Gucci lent Adidas’s trefoil a high-fashion cred that neither brand’s core demographic would associate with and the fact that it was a limited run kept the collaboration in the collector sphere rather than in either Adidas’s or Gucci’s everyday collections.

On the B2B side, a lesser-known but potentially longer-lasting model is Xero’s accountant partner network. This is why accountants are recommending Xero to their clients; it really does make their job easier, and Xero supports that with a partner program, training and revenue share for what many accountants would like to be doing anyway.

The trend in all five: The partner’s viewers were already predisposed to be interested in the other product. Successful partner marketing doesn’t create demand from nothing, it takes the friction out of the demand that is there.

Building a Partner Marketing Strategy, Step by Step

What do you really need out of this? There are three different goals: awareness, pipeline and retention, and they require partner types. A program with a more brand awareness objective and based on referral commissions will always feel underperforming since referral partners are not built for brand awareness, but for conversion. Communicate about the desired one or two outcomes first.

Not just any partner, find partners that have the right audience overlap. The ideal partner is one that has customers seeking your product/service and isn’t competing with you for the same customer. The size of the audience is less important than most people think; a smaller, but more engaged audience is likely to perform better than a larger, less relevant audience. You should also find out just how many other partnerships that company has on its list, if you’re the tenth one, you’ll likely not get very much attention. The research methodology is similar to sales prospecting, most of the work is in researching and ranking the prospects, not the actual outreach.

Create a joint story prior to creating a campaign. Prior to making any content or offer, create a single paragraph describing why the two of you are better as a team than either of you would be on your own – specifically enough to convince a customer that this is so. If at any time that paragraph could be used for any partner you may have chosen, it is not specific enough to make it work.

Choose the mechanics. Be honest with yourself and figure out if this is a referral model, co-branded campaign, bundled offer or integration, and which one truly aligns with the objective you came up with in step one, not the easiest to implement this week.

True partner empowerment. This is the one thing that most programs don’t do or do halfway and is the #1 reason partnerships underperform. A partner who understands that your product is a good idea, but can’t sell it, price it, or respond to basic objections will simply cease to sell it after a few months. Enablement is not a PDF that you send out as soon as it becomes their continual education, answers to the questions they have, and resources they don’t have to create for themselves.

Fire both sides simultaneously. A co-branded campaign that you send out on your channels 3 weeks before sending it on the partner’s channels isn’t really co-branded, it’s you promoting them with additional effort. Agree on the timing before one side publishes.

Measure indicators that will demonstrate the accomplishment of the goal in step one. More on which ones below, but most programs default to vanity numbers instead of numbers that would hold up in the leadership meeting.

Check out with the partner, not just in your head. The partnerships that last get revisited together: what worked, what didn’t, what to change next quarter. Usually these are the ones where only one side is interested in the outcome.

Partner Enablement Is the Part Everyone Underestimates

The one thing that is important to remember from this guide is to read this section again. The hardest part of signing a partner is the one you sign a partner. What most programs don’t quite realize is that getting them to actually and consistently promote you is where they fail.

If a partner has to guess, it isn’t good enablement. Their short and clear explanation should be why you do what you do and who you do it for without having to ask you every time they have a question. They need more than a logo and a one-pager, they need content they can drop into their presentation with minimal editing: email copy, social captions, a slide or two they can place directly into their sales pitch. Whether this is a shared channel, a partner call, or a partner portal that doesn’t feel like a “ghost town” upon login, they need a way to connect with an actual person on your team.

They also need to have a motivation to continue after the initial trade. A performance-based bonus as opposed to a lump-sum signing bonus keeps partners on board beyond the initial euphoria. Inquire occasionally about their feedback as well. When you are treated as a partner who is only taking orders and never giving any, you will be left behind by the partner the first time he or she receives a better response.

When a partner is enabled, consider them an extension of your own team, since that’s what they are in effect. If you put in the work to get a new employee working productively, you can assume that your partner is entitled to the same work, just in an hour rather than a week.

The Metrics That Actually Matter

Many partner programmes are judged by the following: How many partners have they signed up, how many logos are on a partner’s page, how many co-branded posts did they publish? None of those indicate if the program is working. Here’s what does.

Partner-sourced revenue deals that are initiated by the partner, not by any deal the partner just happened to touch on the way. This is the purest indicator that the partnership is bringing in new customers or just benefiting from new work you would have secured on your own.

Partner-influenced revenue: revenue that a partner touched, but did not originate. Not as clean as sourced revenue, but still helpful to see a partner’s overall effect, particularly in a lengthy B2B sales process where a number of touch points occur before close.

Activation rate: percentage of signed partners that are engaged, not just on a list. Most often, a program is going to have many more signed partners than active ones, and it’s usually the gap between the two that is the real opportunity or the real problem.

Time to first deal: the amount of time it takes for a new partner to get their first result from them. In a long ramp, typically the issue is one of enablement and not a bad partner.

For referral-type programs, in particular: what percentage of leads do you convert from referrals? This will let you know if a partner is sending you good quality or just quantity.

If a partner is one of several touchpoints in a longer deal, the attribution gets really complicated: A prospect watches a co-branded webinar, receives a partner’s email and then comes in through a direct search weeks later. If you’re attempting to credit each of those correctly rather than crediting whichever channel was there at the close, then that’s a multi-touch attribution issue, and we’ve made comparisons of the tools that are designed to solve that problem.

What a Partner Agreement REALLY should include

While a partnership doesn’t have to be like a merger, it does have to be in writing before any real money or customer information is at stake. A basic partner agreement should at least outline the responsibilities of each party, how and when the payouts and/or commissions will be determined and distributed, what each party can and cannot say or imply about the other, how customer information will be shared, if at all, and whether or not the agreement is exclusive in any way and how each party can out of the contract in case it doesn’t work out.
None of this needs to be complicated for a small co-marketing campaign. Once money, customer data, or exclusivity comes into the equation, it becomes much more important, and at that point, it is best to have someone with legal expertise review the terms in addition to using a generic template.

Where Partner Marketing Programs Quietly Fail

There are some common themes in relationships that never seem to work out.

Hiring faster than you’ll be able to support. Twenty partners is a lot of momentum, but if 2 of them receive the spotlight and 18 of them go dark, then some of those will tell other prospective partners about it. Slow but steady growth with support is better than a larger number on a partners page.

There are no owners of the relationship. When partnership isn’t on the job, it’s on everyone’s back burner. Successful partnerships have an individual who is named to follow up periodically, and not a shared inbox which is read when time permits.

Pursuing the activity rather than the signature. Signed agreement is not an outcome, it is a starting line. Programs that reward sign-ups but not initial deals end up having a lengthy partner list and little money to demonstrate for it.

Uneven value exchange. If one side is clearly benefiting from the deal, it becomes obvious and it won’t continue. Before making a launch, it’s important to ask yourself if you’d walk away with the deal if you were on the other side.

Conflict with your own sales team. Channel relationships can cause friction in particular, as direct reps feel they are competing on deals with a channel partner. The registration of deals and who gets credit is clearly established at the top of the list of collective symptoms that prevent the real problem of splits.

Turning it into a campaign rather than a relationship. While one co-branded push may generate a quick burst, the programs that continue on a regular basis and have regular check-ins are the ones that create more than a one-time shot in the dark that is never followed up.

Tools Worth Knowing

An expensive stack is not necessary to get started. A partner-based CRM system such as HubSpot or, in the early stages, a shared spreadsheet can log partner contacts and deal status. Partner-referred traffic is part of your analytics feed, so you can see in Google Analytics or whatever analytics you use if it’s really driving results. Joint campaigns are managed across two teams using Trello, Asana, or Notion. Canva takes care of co-branding your visuals without having to employ a designer per visual.

When a program expands beyond a few partners, partner relationship management (PRM) software begins to pay for itself. PartnerStack, Impartner, and Allbound are the names that are most frequently mentioned. All of these platforms track the deals registered, the commissions, the onboarding of partners, and the reporting all in one place important when the spreadsheets can no longer catch up. Co-marketing sends are still done the same way as before via Mailchimp or your own email app, and a joint Slack channel typically beats a partner portal no one logs into.

Select according to the current position of the program, not the desired position next year. An enterprise PRM software program is serving a ten-partner program pay for complexity it doesn’t need.

Creating a Plan

Partner marketing plan does not have to be complex, but it must be somewhere in addition to your head. At a minimum, document the 1 or 2 goals that the partnerships are intended to achieve, the owner of each partnership, what success will look like in numbers for each partnership, and when you will be checking in on progress. If a blank page sounds tougher than it actually should be, there are more than enough free templates to choose from, such as from planning tools like Bit.ai or Cascade. The important thing is not so much the format, as the fact that everyone, both parties to each partnership, is acting from the same document, rather than from their own recollection of what was agreed.

Focus on One Partnership, Not Ten

Partner marketing pays off patience more so than any other channel. A paid campaign can start to work in a week, a partnership typically requires a quarter to 2 weeks before a person can truthfully state that it’s working. The programs that last are those that are not dependent on a long list of loosely affiliated partners, but on a few well-matched and well-supported partners. One or two you can actually give attention to, enablement and metrics right on those, and let the program grow from a track record rather than a spreadsheet of untouched leads.