Let's explore six common misconceptions about partner marketing and set the record straight to help your business achieve better results through partnerships.
One of the most widespread misconceptions is that partner marketing begins and ends with basic co-branded activities. Many businesses believe that once they publish a blog post announcing a partnership, host a launch event, or run a joint webinar, their partner marketing responsibilities are complete.
This approach is simply insufficient.
Effective partner marketing requires ongoing commitment and a comprehensive strategy that extends well beyond these initial touchpoints. A single announcement or event cannot sustain a partnership or generate meaningful results over time. Instead, successful partner marketing demands continuous collaboration, consistent communication, and evolving joint initiatives that deliver value to all stakeholders involved.
There's a common belief that marketing resources should be allocated primarily to partnerships with large, well-established companies. However, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Your most valuable partners aren't necessarily the biggest names on your partner list. Rather, they're the organisations that have the most aligned value propositions and are genuinely incentivised to promote your offerings in the right way. Sometimes, smaller partners with highly complementary solutions or services can drive more significant results than larger partners whose offerings may have less direct alignment with yours.
Every partner, regardless of size, requires appropriate marketing support. You might be surprised to discover that your largest partners sometimes produce the least traction, while smaller partners generate impressive results when provided with the right resources and support.
This misconception fundamentally misunderstands the role of partner marketing in your overall partnership strategy. The reality is that your partner strategy is only as effective as the partner marketing executed to support it.
You can develop the most brilliant partnership strategy in the world, but without proper partner marketing and enablement to activate those partnerships, nothing substantial will materialise. Partner marketing is the critical component that transforms your partnership strategy from concept to revenue-generating reality. It's the key that unlocks the potential of your partnerships, which is why investing adequately in this function is essential for success.
Many organisations make the mistake of assuming that their general marketing team can simply take on partner marketing as an additional function and repurpose existing direct marketing content for partnership initiatives. This approach consistently falls short.
Effective partner marketing requires crafting separate, bespoke value propositions tailored specifically for each partnership. General marketing content is typically too high-level and vague to address the unique solution that emerges from your partnerships. Partner marketing must articulate a joint value proposition with compelling offers for customers on both sides, as well as benefits for the partners themselves.
This requires dedicated effort to create content that speaks directly to the combined solution and highlights the specific advantages that result from the partnership.
The "build it and they will come" philosophy rarely works in any business context, and partner marketing is no exception. Simply creating partner marketing materials and sending them to your partners does not guarantee they'll actively promote them.
Successful partner marketing requires thoughtful incentivisation strategies, clear action plans, mutual success metrics, and joint goals. It's crucial to make promotion as effortless as possible for your partners by creating materials that are easy to customise and deploy—metaphorically enabling them to "drop their Lego on it and run with it."
The easier you make it for partners to promote your joint offerings, the more likely they are to actively participate in marketing initiatives. This approach significantly increases your chances of gaining traction and generating results from your partnerships.
A critical question every organisation should ask is: What proportion of your marketing spend is dedicated to partner marketing? If this percentage doesn't align with the proportion of revenue you're aiming to drive through partnerships, you're underfunding your partnership strategy and limiting its potential impact.
Proper funding for partner marketing is essential to achieve meaningful results. This investment might take various forms, dedicated headcount, specialised tools, graphic design resources, campaign budgets, or other necessities. Regardless of the specific allocation, having sufficient funding in this category is crucial for executing partner marketing initiatives effectively.
Without appropriate resources, even the most promising partnerships will struggle to deliver their full potential value.
Partner marketing is a sophisticated discipline that requires dedicated resources, tailored approaches, and continuous commitment. By recognising and addressing these common misconceptions, your organisation can develop more effective partnership strategies that truly drive growth and deliver mutual value.
Remember that successful partnerships aren't built on one-off activities or repurposed content, they thrive on aligned value propositions, customised marketing approaches, proper incentivisation, and adequate resourcing. When approached strategically, partner marketing becomes a powerful engine for business growth rather than just another marketing tactic.
Is your organisation allocating enough resources to your partner marketing efforts? Are you tailoring value propositions for each partnership rather than using generic marketing materials?