Partnerships are on the rise in the business ecosystem today, and part of making yourself a strong partner is investing in partnership marketing. 

Partnership marketing is about amplifying the positives of your own brand and the brand of your partnerships to make your company a stronger partner that can generate higher revenues. How you go about doing that isn’t always clear, however, especially if you’re new to the game.

In the simplest terms, what you’re really doing when you’re a partner marketing manager (PMM) is telling a story. You’re highlighting the things that are good about your partnership, your own brand, and communicating that in a variety of settings to educate and inform customers and entice potential partners.

With the right partnership marketing strategy, you’ll be creating value for your company, your partners, developing your partnership ecosystem, and in doing so build a successful career in partnership marketing.

Ways of Selling the Partnership

There are several avenues through which the value a partnership brings to customers—and both company’s internal stakeholders—can be developed. Remember: it’s not as simple as making sure your brands are sitting next to each other on copy for all to see. It’s about communicating value to customers that lies beneath the surface of brand association alone.

Here are some effective formats every PMM should leverage:

Webinars

Joint webinars are very popular options for partnership marketing. Many industry players encourage their employees to attend webinars as an easy way to get some extra professional development, and it’s a great opportunity to communicate the value of a partnership to your ecosystem.

Blog Posts

Collaborative blog posts are excellent for elevating the prominence of a partnership and developing its value. High-quality SEO will drive the right people to your content, and they are a natural narrative-driven format that is perfect for partnership marketing. If they are properly backlinked, they can also direct readership to other content that further enhances the partnership brand.

Case Studies

Case studies are a more technically-minded form of blog that lay out clear cause-and-effect narratives for readership. Partner case studies not only demonstrate the practical results that a partnership brought to the partners’ joint customers, but provide a data-driven foundation for  believing in the partnership’s value. 

Other Copy

There are many other ways of getting the news about your partnership out there, and they typically come in the form of alternative print and digital media like ebooks and whitepapers. These documents can fill various miscellaneous marketing channels that target particular segments who might not otherwise get the news.

These are the little things, for sure, but their value can add up to make a big difference in your partnership marketing strategy.

So You’re in Partnership Marketing Now?

You may have landed in a partner marketing role and figured you had a handle on what it takes to develop and market partnership narratives.

And then you realized the truth: you really had no idea what you were doing.

That’s OK! At Firneo, we’ve heard this story a thousand times, and it’s not your fault nobody told you.

When it comes to partnership marketing, there are several tactics you’re going to need to employ to be successful when you’re developing your partnership brand.

Create Value Narratives

Value narratives are critical to effectively marketing a partnership. You’ll need to focus on every aspect of the partnership, and tease out the hottest and most value-driven elements to present to customers and other potential partners.

Anything that demonstrates value and sells the partnership is gold. Dig for it.

Reuse, Recycle

You’re going to be telling the same story a lot, so it’s important to keep it fresh, fresh, fresh. Reuse and recycle old webinar content, blog posts, interviews, and anything else that worked well in the past to generate new content that keeps the story alive and vibrant. 

Develop the Ecosystem

There’s lots of ways to do this in partnership marketing, and it starts with making sure you and your partner are aligned on messaging and the partnership is properly maintained and healthy. If you build it, they will come, and a partnership that is lock-step on messaging and branding will entice more partners into your ecosystem and excite your customer base. That creates value for everyone. 

Produce Materials

This is kind of the nitty-gritty of partnerships marketing, but it’s nonetheless critical. If you’re going to be telling a partnership story, you’re going to need materials to make your case. You and your team will have to engage the right content expertise for web development, branding, online content, media materials, and a host of other useful assets.

Get creative! Your partnership narrative is only as good as your materials. 

Advantages of Partnership Marketing

It’s hard, but when you get it right, partnership marketing can take a decent partnership and make it into something truly great. Not only does selling the story of your partnership increase revenues, but it attracts better partners to your ecosystem. 

In particular, having a dedicated partner marketing role (or even better, a team) can create value for stakeholders above and beyond what a general marketing team is typically capable of. A PMM can take the time to really drill down on the specifics of a partnership’s value, as well as create in-depth analysis of the partnership ecosystem your company would like to develop.

Partnership marketing allows you to extract the maximum value from a partnership that may not sell itself up front to customers. And after all, what are partnerships all about? Just one thing:

Value.

If you’re not generating that, there’s no reason to get hitched. 

Partnership Marketing Is Hard: Make it Easier With Firneo

Partnerships are complicated and there are few positions on any career path that require such a wide blend of intuitive people skills, marketplace calculation, and strategic awareness.

It’s stressful, but the truth? It’s not you. You need a playbook to develop your partnership marketing acumen, and that’s where Firneo’s got you covered.

With our 8-week, cohort-based program, you can unlock the full potential of your partnership marketing network. Our expert mentors teach you how to build partnerships that rev up your company’s growth and your own career.

Best of all? You’ll be totally confident in your success, and so will your boss.