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PRINCIPLES

Act your age

When you have a handful of tech partners, when’s the right time to make the “co-marketing flip”?

You know, the switch from handling co-marketing requests that satisfy a need from your partner or customer to creating content that actively engages more adopters. 

In the early days of a partnership, your co-marketing tends to be foundational and  product-focused. You’re likely developing integration one-sheets, setup guides, creating website copy for your new partner page, and defining the messaging for your customer success team to properly communicate the integration’s joint value.

Then — at some point — your co-marketing should become proactive and content-focused. You and your partner initiate blog swaps, webinars, and events, for example, while promoting the integration to a wider net of your mutual customers and prospects.

These initiatives comprise longer co-marketing campaigns lasting months, if not years, and require long-term planning from both you and your partner.

But that “some point” can’t be arbitrary — your partnership has to be active and mature enough for the co-marketing efforts to be worth the investment. 

To help you find that sweet spot, Mike Stocker, VP Partnerships at CallRail, developed a Partnership Maturity Curve when he was VP of Strategic Partnerships at RollWorks.

Once you have good adoption numbers and get useful customer feedback about the value of your joint solution, you’re ready to graduate to the good stuff. Oh, the places you’ll go!

TACTICS

3 co-marketing plays to earn your place in your buyers' circle of trust

Trust is at the core of your buyers' behavior. 

HubSpot’s State of Partner Led Growth 2023 report demonstrates that 48% to 55% of Marketing leaders have identified that the opinions of trusted individuals in your buyers’ network are the key purchase decision-making factor.

This is where partnerships become so valuable, and where immense opportunity lies for marketers. Partners have already established trusted bonds with buyers. Their influence flows naturally, without raising the buyer’s sales radar. 

With Ecosystem-Led Marketing, marketers put the customer at the center, listening to what they need and creating campaigns with the people they already trust to surround them with value. 

Here are three marketing plays you can plan with partners to earn your way into customers’ circle of trust.

Play 1:  Run a multi-partner event to drive awareness

If you want to drive greater exposure to your company, partner with your buyers’ sources of trust to create a multi-partner event. 

You can partner with media partners, communities, influencers, key opinion leaders, and tech partners to create the event and content and distribute it with them. 

To run a 10/10 multi-partner event:

• Decide to run an event and choose partners based on topic, target audience, and overlap data from your account maps in Crossbeam or Reveal.
• When you approach your partners, come to them with suggestions for details like general date and timeline, industry trend/topic, key participants from their team, and content format. Show them you’ve done the homework around what will be successful for your target audience.
• Create a task list and assign responsibilities based on team strengths.
• Curate an event-targeted list, and try to involve all your GTM teams, so they can also share their insights and help with promotion. 
• As you execute the event, ensure the content is valuable and engaging. During the event (and after the event) have your Sales team network with engaged attendees.
• Don’t stop your collaboration after your “thank you email” — repurpose the content, and convert your event into articles, social posts, video clips, etc., to maximize value.

Play 2: Create a co-branded report to educate and nurture your buyers

It’s never a good idea to market yourself as the story’s hero — your buyer is the hero, and your product is the enabler that will help them save their company revenue. 

The thing is, many companies have used that narrative and created skeptical buyers, who don’t trust selling companies anymore. 

It’s more impactful to your customers if their trusted sources endorse your product than if you were to speak about it yourself. A great to do so is by creating a co-branding report, here’s how:

• Figure out which partner(s) you should include based on the topic, target audience, and the information from your account mapping overlaps.
• Pull collective data and create key benchmarks that point to significant pain points that you and your partner’s joint audience are facing, and how your joint solution can solve them.
• To co-create a plan with your partner, propose a general date and timeline, the value your joint audience will glean from your report, your target audience (and why you chose it), and the format of the report.
• Outline a task list and delegate based on each of your team’s strengths and your partners’ strengths.
• Use your joint channels, target email lists, and the audience’s known watering holes to get the report in front of your target audience. 

Play 3: Focus on making your customers famous to engage better with your buyers

Something that has worked not only for us but for other companies has been: making your customers famous. 

This not only helps to improve existing relationships with your customers but also helps your buyers become solution-aware and solution-ready — leading to conversion. 

Buyers trust other people who have achieved their promised land, remember? So, what better than sharing success stories from your customers to help your sales team close that deal? 

Here are some tips to build and leverage customer stories: 

• Work with your partner to find a customer that aligns with your target audience and effectively tells your better-together story.
• Develop a list of interview questions with your partner to keep the conversation focused on the narrative you want to tell while staying open to unique insights from the customer.
• Record an interview involving you, your partner, and the customer to capture authentic and impactful moments.
• Identify and clip the best parts of the interview for promotional materials to highlight and make both the partner and customer shine.
• Distribute promotional assets to your partner and the customer, making it easy for them to share within their networks to maximize reach.

If done well, these activities lead to a conversion of the customer. 

In the Conversion stage, partners can help with intel, influence, and introductions to decision-makers, helping your sales team finalize the deal.

FROM THE ECOSYSTEM

Ecosystem-Led Growth really is everywhere…thanks Amy Palmerton for the insight.

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